The spring my marriage came apart it seemed the world had recast itself in exaggeratedly biblical relief. Across the land prophets preached exodus from Europe; violent rainstorms lashed the streets of Manchester. On the night of the Brexit referendum my husband and I had one final row and I perceived that our private crisis had assumed its place in another, much larger narrative – some crunching of tectonic plates on a mighty scale. Leaving him felt brave, timely. It felt like the only option.
You could barely move, in fin-de-siècle Mitteleuropa, without encountering something mystical, transcendental, or at least a bit occultish. From Rilke to Madame Blavatsky, counter-Enlightenment was in the air — or, possibly, had leaked into the water supply. At any rate, it had managed to make its way up the Danube and into the sleepy Austrian village of one Rudolf Steiner, who at nine years old had already begun communing with a dead aunt and detecting visions of the spiritual realm within the pages of his geometry textbook.