Myths of the Underworld in

Contemporary Culture: The Backward

Gaze Judith Fletcher
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CLASSICAL PRESENCES

General Editors
   . 
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 19/3/2019, SPi

CLASSICAL PRESENCES

Attempts to receive the texts, images, and material culture of ancient Greece
and Rome inevitably run the risk of appropriating the past in order to
authenticate the present. Exploring the ways in which the classical past has
been mapped over the centuries allows us to trace the avowal and disavowal
of values and identities, old and new. Classical Presences brings the latest
scholarship to bear on the contexts, theory, and practice of such use, and
abuse, of the classical past.
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 19/3/2019, SPi

Myths of the
Underworld in
Contemporary
Culture
The Backward Gaze

Judith Fletcher

1
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3
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 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 19/3/2019, SPi

For Nick, Emma, and Oscar

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 19/3/2019, SPi
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 19/3/2019, SPi

Acknowledgments

I am thankful to all who helped me bring this book above ground. These
include my colleagues at Wilfrid Laurier University, Jane Campbell, for
her thoughtful and generous advice on A.S. Byatt’s poetics, and Ed
Jewinski for steering me to John Barth’s Lost in the Funhouse. I am
also beholden to David Lipovitch (for advice on things Near Eastern),
and fellow members of the Inspir(d) Historians writing group (David
Smith, Amy Milne-Smith, and Dana Weiner) for their close readings of
Chapter 1. My book would have been much delayed and greatly dimin-
ished were it not for my stalwart student research assistants, Kathleen
Vahey, Kyleigh Poultney, and Jenna Lee, who helped me to organize
unwieldy quantities of material. Any remaining errors or infelicities are,
I confess, entirely my own.
My thoughts about underworld themes in contemporary culture were
enhanced when I gave a series of lectures for the Classical Association of
Canada Atlantic Provinces tour in 2012. I am indebted for the hospitality
and engaged audiences that I encountered at all seven host universities,
but especially to Kathryn Simonsen (Memorial University), and Alison
Barclay (Saint Mary’s University). Thanks are also due to Lisa Trentin,
her students, and colleagues at the University of Toronto Mississauga,
who providentially steered me towards a deeper investigation of Neil
Gaiman’s work. My understanding of ancient eschatology was enriched
by participating in a conference on “Imagining the Afterlife in the
Ancient World,” at Newman University in Birmingham in 2016. I am
grateful to Juliette Harrisson for organizing a stimulating few days of
talks, and to audiences and participants for valuable suggestions on my
paper on Ann Patchett’s State of Wonder, which became part of
Chapter 4.
My gratitude extends to Wilfrid Laurier University for teaching relief
in order to complete this manuscript, to Georgina Leighton of Oxford
University Press for editorial advice, to Christine Ranft for her expert
copy-editing and Priyanka Swansi for overseeing production, to the
Classical Presences series editors, and to the anonymous readers of
the manuscript at various stages. And I fondly acknowledge the
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viii 

resources of the beautiful library of the American Academy in Rome

between 2013 and 2017. Thanks also to Daralyn Ward, who made life
easier for me, and to my husband Rick Nixon for support, tolerance, and
encouragement.
I have revisited and reworked previously published material for this
book. Preliminary ideas for part of Chapter 2 appeared in 2002 as “Lost
in the underworld: John Barth reads the Odyssey,” Classical and Modern
Literature: A Quarterly 23: 65–76. My thoughts on A.S. Byatt in
Chapter 3 are developments of my 1999 “The Odyssey rewoven:
A.S. Byatt’s Angels and Insects,” Classical and Modern Literature:
A Quarterly 19: 217–31. And my 2006 “Signifying Circe in Toni Morri-
son’s Song of Solomon,” Classical World 99: 405–18 is an embryonic
version of some of ideas in Chapter 4.
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Contents

List of Figures xi

Introduction 1
1. Source Texts 13
The Odyssean Nekyia 15
Heracles and Dionysus 25
The Descent of Aeneas 29
Orpheus and Eurydice 35
Persephone 40
Elements of the Underworld Narrative 44
2. The Ghost of the Father: Spirits of the Postmodern 47
Finding the Way in John Barth’s Underworld 52
The Anxiety of Influence in Neil Gaiman’s Underworlds 64
3. Engendering the Haunted Text 87
Mutations and Hauntings: A.S. Byatt’s Angels and Insects 92
Mutations: “Morpho Eugenia” 95
Hauntings: “The Conjugial Angel” 107
Persephone Interrupted: Coraline 114
The Doll’s Descent: Searching for Persephone in the Novels of
Elena Ferrante 126
4. The Wanderer’s Descent: The Underworlds of Diaspora 147
Ascending from Oblivion in Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon 152
Amy Bloom’s Away: Dreams of Hell 167
On the Outside Looking In: Salman Rushdie’s The Ground
Beneath Her Feet 173
The Ghost of the Father in Ann Patchett’s State of Wonder 185
The Catabatic Diaspora 197
Epilogue 201

Bibliography 205
Index 219
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List of Figures

2.1 Morpheus in the Dream of Orpheus. Neil Gaiman,

The Sandman v.6. Fables & Reflections (1993), art by
Brian Talbot, et al. 80
© DC Comics.
3.1 Coraline and the lure of the flower. Coraline, dir. Henry
Selick (2009). 119
© Laika and Pandemonium Films.
3.2 Celina at the bottom of the ocean. Elena Ferrante,
The Beach at Night (2016). 132
© Europa Editions.
4.1 Arrival at Kurtz’s compound and the “souls on the shore.”
Apocalypse Now, dir. Francis Ford Coppola (1979). 193
© Omni Zoetrope.

Whilst every effort has been made to secure permissions, we may have
failed in a few cases to trace the copyright holders. We apologize for any
apparent negligence. Should the copyright holders wish to contact us
after publication, we would be happy to include an acknowledgement in
subsequent reprints.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 19/3/2019, SPi
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Introduction

What happens to us after death is a tale that only our dying can tell,
although this discouraging truism hardly prevents the living from
imagining the hereafter. The oldest stories in our narrative tradition
are those in which a mortal or divine being descends to and returns
from the land of the dead, a place where heroism is defined, insight
obtained, and identities transformed. This book is a study of nine
contemporary authors who draw on a fantasy that has intrigued story-
tellers, their audiences, and readers for over four thousand years—and
that is only according to written records.¹ Ancient Near Eastern myths of
the descent of the goddess Inanna to the realm of her sister Ereshkigal,
queen of the netherworld, survive as a 415 line Sumerian poem in
cuneiform (c.1900–1600 ), although scholars estimate that the story
had been circulating for at least 1000 years before this inscription.²
During her downward journey Inanna is gradually stripped of her
clothing and power at the seven gates of Hell, then sentenced to death,
and suspended from a hook. Ereshkigal’s judges decree that Inanna can
ascend if she finds another living soul to take her place; she selects her
husband Dumuzi, who is enjoying life without her too cheerfully, but
whose devoted sister agrees to share his sentence for half the year. The
Descent of Inanna is among the first in a long line of underworld stories

¹ Zaleski (1987: 12–13) speculates that cave paintings from the Upper Paleolithic period
might depict some form of a shamanistic, otherworldly journey.
² Kramer discusses dating the Inanna poems (Wolkstein and Kramer 1983: xii–xiv); for
further discussion, see Laneri 2002: 9–51. In the Akkadian version, The Descent of Ishtar,
the entrapment or death of Ishtar, goddess of fertility and sexuality, results in harmful
effects in the human realm, which might recall Demeter’s response to Persephone’s
abduction. It was not only goddesses who descended to the netherworld in Near Eastern
myth, but also gods such as the Canaanite Baal. Lease (1926: 602–6) offers thumbnail
sketches of different versions of descent stories from ancient Near Eastern and Egyptian
sources up to early modern European literature.
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that feature tests of endurance, substitutions and cycles, and a return to

the realm of the living. In it we detect Ur-versions of the Greek myth of
Aphrodite and Adonis, Persephone’s cycle between Hades and the upper
world, or the story of Alcestis who died as a substitute for her husband
Admetus, and then came back to life. From the perspective of ancient
peoples of the Mediterranean basin, including the Akkadian, Ugaritic,
Hittite, Hebrew, and Greek cultures, the soul went downward after
death.³ Thus a visitor to the land of the dead, like Inanna, undertakes a
catabasis (from the Greek katabainein, to go down), a descent to the
underworld, but then performs the supernatural feat of ascending back
to the terrestrial realm (an anabasis).⁴
Not every attempt to return from the netherworld is successful,
needless to say, and not every underworld tale involves an actual visit
to the land of the dead. The twelfth tablet of the Akkadian Epic of
Gilgamesh (also told separately as Gilgamesh, Enkidu and the Nether-
world) relates how the semi-divine hero’s closest friend, the mortal
Enkidu, descends to Irkalla, and although he never returns, his ghost
can transmit knowledge about the great beyond to Gilgamesh through a
portal linking the two worlds. This dialogue with the dead, or evocatio, is
precursor to Odysseus’ conversations with the parade of shades at the
mouth of Hades in Odyssey 11. In their interviews with ghosts, Gilgamesh
and Odysseus enact the appealing fantasy of gaining knowledge about
the afterlife without actually dying. The topic was a popular one.
A fragmentary Hittite text (c.thirteenth century ), entitled The Voyage
of the Immortal Human Soul describes topographical details of the
underworld, such as meadows, a common feature of Greco-Roman
Hades, and the dreary diet served to the dead, elements that recur in
Greek gold leaf tablets over 1000 years later.⁵ Knowledge of the layout of

³ West 1997: 152. That death is considered to be a descent is evident from passages in the
Hebrew Bible, for example: “The Lord kills and brings to life; he brings down to Sheol and
raises up” (1Sa. 2.6).
⁴ Bernabé (2015: 17) offers this definition of the catabasis: “a tale of the journey to the
subterranean world of the dead led by an extraordinary character while alive who has a
determined purpose and is keen on returning.” Since I include the descent of the goddess
Persephone in this book, this is an improvement on Clark (1978: 3): “a catabasis can be
defined as a Journey of the Dead made by a living person in the flesh who returns to our
world to tell the tale.”
⁵ See Watkins (1995: 284–90) for text, translation and analysis. He also observes some
similarities with Orphic gold leaf texts.
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the underworld apparently provided some assurance that one could

achieve a comfortable afterlife, but stories of visits to a subterranean
kingdom also related to the here and now by advising the living on how
to behave. A seventh-century  cuneiform text known as the Under-
world Vision of an Assyrian Crown Prince is distinguished by its human
protagonist, one of the first of many mortals in literature to take a tour of
the netherworld, during which he sees the ghost of his father, and a host
of fearful beings including a grim ferryman with the head of a bird. The
prince, Kummay, obtains life-changing instruction and an apocalyptic
prophecy from Nergal, king of the dead, before he awakens in terror.⁶
The text is the prototype of a story repeated in Jewish and Christian
accounts of tours of Hell, such as the apocryphal Book of Enoch, as well as
literary versions in Vergil’s Aeneid 6, Dante’s Inferno, and indeed several
of the contemporary versions discussed in this book. Of special interest is
the conceptual overlap between dreams and the land of the dead, a
connection that we shall see repeated throughout this volume.
Over a period of several millennia, ancient Mediterranean cultures,
including those of Greece and Rome, exchanged stories that responded
to human curiosity about the afterlife, although these tales often had
more oblique purposes. The Underworld Vision of an Assyrian Crown
Prince served the political objectives of King Assurbanipal, just as its
literary descendant, Aeneid 6, enhanced the imperialistic agenda of the
first Roman emperor, Augustus. Stories of a descent, by far the most
common type of underworld narrative, often supported Greek and
Roman mystery religions, thereby functioning as “an ideological guar-
antee” to legitimate rituals and other cultic practices that helped indi-
viduals prepare for life after death.⁷ Some scholars believe that Vergil’s
detailed description of Aeneas’ tour of the underworld reflects the
experience of an initiate of the Eleusinian Mysteries, thus appealing to
Augustus who had undergone the popular ritual that honored the god-
dess Demeter and her daughter.⁸ Every telling of the myth of a journey to
the land of the dead has a unique resonance within its specific social

⁶ Sanders (2009: 157–61) provides a summary of the text and a comparison with Jewish
and Christian apocalyptic Tours of Hell, or visionary texts such as Ezekiel 40–8, (which was
composed in Babylon c.sixth century ), or The Book of Enoch (c.300 ). See Almond
(2016: 14–18) on the Jewish underworld in The Book of Enoch.
⁷ Bernabé 2015: 31. ⁸ Bremmer 2014: 181.
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context, and although we suspect influences that go back very far indeed,
we are also missing large chunks of data that would help chart the
shifting meanings of the infernal voyage. In any event, the story of
Inanna’s descent meant something very different to its audience than
that of Aeneas meant to the Romans.⁹ While underworld stories have
served various purposes throughout the ages—not the least of which was
to entertain—they draw on an archive of shared features. Among the
most important is the concept of a physical location inhabited by the
dead. Hades, according to the speculative etymology of the Greeks, was
“A-ides” or the “unseen place,” difficult to access, but which certain
exceptional individuals could enter temporarily through a portal such
as a door, a hole in the ground, the jaws of a monster, or across a body of
water.¹⁰ Hades is governed by the god of the same name (also known as
Aidoneus, Pluto, Dis, or Orcus); so too the Hebrew underworld Sheol
can be personified as an insatiable being with “hands, womb, throat, and
a mouth to swallow the dead.”¹¹ The recurring figure of the infernal
ferryman, who takes the traveler to the land of the dead, suggests a
dynamic cultural exchange between Babylonian, Hittite, Assyrian,
Canaanite, Phoenician, Greek, Egyptian, Etruscan, Roman, and other
ancient Mediterranean societies.¹² This concept of a physical location,
informed by the conviction that the dead must be somewhere, is perva-
sive, and also ripe for parody. In his Cataplus the Syrian poet Lucian

⁹ Edmonds (2004: 14–15) justifiably warns against putting too much importance on
cross-cultural influences when interpreting ancient underworld mythology, since an
emphasis on the transmission of motifs still does not reveal what these elements of the
myths meant to the Greeks.
¹⁰ Mesopotamian myths tell of a “Great Door” to the underworld that can only be
reached after travelling to the far West through barren lands and over a river with the help
of a boatman (Bernabé 2015: 21). In Canaanite mythology, the god Baal descends into the
Underworld through a “voracious mouth” (Clark 1978: 35).
¹¹ Almond (2016: 9). References to the insatiable appetite of Sheol include: “Therefore
Sheol has enlarged its appetite and opened its mouth beyond measure, and the nobility of
Jerusalem and her multitude go down, her throng and he who exults in her” (Isa. 5.14). See
further Almond’s discussion (2016: 12) of the translation of the Jewish underworld Sheol
into Hades in the Greek Septuagint, the version of the Old Testament produced in
Alexandria in the third century  for the Jewish population of Greek-speaking Egypt.
¹² Grinsell (1957) studies the Egyptian funerary texts of late Fifth Dynasty, c.2450 ,
which describe the boatman who transports the dead king to the afterlife. Lincoln
(1980: 41–59) identifies the cross-cultural figure of the ferryman of the dead. According
to Horsfall (2013: 254), the first occurrence of Charon is in a surviving fragment of a Greek
poem known as the Minyas (perhaps composed in the sixth century ); he also appears in
fifth-century Greek vase paintings. Cf. Bremmer (2014: 184–5) and West (1997: 155).
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 14/3/2019, SPi

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(writing in Greek in the second century ) played with the millennia-
old idea of the underworld as a vast city by satirically representing Hades
as a bureaucracy administered by the ferryman Charon and other infer-
nal personnel who exhibit officious concern with paperwork and
accounting.¹³ Throughout literary history poets built on this inherited
sense of place: physical features of the Vergilian underworld reappear in
Dante’s Inferno, Milton’s Paradise Lost, and Spenser’s Faerie Queene. In
the latter (1.i.37–44) the conniving sorcerer, Archimago, dispatches a
spirit to the underworld (the House of Morpheus) to bring back a false
dream; his entrance through embellished double gates recalls that of
Aeneas at the beginning of his trip to Dis, while the quest itself reminds
the learned reader that Aeneas left the underworld through the gate of
false dreams (Aen. 6.893–8). Of course, these fine poets emulate their
classical predecessors in much more intellectual ways. Philip Hardie
observes that for both Vergil and Spenser, “the mythological underworld
is a vivid setting for issues of cosmic, psychological, theological, and
moral order and disorder.”¹⁴ A less elevated composition, the English
satirist Maurice Atkins’ Cataplus (1672), adheres to the structure of
Aeneid 6, but alludes to Lucian’s ironic critique when he shapes Aeneas’
descent as a commentary on the English civil war, all in a jocular tone
peppered with colloquialisms.¹⁵
As cultural critic Linda Hutcheon argues in A Theory of Adaptation,
there are really no new stories, and this book is, among other things, an
illustration of that assertion. The following chapters offer a study of the
adaptation of underworld mythology in a selection of contemporary
cultural products created in the past half-century. All of them preserve
the literary footprints of their Greco-Roman predecessors, most obvi-
ously in how they borrow and develop the well-established physical
features of Hell, but also in their use of the underworld as place to
examine psychosocial matters pertinent to our lives above ground. The
temporal range extends from John Barth’s postmodern tour de force,
Lost in the Funhouse, published in 1968, to the enigmatic Italian author
Elena Ferrante’s highly acclaimed novels, most recently The Story of the

¹³ Cataplus narrates the journey of a boatload of souls being ferried to the underworld.
Nesselrath (2017: 42–50) discusses several of Lucian’s works featuring satirically pragmatic
treatments of the constitution and governance of Hades.
¹⁴ Hardie 2010: 185. ¹⁵ See further Power 2010: 191–2.
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Lost Child (translated into English in 2015). Other specimens include

Salman Rushdie’s The Ground Beneath Her Feet, A.S. Byatt’s Angels and
Insects, Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon, Ann Patchett’s State of Won-
der, and Amy Bloom’s Away. The prolific gothic energy of Neil Gaiman
is represented by The Sandman comic series, and Henry Selick’s filmic
adaptation of his children’s novel, Coraline. This mélange of different
cultural registers, from Nobel and Booker prizewinners to popular and
children’s media, is comprised of adaptations of the ancient story pattern
of the descent to the underworld (catabasis), or a conversation with
ghosts (a Nekyia or evocatio). The same could be said of a very long
list of novels, films, music, art, and videogames produced within the last
fifty years; my book makes no claim to comprehensiveness. I have tried
to incorporate a range of genres, including novels, short stories, comics, a
cinematic adaptation, juvenile literature, and the occasional reference to
poetry and music, in order to illustrate not only the ubiquity of the motif
in our contemporary culture, but also to identify how the fantasy of a
visit to the underworld locates specific concerns of a historical moment
within an ever-evolving and complex tradition. The selections share
several common elements, which studied collectively bring to light the
rich possibilities of the underworld theme in the context of three inter-
secting discourses—postmodernism, feminism, and postcolonialism—
represented by cultural products that cite and adapt the literary canon
while ironically undercutting it. This disruptive impulse can be symbol-
ized by boundaries crossed or transgressed in some fashion. The stories
that we are about to encounter involve versions of the archetypal passage
between life and death, and then back again. Although these border-
crossings are often physical and even geopolitical, many of our heroic
protagonists are positioned along divisions between social groups
(including gender, class, and age), or even straddle different genres
(epic poetry and rock music, for example). Consequently allusions to
ancient prototypes in which a divinity or mortal crosses between the
realms of the living and the dead, the ultimate transgression of bound-
aries, and then returns to quotidian reality, infuse such crossings, actual
or symbolic, with connotations that speak to contemporary sensibilities
in ways that take into account the experience of women, children,
refugees, and other social groups not traditionally valorized by the
European canon. Such citations of classical underworld stories position
these works of fiction, and thus the lived realities of their audiences,
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within a continuum that stretches back to the deepest antiquity, but they
also question the canonical status of the source texts within the societies
that transmit and preserve those myths.
These citations, playfully ironic, defiantly critical, or even respectfully
complicit, are possible because the culturally resonant trope of the
catabasis has been such a definitive element of literature for millennia
up to the present. In The Secular Scripture: A Study of the Structure of
Romance Northrop Frye identified the descent as one of four major
themes in Western literature, an observation that emphasizes the privil-
eged place that this story pattern occupies in our cultural heritage.¹⁶
From their position in the genealogy of underworld mythmakers, con-
temporary authors can draw on and critique a tradition that has been
foundational to Western culture and literature for millennia. The fantasy
has never died. Stories of a visit to Hell remained popular during the
Middle Ages: for example, The Visions of the Knight Tondal, originally
written in Latin by a twelfth-century Irish monk and translated into
fifteen different languages including Icelandic, tells how Tondal falls
unconscious at a banquet and is led by an angelic guide to witness the
torments of Hell and pleasures of Heaven, another iteration of the tour
of the underworld. The experience, as it does for Prince Kummay,
Odysseus, and Aeneas, transforms him for the better. The influence of
Vergil’s description of the underworld is unmistakable in the poem, and
Dante in turn was influenced by tale of Tondal (and of course its
prototype, the Aeneid) when he wrote his Divine Comedy.
While the ancient tradition contributed to the prestige of Dante’s
Inferno or Milton’s Paradise Lost, its very antiquity and familiarity
expose its conventions to parody, critique, and subversion—that was
true as early as Aristophanes’ Frogs, and Lucian’s Cataplus. That Milton’s
nephew, John Phillips, published his own travesty of Aeneid 6 in the
seventeenth century testifies to the persistence of a subversive urge to
deflate the canon.¹⁷ Today an author such as Margaret Atwood can stand
the tradition of the Nekyia on its head in her Penelopiad (2005) by
channeling the ghost of Penelope to critique the patriarchal underpin-
nings of the Odyssey. Atwood’s sly revision provides ample testimony that
the ancient myth of the descensus ad infernos can be adapted in ways that

¹⁶ Frye 1976: 95–226.

¹⁷ There is a brief discussion of Phillips’ poem in Power 2010: 92.
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 12. EXTENSION OF KRONECKER'S
THEOREM ON ABELIAN FIELDS TO
ANY ALGEBRAIC REALM OF
RATIONALITY.
The theorem that every abelian number field arises from the
realm of rational numbers by the composition of fields of roots of
unity is due to Kronecker. This fundamental theorem in the theory of
integral equations contains two statements, namely:
First. It answers the question as to the number and existence of
those equations which have a given degree, a given abelian group
and a given discriminant with respect to the realm of rational
numbers.
Second. It states that the roots of such equations form a realm
of algebraic numbers which coincides with the realm obtained by
assigning to the argument in the exponential function all
rational numerical values in succession.
The first statement is concerned with the question of the
determination of certain algebraic numbers by their groups and their
branching. This question corresponds, therefore, to the known
problem of the determination of algebraic functions corresponding to
given Riemann surfaces. The second statement furnishes the
required numbers by transcendental means, namely, by the
exponential function .
Since the realm of the imaginary quadratic number fields is the
simplest after the realm of rational numbers, the problem arises, to
extend Kronecker's theorem to this case. Kronecker himself has
made the assertion that the abelian equations in the realm of a
quadratic field are given by the equations of transformation of elliptic
functions with singular moduli, so that the elliptic function assumes
here the same rôle as the exponential function in the former case.
The proof of Kronecker's conjecture has not yet been furnished; but I
believe that it must be obtainable without very great difficulty on the
basis of the theory of complex multiplication developed by H.
Weber[26] with the help of the purely arithmetical theorems on class
fields which I have established.
Finally, the extension of Kronecker's theorem to the case that, in
place of the realm of rational numbers or of the imaginary quadratic
field, any algebraic field whatever is laid down as realm of rationality,
seems to me of the greatest importance. I regard this problem as
one of the most profound and far-reaching in the theory of numbers
and of functions.
The problem is found to be accessible from many standpoints. I
regard as the most important key to the arithmetical part of this
problem the general law of reciprocity for residues of th powers
within any given number field.
As to the function-theoretical part of the problem, the
investigator in this attractive region will be guided by the remarkable
analogies which are noticeable between the theory of algebraic
functions of one variable and the theory of algebraic numbers.
Hensel[27] has proposed and investigated the analogue in the theory
of algebraic numbers to the development in power series of an
algebraic function; and Landsberg[28] has treated the analogue of
the Riemann-Roch theorem. The analogy between the deficiency of
a Riemann surface and that of the class number of a field of
numbers is also evident. Consider a Riemann surface of deficiency
(to touch on the simplest case only) and on the other hand a
number field of class . To the proof of the existence of an
integral everywhere finite on the Riemann surface, corresponds the
proof of the existence of an integer in the number field such that
the number represents a quadratic field, relatively unbranched
with respect to the fundamental field. In the theory of algebraic
functions, the method of boundary values (Randwerthaufgabe)
serves, as is well known, for the proof of Riemann's existence
theorem. In the theory of number fields also, the proof of the
existence of just this number offers the greatest difficulty. This
proof succeeds with indispensable assistance from the theorem that
in the number field there are always prime ideals corresponding to
given residual properties. This latter fact is therefore the analogue in
number theory to the problem of boundary values.
The equation of Abel's theorem in the theory of algebraic
functions expresses, as is well known, the necessary and sufficient
condition that the points in question on the Riemann surface are the
zero points of an algebraic function belonging to the surface. The
exact analogue of Abel's theorem, in the theory of the number field
of class , is the equation of the law of quadratic reciprocity[29]

which declares that the ideal is then and only then a principal ideal
of the number field when the quadratic residue of the number with
respect to the ideal is positive.
It will be seen that in the problem just sketched the three
fundamental branches of mathematics, number theory, algebra and
function theory, come into closest touch with one another, and I am
certain that the theory of analytical functions of several variables in
particular would be notably enriched if one should succeed in finding
and discussing those functions which play the part for any algebraic
number field corresponding to that of the exponential function in the
field of rational numbers and of the elliptic modular functions in the
imaginary quadratic number field.
Passing to algebra, I shall mention a problem from the theory of
equations and one to which the theory of algebraic invariants has led
me.
[26] Elliptische Funktionen und algebraische Zahlen.
Braunschweig, 1891.
[27] Jahresber. d. Deutschen Math-Vereinigung, vol. 6, and an
article soon to appear in the Math. Annalen [Vol. 55, p. 301]:
"Ueber die Entwickelung der algebraischen Zahlen in
Potenzreihen."
[28] Math. Annalen vol. 50 (1898).
[29] Cf. Hilbert, "Ueber die Theorie der relativ-Abelschen
Zahlkörper," Gött. Nachrichten, 1898.
 13. IMPOSSIBILITY OF THE
SOLUTION OF THE GENERAL
EQUATION OF THE 7TH DEGREE BY
MEANS OF FUNCTIONS OF ONLY
TWO ARGUMENTS.
Nomography[30] deals with the problem: to solve equations by
means of drawings of families of curves depending on an arbitrary
parameter. It is seen at once that every root of an equation whose
coefficients depend upon only two parameters, that is, every function
of two independent variables, can be represented in manifold ways
according to the principle lying at the foundation of nomography.
Further, a large class of functions of three or more variables can
evidently be represented by this principle alone without the use of
variable elements, namely all those which can be generated by
forming first a function of two arguments, then equating each of
these arguments to a function of two arguments, next replacing each
of those arguments in their turn by a function of two arguments, and
so on, regarding as admissible any finite number of insertions of
functions of two arguments. So, for example, every rational function
of any number of arguments belongs to this class of functions
constructed by nomographic tables; for it can be generated by the
processes of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division and
each of these processes produces a function of only two arguments.
One sees easily that the roots of all equations which are solvable by
radicals in the natural realm of rationality belong to this class of
functions; for here the extraction of roots is adjoined to the four
arithmetical operations and this, indeed, presents a function of one
argument only. Likewise the general equations of the th and th
degrees are solvable by suitable nomographic tables; for, by means
of Tschirnhausen transformations, which require only extraction of
roots, they can be reduced to a form where the coefficients depend
upon two parameters only.
Now it is probable that the root of the equation of the seventh
degree is a function of its coefficients which does not belong to this
class of functions capable of nomographic construction, i. e., that it
cannot be constructed by a finite number of insertions of functions of
two arguments. In order to prove this, the proof would be necessary
that the equation of the seventh degree
is not solvable with the help of any
continuous functions of only two arguments. I may be allowed to add
that I have satisfied myself by a rigorous process that there exist
analytical functions of three arguments which cannot be
obtained by a finite chain of functions of only two arguments.
By employing auxiliary movable elements, nomography
succeeds in constructing functions of more than two arguments, as
d'Ocagne has recently proved in the case of the equation of the th
degree.[31]
[30] d'Ocagne, Traité de Nomographie, Paris, 1899.
[31] "Sur la resolution nomographiqne de l'équation du septième
degré." Comptes rendus, Paris, 1900.
 14. PROOF OF THE FINITENESS OF
CERTAIN COMPLETE SYSTEMS OF
FUNCTIONS.
In the theory of algebraic invariants, questions as to the
finiteness of complete systems of forms deserve, as it seems to me,
particular interest. L. Maurer[32] has lately succeeded in extending
the theorems on finiteness in invariant theory proved by P. Gordan
and myself, to the case where, instead of the general projective
group, any subgroup is chosen as the basis for the definition of
invariants.
An important step in this direction had been taken already by A.
Hurwitz,[33] who, by an ingenious process, succeeded in effecting
the proof, in its entire generality, of the finiteness of the system of
orthogonal invariants of an arbitrary ground form.
The study of the question as to the finiteness of invariants has
led me to a simple problem which includes that question as a
particular case and whose solution probably requires a decidedly
more minutely detailed study of the theory of elimination and of
Kronecker's algebraic modular systems than has yet been made.
Let a number of integral rational functions
of the variables be given,
Every rational integral combination of must evidently
always become, after substitution of the above expressions, a
rational integral function of . Nevertheless, there may
well be rational fractional functions of which, by the
operation of the substitution , become integral functions in
. Every such rational function of , which
becomes integral in after the application of the
substitution , I propose to call a relatively integral function of
. Every integral function of is evidently
also relatively integral; further the sum, difference and product of
relative integral functions are themselves relatively integral.
The resulting problem is now to decide whether it is always
possible to find a finite system of relatively integral function
by which every other relatively integral function of
may be expressed rationally and integrally.
We can formulate the problem still more simply if we introduce
the idea of a finite field of integrality. By a finite field of integrality I
mean a system of functions from which a finite number of functions
can be chosen, in terms of which all other functions of the system
are rationally and integrally expressible. Our problem amounts, then,
to this: to show that all relatively integral functions of any given
domain of rationality always constitute a finite field of integrality.
It naturally occurs to us also to refine the problem by restrictions
drawn from number theory, by assuming the coefficients of the given
functions to be integers and including among the
relatively integral functions of only such rational
functions of these arguments as become, by the application of the
substitutions , rational integral functions of with
rational integral coefficients.
The following is a simple particular case of this refined problem:
Let integral rational functions of one variable with
integral rational coefficients, and a prime number be given.
Consider the system of those integral rational functions of which
can be expressed in the form
where is a rational integral function of the arguments
and is any power of the prime number . Earlier
investigations of mine[34] show immediately that all such expressions
for a fixed exponent form a finite domain of integrality. But the
question here is whether the same is true for all exponents , i. e.,
whether a finite number of such expressions can be chosen by
means of which for every exponent every other expression of that
form is integrally and rationally expressible.

From the boundary region between algebra and geometry, I will

mention two problems. The one concerns enumerative geometry and
the other the topology of algebraic curves and surfaces.
[32] Cf. Sitzungsber. d. K. Acad. d. Wiss. zu München, 1890, and
an article about to appear in the Math. Annalen.
[33] "Ueber die Erzeugung der Invarianten durch Integration,"
Nachrichten d. K. Geseltschaft d. Wiss. zu Göttingen, 1897.
[34] Math. Annalen, vol. 36 (1890), p. 485.
 15. RIGOROUS FOUNDATION OF
SCHUBERT'S ENUMERATIVE
CALCULUS.
The problem consists in this: To establish rigorously and with an
exact determination of the limits of their validity those geometrical
numbers which Schubert[35] especially has determined on the basis
of the so-called principle of special position, or conservation of
number, by means of the enumerative calculus developed by him.
Although the algebra of to-day guarantees, in principle, the
possibility of carrying out the processes of elimination, yet for the
proof of the theorems of enumerative geometry decidedly more is
requisite, namely, the actual carrying out of the process of
elimination in the case of equations of special form in such a way
that the degree of the final equations and the multiplicity of their
solutions may be foreseen.
[35] Kalkül der abzählenden Geometrie, Leipzig, 1879.
 16. PROBLEM OF THE TOPOLOGY OF
ALGEBRAIC CURVES AND SURFACES.
The maximum number of closed and separate branches which a
plane algebraic curve of the th order can have has been determined by
Harnack.[36] There arises the further question as to the relative position of
the branches in the plane. As to curves of the th order, I have satisfied
myself—by a complicated process, it is true—that of the eleven blanches
which they can have according to Harnack, by no means all can lie
external to one another, but that one branch must exist in whose interior
one branch and in whose exterior nine branches lie, or inversely. A
thorough investigation of the relative position of the separate branches
when their number is the maximum seems to me to be of very great
interest, and not less so the corresponding investigation as to the number,
form, and position of the sheets of an algebraic surface in space. Till now,
indeed, it is not even known what is the maximum number of sheets which
a surface of the th order in three dimensional space can really have.[37]
In connection with this purely algebraic problem, I wish to bring
forward a question which, it seems to me, may be attacked by the same
method of continuous variation of coefficients, and whose answer is of
corresponding value for the topology of families of curves defined by
differential equations. This is the question as to the maximum number and
position of Poincaré's boundary cycles (cycles limites) for a differential
equation of the first order and degree of the form

where and are rational integral functions of the th degree in and

. Written homogeneously, this is
where , and are rational integral homogeneous functions of the th
degree in , and the latter are to be determined as functions of the
parameter .
[36] Math. Annalen, vol. 10.
[37] Cf. Rohn. "Flächen vierter Ordnung," Preisschriften der Fürstlich
Jablonowskischen Gesellschaft, Leipzig, 1886.
 17. EXPRESSION OF DEFINITE
FORMS BY SQUARES.
A rational integral function or form in any number of variables
with real coefficients such that it becomes negative for no real values
of these variables, is said to be definite. The system of all definite
forms is invariant with respect to the operations of addition and
multiplication, but the quotient of two definite forms—in case it
should be an integral function of the variables—is also a definite
form. The square of any form is evidently always a definite form. But
since, as I have shown,[38] not every definite form can be
compounded by addition from squares of forms, the question arises
—which I have answered affirmatively for ternary forms[39]—whether
every definite form may not be expressed as a quotient of sums of
squares of forms. At the same time it is desirable, for certain
questions as to the possibility of certain geometrical constructions, to
know whether the coefficients of the forms to be used in the
expression may always be taken from the realm of rationality given
by the coefficients of the form represented.[40]
I mention one more geometrical problem:
[38] Math. Annalen, vol. 32.
[39] Acta Mathematica, vol. 17.
[40] Cf. Hilbert: Grunglagen der Geometrie, Leipzig, 1899, Chap.
7 and in particular § 38.
 18. BUILDING UP OF SPACE FROM
CONGRUENT POLYHEDRA.
If we enquire for those groups of motions in the plane for which
a fundamental region exists, we obtain various answers, according
as the plane considered is Riemann's (elliptic), Euclid's, or
Lobachevsky's (hyperbolic). In the case of the elliptic plane there is a
finite number of essentially different kinds of fundamental regions,
and a finite number of congruent regions suffices for a complete
covering of the whole plane; the group consists indeed of a finite
number of motions only. In the case of the hyperbolic plane there is
an infinite number of essentially different kinds of fundamental
regions, namely, the well-known Poincaré polygons. For the
complete covering of the plane an infinite number of congruent
regions is necessary. The case of Euclid's plane stands between
these; for in this case there is only a finite number of essentially
different kinds of groups of motions with fundamental regions, but for
a complete covering of the whole plane an infinite number of
congruent regions is necessary.
Exactly the corresponding facts are found in space of three
dimensions. The fact of the finiteness of the groups of motions in
elliptic space is an immediate consequence of a fundamental
theorem of C. Jordan,[41] whereby the number of essentially different
kinds of finite groups of linear substitutions in variables does not
surpass a certain finite limit dependent upon . The groups of
motions with fundamental regions in hyperbolic space have been
investigated by Fricke and Klein in the lectures on the theory of
automorphic functions,[42] and finally Fedorov,[43] Schoenflies[44]
and lately Rohn[45] have given the proof that there are, in euclidean
space, only a finite number of essentially different kinds of groups of
motions with a fundamental region. Now, while the results and
methods of proof applicable to elliptic and hyperbolic space hold
directly for -dimensional space also, the generalization of the
theorem for euclidean space seems to offer decided difficulties. The
investigation of the following question is therefore desirable: Is there
in -dimensional euclidean space also only a finite number of
essentially different kinds of groups of motions with a fundamental
region?
A fundamental region of each group of motions, together with
the congruent regions arising from the group, evidently fills up space
completely. The question arises: Whether polyhedra also exist which
do not appear as fundamental regions of groups of motions, by
means of which nevertheless by a suitable juxtaposition of congruent
copies a complete filling up of all space is possible. I point out the
following question, related to the preceding one, and important to
number theory and perhaps sometimes useful to physics and
chemistry: How can one arrange most densely in space an infinite
number of equal solids of given form, e. g., spheres with given radii
or regular tetrahedra with given edges (or in prescribed position),
that is, how can one so fit them together that the ratio of the filled to
the unfilled space may be as great as possible?

If we look over the development of the theory of functions in the

last century, we notice above all the fundamental importance of that
class of functions which we now designate as analytic functions—a
class of functions which will probably stand permanently in the
center of mathematical interest.
There are many different standpoints from which we might
choose, out of the totality of all conceivable functions, extensive
classes worthy of a particularly thorough investigation. Consider, for
example, the class of functions characterized by ordinary or partial
algebraic differential equations. It should be observed that this class
does not contain the functions that arise in number theory and
whose investigation is of the greatest importance. For example, the
before-mentioned function satisfies no algebraic differential
equation, as is easily seen with the help of the well-known relation
between and , if one refers to the theorem proved by
Holder,[46] that the function satisfies no algebraic differential
equation. Again, the function of the two variables and defined by
the infinite series

which stands in close relation with the function , probably

satisfies no algebraic partial differential equation. In the investigation
of this question the functional equation

will have to be used.

If, on the other hand, we are lead by arithmetical or geometrical
reasons to consider the class of all those functions which are
continuous and indefinitely differentiable, we should be obliged in its
investigation to dispense with that pliant instrument, the power
series, and with the circumstance that the function is fully determined
by the assignment of values in any region, however small. While,
therefore, the former limitation of the field of functions was too
narrow, the latter seems to me too wide.
The idea of the analytic function on the other hand includes the
whole wealth of functions most important to science, whether they
have their origin in number theory, in the theory of differential
equations or of algebraic functional equations, whether they arise in
geometry or in mathematical physics; and, therefore, in the entire
realm of functions, the analytic function justly holds undisputed
supremacy.
[41] Crelle's Journal, vol. 84 (1878), and Atti d. Reale Acad. di
Napoli, 1880.
[42] Leipzig, 1897. Cf. especially Abschnitt I, Chaplets 2 and 3.
[43] Symmetrie der regelmässigen Systeme von Figuren, 1890.
[44] Krystallsysteme und Krystallstruktur, Leipzig, 1891.
[45] Math. Annalen, vol. 53.
[46] Math. Annalen, vol. 28.
 19. ARE THE SOLUTIONS OF
REGULAR PROBLEMS IN THE
CALCULUS OF VARIATIONS ALWAYS
NECESSARILY ANALYTIC?
One of the most remarkable facts in the elements of the theory
of analytic functions appears to me to be this: That there exist partial
differential equations whose integrals are all of necessity analytic
functions of the independent variables, that is, in short, equations
susceptible of none but analytic solutions. The best known partial
differential equations of this kind are the potential equation

and certain linear differential equations investigated by Picard;[47]

also the equation

the partial differential equation of minimal surfaces, and others. Most

of these partial differential equations have the common characteristic
of being the lagrangian differential equations of certain problems of
variation, viz., of such problems of variation
as satisfy, for all values of the arguments which fall within the range
of discussion, the inequality

itself being an analytic function. We shall call this sort of problem

a regular variation problem. It is chiefly the regular variation
problems that play a rôle in geometry, in mechanics, and in
mathematical physics; and the question naturally arises, whether all
solutions of regular variation problems must necessarily be analytic
functions. In other words, does every lagrangian partial differential
equation of a regular variation problem have the property of
admitting analytic integrals exclusively? And is this the case even
when the function is constrained to assume, as, e. g., in Dirichlet's
problem on the potential function, boundary values which are
continuous, but not analytic?
I may add that there exist surfaces of constant negative
gaussian curvature which are representable by functions that are
continuous and possess indeed all the derivatives, and yet are not
analytic; while on the other hand it is probable that every surface
whose gaussian curvature is constant and positive is necessarily an
analytic surface. And we know that the surfaces of positive constant
curvature are most closely related to this regular variation problem:
To pass through a closed curve in space a surface of minimal area
which shall inclose, in connection with a fixed surface through the
same closed curve, a volume of given magnitude.
[47] Jour. de l'Ecole Polytech., 1890.
 20. THE GENERAL PROBLEM OF
BOUNDARY VALVES.
An important problem closely connected with the foregoing is
the question concerning the existence of solutions of partial
differential equations when the values on the boundary of the region
are prescribed. This problem is solved in the main by the keen
methods of H. A. Schwarz, C. Neumann, and Poincaré for the
differential equation of the potential. These methods, however, seem
to be generally not capable of direct extension to the case where
along the boundary there are prescribed either the differential
coefficients or any relations between these and the values of the
function. Nor can they be extended immediately to the case where
the inquiry is not for potential surfaces but, say, for surfaces of least
area, or surfaces of constant positive gaussian curvature, which are
to pass through a prescribed twisted curve or to stretch over a given
ring surface. It is my conviction that it will be possible to prove these
existence theorems by means of a general principle whose nature is
indicated by Dirichlet's principle. This general principle will then
perhaps enable us to approach the question: Has not every regular
variation problem a solution, provided certain assumptions regarding
the given boundary conditions are satisfied (say that the functions
concerned in these boundary conditions are continuous and have in
sections one or more derivatives), and provided also if need be that
the notion of a solution shall be suitably extended?[48]
[48] Cf. my lecture on Dirichlet's principle in the Jahresber. d.
Deutschen Math.-Vereinigung, vol. 8 (1900), p. 184.