Absent-minded Alchemists and Foolish Philosophers in Andrzej Sapkowski's "Witcher" series.

The mad scientist and the closely aligned evil alchemist are perhaps the most well-known of the common stereotypes of scientists identified in Western literature by Roslynn Haynes, featured in works of horror, science fiction and fantasy across many different media. Numerous examples can be found in the medievalist universe of Polish fantasy author Andrzej Sapkowski’s The Witcher series of short stories and novels, which subsequently spawned a wildly popular computer games and a live-action Netflix series.

In the mythology of the series, witchers such as Geralt of Rivia are taken from their families as children and mutated through a secret and arduous process developed by evil alchemists utilizing a variety of herbs, elixirs, and magic. Those who survive the painful trials are trained in martial arts, experimental magic (what we might term science and technology), and monster physiology and taxonomy in order to become monster hunters. In return they are rewarded with superhuman strength, agility, and senses, an extremely long lifespan, and resistance to disease. Witchers are social outcasts, equally looked down upon by humans, elves, dwarfs, and other humanoids who reluctantly rely upon the mutants to do their dirty work for them. But while mad mages and evil alchemists certainly abound in Sapkowski’s universe, today I would like to focus on a more light-hearted stereotype of the scientific endeavor, the absent-minded, socially inept genius Roslynn Haynes dubbed the “foolish scientist.” However, given Sapkowski’s well-known reliance on dark humor in his series (for example, putting his own decidedly dark twist on well-known fairy tales such as Beauty and the Beast and Snow White), we will not be surprised by occasions where the foolhardy magician evolves into his evil brethren.

Haynes notes that “the first systematic satires of scientists were directed against the founding members of the Royal Society…. They were ruthlessly mocked on the seventeenth-century stage…. caricatured as obsessed with trivial and usually bad-smelling research and duped by the sellers of fake ‘wonders’, while being totally uninterested in the study of humankind.” These absent-minded professors were “so engrossed in their research that they wear unmatched socks, never remembering to cut their hair, and remain oblivious to the danger confronting their beautiful daughters in the next room.” Haynes notes that this “stereotype is still popular. The media loves an eccentric scientist and will often forgive him much.” Indeed, the trope is much older than the Royal Society. In Theaetetus Plato has Socrates share a tale of how Thales of Miletus was so engrossed in his star gazing that he failed to watch where he was walking and fell into a well. The possibly apocryphal tale about the father of western science finds a parallel in one of Sapkowski’s more slapstick scientists, “sage, alchemist, astronomer and astrologer” Aarhenius Krantz, whose name is possibly a nod to 19^th century chemist Svante August Arrhenius, the father of physical chemistry.

A “gold and red bee of a comet” suddenly appears in the skies over Sapkowski’s fictional Continent just prior to the final battles of the novel The Lady of the Lake. Citizens from myriad lands, on both sides of the war between the Northern Kingdoms and the Emperor of Nilfgaard, struggle to interpret the exact meaning of this prophesized celestial interloper. A wary merchant connects the comet to the obvious troop movements, and aligns its red color with the blood that is sure to be spilled. But a mercenary sagely notes that because the comet is also visible over Nilfgaard its appearance could easily be interpreted as heralding the downfall of either side (depending on one’s point of view). For his part, the scientific and superstitious Krantz carefully follows the comet in his telescope, aiming to calculate its orbit. As they were already in a war, he reasons, the comet’s motions might instead be used to predict a future martial event, so he observes the comet in the hopes of being better prepared for the next calamity. Sapkowski describes in vivid detail how the astronomer takes a break and urinates “straight from the terrace onto a bed of peonies, not caring at all about the housekeeper’s reprimands. Wasting time walking a long way to relieve himself bore the risk of the loss of valuable reflections, which no scholar could afford to do.”

 As he attends to his bodily functions, Krantz identifies various stars and constellations and engages in deep philosophical thought, noting that “According to some theories, they aren’t just little twinkling lights, but worlds. Other worlds. Worlds from which time and space separate us…. I believe deeply, he thought, that one day journeys to those other places, to those other times and universes, will be possible…. But it will demand utterly new thinking, a new, original idea that will tear apart the rigid corset called rational cognition that restricts it today.” As he finishes urinating and rather comically hops up and down, he yearns for an inspiration, for “one, unique opportunity….”

Right on cue, the perfect opportunity materializes before his eyes, as Ciri and her horse Kelpie teleport onto his property, one of her desperate jumps between worlds and time periods in an attempt to escape from the nefarious space-time traveling Wild Hunt and return to her own world and time period. In this case, she is actually home, but she never gets a chance to realize it, because the stunned scientist is utterly unable to speak a coherent word in response to her repeated questions about where and when she might be. Exasperated, she decides she is in the wrong place and time, and offering “Then bugger you, you stupid goat” she teleports away. Krantz stands there, silently, for some minutes, his trousers still unbuttoned and his anatomy exposed, before composing himself and returning to his telescope. Utterly oblivious to the opportunity he has just missed to prove the existence of space and time travel, he focuses on the mundane task of watching the comet to the limit of its observability. As he noted, “It was an opportunity, and a scholar cannot waste such an opportunity.”

Another rather myopic academic who initially has great difficulty recognizing the scientific opportunity literally in front of his face occurs earlier in the saga. In the novel Blood of Elves Geralt is working on a barge in the Pontar Delta, protecting it against recent attacks from an as-yet unidentified kind of monster. Boatbug, the skipper, points out one of the passengers to Geralt in derision, poking fun at the “oaf” who has trouble walking on the barge in smooth water. Said oaf identifies himself as Linus Pitt, Master Tutor and Lecturer in Natural History at the Oxenfurt Academy, described as a “short, thin man of uncertain age, dressed in a large, woolen and none-too-clean cloak pinned in place with a circular brass broach. Its pin, clearly lost, had been replaced with a crooked nail with a flattened head.” His disheveled appearance aligns with his lack of social acumen. When asked by the Redanian customs officers who board the barge if he has anything to declare, Linus (who may owe his name to Carl Linnaeus, the father of biological taxonomy) simply answers “I’m a scholar!”

When the witcher refers to the still unseen beast as an “aeschna” (in our real world a genus of dragonfly) Pitt sneers at the “common name,” asking that Geralt “use the scientific terminology.” Pitt further disparages Geralt’s description of the creature as “a bumpy and rough-skinned monster four yards in length resembling a stump overgrown with algae and with ten paws and jaws like cut-saws,” saying it “leaves a lot to be desired as regards scientific precision. Could it be one of the species of the Hyphydridae family?” Geralt clearly tires of the scientist’s snobbish demeanor, offering that the “aeschna, as far as I know, belongs to an exceptionally nasty family for which no name can be abusive.” Geralt is depicted as clearly disinterested in the details of Linnean taxonomy and more concerned with finding and dispatching the beast without losing his life or that of innocents.  The self-assured Pitt laughs at this identification, because as an expert on the fauna of the Pontar Delta, he knows it to be a fact that there are no “quite so dangerous predatory species” in the area due to the “considerable salinity and atypical chemical composition of the water.”

Geralt interrupts, noting that the water associated with the Novigrad canals is fouled with “excrement, soapsuds, oil and dead rats,” which obviously has an effect on the ecosystem of the area. Here Sapkowski is drawing parallels to the wide-ranging effects of the mass pollution of the Polish environment that occurred as a result of industrialization, including deleterious changes to the Baltic Sea. Pitt laments the fact that of the two thousand indigenous fish species that could be found in the river five decades before, less than half remain. However, he has not apparently done a careful study of the difference between threatened and extinct species in the river, as no sooner does he lament the extinction of the king pickerel than he and Geralt see a twenty-pound king pickerel eat a dead rat in the water in front of them. Geralt jokes that perhaps it was a penguin.

Regarding to the aeschna, Geralt and Pitt have a scientific difference of opinion concerning the creature’s original food source (before the fouling of the canals and delta). Geralt remembers them to be seals, while Pitt argues for river porpoises. Geralt humorously offers “they lived off porpoises and the porpoises were killed off because they looked like seals. They provided seal-like skins and fat.” Regardless, the initial food source went extinct, and “the aeschna underwent mutation. It adapted…. Humans have rebuilt its food chain. They supplied warm-blooded creatures in the place of porpoises. Sheep, cattle, swine began to be transported across the Delta…” Geralt further explains how the “liquid manure” of the Delta water “seems to suit the aeschna. It enhances its growth.”

 Again, while Pitt has tunnel vision, obsessing over the classification of the creature, Geralt is literally keeping a carefully observant eye on the situation. When the mist becomes denser in a lack of wind, he tries to get an obnoxious little boy named Everett away from the edge of the barge. To keep Pitt occupied so that he can keep his attention on the dangers at hand, Geralt asks Pitt to enlighten him about aquatic predators. Pitt launches into a scientific lecture about various species and sub species of Hyphydra (in our real world, an antiquated name for a tropical plant genus). When Pitt describes one particular subspecies that had been recently reclassified as a separate species, Geralt notes that it had already been known and named by other indigenous peoples. For example, Geralt offers that “The creature you’re talking about is an ilyocoris, called a cinerea in [the] Elder Speech” of the elves.

 Dorota Guttfeld uses this particular vignette to highlight the problems with translating Sapkowski’s works from Polish into English. As she notes:

The effect is undoubtedly meant to be comical. The conversation between the scholar and the witcher highlights their different use of language…. As the scholar keeps correcting the witcher, they both showcase a number of common and scientific terms for various creatures. The scene stresses the diversity of the depicted world, where different vocabulary is used by different social classes, as well as the liminal position of the protagonist… while Pitt is limited to academic register, Geralt is able to use both sophisticated and common terms, and insists on the latter at least partially to dissociate himself from the refined scholar. 

In particular, Sapkowski juxtaposes “international Latinate names (hyphydra), with a ph, their Polonized variants (hyfydra), with an f, and local Polish names (zognica),” while translator Danusia Stok’s use of the Latinate hyphydra and aeschna do not represent such a contrast.

The creature predictably attacks the boat while two men are trying to arrest Geralt and the annoying child Everett falls into the water. As Geralt rushes to save Everett and avoid his attackers, the learned Pitt just stands there in disbelief, fortunately more verbally coherent than the previously described astronomer. “It’s impossible!” Pitt offers, “Such an animal can’t exist! At least, it shouldn’t!” Sapkowski alternates perspective between Geralt’s largely underwater battle with the creature and Pitt’s excited scientific babbling. “It’s an anthropod! Order Amphipoda! Group Madibulatissimae!” After the creature is finally killed and Geralt and Everett are safely back on board the barge, Pitt graciously offers to name the new species Geraltia maxiliosa pitti, giving himself proper credit despite the fact that he denied the existence of the creature in the first place.

The astronomer Krantz and natural philosopher Pitt are clearly played for laughs in the novels. In our final example the humorous depiction of the absentminded scientist turns darker, the tip of the iceberg of a tradition of mad scientists and evil alchemists creating dangerous monsters and technologies of mass destruction within the secretive labs at Rissberg Castle. Most respected of the mages there is the eccentric and ancient Grandmaster Ortolan, whose creative mind is responsible for the mages’ antiaging process, among many other magical successes. Being already exceedingly old at the time of its creation, Ortolan himself does not benefit from his own discovery, but he sincerely hopes the rest of humanity is actively reaping its benefits and enjoying centuries of youth. Unbeknownst to him, however, his fellow sorcerers have miserly kept it for themselves, an important detail they carefully hide from their mentor. Working for the benefit of humanity (as he personally defines it) is Ortolan’s mantra, a mantra only given lip-service by his colleagues. As strongly as Ortolan pushes for the democratization of the benefits from magical research, the community of mages at Rissberg fight back to hold on to the power magical knowledge affords them. Oblivious to their machinations, Ortolan continually dreams up new inventions, some of which fail spectacularly on their own while others are intentionally driven to fail, not the least reason being their military applications.

Ortolan, the archetypical foolish scientist of Rissberg, is infamous for his invention of various weapons of mass destruction, including “explosive and flammable materials, siege catapults… sticks that hit by themselves and poison gases.” Ortolan holds the opinion that world peace can only be obtained through the creation of a “terrible weapon as a deterrent: the more terrible it is, the more enduring and certain the peace…. He, Ortolan, would give humanity the benefit of peace, even if it would first be necessary to destroy half of it.” Among his experiments is crossbreeding and genetic engineering, for example Mikita, Bue, and Bang, three ogre-dwarfs, the first created through “Forbidden” magic, while the last two were literally created in “Ortolan’s test tubes.”

Geralt is investigating a series of rather nasty and dangerous genetically engineered creatures, including the Idr, an insectoid monster on which he finds a serial number identifying it as number 12 of a series created by the Rissberg mage Idarran. Ortolan is horrified to learn that Geralt killed the creature, calling it “a work of art” and “miracle of genetics” that Geralt’s shallow layman mind cannot comprehend. He then accuses Geralt of “dishonoring the work of your own fathers with this impudent murder,” for Idarran’s teacher and teacher’s teacher had created the witchers in the first place. The dark mad scientist vibe of the scene is suddenly interrupted when Ortolan cries out that he needs to use the bathroom immediately, one of several instances of scatological humor in the novel.   

 Over the remainder of the novel Ortolan is repeatedly painted as more incompetent than evil, as he is easily duped by his young, attractive protégée, the truly mad scientist Sorel Degerlund. Degerlund’s murder of dozens of poor villagers is far-too-easily overlooked by his colleagues as collateral damage in a promising scientific endeavor, until Geralt metes out justice his way. The Witcher’s dispatching of the mad mage (an incident afterwards covered up as an unfortunate lab accident) has an unintended, yet convenient consequence – the death of Ortolan upon hearing of the death of his favorite apprentice, reportedly in a stroke aggravated by drug use, and the end of his experiments on military weapons.

Interestingly Ortolan is named after a finchlike songbird eaten as a delicacy in France in a barbaric, now-banned culinary ritual. The birds are tricked into gorging themselves by keeping them in the dark for several days, drowned in Armagnac and roasted, then plucked before being eaten whole, feet first.

In his book Hollywood Science, Sidney Perkowitz reflects that the depiction of scientists in popular media “often includes the idea that great minds are helpless in daily life, a notion easy to play for comic effect…. Although unworldliness, lack of social skills, or ‘differences’ can be played for laughs, these characteristics also have deeper meanings about scientists’ ability to connect with others.” Through these three scientific characters Sapkowski not only adds levity to his dark universe, but also manages to carefully point out the potential for danger in the work of careless scientists, despite their supposed lack of malintent, forming a bridge to truly evil experimentation by other mages/scientists in the series such as Degerlund, Stregobar, and Vilgefortz. In this way, we can see them as not all that different in some instances from their “mad scientist” (in this case “mad mage”) brethren, and allow Geralt to shine as not only a more heroic character, but also in many ways a more clear-minded and effective scientist, one who asks keen questions, constantly observes, and is open-minded to the acquisition of new information and the drawing of updated conclusions.

 

Guttfeld, Dorota. “Fantastic Neologisms in Translation: Creature Names in Professional and Amateur Renderings of Sapkowski’s Witcher Series Into English.” Między Oryginałem a Przekładem vol. 23 no. 2, 2017, pp. 77-96. https://journals.akademicka.pl/moap/article/view/489/453.

 

Haynes, Roslynn. “From Alchemy to Artificial Intelligence: Stereotypes of the Scientist in Western Literature.” Public Understanding of Science, vol. 12, 2003, pp. 243-53.

Perkowitz, Sidney. Hollywood Science. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007.

 [Presented at the Medieval Fantasy Symposium, Sept. 28, 2021]