term paper

Oranda Davis

LIT 438

            Throughout history the status of sacred and secular literatures has constantly fluctuated.  The older sacred myths become secular as they are replaced by the new with the passing of time and the shifting of cultural values.  Traits belonging to the ancient gods are projected onto the new as the older stories are absorbed into, and then subsumed by the contemporary.  What once was considered to be sacred scripture becomes popular folklore, the mythology of savages who have been conquered by a more enlightened civilization: but to banish the old ways completely would be a spectacular, if not impossible feat.  The proof of this statement exists in the fact that folktales and ancient mythologies of long dead civilizations are not only still studied by scholars, but are also relatively well-known and loved by the general populations of the world today.  The stories, both sacred and secular, are retold in contemporary novels as well as movies and song lyrics.  They are intimately entwined by several thematic threads pulled from that great abyss which is the human psyche.  This paper will focus on the topic of rejuvenation, a literary motif which promotes the balance of masculine and feminine symbology in secular literature, but is manipulated to disrupt this equilibrium in sacred Biblical scripture.              

            In The Secular Scripture Northrop Frye describes the key distinctions between the two most commonly operative categories of creation myths: 

“If we look down, we see the cycle of animal and plant life, and creation myths suggested by this would most naturally be sexual ones, focusing eventually on some kind of earth-mother, the womb and tomb of all living things.  If we look up, we see, not different forms of life emerging, but the same sun rising in the east.  The cycle of the same, in Plato’s phrase, suggests rather an artificial creation myth, a world made, not born, and made by a conscious and planning intelligence.  Such a myth tends to be associated with a sky-father, who goes about his mysterious business without nursing his children” (112).

For whatever reason our culture has come to be dominated by a sky-father religion, and thus its monotheistic creation myth of artificial design has enjoyed a status of sacrosanct prestige for thousands of years; but echoes of a more ancient symbology resonant from beneath the foliage of God’s perfect garden.  Representations of rejuvenation and feminine power can be found lurking in the patriarchal atrium from which Adam and Eve are said to have fallen.  The archetype of the garden itself is almost certainly an exclusively feminine symbol, for it is merely a smaller version of the ubiquitous representation of earth as maternal.  The theme of rejuvenation is intrinsically contained within the feminine symbology of the garden archetype because a garden’s inherent purpose is to bear fruit for harvest within a naturally occurring cycle of rebirth.  Of course a garden cannot fertilize itself, just as women cannot bring forth life without men.  Just as this is common knowledge today, it was also common knowledge to our ancient ancestors; it is also the threshold where the banal crosses into the sacred, for the vulgar act of sexual intercourse is also the wellspring from which the human life cycle commences.  The masculine, the feminine, and their combined power to create new life are the cornerstones of the trifecta which symbolizes the great and holy mystery of life on Earth.  The essence of the masculine should not dominate over the feminine, nor should the feminine overshadow the masculine; the perfect equilibrium of the two forces is what creates the indelible experience that is the mystery of life, for one cannot exist without the other.

            However, to assume that the feminine garden’s counterpart of the Biblical creation myth is God himself would be remiss; rather, the masculine component is more aptly represented by the briefly mentioned image of a mist which comes naturally from the earth before God creates rain:  “…for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground.  But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground” (Genesis 2:6).  The implications here are that the more novel concept of an artificial creation myth has been superimposed over an older sexual creation myth which was probably more proportionate in its original symbology.  The mist in the garden seems almost arbitrary to the story, as its masculine imagery has been replaced first by God, and later by Adam.  The feminine symbology of the garden is replaced by Eve, who is artificially made out of Adam’s rib; and with this calculated stroke of an unnatural image of man giving birth, the harmonious equilibrium of masculine and feminine that represents the sacred symbology of everyday life is usurped by God, divine dictator that He is.  The masculine is effectively stripped of its capacity to fertilize, while the feminine is denied its inherent ability to bring forth new life.  To quote Heinrich Zimmer:  “Really a grotesque old myth!” (Footnote 259).  The natural cycles of rejuvenation and renewal are replaced by synthetic stagnation, which discourages not only spontaneous creativity, but also suppresses self-revelation. 

            However, Biblical indoctrination is subverted when we look beyond its stories of seemingly sacred truth, and notice that it shares symbology with secular literatures. The masculine symbol of a fountain can be found in the old romances of Arthurian lore, notably in Zimmer’s retelling of Owain’s battle with the Black Knight.  Owain was not the first of the host of The Round Table to encounter this powerful warrior and his dream-like realm which lies beyond a beautiful tree and mysterious fountain.  Acting upon stories of past adventures related to him by his older brethren, Owain seeks out the fountain beneath the tree of life and commences the bizarre ritual of casting a bowl of water upon a marble slab which stands beside the fountain.  This act produces a great storm which strips the tree of its foliage, but is then followed by a multitude of birds landing upon the bare branches and singing a glorious melody.  The consequence of this deed is an ensuing battle with a fearsome knight clad all in black, who appears to avenge the destruction of his kingdom wrought by Owain’s reckless act of ignorance.  The Black Knight is dealt a mortal wound by Owain and flees to his kingdom with Owain following close behind.  Upon the death of the Black Knight, Owain takes his place:  “For thus, apparently, was the law that prevailed at the Castle of the Fountain:  whosoever slew the guardian became himself the guardian, the Black Knight, the lord and consort of the Lady of the Fountain” (Zimmer 104).  The story is far more complicated than what is related here, but the central theme of masculine rejuvenation is powerfully conveyed through the imagery of the fountain and the eternal renewal of a male protectorate for the tree of life and the kingdom over which it presides.

            Themes of feminine rejuvenation from this literary era are more well-known to our popular culture today, the most prevalent of which is the female trinity of the maiden, the mother, and the crone.  Indeed, this trifecta seems to be the driving force of the renewed interest in earth-mother deities today.  Like the phases of the feminine moon, this motif represents the sacred life cycle of women and the distinctive powers contained within each stage:  the young maiden with her unique potential to bear new life; the matronly mother who nurtures her offspring, and the wisdom of the crone who passes her life-learned secrets on to the next generation of life-givers.  The story of Gawain’s marriage to the ugly hag, Dame Ragnell, is as inherently subtle in its conveyance of feminine mystique as the power of femininity itself.  For it is a lesson to men that the real beauty of women lays not in their physical countenance, but in their fathomless capacity to guide, love, and nurture throughout the joys and hardships that inevitably come with this life on Earth.  Gawain is not rewarded for blind loyalty to Arthur, but for his commitment to his wife in his promise of the preservation of her autonomy as woman.  In the story Ragnell tells Arthur, “There is one thing in all our fantasy, and that now shall ye know:  We desire of men, above all manner of thing, to have the sovereignty” (Zimmer 91).  This should not be misread to mean that women desire dominance over men, rather it is the desire of women not to be subjugated by men.  Ragnell’s transformation from ugly hag to beautiful maiden comes when Gawain gives her the freedom to choose her own destiny in their marriage, rather than deciding it for her.  The end of this story is the beginning of their life’s romance together as an equal partnership, thus preserving the sacred trinity of masculine, feminine, and renewal of life.           In our modern times the Bible’s patriarchal disposition is becoming ever more disenchanting as contemporary popular belief systems are beginning to reject its sanctions as exclusive, archaic, and oppressive rather than sacred.  The motif of rejuvenation, that unending cycle of death and new life can be found not only in stories of popular pagan lore, but also hidden deep beneath the preponderance of patriarchal Biblical Scripture which has upset the natural balance of human existence on Earth.  The Bible’s authoritative sway on the mysteries of life and death are beginning to wane, as many people have begun to look deeper, beyond the pages of a scripture which preaches a static place, available only to an exclusive few, in a kingdom so far beyond the realm of human experience that the truth of its existence rings false to earthly ears.

           

           

Royals Behaving Badly, and the Unsolved Mystery of the Super-Secret, Super-Special Red Jewel

Now that I've gotten over my prejudices (to this story at least), I finished Qamar & his Two Sons and was satisfied with the happy ending.  The scene of blood-oaths among birds was just the beginning.  As the story caterwauls along in its merrily manic and cockamamie way, it demands ever more that the reader leave "reality" at the threshold of the page.

Princess Burdur may be a more fascinating character than any of the men portrayed in this story, but her star shines but briefly, and she fizzles out after she reveals her true identity.  Yes, what she does is nearly unforgivable, but I do forgive her because I have little empathy for Qamar, and because it was funny, ironic, and brilliant.  In the second installment of the story, where we (finally) meet the two sons, she goes even further off the deep end, but so too does the rest of the cast.  Qamar not only has been reunited with his lost love, Budur, but also takes to wife her wife, Princess Hayat al-Nufus.  The two sons are one of each born to the two women.  Once they grow to manhood, the mothers fall in love with the boy that is not their biological child.  They fall into the usual fits of love-sickness and send perfumed letters stuffed with hair ribbons to their objects of desire.  The boys, upon discovering the treachery of their father's wives, are angered and promptly kill the messengers by smiting off their heads.  Then Qamar discovers the treachery, and the women lie about their own sons in order to deflect blame, and Qamar, ever the dolt, believes his wives over his sons (even though we are constantly told women are treacherous and men are good), and decides the best course of resolution to this problem is to kill his sons.  As he is on his way to do so, he runs into his father-in-law who also deems Qamar's intentions as the most viable solution, and lauds his son-in-law for his most pious and honorable decision.  However, the king has a brilliant flash of insight and says to Qamar, "They are your sons in any event, and it is not proper for you to kill them with your own hand, lest you be tormented and regret killing them when regret will be to no avail.  But send them with one of the Mamluks to kill them in the desert, out of your sight" (275).  Profound and wise:  I guess that's why he's the king.  Let's take a moment here to reflect.  Forget the Jungian concept of twins, doubles, and mirrors; here we have a double whammy of a semi-incestuous mother-son love rectangle coupled with a father/grandfather murderous revenge twist.  Wow...talk about a Freudian heyday. 

Of course the boys escape death, but are banished to never return to their homeland, then ( of course) they are separated from one another.  Then (of course) they each find love through a labyrinth of plot twists.  One is kidnapped by a cult of abusive homosexuals who worship "the Fire," is taken out to sea, catches the eye of a powerful queen who stalks him to the ends of the earth and finally rescues him from his tormenters only to lose him yet again (though they are reunited and married in the end).  The other wanders the streets until he finds some random woman, who can only be described as a prostitute/dominatrix with a taste for the truly sadistic.  Not wanting her to know that he has no holdings in this city, they enter a random rich guy's house whereupon the owner comes home to them, and for no known reason other than cultural obligations of hospitality from one man to another, takes pity on whichever son it is in this adventure, and plays along with the lie.  The random woman beats the owner of the house severely, then commences to kill the man with a sword.  The prince, feeling pangs of obligation to his most hospitable host, takes the only recourse left him, and cuts off the woman's head.  As they're attempting to dispose of the body they are caught and brought before the king in a yet another scene in which the absurdity again causes me to laugh out loud:  "Damn you," the king shouts at the banished prince, "Do you always kill people and throw them in the sea and take all their possessions?  How many have you killed already?"  But the random rich guy goes to bat for the prince, and the prince is now made the king's vizier.  Hmm.

I think I have rambled on quite enough now, and I have barely scratched the surface.  In the end everybody is reunited with everybody else.  Even Qamar's father shows up on the scene.  But the one niggling loose end that I wanted tied up is the mystery of the weird red jewel in Budur's pants which started this whole ridiculous drama in the first place.  Why was it so special and secret with its mysterious color and engraving?  The world may never know.

"I will not hesitate to bitch-slap any wretched slave who dares to tell me anything other than what I want to hear!"

I would also like to add another element to our long list of periphery motifs for romance:  royals behaving badly.  There is always some kind of deceit employed to keep to plot moving which is oftentimes committed by someone in a position of power.  Of course, the deceit is just as likely to be carried out through lowly characters, but stories with royals behaving badly are a tad more interesting.

I've been struggling to write in this class.  I don't know what all to say about some of the stories because I feel that I'm merely parroting what others see and think.  For instance, in Qamar al-Zaman and His Two Sons, I immediately recognized what our modern society and culture would deem Biblical threads.  I instantly thought of Abraham and Isaac upon reading the first page.  As the story continues I see echoes of Jacob, with missing persons, torn clothes, and animal blood all pointing to apparent death and foreshadowing a future parable of recognition, where a game will be played and a lesson taught.  And let's not forget that these two are obviously foils representing the two sides of one entity, hence the prevalent theme of twins found in so many of these stories.  And so I must say to myself:  "Big deal--everybody else can see that as well." 

But that wasn't enough to incur the hostility I first felt in reading this story, and I was at a loss to explain what exactly I found so overwhelmingly vexing about this particular tale.  Then in Monday's class it dawned on me.  The epiphany came while listening to the reaction of the random blogger that Dr. Sexson read in class.  I couldn't stand the character of Qamar al-Zaman.  I mean what a perfectly terrific moron, and I respected his father even less.  It was no wonder that Qamar turned out to be so dumb considering that the fig generally doesn't fall too far from the tree.  I also hate the descriptions of his hips.  In what universe are wide, curvy hips considered a desirable male attribute?  That blogger was right:  Princess Budur is way more interesting than her mentally addled prince.  But this shouldn't prevent me from enjoying the story and coming up with great insights like my fellow class mates had done.  So what if Qamar is a first-class moron?  That fact should serve to enhance the story, not take away from it.  After all, there would be no story if the dumb-ass hadn't chased after the bird that snatched the mysterious red jewel he'd been holding after snooping through his wife's pants while she slept.  If not for this event, there would have been no separation, and no reason to incorporate a cross-dressing Princess Budur into the adventure. And without this separation there would be no scene of recognition between the idiot prince and his wife the king.  And without all this, there would be no reason to insert the wretchedly hilarious verses of hardcore gay pornography that made Qamar cry like the spoiled little bitch he is.

I decided that I must change my lens, open my mind, and just let myself enjoy the whimsy of this ridiculous tale.  It worked.  For instance, the scene where one bird murders the bird who initially stole the red jewel, and then this death is avenged by two other birds after they have dug a grave for their fallen comrade.  It's just too much, but if I were telling stories to save my own life I guess that I would also (to borrow James' words) "go bat-shit crazy with it."  It was so over the top that I found myself laughing out loud, and... it was wonderful.  I think the generalization that people who read highbrow literature also read lowbrow literature (but not the other way around) is true.  I absolutely do read lowbrow literature and watch lowbrow TV; and if the ancient Muslim royals knew raunchy gay porn well enough to cite it while mentally torturing the people they love, this must mean that they too loved lowbrow stuff.  I can take a cue from them and change my shoes every once in a while.

This bitter-sweet and ambivalent thing we call life...

What really fascinates me about the human experience is the ambivalence of it.  Ambivalence seems to be a key buzzword in this course.  I threw it out in my last blog and have encountered it in both the Frye and Zimmer readings.  Ambivalence, or duality, seems to be the key in unlocking the mysteries of the Spiral (another obsession of mine), that strange symbol of existence and (lack of) time that has no beginning or end, and is in itself an on-going mystery.  Very cryptic indeed, but there is a reason why I'm an English major and not a scientist.

Perhaps the ambivalence of both our earthly and dreamworld experiences is what produces the recurring themes of our literature.  Metaphors of quests in mirror worlds teeming with opposites, twins, apparent as opposed to physical deaths, disguise and ambiguity all represent the duality of our experience.  By the duality of human experience I mean our spiritual lives resonating from some other unknown plane of existence which we cannot fully comprehend while we are living on this physical one.  The murmurs from this other world come to us through our dreams and we try to make sense out of these rustlings by echoing them in our literature.  This is also what I meant when I said that we as writers and poets are but conduits to that other realm where the Ocean resides.  When we dream are we not almost always on some sort of quest?  I suppose I should not presume to know the nature of the dreams of everyone else, but I know that for myself this holds true.  In my dreams I am always sojourning through strange worlds and more often than not, I am traveling with people or entities whom I do not know in my waking, terrestrial life.  I feel as though I am trying to accomplish some task, but alas, it never comes to fruition, or if it does I do not remember it.  And so I am left to believe, especially after a truly haunting vision (you know them when you have them) that it must mean something--something specific to me--and so I must hold fast to the feeling of that quickly ebbing vision, for eventually a feeling is all that will remain.  These recollections are usually piquant in nature, instilling sentiments that are at once disquieting and exhilarating.

This duality is also at the heart of our life's experiences, at least it is for me.  We quite simply cannot take the good without the bad; and maybe this was the inherent flaw in the single God's great biblical design, for I am inclined to argue that man's "tragic" fall from the paradisal state of the flawless garden was inevitable.  As alluded to in my last blog, I am also inclined to argue that man  never belonged in this atrium in the first place and neither did the plants or animals, as if our world and others that may potentially exist are merely static figurines forever ensconced in the Father-God's snow-globe collection.  I have long believed that religion is nothing more than a social construct falsely rendered from misreading mythology.  I believe the only separation between the sacred and the secular is an ideology imposed by some powerful past conglomerate that is no longer identifiable.  I think this notion is at the heart of Zimmer's piece concerning a pagan hero and a Christian saint; I think this notion is at the heart of Frye's work as a literary critic; and I think this notion is at the heart of literature.  It is but another ideology, to be sure; but it is a much more enriching ideology than the exclusive and oppressive one under which a large faction of society currently labors.  I am hostile to this belief system because it attempts to remove the ambivalence of natural experience, as do the more vulgar of popular romance stories which is also why I'm hostile to them.  During our descendant journey from childhood innocence to the jaded realm of adulthood we come to realize that black and white are only the ideals from which true life experience shades itself.  There is not always a happy ending to our daily life's journeys, and so we come to appreciate them much more when we are graced with them. 

Conn-eda's journey is also a descent, a fall, from innocence.  What I find particularly fascinating about this story is that the downward movement to the Fairy Kingdom is progressive rather than devolved.  Zimmer writes:  "Conn-eda is thus outgrowing his innocence.  Such a childlike state of grace has to be surpassed through experience, and experience precisely of the intrinsically twofold, ambivalent character of everything that forms life's warp and woof.  Such an awakening entails the peril of a loss of all faith in virtue and in the values of good--the peril of indifference or callousness to the distinction between good and evil and to their unending strife; or it may entail the opposite spiritual disaster--impotent despair, absolute disillusionment in man's capacity to realize the everlasting, great ideals"(37).  And for me this is where the Sacred Scripture (as it has come to be ideologically and socially defined) failed for me.  It was only through reading literature innately deemed secular that I awakened from my disillusionment, a state that was only deepened when I went looking for meaning in churches.  But my truly personal apocalypse came once I learned to read that Sacred Scripture through a secular lens.  The further down I go, with each trap door I open, the less I know and the more voracious I become.  I don't want to return to the Garden, I don't want to be Job--piteous, naive fool that he was.  I want to walk to and fro in the earth, and up and down in it.  I want to walk the path of Conn-eda and maybe someday remember one of my visits to the Fairy Kingdom.

Descents from Innocence

I like this image of Daphnis and Chloe because it depicts the beauty and innocence of the story's pastoral setting.  The lovers are barely discernible from their setting, and the story's landscape, rather than the love story of  its characters, is the subject of this piece.  I chose this painting because I realized why I liked D&C more than our other two classic Greek romances.  It wasn't so much the characters themselves, or the plot, or the structure.  The setting, or more specifically the dream scape, as I see it is a rendering of that child-like innocence from which we have all descended.  I return to that place from time to time in the bitter-sweet ambivalence of memory, but I would never again wish to reside there. 

In Sexson's Bible as Lit class I was placed into one of the Garden groups, and the interpretation of this mythological trope as put forward by Frye has come to occupy my mind a great deal.  It has become an obsession of sorts, as I have since been trying to unravel the mysterious ramifications of this event.  "In sexual and earth-mother creation myths death does not have to be explained:  death is built in to the whole process.  But an intelligently made world could not have had any death or evil originally in it, so that a myth of fall is needed to complement it" (Frye 112).  This is explained as an artificial myth because it is a myth of deliberate creation rather than a myth of birth.  Frye also writes:  "The artificial myth won out in our tradition, and the lower world became demonized, the usual fate of mythological losers.  But many echoes of a very different feeling about the lower world linger in romance" (112-13).  The cave of the Nymphs in D&C is not a place of demonic descent and torture, nor is it a representation of hell.  In fact it is a place of refuge and quiet beauty.  It is the place where the infant we will come to know as Chloe was abandoned to the protection of the Nymphs by her true father.  He says at the end of the story that he had hoped that she would be found and raised by other parents, but it is reasonable to assume that he knew she very well could have been fated to die there.  The cave then becomes the dual symbol of womb and tomb that is so prevalent in pastoral, earth-goddess mythology.  It is in this cave where Chloe first realizes the implications of Daphnis's naked body, and so a layer of her naivete is shed and a small increment of awakening or knowledge is gained.  It is to this cave where she flees, and although she is taken captive by her pursuers, fate once again steps in to rescue her.  Pan appears in a dream to the general of the Methymneans:   "...you have torn from the alters a virgin whom Love wishes to place at the heart of a story, you showed no shame before the Nymphs as they looked on, nor before me" (167).  In fact dreams are an important plot mechanism in this story:  Dryas and Lamon are sent identical dreams concerning their adopted children from the Nymphs; the Nymphs also speak to Daphnis in a dream, consoling him that Chloe will be returned to him.  There is even a beautiful garden in this story, a garden that is destroyed by jealousy and petty plotting.

According to Frye the Garden symbol is the second level of literary movement; it is one level above our so-called middle earth, the every day world where we currently dwell, and one level below heaven, the cosmos, or whatever one wants to call this plane.  Below middle earth is the demonic underworld (97-98).  "As for the earthly paradise, according to Christian doctrine it was, but it cannot now be; consequently in romance the paradisal is frequently a deceitful illusion that turns out to be demonic, or a destructive vision.  The fourth level, though purely demonic in Christianity, is in romance often a world where great rewards, of wisdom or wealth, may await the explorer" (98).  In D&C I would not argue that their pastoral paradise is deceitful or destructive, but it is illusory.  Neither Daphnis nor Chloe were born into slavery and shepherd's work; these are not their true identities.  When their true identities are revealed they are symbolically descended from their innocence, and even though they choose to live out their lives in the country they are still unable to return to their previous state.  This is sealed by the consummation of their marriage bed and the last lines of the story:  "Daphnis and Chloe lay down naked together and put their arms around each other and kissed, and even as they got less sleep that night than owls, Daphnis did some of the things that Lycaenion taught him, and it was then that Chloe learned, for the first time, that the things they had done earlier in the woods were merely games that shepherds play" (210).

The true tragedy of the Christian's fall of man is, from what I can gather, the loss of innocence incurred with this event.  Man is no longer in his "rightful" place, the place for which God created him; but I have to question whether that artificially mythical place is truly where man was meant to reside.  Did we not fall because we chose knowledge over eternal life?  I would say yes.  And with that answer comes another question:  why?  Why did we make that choice?  The simple answer of free will is not enough for me.  Of course we had free will, otherwise we would still be lounging around naked in an artificial atrium like animals at the zoo.  Maybe we looked down and saw the natural rhythms of earthly life and knew that that was where we truly belonged, with birth and death and all that comes in between.  And this is the natural life pattern, is it not?  I have descended from childhood innocence into adulthood (as have we all) with all of the hard lessons, and scars, and tribulations that are the price of this knowledge.  I do not want to be a child forever, nor do I wish the same dull fate on my own children; and this is a hard thing.  A huge part of me wishes I could lock them away from the cruelties of the world, so that they would never have to be hurt as I have been.  But this would be a huge disservice to them, for they would never be able to experience all the fleeting beauty this world serves up along with the horror. They would never be able to reach backward to find solace in that hazy time of innocence to help them on their own journeys, to propel them to keep looking for whatever it is that they seek.

Oh What Murky Depths We Tread

I'm having a hard time forcing myself to read Callirhoe.  I hate it; and I also hated An Ephesian Tale.  I know there is arguably little difference between these two dreadful pieces of literature and that of Daphnis and Chloe, but I cannot, will not, sit here and blog a lie.  I can't pretend to like this stuff; I would not read it if it weren't required material, and I don't read modern day romances either.  I love fiction, which can be grouped in that larger, catch-all genre of romance, but not these awful, formulaic love stories.  I can't stand those terrible episodic murder mysteries my mom reads either.  At least she doesn't read romance novels, though.  Nothing irks me more than when people, usually men--no offense meant guys, I know the men to which I'm referring to here are not a fair representation of your esteemed gender--assume that my love of literature is based solely upon the reading of Harlequin romances.  "No," I usually sneer at them, "I prefer to read good literature."

Hold up.  Since when have I turned into to such an elitist, literary snob?  I hate snobbery just about as much as I hate romance novels and the two afore mentioned class readings.  I just want a little bit of substance in my reading life.  Is that so unreasonable?  Perhaps.  I totally appreciate and recognize the indelible and ancient patterns of storytelling, and I delight in seeing them artfully retold time and again; but the flimsy archetypes and predictable contrivances of "low-brow" literature just don't cut it for me.  I read because I want to know...something.  But what that something is, I'm not exactly sure.  I love literature because it has its tentacles in almost every other aspect of life and culture.  I love literature for being a mirror to hold up to my own selves, and I love it for being a lens which I can use to peer into the selves of others, real or imagined.  You see, I've never read to escape; I read because I'm a voyeur, because I want to make those connections and I want to find that something, whatever it may be.  And I feel there is nothing left for me to find in these stories composed of such immense breadth and platitude.  I have come to desire stories of depth, created by layers of murky descent.  I don't want to be told who is good and who is bad, I want to seek that truth out for myself.

And so, I shall conclude my rant with a Frye quote:  "Great literature is what the eye can see:  it is the genuine infinite as opposed to the phony infinite, the endless adventures and endless sexual stimulation of the wandering of desire.  But I have a notion that if the wandering of desire did not exist, great literature would not exist either" (30).  He's right of course, and not just because he's Frye, but because without the lower rungs we would not be able to climb to higher literary realms.  Oddly enough, I believe that these higher realms are actually located in the depths of the Ocean, rather than the shallows.  Counter intuitive, I know, but it makes perfect sense if we consider the fluidity of time-space outside of the earthly plane, which is where the Ocean also resides.  As writers and storytellers we are merely conduits of a power far greater than ourselves.  The "low-brow" is no less important than the "high-brow," but I have decided to discard my worn out slippers and tread into the web cast by the Sirens' call, echoing from within those murky, unfathomable depths.

Echoes in the Sea

"Literature is an aspect of the human compulsion to create in the face of chaos" (Frye 31).

The echoes I found in Haroun are probably no different than those discovered by everyone else in class.  As Dr. Sexson pointed out, there is the echo of The Wizard of Oz in which entities from Haroun's great dreamland adventure mirror people from his waking life.  I also saw echoes of Alice in Wonderland with the drinking of potions, and pages that were pages rather than cards, and themes of twins and opposites and the suspension of "real" time.  And let us not forget Peter Pan and his shadow.

But there is something much more subtly familiar about this particular story, and that something is wrought of the intangible images conjured in my mind's eye through the magic of language.  At first it reminded me of all the children's books turned movies I have seen, for I have never actually read any of the Alice adventures, or Peter Pan, or The Wizard of Oz.  My first impulse was to go online and research these texts so as to write an informed and scholarly post; but I was stopped in my tracks, diverted by other memories of books I had read as a child.  Roald Dahl was perhaps my favorite author back then.  I loved Matilda and The Witches more than Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, but my absolute favorite was James and the Giant Peach (Rushdie's Mali instantly reminded me of the cloud men in James).  I also loved the books of E.B. White, Charlotte's Web (of course) and Stuart Little, which my son loved so much that he bought it at the book fair and had me read it to him again.  But my favorite E.B. White book had to have been The Trumpet of the Swan, and I always much preferred Beverly Cleary's The Mouse and the Motorcycle (half a ping pong ball for a helmet--love it!) to Stuart.  And while we're on the theme of mice let's not forget Robert C O'Brien's Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, also one of my favorite movies, and a significantly less Disney-fied Disney film considering the tradition.  Rounding out the most vivid memories of my  childhood reading life would be Bunnicula, a campy tale of a vampiric pet bunny who sucks the juice out of vegetables.  The story is told in the first person by the family's dog as he recounts the imaginative family cat's attempts to end the bunny's life.  I clearly remember the scene in which the cat takes a steak from the fridge while the family is out and attempts to drive it through the sleeping rabbit's heart (Bunnicula, of course, sleeps during the day and feasts on vegetable juice at night).  And I must not neglect the late Shel Silverstein, whose gift of poetry I have passed on to my own children.

All this, this huge rush of memory, has come from the neglected ocean of my past, its echoes churning out other long neglected memories of why I love stories that aren't even true.  I remember making stories as a kid, and I say making because I never actually wrote stories--I drew them.  I did this because I had an urge to make stories even before I knew how to read and write.  I took echoes of what I watched on television or heard at bedtime and retold them in drawings.  And though the pictures were static the stories were not.  Once I had finished my pages, complete with color, I would take them to my grandma and she would sit me in her lap and I would tell her the story behind the pictures.  Afterward she usually asked me questions about my plot and character motives, and this would just get the creative juices flowing again.  Then I would take them to my grandpa and "read" the pictures to him, then to my mom...and so on, each new story a slightly different echo than the one that came before.  And now I see these echoes resurfacing within my own children.  As an English major I admit that I shamelessly emphasize the importance of literature over the importance of math and science to my children.  I can't wait to see the books they bring home every Tuesday after school.  My daughter loves all the fairy tales, but she doesn't bring home the reductive Disney versions; no, she finds stuff like the Italian version of Rapunzel and the Arabic version of Cinderella, and other obscure myths like one about a brother and sister who run away from their ugly, abusive witch of a  foster mother and live in the woods ( but the brother gets turned into a deer because he drinks from a stream the witch has cursed), and a strange tale about a prince and a mermaid which, though it does not end tragically, is not resolved in the typical happily ever after pattern.

My son, on the other hand, prefers to read nonfiction; however, he has discovered Star Wars through the movies, and now he checks the chapter books out of the school library so that we can take turns reading them to each other throughout the week.  I used to hate books and movies that take place in outer space, but I have come to appreciate the mythology of  Star Wars because of him.  He has now followed in my footsteps creating his own Stars Wars based books with pictures and words, and he even structures them into chapters and anthologies.  He still desperately needs to work on his spelling, though.  One day I looked over his shoulder to see what he was writing and began correcting his numerous spelling errors when he looked up at me and said, "I have a great idea, Mom.  You can be my editor!"  My daughter doesn't create her own stories, but her Christmas gifts for her immediate family were carefully drawn pictures of "worlds where everybody can just be themselves."  They have re-taught me the importance of stories that aren't even true.  Through them I have received my letter; it is echoed in their favorite Shel Silverstein poem:

 Hector the Collector
 Hector the Collector
Collected bits of string,
Collected dolls with broken heads
And rusty bells that would not ring.
Pieces out of picture puzzles,
Bent-up nails and ice-cream sticks,
Twists of wires, worn-out tires,
Paper bags and broken bricks.
Old chipped vases, half shoelaces,
Gatlin' guns that wouldn't shoot,
Leaky boats that wouldn't float
And stopped-up horns that wouldn't toot.
Butter knives that had no handles,
Copper keys that fit no locks,
Rings that were too small for fingers,
Dried-up leaves and patched-up socks.
Worn-out belts that had no buckles,
'Lectric trains that had no tracks,
Airplane models, broken bottles,
Three-legged chairs and cups with cracks.
Hector the Collector
Loved these things with all his soul--
Loved them more than shining diamonds,
Loved them more than glistenin' gold.
Hector called to all the people,
"Come and share my treasure trunk!"
 And all the silly sightless people
Came and looked...and called it junk.

"Oh, poor Hector the Collector!" wailed my daughter the first time I read this poem.
"Yeah," my son chimed in, "I wouldn't think it's junk!"

The parallel I'm trying to draw here is obvious.  All the jewels and gold I took with me on my journey beneath the sea are the stories of my soul.  The stories which came bubbling up before I could write, the stories of my treasure chest full of nothing but junk to the pretentious eyes of a distracted outside world still waiting for its letter.

So, in closing, I offer my favorite Shel Silverstein poem:

Where the Sidewalk Ends
There is a place where the sidewalk ends
And before the street begins,
And there the grass grows soft and white,
And there the sun burns crimson bright,
And there the moon-bird rests from his flight
To cool in the peppermint wind.

Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black
And the dark street winds and bends
Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow
We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And watch where the chalk-white arrows go
To the place where the sidewalk ends.

Yes we'll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And we'll go where the chalk-white arrows go,
For the children, they mark, and the children, they know
The place where the sidewalk ends.