Showing posts with label TalesOfFaerie. Show all posts
Showing posts with label TalesOfFaerie. Show all posts

Monday, April 20, 2015

Monthly Discussion: "From the Forest" with Tales Of Faerie - April

Kristin & Gypsy discuss
12 MONTHS - 12 FORESTS - 12 TALES
UK Title: “Gossip from the Forest: The Tangled Roots of Our Forests and Fairytales”


APRIL:  Saltridge Wood & a retelling of The White Snake
(see the 2nd part of the discussion at Tales Of Faerie  HERE)
************************************
Links to chats so far:

Note: Kristin and I agree the book would really benefit from some lush color photographs because despite the lovely descriptions it’s hard to picture, even when we’re familiar with the trees she’s talking about. without having a ‘sense of forest’ to begin with we both tend to wonder when the relevance to fairy tales kicks in, and then sometimes have to go back and re-read for context once it does.
Birches in morning shadow - photographer unknown
Gypsy: Took me a while to settle in to this chapter, it seemed to meander but I eventually found myself flipping back pages to re-read things she’d mentioned before when I started linking the walk to considering fairy tales.  Eventually I realized this is the chapter where Ms. Maitland starts getting seriously into fairy tale roots - what are they, where are they, would we even recognize them?
European Beech tree

Walking through Saltridge wood discussing beech trees and how pretty they are, but also ‘false forest’ they are, had me recalling “fairytale” (perfect/ideal state of bliss) vs “fairy tale” (wonder tales - ordinary stories with an element of wonder). The idea that beeches are the recognizable “quintessential” or ideal tree that people identify with, versus the fact that they’re not really that useful other than for their looks - and haven’t been considered so, either in history or in tales. Apparently beeches are the trees people plant for that ‘wow factor’ on estates, down long driveways and in cultivating a ‘beautiful woods” feel (as opposed to a real woods feel which is not always beautiful at all). It’s very much like the American use of the word “fairytale” today - like a dream wedding, a perfect romance. To achieve such a thing it’s (usually) extremely contrived, planned, thought out in detail, managed to the nth degree and contained. But it’s not a real state. (To confuse the metaphor, beech trees are actual trees that grow and have a cycle.) The important thing with regard to the woods and places we see them (beech trees) now is that they’re not naturally occurring in those places, even though it may seem that way.


Kristin: That’s one of my biggest pet peeves, is people using “fairytale” as a negative term for something that is an unrealistically perfect ideal, when it completely contradicts the actual facts of fairy tales!

I did find it interesting that the word “book” may have been derived from “beech,” and some of the earliest European books were likely printed on thin slices of beech wood.

Beech trees UK
Gypsy: I’m not certain why she begins talking about birch trees in contrast here, unless it’s because beech are now considered the queens of the forest, whereas the title used to belong to birch, but these trees are like a perfect metaphor for real tales (as opposed to Disney-version/ marketing-contrived ones).


p42 - “Despite their fragile appearance and relatively short life span (seldom more than 80 years) individual birch trees are immensely tough - Rackham (EDIT: Oliver Rackham, not the artist Arthur Rackham) reports specimens that have fallen over collapsing cliff edges, tumbled to the bottom and then simply re-rooted and carried on growing.”


Holy moley - that exactly like fairy tales!
Birch tree close-up


It goes on to say (p42 cont - ) “Recently, birch has been earning the respect of commercial foresters for this reason: it will plant itself, saving time and energy…”


Back at the top of the page it also mentions how “birch pollen is produced in abundance and carries widely on the wind, so birch can appear anywhere - and does.”

Then she gets to the ‘birch in folklore’ part and I’m totally glued to the page wondering what she’ll talk about next.


p43 - “Curiously, beech trees are almost entirely absent from folklore...virtually nothing in the way of associated customs or proverbs. Birches, on the other hand, are magical trees… Birch trees, together with fish, are among the very few items from the natural world that cross over, with their positive magical attributes intact..” (edit: I have to look into fish more now too)


Then she gets into: “the dissemination of fairy stories is at least as complicated as the dissemination of tree species.” which brings me back to what I was thinking about before - how birch trees with their hardy self-planting, growing everywhere and re-rooting capabilities are just like fairy tales.
Birch forest

Kristin: What a cool picture of how tales evolve and spread-reminds me of the charts I’ve seen in Alan Dundes’ “Cinderella: A Casebook” mapping Cinderella variants found all over the world in an attempt to find the tale’s source, much like biologists might map various specimens as they study evolution.

Gypsy: Then there is the sobering point that because of how trees disseminate (along with how they’re interfered with by people) we can’t truly know what the “wildwood” (the original wild and natural forests) really looked like at all.


p44 - I believe the same is true of fairy stories. By the very nature of oral ‘text’ you can only know how it was this time, the time you heard it.
And then this next observation I think is key in understanding what’s happening with fairy tales today too: p44 cont - Field anthropologists have become sensitive to the fact that asking someone in an oral culture to tell you a traditional story will distort the story; the teller will mould the story to the listener’s expectations - at least as far as such expectations are understood. This is not deliberate deceit or secrecy; it is the job of a storyteller to do so.


Then I put this sentence on the next page in a giant box, underlining it twice:
p45 - Many historians believe that memory itself has changed with the shift to literacy - that we learn and remember things in a different way today from how we did in the past.

With the topic of a visual culture currently on my mind, I think this is true. We used to be better at remembering words, phrases, rhymes, charms, blessings and, of course, stories. Now we think in images and advertising, in special effects. People record their days in selfies, Facebook comments and likes and discuss viral memes.
Birch Forest - photographer unknown
Kristin: Yes, I found that part about memory fascinating as well. I’ve read both that fairy tales had to vary widely each time they were told, to the idea that I believe was propagated partially by the Grimms in their inclusion of their female narrator (Dorothea Viehmann) and how she would tell the story word for word each time. People have been suspicious of this and brushed it off, but it actually confirms what I’ve read elsewhere about human memory hundreds of years ago-in native American culture, Powhatan’s messengers could listen to him talk for three hours and later deliver the message, reciting what he said word for word. Memory is a skill that can be practiced (as actors who have to learn lines quickly will attest), and it makes sense that literacy would cause a loss of this skill. And perhaps even more frightening, what does our shift into social and visual media mean about our memories? Will we forget even more and more, losing memories of ideas and concepts and anything that isn’t an image?


Beech forest
Gypsy: I think this is where libraries are really important - a way to hold knowledge in different forms of media, no matter what the current form of remembering. But the great thing about visuals is that they hold a LOT of information. The difficult thing is accessing all the information it holds… *conundrum creases in forehead*


I digressed there for a bit but the author returns to the idea that literary stories have fed back into oral ones as well as the opposite - like trees being “inserted into existing woods”, “altering them in ways we don’t fully understand”.


p47 - “One problem, which bring our fairy stories at least back within the shades of the woods, is that we have no ‘virgin stories’, or true fairy wildwood.”
Ancient beech forest in Germany

This feeds into the idea of fairy tales as palimpsests*: I see this concept come up a bit but it’s the first time relating it to earth and forests for me. (*NOTE: Palimpsest def: a manuscript or piece of writing material on which the original writing has been effaced to make room for later writing but of which traces remain./ something reused or altered but still bearing visible traces of its earlier form.) I think this may be somewhat true but I think the fact of re-rooting and a birch seeding itself in many places may be closer to how fairy tales behave. Rather than just getting written over again and again, with our understanding relying on the latest “writer”/teller/map, I think stories only spread when some of their “story DNA” remains intact.

It’s a good thing the “DNA” of fairy tales is tough! It doesn’t go away easily, even when advertising, pop culture and giant companies change them to be almost unrecognizable. There’s more to a fairy tale than the visible ‘bloom’ - the roots really are extraordinary. No matter what you do to Red riding Hood, she insists on coming back. (And if you removed her teeth she seems to come back with triple sets!) And it’s yet another reason I love fairy tales. there’s something earthy, vital and tough about them.
Birch forest wallpaper - photographer unknown
Random piece of trivia: the wallpaper in the "Evil Queen's" office on ABC's Once Upon A Time is birch forest. It was chosen for it's black and white, that is, opposites, contrast, with the theme of the space representing good and evil, hero and villain.

We’ll leave the discussion there for you to think about. Tomorrow Kristin will post our discussion on Sara Maitland’s retelling of The White Snake over on Tales Of Faerie.

Be sure to watch out for next month’s discussion in which  we’ll discuss the chapter for May and the author’s walk through The New Forest, as well as  the author’s  retelling of Rumpelstiltskin.

Thursday, March 26, 2015

Monthly Discussion: "From the Forest" with Tales Of Faerie - March (Story)

Kristin & Gypsy discuss
12 MONTHS - 12 FORESTS - 12 TALES
UK Title: “Gossip from the Forest: The Tangled Roots of Our Forests and Fairytales”

MARCH: Airyolland Wood & a retelling of Thumbling
(see the 1st part of the discussion at Tales Of Faerie HERE)
************************************
Note: Welcome to a new monthly feature we're beginning, in cooperation with Tales Of Faerie! Kristin and I are both reading one chapter of this book each month, discussing our thoughts on both the chapter portion and the story/retelling at the end, then sharing that on our blogs. Each month we will swap discussion parts. This month Kristin started things off by posting the main discussion of the chapter (Part 1) and this is our chat about the story (Part 2). We will alternate who posts Part 1 and Part 2 each month and link to each other's posts so you can follow along. This is the first time for both of us reading this book, so you're getting our thoughts right out of the oven! Enjoy. (I'm putting the jacket summary below for this first round, only, to help you orient yourself. The story discussion is below.)

Jacket summary: Forests are among our most ancient primal landscapes, and fairy tales some of our earliest and most vital cultural forms. In this fascinating and illuminating  book, Maitland argues that the two are intimately connected: the mysterious secrets and silences, gifts and perils of the forests were the background and source of fairytales. The links between the two are buried in the imagination ad in our childhoods.

Maitland journeys in forests through a full year, from the exquisite green  of a beechwood in spring to the muffled stillness of a snowy pine forest in winter, explaining their complex history and teasing out their connections with the tales.

There are secrets in the tales, hidden identities, cunning disguises, just as there are surprises behind every tree in a forest; there are rhythms of change in the tales like the changes of the seasons; there are characters , both human and animal, whose assistance can be earned or spurned and there is over and over again - the journey or quest, which leads to self-knowledge and success. The forest is the place of trial in fairy stories, both dangerous and exciting. Coming to terms with the forest, surviving its terrors, using its gifts and gaining its help, is the way to “happy ever after.”

As a fiction writer, Maitland has frequently retold fairy stories, and she ends each chapter with an enchanting tale, related imaginatively, to the experience of being in that specific forest.

Richly layered, full of surprising connections, and sparkling with mischief, From the Forest is a magical and unique blend of nature writing, history and imaginative fiction.

On “Thumbling


SOURCE: Grimm’s Household Tales
SOURCE TALE SUMMARY: Childless couple have teeny miracle child; never grows bigger than mother’s thumb. Growing up is a hazard & still, he wants to see the world. Tricks & fast thinking help him escape disaster, death & circuses, to return home, no bigger but much wiser.
FROM THE FOREST THUMBLING SUMMARY: The classic fairy tale is retold from the mother’s perspective. After longing for a child, she gives birth to and raises a tiny son. As he grows, he begins to long for adventure and love. His parents agree that they need to let him go and experience life on his own, and despite their worry he returns home safe and happy, and the family continues on as before.
*******************
Thumbling by Kiri Østergaard Leonard
GYPSY: It wasn't... as absorbing to me as I expected when it started, because I was completely touched by the beginning. The story was told almost entirely from the mother’s point of view, which makes sense when you remember it came out of the author talking with her own son in the forest to start with (and telling him a tale).  It even fits as a “Mother’s Tale” choice in this instance,with Thumbling being so very small and the mother feeling like she has to be an “UberMother” - someone who has to do more than usual to care for and protect her child. I’m sure the situation in the forest, camping, feeling the weight of the forest in both actuality and metaphor at the same time, amplified that feeling for Sara, the author, so Thumbling was a natural choice of story.

The problem for me, is that I was ultimately left dissatisfied.

Initially, I loved hearing about Thumbling growing, the challenges of caring for him, how he was protected, how the village reacted and the couple grew together as people and as a family (and as a community too) during this time. But then, after a certain point, specifically when Thumbling went “adventuring”, it felt that there was no point to the story anymore, because all three main characters returned to a previous point in their lives/understanding/comfort zone and nothing really changed. They lived their lives afterward exactly the same way as they did before. Actually, no, not exactly the same way, with less “life” than before.

Artist unknown
Did the mother not learn anything about letting go? Or about anything at all after a certain point? What about the need to encourage her son into the forest? How does that fit with the beginning of the story in which she was at first over protective and then realized she had to let him go? When he comes back, she’s.. what? - relieved she doesn’t have to deal with reality? It felt odd. Didn't the mother find her own stories/freedom/adventure, just like she was talking about having done in the process of learning tales and exploring the woods? It seemed to me during the main portion of the chapter that this is the very thing the author was explaining to her son, Adam, and that she was pleasantly surprised to find that, not only was she helping her son, but he was able to add to her learning and journey (specifically with the fungi story) as well. While reading the main chapter I was most interested in this aspect of their conversation, and how his input ultimately informed hers. To the author’s surprise, she had a moment of realization that her son had matured enough to be teaching her as well as her teaching him. It’s like evidence that you’ve done your job as a parent, that your child can do this.

I guess I expected that to be reflected more in the story but instead it seemed like the opposite is what happened: keep him in the pretend forest forever and ever more. I know the Thumbling story was supposed to be partly about coming back home but I felt it started well and developed well then it just ended up being sentimental, without a good reason for coming home except to escape reality. The impression I’m left with is that he’ll be cared for and coddled the rest of his life now and never be encouraged (let alone forced) to experience the world as a mature person, and build his own future, add to the world and his village etc. (At least, until his parents die and he’s left with having to deal with that. Then what will he do? Yikes.)  I should state this is my immediate impression only. I wrote my initial notes straight away specifically as I felt it resonated while the words were still in front of me. I have a feeling there is more to my disquiet with the resolution (or lack of from my perspective) with the story but it would need some more read throughs and more reflective time to nut that out.

What were your impressions Kristin?
Illustration and text taken from "The History of Tom Thumb" from the Mary Bell's Series published by Peter G. Thomson of Cincinnati, Ohio.
Tom went with his mother to see a dun cow : The leaf of a thistle he took for a bough ; He sat down upon it, but, shocking to tell, The cow seized the thistle, and Tom Thumb as well. To the cow's upper jaw Tom manfully clung ; He kicked her front teeth, and he tickled her tongue. The cow could not ask him what he was about, So she opened her mouth and she let him out.
KRISTIN: I thought it was a sweet story (for most of it), I liked the theme of the importance of communicating well within a marriage and underlined a couple of quotes there. Then I liked the mother’s sacrifice in letting her son go and experience freedom, which I thought reflected the sacrifice every mother has to go through-but like you I was surprised by the ending, it seemed sudden and unrealistic that Thumbling would never again yearn for a normal life, or as an adult have increased conflicts with being dependent on his parents.  It missed the fact that letting go is an essential part of being a successful parent, in most cases, although it did remind me of many of the families I interact with who have children with disabilities (although this didn’t apply to the author…) because for them, their children grow up physically but never quite become independent. In a way it can be comforting because the parents know they don’t have to worry about their children rebelling and getting into sex/drugs/etc., but that ideal happy family life doesn’t stay that way forever. Even with people with disabilities, eventually their parents are going to get too old to take care of them but those individuals have to keep on living, so letting go and moving on is even part of parenting for those cases.
The Birth of Tom Thumb, illustration from Our Nurses Picture Book,
engraved by Kronheim and Co., 1869, a painting by Horace Petherick.
GYPSY: I think you nailed it: that fact about letting go is an essential part of being a parent. Especially with this being almost completely from the mother’s POV, it didn’t matter as much what Thumbling’s journey and arc was as hers, but her maturity as a parent didn’t happen. She didn’t fail either. She just… continued.
I like the parallel with disabilities. I never thought of Thumbling as having disabilities before! I can totally see that being a great metaphor, but even when children can’t become fully independent there is usually an effort to help them be as independent as they can manage and to live as vital a life as possible, including giving back to the community if they can. (That’s my experience anyway.) I would have like to see that type of development - or “shift” in thinking - toward a sustainable future for Thumbling beyond the natural life of his parents. Or the opposite - a complete “fail” in which the failure to encourage thriving becomes apparent. (But I’d prefer the happy ending please because that’s just me!)

KRISTIN: Absolutely, a healthy goal for people with disabilities is to point them towards as much independence as they are capable of (worked at a group home briefly)-in household tasks, getting jobs, etc. The ending of the story almost seemed like a creepy version of a mother’s desire to keep her kids innocent and childlike and with her forever, which was weird especially since she’s there telling it to her adult son. It almost seemed like we’re not supposed to take it seriously because it’s so obvious that any lessons learned were completely undone? The ending contradicts everything else in the story, maybe it was just a convenient way to wrap up and end it?
Different Toms: From Our Young Folks, Vol 1, No.1, An Illustrated Magazine (artist unknown); The National Nursery Book (unknown); The Beacon Second Reader (Edna T. Hart)
Come back next month to see Kristin & Gypsy discuss “April - Saltridge Wood” and Sara Maitland’s retelling of “The White Snake”.

Thursday, March 5, 2015

Red As Blood, White As Snow, Black As Ebony... Discussing The Big Three Colors in Fairy Tales

'She bade him leave his horse with her and ride on her own two-winged horse
Illustration for The Bold Knight, the Apples of Youth, and the Water of Life

by N. Puttapipat (aka Himmapaan on social media)
This was written yesterday in response to the Tales Of Faerie post (Wednesday, March 4, 2015), which references tri-color themed fairy tales, but my comment was so long it wouldn't post on the site so I sent it via mail. I've posted it here with encouragement from Kristin, who thought more of you might like to read this. I omitted the part of the comment that responds directly to yesterday's post, just because it makes no sense out of context.

You may want to go read Kristin's Tales Of Faerie post first, HERE, before continuing below or at least have a glance at the academic article/paper she mentions (HERE), that she also posted her thoughts on, in December last year HERE(The referenced paper is a number of pages long and quite detailed but you'll get the gist of the topics with just a scan.)

Note: generally, when writing comments on someone else's blog I write very informally, conversationally, if you like, sometimes almost like shorthand, so it's even less formal than my usual writing for OUABlog.
'But he could not hold the firebird herself; she tore herself from his grasp and flew away'
Illustration for Prince Ivan, the Firebird, and the Grey Wolf.
************************
The tri-color aspect of many fairy tales (and cultural color recognition order*) is fascinating and one of the things I'm always curious about (my investigations started in my teens with my wondering about Snow White - of course). Vaz da Silva's article/paper has a lot of interesting points, things I've read or heard about quite a bit but it's also missing some basics I think. 

White and black should be obvious just because there is no greater contrast in the world, and this jives with one of the main interpretations too: ultimate good vs ultimate bad - however, true black and true white are almost impossible to create as well, so there's that dichotomy of the color significance. 
'Next morning the seven-year-old girl took off her clothes, donned a net, took the quail in her hand, sat upon the hare, and went to the palace'
Illustration for The Wise Little Girl.
White is interesting because, while Westerners tend to think "purity", it's the color of death in many other cultures. A strong theory of why clowns freak people out so much (especially children and babies) is because of the white face: it's basically a death mask (and if you know anything about the history of clowning, you'll know this was done on purpose - to remove the personal nature of the performer, among other things). 
'The sorceress was waiting for her, seized her, tied a stone around her neck, and cast her into the sea'
Illustration for Sister Alionushka and Brother Ivanushka
Black, on the other hand seems like a no-brainer: death, darkness. The dark was always a scary, dangerous time for people pre-electric lights but there's more to that as well. In many cultures the absence of a shadow is an indication of something supernatural - usually something bad - but once a shadow was seen/restored, then the human/natural element was returned and things were back in balance/safe. (Think of the significance of Peter Pan trying to get his shadow back too.) One of the reasons the twilight time of day is considered magical (or one of the dangerous Faerie times of day - and today - one of the worst times to drive because cars are so hard to see) is because shadows are hard to see/define/distinguish too. Gray is 'in-between" - neither here nor there - there are no silhouettes, no shadows, no easy proof of life.
'She became a terrible lioness, but when she was about to swallow the good youth, his magic steed came running and took hold of her with his mighty legs'
Illustration for Two Ivans, Soldiers' Sons
Red has almost always been related to blood and though we see it as violence as well, more often it means life (when you stop bleeding, you're dead.) Women bleeding monthly is still weird and mysterious to guys! How does one bleed without injury or threat of death? In many ways, it's like women have a secret "in" to what life is all about - something further enforced by the ability to create and birth children. I think menstruation and a women's cycles of maturation are a natural connection and a fairly common way of interpreting the appearance of red. Red is blood - blood is life, and blood also rises in passion (of love or violence) - proof of life in many ways.
'She waved her right hand, and lakes and woods appeared; she waved her left hand, and various birds began to fly about'
Illustration for The Frog Princess
Black and white are also not technically "colors" - true black is the absence of color and white is all colors together (or, if you want to get more technical - since trying to do this in paint always fails - white is the reflection of every color frequency/wavelength seen together, black is no reflection of any light wavelength). Red is the color that contrasts most against both black or white and especially against black and white together. It could be because we're built to recognize the importance of red (due to blood and the life connection) but I'm guessing there's a scientific reason too. Red is one of the lowest frequency colors - not much light is needed to see "red' at all, whereas other colors can only be distinguished if there's enough light. (Am I boring you yet??)
The fox is carrying me away … Cat Cotonaevich, rescue me!’
Illustration for The Cat, the Cock, and the Fox.
For an example of how these interpretations work both ways, think of how vampires are represented almost the world over: black, white and red. Black clothes, white skin, red mouth because they've drunk someone's blood. They're a scary symbol of supernatural-meets-human because they have both - the human element (red lifeblood), the white (death and supernatural) and black (evil but also earthly). Weird, right? But it makes sense too.


Anyway, I think all this has significance with regard to tales across the globe since it works for all interpretations of the how different cultures see black,white and red. 
'She boiled water and poured it into the barrels, thus scalding the six robbers to death'
Illustration for The Wise Maiden and the Seven Robbers.
One fairy tale (**in addition to the ones Kristin and Vaz de Silva mention) that comes to mind from Japan, is The Crane Wife - almost all white feathers but with a distinct black pattern, against the snow, in the dark, wounded, red and bleeding... Again we see the implication of the supernatural mixed with the natural in a single form (the woman), the "real" implication (not a ghost), because of the blood and the almost magnetic attraction to that combination for "man".
****************

If you haven't gone there yet, but want more I suggest going to Tales Of Faerie. There's an Irish tale using the tri-color theme for your reading pleasure as well ("The Snow, the Crow, and the Blood").

All these amazing silhouette illustrations are by N. Puttapipat for the Folio Society edition of Aleksandr Afanas'ev's Myths and Legends of Russia (though I cannot find it on the Folio website!). See left for a description of the book.

* Quote from Kristin's post HERE: "Da Silva cites a study in which they found that if a language has only two words for color, it's black and white. If they have three, it's always red, black, and white. "

** Tales mentioned specifically using the red, white & black tri-color theme, listed below:
  • Snow White (& variations)
  • The Crow - Basile
  • Perceval - Conte du Graal
  • The Three Citrons - Basile
  • The Snow, the Crow and the Blood