pogo's place

Winter Solstice Six Swans

2004-12-21T14:43:00.000-08:00

21 Dec 04 Winter Solstice Six Swans
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/112699

Seven Sisters
http://www.ras.ucalgary.ca/~gibson/pleiades/pleiades_myth.html

"One day the great hunter Orion saw the Pleiads (perhaps with their mother, or perhaps just one of them; see Merope above) as they walked through the Boeotian countryside, and fancied them. He pursued them for seven years, until Zeus answered their prayers for delivery and transformed them into birds (doves or pigeons), placing them among the stars. "

The Pleiades Star Cluster
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap031227.html

The Six Swans are in the original Grimm collection of Household Tales of 1812. They cited sources as Die sieben Schwane from Feenmarchen published by Braunschweig in 1801. Similar tales include the Seven Ravens which appears also in the Grimm collection. Others are Twelve Brothers, Twelve Wild Ducks and Wild Swans that appears in Andersen's tales. Add to this the Twelve Dancing Princesses which has the ladies descending to a netherworld to wear out their shoes each night.

The stories probably are derived from ancient sources; the most notable is that of Proserpina who was abducted from earth by Hades while she was gathering flowers with her mother, Ceres. Hades, King of the Underworld didn't much appreciate his bachelorhood and had no interest in the wraiths that shadowed his land. Apparently they were so thin that he put his hand through them or could get a proper grip on their waists, and they were probably ticklish in bed. Whatever the reason, he nabbed Prosepina and dragged her under into darkness, leaving her mother disconsolate on earth. For this reason, the year is divided into seasons, as Ceres mourns the months that Proserpina must return to be with her self-imposed husband. Ceres wandered the whole earth in search of ehr, but finally went to Zeus to beg intercession and strrong arm his brother. Zeus, not wishing too many conflicts with his brooding sibling became diplomatic:

Metamorphoses Bk 5 Story of Proserpina and Hades

"The girl shall rise to heaven on one condition—
That is, if no food touched her lips in Hades
For this is the law commanded by the Fates.

He had his say, but Ceres was determined
To claim her daughter, yet the Fates said No.
But Proserpina, guiless, innocent,
Had taken refuge in Death's formal gardens
And, as she strolled there,plucked a dark pomegranate,
Unwrapped its yellow skin, and swallowed seven
Of its blood-purpled seeds."

Ovid, The Metamorphoses Book V, p155
transl by Horace Gregory, Mentor Books 1960

In the Grimm's tale, a forlorn king is lost deep in the woods. On condition of finding his way out, he consents to marry the witch's daughter, but:

"The King had already been married once, and had by his first wife seven children, six boys and one girl, whom he loved more than anything in the world.

Although it is not immediately apparent, the two stories are probably related. The hidden problem might be the shift from a lunar to solar calendar which can be found in Grimm's version of the six swans. There are seven children, one female and six boys. The boys vanish cursed as swans into the wide world. On hearing their mysterious disappearance the sister determines to find and redeem them. The task is arduous. She must remain mute for six years and weave shirts from star flowers. Fate intervenes in the form of a King determined to marry her. Her silence is attributed to witchcraft. When she gives birth, her children are stolen. Condemned to die as a witch by fire, she is still feverishly mute, trying to finish the sleeve of the last shirt of star flowers.As the fire is lit, the swans appear.

How many moons are there in a Lunar calendar and months to a solar year? Hence the youngest brother receives an incomplete shirt and is transformed once more into a human being, but deformed by a wing. Six and half doubled make up the thirteenth moon, while the six swans might represent the months of a solar half year. A beginning astrologist might split the circle into upper and lower halves, explaining that the center top is the zenith while the opposite pole is the nadir. The top is governed by the sun representing success and fullness of life, but at the opposite extreme lay the hardships and darkness a person endures. In one version, the brothers live double lives, during the day they are swans, but transformed back into humans at night, revealing its relationship to astrology and astronomy. As a transformation story, it symbolizes the ability of the soul to transcend the hardships of this world to enter the world-to-come.

Despite the loss of her three children and the accusations of being a witch, the sister remains faithful to her brothers even to the point of suffering a horrible death. She does not allow her emotions to be split amongst her children, husband or brothers. Superficially this looks easy, but how easy is it to remain silent when people speak evil of you? How easy is it to be torn in alliances between a husband and siblings? More than one marriage has been torn to shreds as a result of family bickering and antagonism of a family against a husband or wife. As social creatures, we seek the affection and acceptance of others, making compromises as it is necessary to maintain stable relationships. When the fire is lit, the brothers circle above her. Is it magic? No, not really. She has spent the six years loyally mute and completed the demanding task of the six shirts with the exception of a sleeve. The fire quenched, she begins a new life, filled with the rewards she deserved from her self-imposed labor. Although many like to preach about heaven, just as many forget that to enter that state, they must first die. In fairytales, the transition is quickly made as the characters transcend their hardships on earth and enter Paradise on earth.

The Wild Swans by Judith M Warren
http://judithmwarren.com/Renaissance/swan2.html
a lovely illustration

Classical Sources
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Pluto et Proserpina
http://www.anthy.com/mythology.html

transl Dryden, Ovid's Metamorphoses Book V
http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/ovid/meta/meta04.htm

Orpheus Myth
http://www.paganizingfaithofyeshua.netfirms.com/no_6_orphean_reconstruction_of_dionysus.htm

Kline, A. S., (poetry translation) “Ovid, The Metamorphoses
http://www.tkline.freeserve.co.uk/Webworks/Website/Ovhome.htm
full downloadable Metamorphoses in .pdf with index and hyperlinked text for quick searching.

University of Virginia Etext: Ovid Metamorphoses
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/latin/ovid/

Ovid Metamorphoses
http://www.elizabethanauthors.com/ovid00.htm
Golding complete text
The Fifteen Books of Ovid's Metamorphoses, 1567
The first translation into English - credited to Arthur Golding

Latin Search Engine
http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/ot2www-pubeng?specfile=/web/data/latin/ovid/search/ovidmet.o2w

RELATED FAIRYTALES
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Sur la Lune Index Illustrations
http://judithmwarren.com/Renaissance/swan2.html

Grimm Six Swans
http://www.bjtanke.com/grimms/sixswan.htm
illustrated with engravings

Grimms Six Swans 1812 edition
http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm049.html
trans Ashlimann plain text

Sur la Lune Six Swans
http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/sixswans/index.html

Sur la Lune, The Wild Swans
http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/sixswans/stories/wildswans.html

Sur La Lune, Seven Ravens by Grimm
http://www.familymanagement.com/literacy/grimms/grimms19.html

Wild Swans by Andersen
http://hca.gilead.org.il/wild_swa.html

An Analysis of "The Wild Swans" and "The Eleven Swans"
http://home.online.no/~olavkv/hca1.htm

Andrew Lang, Red Fairy Book--Twelve Brothers and Twelve Dancing Princess
http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/cgi-bin/sdb/t9.cgi?entry=540&full=yes&ftpsite=http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/

contents of the Yellow Fairy Book
http://lang.thefreelibrary.com/Yellow-Fairy-Book

Yellow Fairy Book: Six Swans
http://lang.thefreelibrary.com/Yellow-Fairy-Book/1-2

Andrew Lang, Yellow Fairy Book –Six Swans
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/LanYell.html
nightingale steadfast tin soldier tinderbox emperor's new clothes
glass mountain and more

Grimms Household Tales transl Edward Taylor 1812
http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/grimm/index.htm
in plain text with notes

Planet PDF Grimm's Fairy Tales
http://www.planetpdf.com/mainpage.asp?webpageid=2973
and much more for .pdf

HCA: Fairytales and Stories transl H. P. Paull (1872)
http://hca.gilead.org.il/
168 stories in fulltext

HCA Center
http://www.andersen.sdu.dk/index_e.html
http://www.andersen.sdu.dk/liv/minibio/skole_e.html schooling

PICS
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Kay Nielsen Six Swans
http://nielsen.artpassions.net/

Pleiades
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/apod/apod_search?Pleiades

NGC 1999: Reflection Nebula in Orion
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap000302.html
my fav pic

Moon and Planets Sky
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap040326.html
Mars Venus Mood and Pleiades

Pleiades
http://www.crystalinks.com/pleiades.html

Seven Sisters
http://www.ras.ucalgary.ca/~gibson/pleiades/pleiades_myth.html
Pleiades- peleiades, `flock of doves', consistent with the sisters' mythological transformation.

"The Pleiad(e)s were the seven daughters of Atlas and Pleione, and half-sisters of the Hyades, whose mother was Æthra (`bright sky'; a different Æthra than the mother of Theseus). They were perhaps also half-sisters of the Hesperides, who were daughters of either Night alone, or Atlas and Hesperis (`evening'), or Ceto and Phorcys"

the male counterparts also exist in mythology as the seven Hyades or rainmakers.

Cygnus Nebulosities
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap031023.html

Cygnus loop
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap010623.html

Cygnus Loop Shockwave
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap950718.html

Other Andersen in Suite Fairytales
%%%%%%%%%%%
20 June 05 The Nightingale Art vs Artifice
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/116546

18 June 05 HCA The Nightingale
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/116539

17 April 2005 HCA Tin Soldier
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/115349

21 Dec 03 Little Match Girl
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/fairytales_myths_fables_&legends/105331
http://pogoland.blogspot.com/2003/12/little-match-girl.html

14^th Dec 03 Fir Tree by HCA
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/fairytales_myths_fables_&legends/105215
http://pogoland.blogspot.com/2003/12/fir-tree.html

7 Dec 03 Snow Queen
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/fairytales_myths_fables_&legends/105068
http://pogoland.blogspot.com/2003/12/snow-queen.html

1 November The Silence of Longing p2
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/104349
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/104342
reposted on 3d November was deleted
http://pogoland.blogspot.com/2003/11/silence-of-longing-p2-1-november.html

1 November The Silence of Longing p1
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/104352
http://pogoland.blogspot.com/2003/11/silence-of-longing-p1.html

24 October The Waterline p1
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/104111
http://pogoland.blogspot.com/2003/10/mermaid-waterline.html

24 October The Waterline Going Deeper p2
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/104110
http://pogoland.blogspot.com/2003/10/mermaid-going-deeper.html

24 October 2003 The Waterline: Drowning p3
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/104109
http://pogoland.blogspot.com/2003/10/mermaid-drowning.html

21 October 2003 The Mermaid
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/104067
http://pogoland.blogspot.com/2003/10/little-mermaid.html

22 June 2003 The Ugly Duckling
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/fairytales_myths_fables_&legends/101567
http://pogoland.blogspot.com/2003/06/ugly-duckling.html

Kidnapped Santa

2004-12-05T09:12:00.000-08:00

5 Dec 04 Kidnapped Santa
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/112042

Kidnapped Santa
Gutenberg index L Frank Baum works
http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/world/authrec?fk_authors=42
"One would think that our good old Santa Claus, who devotes his days to
making children happy, would have no enemies on all the earth; and, as
a matter of fact, for a long period of time he encountered nothing but
love wherever he might go

But the Daemons who live in the mountain caves grew to hate Santa Claus
very much, and all for the simple reason that he made children happy."

A Kidnapped Santa Claus by L. Frank Baum
http://www.gutenberg.net/etext/519

Baum opens his Christmas parable with the conflicts of love and hate, wealth and poverty, happiness and sadness. Although already an institution in the United States through the corruption of St Nicholas, Santa represents the base commercial aspects of American Consumerism. Derived from Christian sources, he represents happiness through mass accumulation. He does little to ease the agony of the world or bring peace to embattled countries. Unlike Dicken's Scrooge, he suffers no moral dilemma or repents of miserly living. In truth, Santa is a cardboard figure, planted in busy shopping malls and plastered on plate glass windows to keep the economy circulating in the darkest time of the year. Moreover, he lives at the frigid North Pole and annually drives about in an airborne sled drawn by a team of reindeer. Not much can be more ridiculous than this American fairytale of achieving happiness through commerical gain.

The protests begin, "but Santa represents the Spirit of Giving." Does he really? Enter a church during the Christmas season and what is more commonly heard: The Giving or The Getting? There might be a display of Christian Charity with a heap of presents going to a local orphanage or children's hospital once a year, but what about the impoverished members that live amongst the wealthy congregation? Does anyone approach them to help them establish a new business, enter a new program of study so that they can become more self-suffcient? Or is it really much mor superficial than that with giving a present to satisfy a fleeting interest? How much is a doll or walkman really worth to a child when he does not have love and attention the year round or conscientious adults to provide him with a model of good living? How much are these things worth in comparison to the homeless poverty of many American children or the lack of dental and health care? Santa may indeed be symbolic of giving, but the serious question is what kind of giving?

Taking a superficial story designed for American commercialism, Baum tries to endow it with deeper insight and universal meaning. The biggest problem about Christmas is that it is largely a Christian festival with unscrupulously unchristian values of self-interest, whether consumer or corporation. Christmas is indisputably the season of plastic and increased debts. Mothers and fathers fret about fulfilling the demands of their children and children stressed out about satisfying the expectations of their parents. Kids arrive in school eager to show off what they got, but not what they gave to those in need. It's also one of the few times in the year, when the homeless can stand in long lines and reasonably expect to receive a cooked meal.

What's so generous about that?

In the US, approximately 33% of the children now come from single parent or homeless families. They live in shelters, becoming urban nomads without proper diet, social support or stable foundation. They have no future. This isn't their future, but America's future. People do not live in the street merely because they are shiftless, lazy people. Often they land there as sudden reversals in their lives and catastrophes outside their control. Sudden medical bills or consumer fraud strips a person quickly of his means. A job loss or unexpected accident forces a family from its home. Once on the street or in a shelter, it is virtually impossible to return to a stable position in a society that puts so much emphasis on material accumulation where the rich live like robber barons while exploiting the poorer classes for labor. Compared to Europe, the US is a disaster area fast becoming a country like India with an enormous split between the wealthy and poor with the impoverished becoming the Untouchables and Invisible Unwanted Burdensome People. They eat tax money for breakfast says the big self-serving government.

Moreover, technology affects the working population of America deeply. Without basic education, health or technological skills, an unemployed person cannot find a job. Jobs such as waitressing or janitorial work are unstable. Unskilled labor is dispensible, easily replaced by another drone. Psychologically the worker is worn down by the pressures of society, the unrelenting debts and his inability to fulfill basic needs of his own or family's survival. Certainly a Sony Playstation might be a nice toy to give to a family with limited means, but development skills, constant encouragement and personal interaction will go a much longer way in reversing the ills of society.

Baum tries to rewrite the Christmas Consumer Story, by creating conflicts between good and evil. Certainly it is a much better version than Rudolf the Red-nosed Reindeer or Frosty the Snowman with much deeper allegorical meanings for the reader, but the problem isn't the parable or the quality of writing; but what the reader does for his neighbor.

" The Caves of the Daemons are five in number. A broad pathway leads
up to the first cave, which is a finely arched cavern at the foot of
the mountain, the entrance being beautifully carved and decorated. In
it resides the Daemon of Selfishness. Back of this is another cavern
inhabited by the Daemon of Envy. The cave of the Daemon of Hatred is
next in order, and through this one passes to the home of the Daemon
of Malice--situated in a dark and fearful cave in the very heart of
the mountain. I do not know what lies beyond this. Some say there
are terrible pitfalls leading to death and destruction, and this may
very well be true."

Succinctly, Baum identifies the demons of contemporary society: selfishness, envy, hatred and malice. Pick any one of them before you enter the fifth cave. Consider which one you can sacrifice to help someone regain a more stable position in life. There are hundreds of social programs available. When you say your time is limited, consider the neighbor next door. Chart two hours a week to help someone at school, at church; at the synagogue, in the street, at work. Instead of plastic, give of yourself this year.

Life and Adventures of Santa Claus by L. Frank Baum
http://www.gutenberg.net/etext/520

UC San Diego History of the Wizard of Oz
http://history.acusd.edu/gen/filmnotes/wizardofoz.html
with book jacket illustrations

American Fairytales
http://www.gutenberg.net/etext/4357
American Fairy Tales by L. Frank Baum

Wonderful Wiz of Oz
http://www.eskimo.com/~tiktok/ozfaq.html

http://thewizardofoz.info/
Eric Gjovaag was born January 21, 1966 in Seattle, Washington, USA
has FAQs re L Frank Baum and the books/film

L Frank Baum
http://www.halcyon.com/piglet/author01.htm

chronology
http://www.halcyon.com/piglet/author.htm

author
http://www.halcyon.com/piglet/ozozite.htm
offers an index to the books
http://www.halcyon.com/piglet/movies.htm
movie index
http://www.halcyon.com/piglet/weblinks.htm
has also an index to places, things, characters and weblinks

Lyman Frank Baum
http://www.underthesun.cc/Classics/Baum/
has a collection of links and 26 works online
plain vanilla text—well laid out and legible

RELATED
&&&&&&&&&&
Wizard of Oz 1
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/111631
with pumpkin pie

Wizard of Oz 2 Political Allegory
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/111632
with roasted turkey

Nix of Mill Pond

2004-12-01T14:25:00.000-08:00

1 December 04 Nix of Mill Pond
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/fairytales_myths_fables_&legends/11252 4

Fairies live in woods, leading men astray into enchanted forests, the world of fantasy and confrontation with reality. In literature, the netherland of fairies often represents the human consciousness, the dreams and schemes that we wish to do, but frequently fear to try. In Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream, Puck casts a spell on Titania to fall in love with an ass, parodying the foibles of love.

In Germany, there are stories of the Lorelei, the water nymphs luring the unwary huntsmen to their deaths with beautiful voices. Grimm records one of these stories in the Nix of the Mill Pond. The formula is familiar. An innocent man chances upon a body of water from which emerges the nix, nymph or sprite who entrances him with her beauty. In Rusalka, the Czech version, the nymph yearns to become embodied and joined in marriage with a man, but the price of the transformation is the loss of her voice. Only through the faithfulness of her beloved and the subsequent marriage, will Rusalka become truly human. The process is in reverse, discovering a dream and briinging it into reality through faithful application and personal discipline. However, the Rusalka story warns of outside influences for on the bridal night, the bridegroom is lured away by a seductive rival. Nearly the same theme appears in Tschaikovsky's famous ballet, Swan Lake, in which there are two apparitions of swan maidens: Odile and Odette, one white and the other black, each in competition for his affections, possibly representing the Good versus the Bad Intention since all people are born with both and frequently make decisions with leanings toward one or the other, including marriage.

In the Nix of the Mill Pond, the watersprite deceives the Miller who promises the newly born within his house:

"The Miller saw at once that it was the Nix of the mill-pond, and he knew not from fear whether to stop or go away. The Nix solved his doubts by calling him in a gentle voice, and asking him why he was so sad. At first the Miller was dumb; but as she spoke kindly to him, he took courage, and told her that he had once lived in riches and prosperity, but now he was so poor that he did not know what to do."

The Complete Illustrated Works of The Brothers Grimm, 1984 p 747 (first published in 1853 by George Routledge and Sons Ltd as Grimm's Household Stories) ISBN 1 85152 505 X

Doubt enters the Miller's life through misfortune. The Evil Intention persuades him to acquiesce. Life cannot get much worse. Because of the hardships and misery, he faces, he cannot see the consequences. He sees the immediate overwhelming daily struggle of survival with the misery that poverty inflicts on others. His intentions ar mixed. He hates the hardship, but sees no other alternative and is readily beguiled by the opportunity that the Nix lays before him. If he has sufficient food on his table and wealth to care for his family's needs, what dangers can be hidden in the innocuous agreement? Oppressed, he makes the pact, desiring a better life. Upon realization that he has traded his son for his own comfort, the bargain becomes a harsh reality. None of his friends can advise him.

The warning is clear. If a person indulges too greatly in his desires, they can swallow his life, just as the Nix claims the Miller's son. The metaphor warns the reader to be careful of schemes that sound too good, or plans that are built on air. Some dreaming is healthy, but becomes dangerous when the dreamer is narcisstic, basking hours within his own reflection, rather than working. Each person has a water nix that can betray him into self-destruction, by luring him into unfeasible projects or speculative endeavors. The relationship between reality and fantasy is illusive. Man first conceives a thing before bringing it into reality. Without the encounter with the nix or nymph, man lacks creativity. When the nix or nymph dominate and drive hard bargains concerning future life, the relationship becomes self-destructive. Only when the two are equally matched in marriage is an endeavor succesful. The man must be as strong as the dream, matching it with both physical and intellectual capacity, but not allowing it to dominate him.

Moreover, such decisions bear influence over generations. Although the Miller's son is apprenticed as a Huntsman, his fate overcomes him. One day, he in turn comes upon the mill-pond where the Nix waits for him. Unwary of his father's decision, he is entrapped by the contract. The burden of the bargain passes onto the wife on his diappearance. To break the spell, transformation is required as well as tenacious fidelity. The wife must struggle with the complex problems inherited from her father-in-law's facile decision years before. Only through much suffering does the conflict between nix and man resolve. Applied to business, the mtaphor illustrates a situation: a bad decision regarding investments. With it, consequences continue for years with a company struggling with bankruptcy or being sold to pay off debts. To redeem the company from the inadvertant bad decision, transformations must be made. Consultants consulted for restructuring and management changes hands.

Throughout literature, water-nixes and sprites appear, analyzed by Jung in his interpretations of dreams and symbols. Of the versions I know, a favoite come from a brilliant writer, Jan de Hartog.

Jan de Hartog, is known primarily for two books, The Peaceable Kingdom and The Captain. A prolific writer, Hartog served as a captain of the North Sea Fleet during the WWII in merchant marine. The Captain belongs with a group of novels that reflect his sea duties, along with The Distant Shore and others. He joined with merchant vessels smuggling concentration camp victims into Palestine. He also wrote for young audience, including the story of the nymph of the Lost Sea, the Zuider Zee.

Jan de Hartog came into my hands by my brother who died suddenly on December 1, 1971 in an unexplained rollover while hauling Christmas trees. How a cab can roll over its driver after it has been braked in a cul-de-sac is relatively inexplicable, especially when the truck is two weeks off the sales lot. Brakes simply don't fail on rigs two weeks new, but I suppose evidence in double-logging, might explain some of the mysterious circumstances that surrounded his death and those of his colleagues. Trucks don't swim very well in the Columbia River, either—but I am sure that at the time, the police believed in fairytales.

On this day, a little dark blue, Toyota Corolla got swept under the carriage of a sixty-foot rig, just off I-5 and 45^th NE crossing the bridge during rush hour. I was on my way to a voice lesson on Mercer Island. A very still voice warned me to look in the review mirror. The rig charged throuh the lanes behind me, sweeping the merging traffic off to the sides, but I had nowhere to go caught in the center lanes. Quickly overcoming me, it sucked the car under the trailer. Horrified I saw myself being pulled back under its rear wheels. Somehow, in seconds, I escaped being crushed to death, but the little red car ahead of me was impaled on its grill and carried for nearly a mile where the rig finally stopped. The car was totalled. I stopped to see whether the people were alive. They got out, shaking in terror. We stood there together on the highway shoulder exchanging our horror. The driver of the rig climbed down, blaming us for cutting in front of him. He didn't even see the red car until he ground to halt.

To this day, I believe that my brother protected me that day, warning me of impending danger. Of the thousands of vehicles (5000+ an hour), I was the only one to stop, the only one to file a police report and the only one to bear witness for the insurance investigator. Unfortunately for the couple, they lost their new car—less than a week old—and their birthday present—skiing in the nearby mountains. However, they won their case. The driver was sky high. Drugs.

In honor of my brother who loved the sea, and gave me the wonderful stories of Jan de Hartog.

By Jan de Hartog

Jan de Hartog, The Lost Sea
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0848809823/qid=1066953187/sr=1-17/ref=sr_1_17/102-7164010-3788930?v=glance&s=books

other books by Jan de Hartog
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-url/index=books&field-author=Jan%20De%20Hartog/103-8861255-9007840

Grimms Household Tales
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Nix of the Mill Pond
http://www.familymanagement.com/literacy/grimms/grimms130.html
online text

Nix of the Mill-Pond
http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/g/grimm/g86h/chapter182.html
translated by Maragaret Hunt

The Household Tales of Brothers Grimm
http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/g/grimm/g86h/index.html
translated by Margaret Hunt

The Household Tales of Grimm
http://www.ucs.mun.ca/~wbarker/fairies/grimm/
edited by William Barker, recommended by Gutenberg Project as more faithful to original texts

Nix in the Mill-Pond
http://www.ucs.mun.ca/~wbarker/fairies/grimm/181.html
translated by Margaret Hunt

transl by Ashlimann, The Nixie in the Pond
http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm181.html
Kinder- und Hausmärchen (Children's and Household Tales -- Grimms' Fairy Tales), 7th ed. (Berlin, 1857), no. 181

Grimm's Household Tales
http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/grimmtales.html

Grimms Brothers Home Page
http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm.html

Planet PDF Grimm's Fairy Tales
http://www.planetpdf.com/mainpage.asp?webpageid=2973
and much more for .pdf download

Theater
&&&&&&&&&&
Tchaikovsky, Swan Lake
http://www.broadwaymidi.com/broadway/asinsearch_B000001GYA/
with Seiji Ozawa as conductor

DVD, Tschaikovsky Swan Lake with Royal Ballet at Covent Garden
http://www.broadwaymidi.com/broadway/asinsearch_B00008AOR4/index.html
Markarova and Dowell

University of Oregon : Swan Lake
http://libweb.uoregon.edu/music/dancevidballet.html
catalog of video recordings look to bottom for
Maiia Plisetskaia, Nikolai Fadeyechev, Ballet and Orchestra of the Bolshoi Ballet,
another good recording would be Fonteyn/Nureyev or Nureyev's production in Vienna 1991 --brilliant production

Fonteyn/Nureyev with Wiener Staatsopern Ballet
http://www.fattvideos.com/dvd_video/17240/FONTEYN_SWAN_LAKE_NUREYEV
must be a re-issue of an earlier tape as Nureyev was in Vienna in 1991, but Fonteyn died that year of cancer –

for other very good options
http://www.fattvideos.com/videos_and_dvds_by/13224/Ballet/SWAN_LAKE

Margot Fonteyn
http://www.ballet.co.uk/old/legend_js_margot_fonteyn.htm

Gallery of Margot Fonteyn
http://www.ballerinagallery.com/fonteyn.htm

Wikipedia Fonteyn
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margot_Fonteyn
learn more about this incredible woman and fortunately she brought ballet to film

Antonin Dvorak, Rusalka
http://www.musicweb.uk.net/classrev/2003/Aug03/DvorRusa.htm
Vaclav Neumann, Czech Philharmonic with Benackova, Soukupova, Ochman, Drobkov

Antonin Dvorak, Rusalka
http://www.artsworld.com/music-dance/works/a-c/rusalka-antonin-dvorak.html
synopsis by Opera News

Fokine, Les Sylphides
http://www.cmi.univ-mrs.fr/~esouche/dance/Sylph.html
Jim Williams, ballet photographer

More fairies in pointe shoes: Les Sylphides
http://www.freewebs.com/ballet/lessylphides.html

1 December 2004 Nix of Mill Pond
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/fairytales_myths_fables_&legends/112524

3 November Silence of Longing part 2
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/104342
part 2: Rusalka, Berg and literary social criticism
http://pogoland.blogspot.com/2003/11/silence-of-longing-p2-1-november.html

1 November The Silence of Longing p1
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/104352
http://pogoland.blogspot.com/2003/11/silence-of-longing-p1.html

24 October The Waterline p1
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/104111
http://pogoland.blogspot.com/2003/10/mermaid-waterline.html

24 October The Waterline Going Deeper p2
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/104110
http://pogoland.blogspot.com/2003/10/mermaid-going-deeper.html

24 October 2003 The Waterline: Drowning p3
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/104109
http://pogoland.blogspot.com/2003/10/mermaid-drowning.html

Our most thoughtful condiments for the turkey

2004-11-23T14:38:00.000-08:00

23 Nov 04 Our most thoughtful condiments for the turkey
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/112097

The turkey has a bad reputation ever since Mark Twain derided the domestic turkey as the stupidest bird on earth. However, the US is full of its turkeys, domestic and political and in this season we are to be thankful for those laid upon the plank and roasted to perfection.

On Hunting the Deceitful Turkey
http://www.readbookonline.net/readOnLine/358/
from Mark Twain

Therefore to honor the season of autumn harvest and a windfall of rotten apples into the political baskets of sour grapes, we uncork the wine, pass the port and begin a series of stories, collected to enjoy in front of a rushing fire or sitting on a luke-warm radiator or in a freezing cold room with three layers of socks and a hot water bottle clutched between the knees to gnaw on old bones and chew the fat, doing a little turkey-talk on the business of being a turkey.

On Turkeys and National Identity
http://www.urbanext.uiuc.edu/turkey/history.html
nominated by Ben Franklin to be the national bird of the US to reside in the great white nest

More on Wild Turkeys
http://me.essortment.com/grandslamturke_rixe.htm

from the Coffee Bean Goddess
http://www.mugajava.com/04oct30.htm
pic of wild turkeys

A turkey is decidely an American bird., a gallinaceaous bird, Meleagriis gallapova, that is raised chiefly for culinary purposes. It is generally served with baked sweet potatotes, mashed potatoes and currant or cranberry sauce. However, cranberries aer not native in Europe, so currants are a good substitute for the appetizer. For a zesty change in the jelly section of your cabinet, you can experiment with making rowan jelly. The rowan is better known to the Americans as the ash tree that bears clusters of rusty red berries in late autumn. Wait until the berries are soft, nearly mushy before collecting them for jelly. Rinse them by running water over them . An easy way to stemming currants or rowan is by running a fork through the stems, thereby knocking the fruit into the cooking-pot. Don't worry over the loose oddbits, for making jelly requires straining and then possibly straining again. To make any fuit jell naturally, chop up three small japanese quinces and toss them in with the fruit. Allow them to stand overnight before cooking.

To make fine jellies, use low heat and allow the fruit to simmer hours. Strain the pulp through a cloth and allow more time for the the sediment to collect. Strain again to remove it. The liquid will change color depending on the intensity of heat an the resulting jelly will be a clear ruby that glistens wonderfully under sunlight. Use coarse sugar rather than crystal, adding it in slowly throughout reduction until you have the sweetness or tartness that you want. Two day jellies have much rounder flavors than the one-day jobber, and if you can manage the agony to three, you'll have a jelly which the neighbors will want. The trick is getting the full amount of juice out of the fruit and then repeatedly straining the liquid until all sediment is removed. Reduce, add water, reduce, add water, reduce until the fruit is nothing but mash.

Rowan by itself is tart, and is an excellent jelly for dark meat and game, but it blends fabulously with apple, pear, quince or mint. To give it some added zest, drop in some cloves, broken cinnamon stick and lemon peel. Orange and mandarin peels work nicely, too. The result is an incredibly wonderful jelly that will never be found in a delicatessan shop or on the grocery shelf with a brilliant red fire to warm the hearts of anyone who receives it as a present.

Rowan berries dry nicely, even more so than wild cherries and add wonderful color to a seasonal wreath to decorate your table or front door.

Now that you've had your work-out in the kitchen in creating the jellies to give some zing to the turkey, let's sit down and read, while the turkey gets it's roasting.

More facts on Turkeys from the Restaurant Report
http://www.restaurantreport.com/departments/ct_turkey.html
Chef's Table: Let’s Talk Turkey
By Jim Coleman with Candace Hagan

In the following story, you can learn about the magical transformation of turkey to being a prince. I know, we're so used to people becoming turkeys that it seems impossible to believe that the reverse could be true, but this story is from Rabbi Nachman, known to many Jews for his delicious sense of humor that gets served with a generous helping of wisdom.

The Prince Who Thought He Was a Turkey
http://www.hasidicstories.com/Stories/Nachman_of_Bratslav/turkey.html
The Prince Who Thought He Was a Turkey
adapted by Gedaliah Fleer from the stories of Rebbe Nachman

Meleagris gallapavo: the real thing in the wild
http://biology.usgs.gov/s+t/lrgimage/b028w01.jpg
us geo survey

Baucis and Philemon

2004-11-14T14:07:00.000-08:00

14 Nov 04 Baucis and Philemon
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/111663

Ovid, Metamorphosis, Bk VIII
Dryden, transl Metamorphoses
http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/ovid/meta/

Book VIII about 3/4 through book
http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/ovid/meta/meta07.htm

Nearly every culture tells stories about gods or saints wandering about the earth, in search of good men. Brecht takes up the theme in his play, Der gute Mensch von Sezuan, in which the virtuous citizen is revealed to be a prostitute. The New Testament offers the Parable of the Good Samaritan, becoming the model for hospitals and emergency medical units over centuries, although the first Hospitalers were religious orders established along the routes of the Crusaders sweeping mercilessly over Europe, slaughtering the innocents that lived in their paths. Their vocation was to tend to the wounded knights and soldiers who were left on the field and to offer shelter those on pilgrimmage.

A band-aid does not much cover up the violence of genocide or religious wars as Central Europe became the chessboard of marauding Crusaders and invading Turks alternately sweeping off each other in bloody battles that captured towns, depopulated villages and persecuted Christians and Jews alike.

Ovid relates the Flood Story of Deucalion and Pyrrha, and although water does wash away dirt, it has little effect on men's souls. The plants and animals perished, subdued by the Deluge, but man resilient to nature through his engineering genius or tenacity to survive endured. In a few generations after the Great Flood, man resorted to his normal corruption and violence with much zest. The world turned and nothing changed much in human character.

And as then as now, disputes arose whether gods exist or the world has a Divine Creator. Atheism seemed as prevalent then as now with Ixion's son ridiculing Aechelous' explanation for the island, claiming it was a maiden drowned transformed.

"The others disagreed with what he said
And grew uneasy at his blasphemy
Particularly Lelex who was wise
Mature in years as well as wit and feeling.
He said, "The powers of heaven are eternal,
Not to be measured by our time and space,
And what the gods decide, their will is done."

transl Horace Gregory, Mentor, 1958 p235

Lelex interrupts the discussion, presenting the story of Baucis and Philemon, relating the rustic beauty of the foothills of Phrygia where once Pittheus reigned. Jove took to wandering the earth, garbed like a peddler, searching for a stall to stay the night. One after another, the local inhabitants turned him away until he came to the hut of Baucis and Philemon. They had but little, but what little they had was theirs: a goat or two, the cheese thereof and smoked sausages hung from the rafters of the roof of the one-room dwelling.

Their door swung open as well as their hearts. A humble dinner lay upon the table and Jove invited in. Although meager, their frugal meal replenished itself. The food and drink never ran out. And for their hospitality, two trees now grow entwined together where a temple once stood. Jove granted their request never to be separated in life or in death.

As simplistic as the story seems, it is the source of a plethora of literature including Henry David Thoreau's Walden, as he cries to contemporary consumers to "Simplify, simplify, simplify."

"I see young men, my townsmen, whose misfortune it is to have inherited farms, houses, barns, cattle, and farming tools; for these are more easily acquired than got rid of. Better if they had been born in the open pasture and ruckled by a wolf, that they might have seen with clearer eyes what field they were called to labour in. Who made them serfs of the soil 1 Why should they eat their sixty acres, when man is condemned to eat only his peck of dirt? Why should they begin digging their graves as soon as they are born? They have got to live a man's life, pushing all these things before them, and get on as well as they can. How many a poor immortal soul have I met well-nigh crushedand smothered under its load, creeping down the road of life, pushing before it a barn seventy-five feet by forty, its Augean stables never cleansed, and one hundred acres of land, tillage, mowing, pasture, and wood-lot!"

H D Thoreau, Walden, Walter Scott Publishing 1886, p3

Thoreau reduces life to the needs of Food, Shelter, Clothing and Fuel, seeking a temporary refuge on Walden Pond as he contemplates the meaning of life and the corruption of man. Critical of the religious fervour of his age, he comments on the bustling trade at Salem harbour which brings no trade into the Celestial Empire, explaining that his purpose in living at Walden was not to live cheaply, but deeply, taking his accounts before his Creator , being a self-appointed inspector of snow and rain storms, of highways and forest paths and watching the wild stock of the local village.

Through the eyes of Thoreau, we see our exaggerated needs for artificial entertainment and our greed for superfluity while two-thirds of the world is deluged by unremittant poverty. The refrigerator does not hold a chicken, but a dozen eggs and milk cartons supplied by a distant dairy. The dinner comes in foil, popped into the handy nuker sitting on the kitchen counter. Cook? Make your own syrup from the elderberries hanging despondently on the neglected bushes? Collect the quinces falling by the side of the road? Or use the shrivelled carrots for a hearrty soup? Me?

Why should I do that when I can heat a pizza?

And so for their gratitude for the little they had, and the much they shared, Baucis and Philemon grew together, immortalized as trees, at the edge of a meadow for their hospitality to wayward strangers.

H D Thoreau, On Walden Pond
http://www.abacci.com/books/book.asp?bookID=1699

An Internet Directory for Ovid's Metamorphoses
http://academic.reed.edu/english/Courses/English301/ovid.html
references and allusions
background, journals, criticism
old 1997-98

Project Muse
http://muse.jhu.edu/search/pia.cgi
use search, drop in Ovid

Perseus Project : Ovid Metamorphoses
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus%3Aabo%3Aphi%2C0959%2C006&query=toc

Ovid Metamorphoses
http://www.elizabethanauthors.com/ovid00.htm
Golding complete text
The Fifteen Books of Ovid's Metamorphoses, 1567
The first translation into English - credited to Arthur Golding

University of Wisconsin at Madison
http://www.uwm.edu/Library/special/exhibits/clastext/images/big/ovi1586a.jpg
http://www.uwm.edu/Library/special/exhibits/clastext/clspg052.htm
an annotated Ovid, printed just like a chumash

Ovid with the Picasso illus
http://www.uwm.edu/Library/special/exhibits/clastext/clspg049.htm

RELATED OVID
&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
14^th March 04 Pygmalion:
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/107233
http://pogoland.blogspot.com/2004/03/pygmalion.html

15 Febr 04 Pyramus and Thisbe: Till Death Do us Not Part
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/107233
http://pogoland.blogspot.com/2004/02/pyramus-and-thisbe-death-do-us-not.html

27 Sept 04 Daedalus and Icarus
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/111042
http://pogoland.blogspot.com/2004/09/daedalus-and-icarus_27.html

20 Sept 04 Deucalion and Pyrrha
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/110942
http://pogoland.blogspot.com/2004/09/deucalion-and-pyrrha.html

11 Sept 04 Daedalus and Icarus
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/110770
http://pogoland.blogspot.com/2004/09/daedalus-and-icarus.html

4 Sept 04 Phaethon Rises
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/110766
http://pogoland.blogspot.com/2004/09/phaethon-rises.html

7 Nov 04 Medea
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/111425

21 Dec Let Us Orpheus Theosophically
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/112732

4 Jan 05 Orpheus and Eurydice a Transcendental Kind of Love
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/113161

30 Jan 2005 Venus and Mars
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/113096

Medea

2004-11-07T14:00:00.000-08:00

7 Nov 04 Medea
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/111425

Medea with the dark hair, shrewd mind and piercing eyes is the epitome of witchiness. She set the model, which all stepmothers are forced to follow, becoming the ancestor of Baba Yaga and other venerable old hags that populate folklore.

Medea was the daughter of Aeetes, King of Colchis who owned the Golden Fleece. The Golden Fleece was protected by a dragon which never slept in a sacred grove of Ares near the end of the world. In Thessaly, on the other side of the world, lived a King Aeson who conceded his crown to his brother Pelias for the duration of his son's minority. Upon reaching his majority, Jason would be the rightful heir over the land. Pelias outwardly agreed to the conditions and accordingly took the reins of government in his own hands. When Jason came of age, Pelias seemed willing to transfer the authority to the younger man, but on condition that he go to Colchis and bring back the Golden Fleece as proof of his princely heritage.

Like any young man, Jason was enthusiastic about the quest, sniffing the sea air for adventure. He put out a bull summoning the brave youth of his generation to join him on the adventure. They sailed together in a ship dedicated to the goddess Hera. Joining him were famous heroes including Herakles, Theseus, Nestor and Orpheus (obviously their tour guide for the Underworld should they end up there and entertainment section should they get bored on the way. Maybe they intended to send him overboard to the Sirens, who knows?)

Once in Colchis, Theseus probably advised Jason on the manner of seducing the king's daughter to acquire the Golden Fleece, having already gained experience in Crete in killing the Minotaur through the services of Ariadne. In this case, perhaps Orpheus was to play soothing music in moonlight while Jason lip-synched maudlin poetry. Once in Colchis, Jason made known their mission to the King Aeetes regarding the Fleece. "Very well, " Aeetes replied, " only if he could yoke two brass-shod, fire-breathing bulls to a plough and then sow the dragon's teeth. This only seems to be an outrageous demand, but he had Herakles on hand who much experience in clearing the Stygian stalls and wrestling lions. Moreover, the advice from Theseus proved timely, as Medea fell for his handsome looks and assisted in the theft.

Anxious to prove himself an all-round hero, Jason put on a fine show in bull-taming on the appointed day, and excelled in the dragonteeth sowing event. In so doing, he not only gained the Fleece, but stole Medea's heart. However, the stout men of Colchis were affronted by his boldness and the athletic exhibition soon turned into a melee in which each man fought for himself. Still there was the problem of lulling the sleepless dragon to sleep which guarded the Fleece. However, with a little magic from Medea, his eyes closed quickly as the men snatched the Fleece from the tree and headed back to the ship for a quick sail homewards. Adventures are always better to talk about after they have ended.

Back in Thessaly once more, the town turned out to celebrate the capture of the Golden Fleece. Only one thing troubled Jason. his father was not there. Too enfeebled by age, he cuold not dance in the streets. Medea seeing Jason's consternation intervened. A devotee of Hecate, she knew secret incantation to make the ancient young again. There are different versions how she did this. Some say she cut him up and tossed in a cooking pot, while others are more begnign and said she made a special brew of all the unspeakable things with a bit of herblore, slit his throat, drained his blood and gave him the first complete transfusion. Whichever the case, he was killed and then rejuvenated to a younger age. While others recount that she slaughtered Pelias the Ursurper in a particularly brutal way, establishing the precedent for Eddie Gein and Albert Fish.

Medea boiling a Lamb
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/image?lookup=1990.01.0296&type=vase
image is from the Harvard Library

Having saved Jason's life and assisted in the poaching of the Fleece, Medea was no longer needed. Jason's mind now turned to more legitimate ladies and took interest in Creusa, Princess of Corinth. By now, Medea had two children of her own, so Jason had been somewhat occupied other than ruling his own country. Jealous and embittered by his perfidy, Medea sent the bride a beautiful gift, a poisoned robe, so that when Creusa took it in her hands, her skin would be burnt off like napalm. Beautiful to see, but deadly to touch, Creusa suffered a horrific death, thus we say to this day—curiosity killed the pussycat. To further avenge herself, Medea committed infanticide, fleeing the country in her dragon chariot, leaving Jason with a heir and in despair.

The Absolute Medea-Maria Callas
http://www.serendipity.li/callas/call_lnx.html

pic: Callas Medea poster
http://www.rgrossmusicautograph.com/callas55.html
a cool 3000

recording with the Callas
http://www.omm.de/cds/musiktheater/DY-medea.html

Classical Myths; Medea
http://www.geocities.com/medea19777/medea.html
a collection of myths

Carlos Parada: Medea
http://homepage.mac.com/cparada/GML/Medea.html
very beautiful page, hyperlinked text

Internet Classics: Medea By Euripides
http://classics.mit.edu/Euripides/medea.html

http://classics.mit.edu/Euripides/medea.pl.txt
Written 431 B.C.E
Translated by E. P. Coleridge

TextKit: Medea
http://www.textkit.com/learn/ID/21/author_id/7/
E P Coleridge translation in pdf free download 31 pp

Medea by James Hunter
http://www.pantheon.org/articles/m/medea.html
a biographical account of Medea

Temple U Classics Dept
http://www.temple.edu/classics/mythdirectory.html
has several links, Zeus and Pandora

Bulfinch's Mythology The Age of Fable: Medea
CHAPTER XVII THE GOLDEN FLEECE MEDEA
http://www.bulfinch.org/fables/bull17.html

Crime Library
http://www.crimelibrary.com/serial_killers/index.html
serial killers

RELATED
&&&&&&&&&&
6 Jan 2003 Transformation Myths and Reality
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/fairytales_myths_fables_&legends/97574
http://pogoland.blogspot.com/2003/01/transformation-myths-and-reality.html

Baum and Political Allegory p2

2004-10-31T08:57:00.000-08:00

31 Oct 04 Part II Baum and Political Allegory
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/111632

from:

Part I Wizard of Oz I Theosophical Society
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/111631

Between the implications of social utopianism or utopian socialism and the puritanical distaste for allegorical works that might conceivably have mystical interpretations, Baum fell out of favor with the American public shortly after his death in 1919. Other commentators criticize his constant use of women and his disdain for romantic encounters between his characters, accusing him of promoting homosexuality and lesbianism. Such accusations are difficult to substantiate, but unfortunately those who wish to see the world only in stark monochromatic terms lose the the glory of nuanced colorings and the wonderful insights gained through allegory.

In considering, the Wizard as political allegory of the struggle of common man against the corrupt government of the east; the despondent souls living in the desert of Kansas dream of escaping to the the ethereal Emerald City along a Yellow Brick Road paved in gold. In drawing his parallels, Littlefield argues that the silver shoes Dorothy wears symbolizes Bryan's national plea for using silver to stabilize the gold standard and the split within the US as westerners skeptically viewed the Big Government in the East as the Wicked Witch. Several presidents fit the description of the Wizard as a Humbug from Grant to McKinley with the unrest of western farmers and the settlers on worthless land grants stolen from the Indian Wars as the common worker was exploited unmercifully for his labor without minimum wage or basic health insurance or medical care.

In this view, Dorothy becomes the feminist leader of the motley crew of socially marginalized figures, the pumpkin-headed Scarecrow, Tin Man and Cowardly Lion each representing a segment of disillusioned American society, desperately in search of the ideal political solution with a little magic from the inviisible wizard who through tricks of illusion appears to be a

" a great Head," said Dorothy...."And I thought Oz was a terrible Beast," said the Tin Woodman. "And I thought Oz was a Ball of Fire," exclaimed the Lion. "No; you are all wrong," said the little man meekly. "I have been making believe."

but turns out to be a terrible humbug instead in a city-state where green is the national color and the leader must appear to be everything to every person.

Although the company do not find a utopian solution for man's enslavement to greed or industry, they do fulfill their quests by achieving fulfilment through themselves ather than the artifice of the Wizard's magic in the duration of the journey. In spite of the colorful diversity of the Land of Oz where all things are pragmatically regulated and organized, Dorothy yearns to return to the bleak land of Kansas where crops to be successful must fail in order to gain the compensation from the government.

In time for a presidential election, maybe the Wizard of Oz fits neatly into the current reading list for a refreshing insight of American life and politics. And looking at the two candidates placed before the American public, one seems to be distinctly a humbug, roaring about when in reality he is filled with cowardice, having skipped any direct involvement with past wars only to volunteer the lives of gullible and vulnerable Americans overseas to terrorism.

Nostalgic, Americans can look back on Baum as a model of "simple living" and "true American values" of pragmatism overcoming the obstacles of sophistry and technology and getting down to the basics with fireside talks with the Trumans, Roosevelts and Carters. Confronted by the Wicked Witch, Dorothy tosses ordinary water on her, causing her destruction. Corruption dissolves before the truth and the remnants of it should be swept out the door before the next incoming official. Too often, we are deluded by the appearance of things and confounded by the roar of words, unwilling to trust ourselves to overcome the difficulties before us thereby allowing ourselves to be enslaved to regimes we recognize as destructive. Each adversary, Baum reminds us, has its weakness—the real problem is our own weak knees in confronting adversity.

Perhaps, in having November as the Election month with Thanksgiving just following, Americans preserve the national humor by placing taking a turkey from the White House and placing a pumpkinhead within.

Recipes for Election Day
Grilling the Turkey
http://www.reluctantgourmet.com/grilled_turkey.htm

Talking Turkey with the Reluctant Gourmet
http://www.reluctantgourmet.com/turkey_tips.htm

Pumpkin Heads with Fab Foods
http://www.fabulousfoods.com/holidays/halloween/politicalpump.html

Mollie Katzen—pumpkins
http://www.molliekatzen.com/

Pumpkin Nook
http://www.pumpkinnook.com/cookbook/recipe01.htm
has a basic pumpkin pie recipe plus all you need to know about pumpkins
best topping for pumpkin pie is homemade strawberry jam and when you have none, use blackberry

Parable on Popularism by Henry M Littlefield
http://www.amphigory.com/oz.htm

Brooke Allen, 'L. Frank Baum': The Man Behind the Curtain
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B05E2DC1F3EF934A25752C1A9649C8B63
New York Times, November 17, 2002

"As the Tin Woodman remarks of his stint as emperor of the Winkies, ''Like a good many kings and emperors, I have a grand title, but very little real power, which allows me time to amuse myself in my own way.'' Baum often uses such asides as a vehicle for wry commentary: the citizens of the Emerald City, for instance, are pleased by the Scarecrow's accession to the throne, '' 'For,' they said, 'there is not another city in all the world that is ruled by a stuffed man.' And, so far as they knew, they were quite right'' -- the ''so far as they knew'' being a brilliant comment upon rulers as a species"

Kirjasto: L Frank Baum
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/lfbaum.htm
short bio listing some of his 69 works
chief pseudonyms: Hugh Fitzgerald, Edith Van Dyne, Schuyler Stanton, Suzanne Metcalf, John Estes Cook, Floyd Akers, Louis F Gottschalk (two musicals) and Byron Gay

Theosophical Society:
http://www.theosophical.org/theosophy/oz/
Five Essays on the Wizard of Oz

L Frank Baum Wonderful Wizard of Oz
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/BauWiza.html
Baum, L. Frank (Lyman Frank), 1856-1919 . The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia Library

Richard Brown: Oz FAQs
http://www.ucalgary.ca/~dkbrown/oz.faq
a list of questions generally asked obout the book

Suite101 Janet Kay Blaycock
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/classic_literature/33963

Other Places
&&&&&&&&&&&
International Wizard of Oz Club
http://www.ozclub.org/
memberhsip, books, conventions, publications, reference, Oz resources
The International Wizard of Oz Club
P.O. Box 26249
San Francisco, CA 94126-6249

UC San Diego History of the Wizard of Oz
http://history.acusd.edu/gen/filmnotes/wizardofoz.html
with book jacket illustrations

Oz Central
http://www.oz-central.com/links.html

Lyman Frank Baum
http://selfknowledge.com/27au.htm
has links to online books
picture/image search, audio files, literary bios and search tools

For Text
&&&&&&&&&&&&&
University of Virginia Young Reader's Collection The Marvellous Land of Oz
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/ebooks/subjects/subjects-young.html
scroll to Baum Palm or MS Reader
there are some illustrated works here

Lyman Frank Baum
http://www.underthesun.cc/Classics/Baum/
has a collection of links and 26 works online
plain vanilla text—well laid out and legible

Gutenberg index L Frank Baum works
http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/world/authrec?fk_authors=42

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
http://www.gutenberg.net/etext/55

The Marvelous Land of Oz by L. Frank Baum
http://www.gutenberg.net/etext/54

Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz by L. Frank Baum
http://www.gutenberg.net/etext/420

The Emerald City of Oz by L. Frank Baum
http://www.gutenberg.net/etext/517

The Enchanted Island of Yew by L. Frank Baum
http://www.gutenberg.net/etext/518

Glinda of Oz by L. Frank Baum
http://www.gutenberg.net/etext/961

The Lost Princess of Oz by L. Frank Baum
http://www.gutenberg.net/etext/959

The Magic of Oz by L. Frank Baum
http://www.gutenberg.net/etext/419

The Marvelous Land of Oz by L. Frank Baum
http://www.gutenberg.net/etext/54

Ozma of Oz by L. Frank Baum
http://www.gutenberg.net/etext/486

The Patchwork Girl of Oz by L. Frank Baum
http://www.gutenberg.net/etext/955

Rinkitink in Oz by L. Frank Baum
http://www.gutenberg.net/etext/958

The Road to Oz by L. Frank Baum
http://www.gutenberg.net/etext/485

The Scarecrow of Oz by L. Frank Baum
http://www.gutenberg.net/etext/957

Tik-Tok of Oz
http://www.gutenberg.net/etext/956

The Tin Woodman of Oz
http://www.gutenberg.net/etext/960

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
http://www.gutenberg.net/etext/55

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
Fab Foods Halloween
http://www.fabulousfoods.com/holidays/halloween/halloween.html

the gallery at Fab Foods
http://www.fabulousfoods.com/holidays/halloween/jackgal.html

Pumpkin Nook- Thanksgiving
http://www.pumpkinnook.com/tday/

Pumpkin Nook
h ttp://www.pumpkinnook.com/cookbook/recipe01.htm
has a basic pumpkin pie recipe plus all you need to know about pumpkins
best topping for pumpkin pie is homemade strawberry jam and when you have none, use blackberry

RELATED
&&&&&&&&&&
Kidnapped Santa Claus
http://www.suite101.com/article/edit.cfm/16568/112042

Wizard of Oz p1

2004-10-30T08:48:00.000-07:00

30 Oct 04 Wiz of Oz 1
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/111631

For kids everywhere, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz with its pumpkin-headed scarecrow represents escape from dull reality and the doldrums of pragmatic living with its bleak black and white views on humanity. Controversial, L Frank Baum's books lend themselves to new literary commentary, examining them within their historical frame and in light of political nd philosophical movements of their day. For those who are unread, the title recalls the 1939 film with Judy Garland as Dorothy, Jack Haley as the Tin Man, Margaret Hamilton as the Wicked Witch of the West, Bert Lahr as the Cowardly Lion, Frank Morgan as Wizard and Billie Burke as Glinda the Good Witch and the lyrics of "Somewhere over the Rainbow" reflecting the evanescent American Dream of success.

Lyman Frank Baum (1856-1919) was born in New York to a successful oilman, Benjamin Ward Baum and the ardent feminist, Cynthia Stanton Baum. He was home tutored until twelve when he was shipped off unmercifully to Peterskill Military Academy where he learn to hate military discipline. A precocious writer, he was writing stories, dramas and musicals even in his teens, producing the Rose Lawn Journal when he was fifteen from the estate in Chittenango. Seeing his propensity towards theater, his father provided support and houses for Baum to establish his own troupe. However, the stock market crash in the eighties, brought with it financial disaster for the Baum family. Adopting his father's pragmatism, Baum tried nearly aspect of commercial business without success, including a general store in Aberdeen, Dakota Territory and establishing the National Association of Window Trimmers and becoming the editor-publisher of Show Windows from 1897-1902.

In 1873, he tried was a journalist for the New York World, which was also the origin of another famous children's writer, Thornton Burgess and his long-standing partnership with Harrison Cady and the Mother West Wind books. In 1875, Baum was in Pennsylvania raising chickens and editing the Poultry Record. In 1882, his life changed as he formed a lifetime partnership with Maud Gage, his wife and business manager, keeping him on a safer road of domestic stability and success. With Maud, he had four sons; but his works are dominated by heroines. His wife, too was an ardent feminist, influencing Baum in the presentation of his novels and political involvement. In 1888, they moved to Aberdeen, Dakota territory where he tried to apply himself in business by opening a general store which failed.This period becomes the background for Dorothy's bleak Kansas with its drab, worn-out atmosphere. They remained there for two eyars befoer returning to Chicago where they were involved in the Populist Movement, taking part in the torchlight parades of William Jennings Bryan. The Wizard of Oz is interpreted as both a political and mystical allegory, with parallels alluding to Democratic Populism or Theosophy. In his essay, The Wizard of Oz: Parable on Populism, Henry M Littlefield argues persuasively of Baum's political involvement reflected in the symbolism of the main characters and their attributes. Other literary critics recognize the hidden symbolism of Theosophy as the Tin Man is in search of a heart, the Cowardly Lion, courage and the Scarecrow, a mind. The argument of heart versus mind is ancient, traced back to Plato's Charmides. The pumpkin-headed figure is also relatively ancient, possibly traced back to the Pumpkinification of Claudius by Seneca. The symbols lend themselves easily of either political or mystical interpretations with fundamental Christian moralists eschewing Baum as morally corrupt and an adherrent to New Age mentality. They perceive his ability to translate mystical symbolism into children's literature as dangerous as he divides divides the world into four essences following the medieval alchemists with the Masonic/ Theosophical search for Light.

The Tin Man represents the heart—the feminine nature of mankind
The Scarecrow represents the mind—the masculine nature of mankind
while the Lion represents courage or the application of both to one's environment.

The fairy world is divided into four domains:

Air: sylphs or winged fairies (Lulea in Queen Zixie of Oz; Lurline in The Tin Woodman of Oz)

Water: nymphs or undines (Aquareine in The Sea Fairies and the waterfairies in The Scarecrow of Oz)

Earth: gnomes (King Nome and the nomes in The Kidnapping of Santa Claus and The life and Adventures of Santa Claus)

Fire: salamanders (Demon of Electiricty in The Master Key and the Lovely Lady of Light in Tik-Tok of Oz)

Furthermore, Baum destroys the monochrome image of black and white completely by rejecting the concept of absolute evil versus absolute good. There are two sides to everything, and no evil is completely bad; all of his characters have a weakness that contribute to their undoing. A mystic, he understands that the tree of knowledge of good and evil was planted in the garden before the creation of man; therefore good and evil always co-existed, but man through taking a bite learned of its bitterness.

Kirjasto: L Frank Baum
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/lfbaum.htm
short bio listing some of his 69 works
chief pseudonyms: Hugh Fitzgerald, Edith Van Dyne, Schuyler Stanton, Suzanne Metcalf, John Estes Cook, Floyd Akers, Louis F Gottschalk (two musicals) and Byron Gay

Theosophical Society:
http://www.theosophical.org/theosophy/oz/
Five Essays on the Wizard of Oz

Baum and the not-So Wonderful Oz
http://www.balaams-ass.com/journal/homemake/wizardoz.htm
a peculiar look at Baum through Christian fundamentalism, revealing the reasons why Baum is frequently boycotted and banned by puritanical moralists

For Text
&&&&&&&&&&&&&
University of Virginia Young Reader's Collection The Marvellous Land of Oz
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/ebooks/subjects/subjects-young.html
scroll to Baum Palm or MS Reader

Gutenberg index L Frank Baum works
http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/world/authrec?fk_authors=42

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
http://www.gutenberg.net/etext/55

The Marvelous Land of Oz by L. Frank Baum
http://www.gutenberg.net/etext/54

Teaching materials
&&&&&&&&&&&&
Baum: Teacher's Resource Page
http://falcon.jmu.edu/~ramseyil/baum.htm
has files for teaching and reading L Frank Baum

LOC Exhibit, The Wizard of Oz: An American Fairytale
http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/oz/

Richard Brown: Oz FAQs
http://www.ucalgary.ca/~dkbrown/oz.faq
a list of questions generally asked obout the book

UC San Diego History of the Wizard of Oz
http://history.acusd.edu/gen/filmnotes/wizardofoz.html
with book jacket illustrations

Tech Association
http://etext.techassocinc.com/etexts/wizoz10/view.php?part=0
Wizard of Oz

Teach-Nology: Baum
http://www.teach-nology.com/teachers/child_lit/authors/baum/
resources and links for teaching Baum's Wizard of Oz

Oz Central
http://www.oz-central.com/links.html

Suite101 Janet Kay Blaycock
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/classic_literature/33963

RELATED
&&&&&&&&&&
Kidnapped Santa Claus
http://www.suite101.com/article/edit.cfm/16568/112042

Bluebeard

2004-10-27T08:41:00.000-07:00

27 Oct 04 Blue Beard
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/111446

Harry Clarke illus
http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/cinder/images/Clarke16.htm
title page

According to the commentary on Sur La Lune, the story of Bluebeard is based on the life of Giles de Rais, a Marshal of France who served under Joan of Arc. Retiring to his estates after her execution, he became an alchemist, sodomizing boys and dabbling in black magic as well as child sacrifices apparently. He confesed to over 140 killings, but may have killed as many as 300—for this he was hanged and burned alive on October 26, 1440 —an incredibly difficult combination of executions.

Harry Clarke illu
http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/cinder/images/Clarke19.htm
Bluebeard joins his other wives

In 1697 Perrault published Bluebeard, in Histioiires ou contes du temps passé / Stories or Tales of Past Time, making it equally justifiable to say that Henry VIII was the real life model with his domestic diplomacy of disposing with several wives. In some ways, Bluebeard is the inversion of Beauty and the Beast regarding the themes of fidelity and marriage. A man has two daughters whom he wishes to marry to a wealthy neighbor, but they are repelled by him having a blue beard. To engage their affection, Blue Beard took them to his country estate where nothing by pleasure could be found in hunting, fishing, dancing and feasting. No one went to bed as the parties lasted till early morn. The younger of the two daughters began to think that life was not so bad with Blue Beard. A month after their departure, the marriage was concluded between the young woman, Fatima, and Blue Beard.

And all the neighbors and friends were envious of the rich marriage. They visited the castle to see about the trappings and wished the bride well and left her to her fate. her huband departs on a journey, leaving her a key to a secret chamber in the cellar with the instruction not to enter. However, Curiosity overcomes her and she investigates, only to find the corpses of other slaughtered brides.

Contemporary interpretation like to moralize that curiosity killed the cat. The story has taken on the usual Freudian sexual connotations that the bloody key represents the bride's infidelity to Blue Beard, while past generations used it to moralize it on the sanctitiy of marriage and grave punishment for marital insubordination. Both views ignore historical environment at the time of Perrault. Whether Perrault based the story on Giles de Rais or even Vlad IV the model of Dracula, cannot be proven. He may have used Cunmar the Accursed, a 15^th century tyrant who killed a succession of wives in Brittany. It seemed a popular way of disposing of them as Henry VIII did so himself. However the last of Cunmar's wives is more fortunate than Anne Boleyn. After being decapitated outside the castle, St Gildas, the abbot of Rhuys happened by and restored her head to body, thus resussicating her. The story is found in frescoes in St Nicholas des Eaux. Similar stories are Fitcher's Bird in the Grimms' collection, Silvernose in Calvino's Italian Folktales and the English, Robber Bridgroom.

But curiously, Blue Beard, usually appears in oriental dress, something of a Turk in illustration.

Dulac illus
http://www.bartleby.com/76/P5.html
Quiller-Couch version of Blue Beard
Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch (1863–1944). The Sleeping Beauty and other Fairy Tales. 1910.

Perrault first brought the story forth in 1697—just fourteen years after the Siege of Vienna. In 1683, Mustafa I with 250,000 Turks were at the walls of Vienna on Kahlenberg. Kahlenberg overlooks Vienna above Grinzing—where Beethoven didn't hear the church bells. It is about 25minute walk through the vineyards from the Grinzinger Church, less than an hour's walk to the Stephansdom. Mustafa's armies encircled Vienna, because the other major battle was just across from where the Sudbahnhof stands today—a mere 15minutes walk from the Stephansdom. The Poles under John Socieski attacked from rear and Prince Eugene of Savoy defended Vienna—hence Prinz Eugenstrasse leading to the Sudbahnhof. It wasn't the first invasion of the Turks to Vienna, but the last. An exhibition of the weapons, tents, arms and javelins is permamently in the Heeresgeschichte Museem near to the Sudbahnhof. The Viennese were shaking in their nightgowns. The theme or relief of the defense is picked up by Mozart in Cosi fan Tutte where the two women exchange lovers and in the Abduction where Constanza escapes. White slavery of western women was a flourishing trade, just as much as black slavery. Nearby Vienna lies a small town near a large rock, Hainburg—where the great Roman general Marcus Aurelius had fortified the Danube. This town was swept through every war since that time, withstanding the sieges of Swedes and Turks successively, but one very narrow alley leading precipitously into the Danube is called Blutgasse. Why? The Turks having overrun the town, slaughtered all the inhabitants and cast them down this street into the Danube.

All of Europe was torn by the bitter religious wars between Catholics and Protestants, not limited to their own borderlands. The Swedes battled in Vienna and fought at White Mountain in Prague whle England fought between Catholic and Protestant governments through successive rulers. Perrault living in the midst of political and religious chaos and persecution, may have equally well chosen the model of Henry VIII as Elizabeth survived, taking on the authority of the throne and immediately persecuting the Catholics she could find. The story might more realistically reflect the brutality ongoing in the world betwixt the political and religious powers with the warning not to look into the bloody past of either. Both the church and state always wish to represent themselves as innocent maids, but in reality both were grotesquely barbaric hiding bloody carcasses behind the doors, while offering a golden key.

The Blue Fairy Book
http://www.online-literature.com/andrew_lang/blue_fairy/
a searchable version of the Blue Fairy Book

Sur La Lune: Bluebeard
http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/bluebeard/index.html
annotated story

Sur la Lune Book Gallery
http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/bluebeard/books.html
Bluebeard and spin-offs incl Eudora Welty

Tracy Ann Bernson
Castles, Moats, Roses, and Thorns: A Study of Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber and the Fairy Tale Tradition of Bluebeard
http://www.unh.edu/mcnair/96.t_bernson.abs.html

Terri Winding Bluebeard and the Bloody Chamber
http://www.endicott-studio.com/rdrm/forblue.html

Gustave Dore, illus
http://mennis.web.wesleyan.edu/fist255s.mle.dore.html
bio at Weslyan with illustrations from fairytales
Blue Beard is toward bottom. Takes time to load.

Gilles de Rais
http://vampires.monstrous.com/gilles_de_rais_alias_blue_bear.htm
a fairly long biographical account of Gilles de Rais. The account differs from Sur La Lunee's in that he was first strangled and then burnt, after being tortured by Inquisition.

Crime Library: Legend of Bluebeard by Mark Gribben
http://www.crimelibrary.com/serial_killers/history/landru/index_1.html?sect=3
extremely slow in opening

Man More Than Myth by Joseph Geringer
http://www.crimelibrary.com/serial_killers/history/vlad/index_1.html
Vlad Dracula

RELATED STORIES
&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
Blue Beard
http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/perrault03.html
has a list of links

Fitcher's Bird
http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm046.html

Robber Bridgroom
http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm040.html

Bartok Opera
&&&&&&&&&&&
Blaubart Schloss Bluebeard's Castle by Bartok
http://www.thecatseyes.com/show.asp?show_id=2438
with the Hungarian State Opera
well worth seeing this production

Bluebeard's Castle
http://www.operaworld.com/special/bluebeard.shtml
a short history of the opera production
"Librettist Béla Balázs, influenced by his peer Endre Ady, embraced the French symbolists as a model for his work. Balázs' source of the Bluebeard story was the symbolist poet Maeterlinck's Ariane et Barbe-bleue, an adaptation of Perrault's fairy tale."

FILM
&&&&&&&&
Michel Gagne Walt Disney and Bluebeard's Wives
http://www.gagneint.com/Final%20site/Gallery/films/film3.htm
drafts for animated ghosts

French Production of Blue Beard
http://www.bernard-luc.com/cinema/barbe/barba.htm
Director : CHRISTIAN-JAQUE Co-author : Jean Bernard-Luc Dialogues : Henri Jeanson

Freedom to Read:
World Library and Information Congress: 70th IFLA General ...

http://www.ifla.org/IV/ifla70/papers/035e_trans-Roldan.pdf.
The Reading Adventure Gustavo Roldán Buenos Aires, Argentina

History- Turkish Invasion
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=lang_en&q=%22Turkish+Invasion%22+Europe

Siege of Vienna 1683
http://www.campusprogram.com/reference/en/wikipedia/v/vi/vienna_1.html

Austrian-Polish Agreement
http://www.iyp.org/polish/history/vienna.html
The Battle of Vienna: September 12, 1683 by Richard Lysiak

Prince Eugene of Savoy
http://english.bmf.gv.at/Ministry/WinterPalaceofPrinc_69/TheHistoryofthePalace/_start.htm

Turkish Wars
http://web2.airmail.net/napoleon/duchycavalry.htm

Lycaon

2004-10-20T08:32:00.000-07:00

Ovid Book 1: Lycaon: Lycanthropy and Vampyres
20 Oct 04 Ovid Bk 1 Lycaon
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/111308

Ovid recalls the Four Ages of Man, describing the destruction of creation and the corruption of the world. The First Millenium was Gold: Men were content to live at peace and indeed so peaceful with one another that they had not yet begn to explore the earth. No cities crowded the rivers or crowned hills. Life was simple without need for fortifications. The trees bent over to give their fruit from extended fingers, the grapes and strawberries ripened in the sun while man was content to eat his fill without quarrelling with his neighbor.

The Second Age was Silver when Saturn fell to Death's dark contry and Jove began to rule. This age was not so rich as change came when Autumn brought her shifty winds and wild Winter ravaged earth, stripping the trees barren of their fruit. Ice crystallized the winter air and Spring restored the world with greenery, but lived a life too short. In this time, man learned to plough the land and work by the sweat of his brow to plant the seed and harvest the wheat, grinding gain for bread. His back against the wind, man built shelters for the winter, shutting his world into little boxes—each one defending for himself.

The Third Age followed, filled with Bronze. Trumpets rang as men turned their ploughshares to swords and fought with one another still in fear of almighty Jove. And soon thereafter, came the Fourth, the Age of Iron in which we live today: man against man; each striving to maintain his selfish gain. The breast of Mother Earth sodden with men's blood as strife breaks out between the bitter quarrels of kingdoms and countries, each fighting for superiority. The values of the past are gone. No man trusts his brother while Piety, Faith, Love and Truth are all exchanged for Violence, Cheating, Deceit and Usury—the world turns with trade.

So it was when Jove decided to visit Earth disguised as a peasant to discover the ways of men and bring justice to the world. Death trod the earth as man watched warily of one another. Driven by greed to raid the bowels of earth, they succumbed to avarice and murder, each taking what he could. Brother distrusted brother and stepmothers devised poison as choice desserts for their sons. Fury raged within the walls of homes and spread across the lnd as countries fought with one another, threatening to destroy the oundations of the world. In this time in Lycaeus, there lived one tyrant, Lycaon, more cruel than all the others. He had no fear of any man and less of Jove above. Inhumane, he was beastly to those who dwelt within his domain. Imprisoning men within his cells and slaying them to fill his cooking-pot, he slit their bowels and devoured their entrails. This was the feast he prepared for the ruler of the gods and so ppalled by the horror o it all, Jove struck him with a thunderbolt. His cry we hear as he stalks his prey at night now. his cloak turned to coarse hair and his legs became those of a wolf as he seeks to tear the life-blood from helpless animals with his canine teeth.

So Ovid introduced the story of the werewolf into the Western world, taking it from other sources including the Trojan War. Lycaon, the son of Pelasgus entertained a wandering Zeus, cooking up a meal from one of his sons. (Apollodorus III: 8 Later the wolf tales, particularly the adaption of Romulus and Remus were brought into western literature through the Tarzan stories and Kipling's Jungle Books in a begnine manner as men run with the wolf-pack and live half-wild lives, yet always maintaining their identity as human.)

Such shape-changers originated from the east through the stories of Vikram the Vampyre which were incorporated into Apuleius, Golden Ass. Below are links for meeting with the Indian Vampyre which invaded the western world before Apuleius birth ca 130. The Gandharba-Sena, originator of the Vikram stories, lived in the century before the dawn of Christianity and with the east-west trade, his stories spread in the same manner as the Jatarka and Bidpai Tales which incorporated with the Aesop's Fables.

Dryden, transl Metamorphoses
http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/ovid/meta/

Book 1
http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/ovid/meta/meta00.htm

Description of text : This is the most accessible translation of Ovid's "The Metamorphoses" ever produced. It combines readable contemporary language with an in-depth mythological index which is fully hyper-linked to the main text and vice versa. Experience a narration of Greek and Roman mythology from the Creation, to the foundation of Rome. Theseus, Hercules and Achilles are among the many characters illuminated by this 4 MB .pdf 880 MR

Wikipedia: Lycaon
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lycaon
gives a summary of texts and sources in classical literature where Lycaon appears and their differences

Wikipedia: Werewolf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werewolf

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werewolf#History_of_the_werewolf
definition with history of the word

Wikipedia: Lycanthropy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lycanthropy
gives a history and description of the myth

Captain Sir Richard F. Burton's, Vikram and The Vampire
Classic Hindu Tales of Adventure, Magic, and Romance
Edited by his Wife, Isabel Burton
http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/2400
from the preface 1870 version:

"The Baital-Pachisi, or Twenty-five Tales of a Baital is the history
of a huge Bat, Vampire, or Evil Spirit which inhabited and
animated dead bodies. It is an old, and thoroughly Hindu, Legend
composed in Sanskrit, and is the germ which culminated in the
Arabian Nights, and which inspired the "Golden Ass" of Apuleius,
Boccacio's "Decamerone," the "Pentamerone," and all that class of
facetious fictitious literature.

The story turns chiefly on a great king named Vikram, the King
Arthur of the East, who in pursuance of his promise to a Jogi or
Magician, brings to him the Baital (Vampire), who is hanging on a
tree. The difficulties King Vikram and his son have in bringing the
Vampire into the presence of the Jogi are truly laughable; and on
this thread is strung a series of Hindu fairy stories, which contain
much interesting information on Indian customs and manners. It
also alludes to that state, which induces Hindu devotees to allow
themselves to be buried alive, and to appear dead for weeks or
months, and then to return to life again; a curious state of
mesmeric catalepsy, into which they work themselves by
concentrating the mind and abstaining from food "

Tales of King Vikram and Betaal the Vampire
http://members.tripod.com/~srinivasp/mythology/betaal.html
very short fables are available here

vampyre codex
http://www.sacred-texts.com/goth/vc/index.htm
"The prototype of this work was first set to paper in late 1991. A specially printed version was offered to select students in conjunction with the International Society of Vampires beginning in 1995. Later revisions led to the Sanguinarium edition, published by the Sanguiarium Press in October 2000. This version is derived from the Sanguinarium edition which also came to be circulated widely on the Internet"

Wikipedia: Vampires
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vampire
definition

RELATED- OVID
&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
27 Sept 04 Daedalus and Icarus
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/111042
http://pogoland.blogspot.com/2004/09/daedalus-and-icarus_27.html

20 Sept 04 Deucalion and Pyrrha
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/110942
http://pogoland.blogspot.com/2004/09/deucalion-and-pyrrha.html

11 Sept 04 Daedalus and Icarus
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/110770
http://pogoland.blogspot.com/2004/09/daedalus-and-icarus.html

4 Sept 04 Phaethon Rises
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/110766
http://pogoland.blogspot.com/2004/09/phaethon-rises.html

15 Febr 04 Pyramus and Thisbe: Till Death Do us Not Part
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/107233
http://pogoland.blogspot.com/2004/02/pyramus-and-thisbe-death-do-us-not.html

14 Nov 04 Baucis and Philemon
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/111663

7 Nov 04 Medea
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/111425

21 Dec 04 Let Us Orpheus Theosophically
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/112732

4 Jan 05 Orpheus and Eurydice a Transcendental Kind of Love
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/113161

30 Jan 2005 Venus and Mars
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/113096

Robber Bridegroom

2004-10-13T08:22:00.000-07:00

13 Oct 04 Robber Bridegroom
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/111511

Robber Bridgroom
http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm040.html

October is the month for dark tales as Halloween approaches. In the following weeks, witches shall appear and vampyres and werewolves roam through the night, each seeking to trap unwary souls.

Among the tales of Grimms, is the Robber Bridegroom. Similar to Beauty and the Beast, a young lady is promised in marriage to a stranger. Her father, a poor miller, hopes for the best as he recognizes the need for her to have a future home. Like Blue Beard and Red Riding Hood, the story has elements of cannibalism. Yet like Hansel and Gretel, it also has the motif of dropping peas and lentils along the way to the stranger's house in the wood. Unlike Hansel and Gretel, the birds do not swoop down to devour them, but they sprout to mark her escape home. Upon entering the house, she finds it deserted, but a little bird warns her of danger, just as a bird warns the prince that he is bearing away the wrong daughter in Cinderella. Although the father has good intentions in marrying his daughter off, the message is clear that even when circumstances seem to be practical, danger may be lurking in the shadows and it might be better to rely on one's instinct.

The daughter is compliant with her father's wishes, but at the same time circumspect. She does not much trust the stranger who lives in the woods. He seems to far removed from civilization and provides for herself an escape. With few resources, she is resources and wary of the world in which she lives.

The theme of women being trapped into dangerous situations by marriage or caught be abductors and robbers is frequent in fairytales. In Andersen's, Snow Queen, Gerda is captured by the robber band and held captive like the reindeer by the Robber Maiden.

Part 1 The Mirror
http://www.live-artist.com/fairytales/snwq2.html
The Snow Queen" translated by Naomi Lewis,
Illustrated by Angela Barrett illustration copyright 1988

Part 5 The Little Robber-Girl
http://www.live-artist.com/fairytales/snwq6.html

In other respects the story resembles the English Jack and the Beanstalk in that the old hag hides the girl behind a cask and protects her. Like Jack, the miller's daughter makes good her escape although she gains no treasure in the adventure. When the stranger appears for his wedding-day, the girl confronts him with a dream story, placing the burden of justice on his shoulders. Trapped by her cleverness, he is apprehended and rendered harmless.

The story may point to the protective instinct that most of us have, but fail to nuture. Prodded through life by the demands of others, we tend to follow the herd without listening to our own fears and objections. We rely on the experts about us who claim to know more about the world we live in. We are persuaded to trust appearances even when we sense that they are empty facades or danger lurks beneath the surface. We do not like to admit fear in apprehension of public humiliation. Instead, we bite our lips and continue as instructed, following the advice of those more experienced in the ways of the world. Had the miller's daughter presented the story to her father upon her escape, he probably would have laughed her down and upbraided her as being neurotic. When reality is framed as a dream, that it is accepted as real. Frequently novelists or writers comment on the duplicity of the world. So long as what they present as realistic or factual, it might not be accepted for being too depressing, melodramatic or tragic; but when packaged in a novel, well—that's different. It's credible.

So it is for small children seeking assistance from their parents or teachers after they have been abused by a trusted acquaintance of the family. It couldn't have happened. No one would ever accept that So-und-So molested the girls on the track team, or the doctor assaulted the patient, or the priest molested the children in the sacristy. Imagine the frustration of survivors escaping from mass graves and returning to their villages to warn the others, "They're packing us into cattle cars and making us dig mass graves out in the woods—" Or the frustration of embassy staff who repeatedly tried to warn foreign nations of the violence ongoing under the Nazi Regime. The brutality is beyond human comprehension. How can anyone believe that lampshades were being made out of human skin?

It is only when the miller's daughter relates her story as a dream in the company of others, she can confront the reality of the situation. Only then, does her father recognize her instinctive fear and distrust is valid. We tend to scoff at intuition, but oftentimes, there is very good reason to be afraid and circumspection is warranted. Provide for yourself an escape, if the path looks too removed from society and the company dangerous.

Art Passions: Segur
http://www.artpassions.net/segur/segur.html
illustrations by Segur
you may link by html page but not by images
thank-you. You may also send the images as postcards

Jack Zipes
http://www.wwnorton.com/college/english/nce/Zipes/toc.htm
a listing of comparable titles of stories with same themes

How to interpret fairytales according to Jung
http://www.jungnewyork.com/whatisit.html

Once Upon A Couch
http://www.eldrbarry.net/roos/books/fair2.htm
a bibliography for analysis of fairytales
This shelf in Hatter's Classics is stocked with books attempting to analyze fairy tales. Feel free to print out a copy of this for reference. Browse through the titles. Look for them at your local library or bookstore.

Bibliography of Eudora Welty's works
http://www.olemiss.edu/depts/english/ms-writers/dir/welty_eudora/pubs.html
1942 Robber Bridegroom

Mississippi Quarterly: A Bibliography for Robber Bridgroom
http://www.missq.msstate.edu/sssl/search.php?q=The+Robber+Bridegroom
related to Eudora Welty's Robber Bridegroom

Maggie Atwood Handmaid's Tale
http://www.eng.fju.edu.tw/worldlit/canada/handmaid.html
a dystopian twist on similar theme

RELATED
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6 Feb 2003 Beauty and the Beast: Love Transforms
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/fairytales_myths_fables_&legends/98630
http://pogoland.blogspot.com/2003/02/beauty-and-beast-love-transforms.html

3 Feb 2003 Beauty and the Beast: Gerneral Background
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/fairytales_myths_fables_&legends/98248
http://pogoland.blogspot.com/2003/02/beauty-and-beast-general-background.html

20 February 2003 Beauty and the Beast : Social Expectation and Womens Roles B
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/98632
http://pogoland.blogspot.com/2003/02/beauty-and-beast-social-expectation.html

20 Feb 2003 Beauty and the Beast: Social Expectations and Womens' Roles A
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/fairytales_myths_fables_&legends/98630
http://pogoland.blogspot.com/2003/02/beauty-and-beast-social-expectations.html

16 Dec 2002 Child Abuse and Cinderella: Social Blindness
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/fairytales_myths_fables_&legends/97081
http://pogoland.blogspot.com/2002/12/child-abuse-and-cinderella-social.html

23 Nov 03 Humperdinck's Children Hansel u Gretel Making Gingerbread B
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/fairytales_myths_fables_&legends/104793
http://pogoland.blogspot.com/2003/11/humperdinks-children-hansel-u-gretel.html

23 Nov 03 Humperdinck's Children making Gingerbread A
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/fairytales_myths_fables_&legends/104795
http://pogoland.blogspot.com/2003/11/humperdincks-children-making.html

27 Oct 04 Blue Beard
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/111446

Flower Stories

2004-10-02T20:30:00.000-07:00

2 Oct 04 Flower Stories
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/111294

Some flowers have stories other than those found in Alice in Wonderland or Through the Looking Glass where Lewis Carroll creates his own parodies with Alice trying bavely to go backwards to the future. Andersen also makes use of flowers for parody within his saga, The Snow Queen when Gerda is waylaid and trapped by the old woman into the magical garden where time remains in eternal spring. The roses are buried underground but suddenly bloom when Gerda's hot tears fall to the earth.

Ovid recorded some flower myths in the Metamorphoses, the most famous being Narcissus, the lovely white flower which grows by ponds. In Book IV, Ovid tells the story of Leucothoe who falls in love with the sun. This arouses the jealousy of Clytie who also yearns for the warm embrace of the sun. Leucothoe is buried alive by her father as a consequence of Sol's seduction. The sun hearing her cries from the earth had mercy on her, but could not bring her back to life. To reduce her agony, he tansformed her to a a sweet smelling tree, the Boswellian but her name is transferred to the genus of daisies that litter the meadows in spring—the ox-eyed daisy.

Clytie however, for her wagging tongue, was disdained by he sun and wilted away to become a flower that ever turns its face in yearning to the sun, the heliotrope. But the myth brings an array of gardener's confusion for identification for the sunflower, the marigold and violet and valerian are all associated to this myth as well as the members of the borage family. The helicanthe, the giant sunflower used for birdseed and oils, is a North American native and so adds further confusion to interpretation of the myth.

Moeover, the flower not mentioned in the various seductions of Apollo and Helios/Sol is the dandelion which is known the world around for its golden mane. Not known the origin of the French etymology, the name was always easy for kids to remember as Dandy Lion. The flower is associated to St Francis because it blooms twice and the more you try to stomp it out, the more it flourishes. It is also valuable herbal, providing greens for salads. each part of the flower can be used. The roots have been used to make an ersatz coffee and the flowers are used by Central Europeans to make a fine honey and wine.

Leucothoe—heath family
http://www.mikebaker.com/plants/Leucothoe_racemosa.html

Leucothoe --ferrerbush
http://www.georgian.edu/pinebarrens/bi_p_lra.htm

Chrysanthemum Leucothoe Ox-eyed daisy
http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/wildseed/32/32.1.html

Wild flowers-Ox-eyed Daisy
http://knps.org/Wildflowers/oxeyed.htm

Valerian
http://www.monasheetourism.com/PlantsandFlowers/T%20130%20Sitka%20Valerian.jpg

valerian pink
http://www.liferesearchuniversal.com/valerian.html

Helianthe one of many sunflowers
http://www.ouellette001.com/flore/Groupes/Spermatophytes/Angiospermes/Dicotyles/103Composees/images/Figure_208.jpg

http://www.ouellette001.com/flore/Groupes/Spermatophytes/Angiospermes/Dicotyles/103Composees/30_Helianthus/Genre.htm

Heliotrope
http://www.gardenerspath.com/plantguide/heliotrope.html

Heliotrope
http://www.indiana.edu/~libwylie/heliotrope.html

Borage
http://www.gardenerspath.com/plantguide/borage.html

Marigold
http://www.uq.net.au/hyperlinked/Herbs/marigold.htm
another very valuble herb

Dandelion
http://www.westol.com/~pennwest/wildflowers/dandelion.html
an extremely valuable herb

Dandelion
http://www.uq.net.au/hyperlinked/Herbs/dandelion.htm

Dandelion page
http://www.theherbspecialist.com/dandelion.html
to make honey—collect the flowers when they ae heavy with pollen. Place them in a ceramic bowl or ceramic lined pan and cover with water. Add a little sugar for sweetness—using a brown sugar or rougher form of beet sugar is preable to white crystal. squeeze in a taste of lemon juice—one or two lemons. Cover loosely with a dishtowel. wait three days. Strain flowers. Strain again through a fine cotton cloth to catch residue. Simmer slowly until the liquid turns into a fine honey.

Garden of Live Flowers illus
http://www.kellscraft.com/throughthelookingglassch2.html

Garden of Flowers
http://wyllie.lib.virginia.edu:8086/perl/toccer-new?id=CarGlas.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=2&division=div1
illustrated the illustrations enlarge

University of Virginia Etext Library Through the Looking-Glass
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/CarGlas.html
title of contents Published: 1862-1863 illus Tenniel

University of Virginia: Alice in Wonderland 1866
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/CarAlic.html

Literature Net : Through the Loooking-Glass
http://www.literature-web.net/carroll/lookingglass
searchable version with short bio of Lewis Carroll

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Snow Queen : Old Woman's Garden
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/fairytales_myths_fables_&legends/106388

Lewis and Alice Expedition Through the Looking-glass
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/fairytales_myths_fables_&legends/105856

Daedalus and Icarus

2004-09-27T20:27:00.000-07:00

27 Sept 04 Daedalus and Icarus
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/111042

Fish swim, birds fly, but men are made from clay. Genesis relates that in the beginning, God created man in his image, forming him from the clay and breathed life into his nostrils.

After completing the labyrinth for King Minos, Daedalus was trapped into a prison of his own making. Minos understood the consequences of setting the master of the secret free. Set Daedalus free and he invited an invasion to conquer his island kingdom. The mentality has remained with dictators ever since. Hitler hid in his bunker after creating a maze of bureaucratic policies and laws, that isloated him from the suffering of his fellow men. Stalin retreated to his dacha, protected by the fearsome apparatus of Central Committee enforced with KGB. Once society is perverted by a mass of confusing and contradictory turns of legal indictments against humanity, and sent enslaved to work camps to be finally annihilated in death camps, no hope is left for escape. Ask those who survived the terrors of the past, knowing that their relatives went up the chimneys. Arbeit Macht Frei was written over the door that Daedalus entered and his exit could only accomodated by his desperate attempt to fly.

Yet myth is open to different interpretations and further exploration. Man bogged down in the corruption of his time, seeks to rise above the filth in which he's born—a common theme explored by Bertoldt Brecht. He dreams of achieving the divine, of becoming the god, rather than the lump of clay that has breath. By folly or fantasy, he dreams of creating monuments, he aspires to ascend to the heavens. Similarly, in Genesis 11, the story of the Tower of Babel relates man's dream to achieve the superhuman. He wishes to rise above the daily muck of his life. Following the Deluge, people continued to populate the earth and subdue it, spreading corruption wherever they went. And in their arrogance, they believed that they could achieve the heights, become superior to their fate. They built brick by brick, a city with its tower in the heavens to glorify their own existence. Man becomes superman, transcending culture and language, supplanting God's place in the heavens.

Although the myths seem radically different, they both critically view man's mortality and limitations. In the Daedalus myth, Daedalus creates a trap for others which becomes his own prison. His only escape from the corruption that surrounds him is through the air. Only through great genius and the contrivance of artificial wings, will he escape the fate of other prisoners that are sent into the labyrinth to be devoured by the Minotaur. His genius becomes his undoing, as the artificial can never replace the real. The wax melts, the feathers fall, and his son falls into the sea. It is a warning to all who wish to achieve the distinction of being superior to their fellow mortals. Each who dreams of flight, of becoming the leader must in time confront the dangers of Daedalus' flight.

Similarly, those building their towers from ground up, believing that their egos can be fortified by walls, discover in time that stones and bricks have no resistance to the wrath of social rebellion. After seven years of war and unspeakable brutality, the monstrous bestiality of NJazism collapsed under the avenging forces of free nations. Stalin's megalomanic power ied with him and his statues torn down with the destruction of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Even taken on a personal level, those who wishing to fly above the rest find their artificial wings melting and feathers moulting as the skeletons of their existence are exposed. Kennedy glamorized as the New Arthur is criticized for his social politics; the hulk of Pavoratti dominating the stage incurs catcalls for shoddy performances. Few attain heights with their feathers intact, their golden plummage glowing in the sunlight or take their places as stars that shine through dark nights. Flight from corruption, from physical or psychological imprisonment is merely a fantasy, a longing of man's desire to attain immortality and seat himself amongst the gods on Mount Olympus.

Dryden's translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses: Bk 8 Daedalus and Icarus
http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/ovid/meta/meta07.htm

Ovid Metamorphoses
http://www.elizabethanauthors.com/ovid00.htm
Golding complete text
The Fifteen Books of Ovid's Metamorphoses, 1567
The first translation into English - credited to Arthur Golding

Image Gallery: Daedalus and Icarus and other Poultry
http://www.kzu.ch/fach/as/gallerie/myth/daedalus/00.htm

http://www.kzu.ch/fach/as/gallerie/myth/daedalus/01.htm
Wandgemälde im Hause des Priesters Amandus
http://www.kzu.ch/fach/as/gallerie/myth/daedalus/08.htm

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11 Sept 04 Daedalus and Icarus
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/110770
http://pogoland.blogspot.com/2004/09/daedalus-and-icarus.html

Deucalion and Pyrrha

2004-09-20T20:24:00.000-07:00

20 Sept 04 Deucalion and Pyrrha
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/110942

In Genesis 6, the Bible gives the story of the Great Flood. Noah had three sons: Shem, Ham and Japheth. They lived at the dawn of civilization. Ten generations separated them from the orginal inhabitants of teh earth: Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel. In those ten generations, man became more violent and wicked. he destroyed his environment and his brother. Nothing has ever changed since then.

However, to wipe the slate clean, God decided to purge the world with a great flood. Noah was the best man at his time. The rabbis always tell the reader that this is a comparative statement. he was not perfect or the best man of all times. He was the best of his generation. This explains his behavior because God warned him of the impending danger. For a good interpretation, listen to Bill Cosby.

Noah makes an ark out of gopher wood the length of three hundred cubit and the height of fifty cubits—about the size of the Queen Mary—maybe a bit smaller. However, establishing a shipbuilding industry inland or on a mountain, is a bit peculiar since there was no serious water nearby to accomodate the draught.

Noah built. He collected the first menagerie and instituted the first floating zoological gardens. He had serious trouble teachng the elephants how to balance their bottoms off the rail, so he wouldn't have to clean the stalls.

What did he do wrong? He saved his own skin. He made little or no effort to save the lives of his neighbors or interced on their behalf to turn the wrath of God. The Deluge came and the neighbors drowned. Later after the Deluge, the ark rested on Mount Ararat where Noah disembarked. He built a vineyard and got drunk, possibly from a guilty conscience. From that day to this, sobriety ends when stress begins.

Hesiod related a slightly different story which is found also in Ovid's Metamorphoses. In the dawn of time, the First Age was gold. Men lived together and no one ever had a bad thought. The trees dipped their boughs whenever someone wanted siomething to eat. Life was sweet.

The Second Age was Silver. Saturn fell into Death's dark country and the endless summer changed into the four seasons. Earth withheld her fruit and trees no longer bent to the whims of man. Fields were ploughed and man began to work by the sweat of his brow. Man became the master of animals, yoking the ox to his plough.

The Third Age was Bronze. Impurity became a chief quality to beauty. Men fought against each other to gain control of land and law. Life was lived by blood and Death came quick with angry words and violence. Man became corrupt, hating his neighbor as his enemy.

The Fourth Age, we all know. It is the Age of Iron in which men live by brutal law. master of animals, man turned in hatred against his brother to steal his wife and house. Stabbed so many times with swords, Mother Earth cracked open and poured forth her life blood. Man had no respect for man, beast or gods, as he became a god himself, ursurping the natural law of the universe.

Jove looked down from Mt Olympus and saw the destruction that man had wrought. Cities lay smouldering in ruins. Children had no mothers and mothers, no husbands as life was swallowed up by war and corruption. In fury, Jove raised his thunderbolt to hurl at the earth. In the oceans, the trumpets sounded, signalling the release of all the waters from the deep. The gods released a great tempest upon the earth to erase all trace of man. neptune's steeds no longer restrained, raced wildly over the land as water surged to reach the mountaintops.

But two people's lives were save: Deucalion and Pyrrha survived. They alone, floated on the waters that covered the vast earth, coming finally to rest on Mt Parnassus.

Survival they ralized is no salvation, because isolation brings great grief. And so they prayed for guidance from Themis who told them to toss their mother's bones over their shoulders.

What? Pyrrha asked. Desecrate my mother's bones. No to mention they were washed away.

But Deucalion understood the test. And you can read the rest.

Greek Flood Myths
http://www.publicbookshelf.com/public_html/The_Story_of_the_Greatest_Nations_and_the_Worlds_Famous_Events_Vol_1/greekflo_bde.html
Deucalion and Pyrrha

Hesiod: Pandora and Deucalion
http://www.2cah.com/pandorasbox/Intro.html

Ovid, Metamorphoses Bk 1: Deucalion and Pyrrha
http://www.webwinds.com/thalassa/themis.htm

RELATED:
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20 Sept 04 Deucalion and Pyrrha
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/110942

I-2 Noah Noah's Flood
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/19415/118696

Daedalus and Icarus

2004-09-11T20:20:00.000-07:00

11 Sept 04 Daedalus and Icarus
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/110770

Just as the pigeon tries to imitate the hummingbird at the feeder, so man yearns to fly. In dreams, flying is symbolic of our wish to attain the unimaginable heights of our abilties—to rise aboove human clumsiness and the mundane to take wing to heavenly achievements. Flight symbolizes our deepest yearning to succeed, to overcome or weakness and to be unfettered by human frailty.

Daedalus was an inventor who created the subterranean maze for King Minos of Crete. Every year the maidens of Athens were sacrificed to the bull that lived beneath the island palace. The maze was created as a means of fortification to the island so that invading militia would be trapped and confused. Siimilarly, the fortress at Terezin, built during the Napoleonic Wars, also has an underground maze which was designed to trap the the invaders and confuse them.

However, Daedalus became trapped by his own trap, the snake biting back on its own tail. How ? Why? He became caught like the spy who has learned too much. As the designer of the maze, he was not trusted by Minos not to reveal the secret. Knowledge frees us, but if we learn too much, it also traps us, making us victims of our own understanding. Where do old CIA spies go? How does a spy tell his wife that for twenty years he lived a lie? True some intelligence officers do make fine novelists: Ian Fleming and Le Carre; but what happens to all the others?

There are limitations on what is socially avcceptable to know about your neighbor—or intimate friends. Listening at doors is strongly discouraged and oftentimes we find out what we least want to know. Knowledge implicates.

But the myth is also about escape—the longing and yearning that man has to esacpe from the known; to escape from his constrained environment; to flee confinement. If we know too much about a thing, it becomes psychologically repressive and burdensome, so that we yearn to forget, to escape the past. Mazes appear in nightmares, the symbols of anxiety, of confusion and of being trapped into dark places of psychological torture. Few dreams are as terrifying as those of wandering through a maze of halls in dim lighting, searching frantically for the exit, but not finding it. Read Kafka if you want to drive yourself crazy. Take up an issue regarding Freedom of Information if you want to find out the frustrations of government bureaucracy. Just try to de-classify a document.

For Daedalus, escape was imperative. His plan was risky, fraught with dangers because his materials, he knew were faulty. Wax melts and no one had ever recorded a successful flight before. There were too many what-ifs, but his situation was desperate. So often we read the story thinking, how clever an inventor without considering the extremity of his despair. What kind of person risks his life with a contraption of wax and feathers? Surely with all the materials available, he could have made something more reliable like Leonardi's invention. But, he risked it all, including his son who didn't have the intelligence to keep out of the sun—and thereby lost his most treasured possession.

And indeed, there must be terrible trade-offs and compromises for those who try to escape their own knowledge whether scientists, war criminals, soldiers suffering from combat fatigue or spies-- Certan things do catch up with a man, even if he is a president. It's virtually impossible for man to transform himself into a bird; how do you sort out all the lies? Imagine trying to live two parallel lives with one side of the face never admitting its existence to the other. How can a person forget his past or re-invent himself as an altogether different animal? What does a spy do when he retires? Sits on the front porch writing acrostics and inventing stories of wars he never fought or paper-chases that he never ran?

So many questions are raised by this myth regarding man's nightmares forcing him to flight and seek his place among the stars.

Ovid's Metamorphoses
http://larryavisbrown.homestead.com/files/xeno.ovid1.htm
An introduction and commentary with discussion of myths and links to sources and influences in art and literature
Larry A. Brown, Nashville, TN

University of Vermont Ovid Project
http://www.uvm.edu/~hag/ovid/
The University of Vermont's rare book department has an extensive collection of illustrated works of Ovid, including engravings by the 17th century German artist, Johann Wilhelm Bauer, depicting 150 scenes from the Metamorphoses. Each scene has a brief description in both Latin and German. Plates by George Sandys from a 1640 edition of the translation available

Bauer
http://www.uvm.edu/~hag/ovid/baur1703/index.html

Sandys
http://www.uvm.edu/~hag/ovid/sandys1640/sandys1640.html

University of Virginia Etext: Ovid Metamorphoses
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/latin/ovid/
a collection of resources for the Metamorphoses

Dryden, transl Metamorphoses
http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/ovid/meta/

Book 8 Daedalus and Icarus
http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/ovid/meta/meta07.htm

Ovid Metamorphoses
http://www.elizabethanauthors.com/ovid00.htm
Golding complete text
The Fifteen Books of Ovid's Metamorphoses, 1567
The first translation into English - credited to Arthur Golding

Myth Web: Daedalus
http://www.mythweb.com/encyc/entries/daedalus.html

Web Winds Ovid
http://www.webwinds.com/thalassa/ovid.htm#Links

Flight and Fancy
&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
BBC:Daedalus
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A470981
historical article on Daedalus and inventions attributed to him

Flight of Daedalus and Technology
http://www.geocities.com/capecanaveral/hangar/9434/stsdaed.html
has an image gallery fo famous paintings and synopsis of story

Image Gallery: Daedalus and Icarus and other Poultry
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&u=http://www.kzu.ch/fach/as/gallerie/myth/daedalus/00.htm&prev=/search%3Fq%3DDaedalus%2Bmyth%26start%3D40%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26ie%3DUTF-8%26sa%3DN

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27 Sept 04 Daedalus and Icarus
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/111042
http://pogoland.blogspot.com/2004/09/daedalus-and-icarus_27.html

Phaethon Rises

2004-09-04T20:15:00.000-07:00

4 Sept 04 Phaethon Rises
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/110766

Since the beginning, man has always been ambitious. In the Genesis account of creation, the Bible states that God created man in his image and shortly thereafter man ate the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, discerning good from evil and getting chucked out of Paradise as a consequence. Such is life, we bumble along blissfully, thinking how glorious it all is until we realize the extent of our own mistakes and frailties.

A few generations later, men gathered together in the famous city of Babel to build a tower extending to the heavens. The consequence was to be struck by lightning and scattered across the earth into diverse cultures and languages.

The Second Book of the Metamorphoses, opens with the story of Phaethon, the bastard son of Clymene and Phoebus Apollo. As gods were restrained from marriage with mortals, they merely cavorted the fields begetting literature with heros. Raised by a single mother with an absent father, Phaethon is naturally curious about his origins. It's a problem that dogs society to this day as it is relatively difficult to tell a kid he came from a test-tube or implant from a cooler. Confrontation with his mother, revealed the culprit to be none other than the wayward Apollo, who chased after many other skirts as he circled the earth. And like many children, he wanted to be not only proud of his father, but match his feats, ultimately demanding to drive the sunchariot across the skies alone. The attempt resulted in disaster, as the sun swerved off its path, narrowly missing the various monsters and dangers on its course. Onlooking Apollo had little recourse but to plead for hasty intervention of Zeus to bring the chariot down by means of a lightning bolt for only fire can extinguish fire.

Whether the myth is a warning for overstepping one's abilities in the attempt to emulate one's idols or a mythological interpretation of a astronomical event, the story remains as true today as it was in Ovid's day. Often children are harassed by their peers to go beyond their limitations, to overstep the boundaries of danger in order to prove their courage. Truth or Dare is a game played to embarrass personal confidences, but when it comes to jumping off bridges or drinking another beer; then it goes beyond heroics into foolhardiness. Phaethon's intent was originally good, but when he was confronted with the realities of the dangers involved, he became foolhardy in insisting that he could manage a team of unwieldy horses and ride over a dangerous course to prove to himself he was the Sun-god's son. Simplistic it sounds, but frequently we embark on a journey or goal with good intents, but someone our senior, far more experienced, informs us of the risks and complications that lay ahead, urging us to rescind our decision. Instead, we tighten our hands on the reins, thinking that through sheer will power we can achieve the goal and survive all dangers. As a result we lose control, often destroying ourselves or the project in the attempt. We are afraid to be called cowards or lose face and so we take on more than we can control. Our identity is at state. We identify ourselves not only with the goal, but also with achieving the social and parental expectations. The world hates failures and so we think by killing ourselves for unrealistic achievements, we will achieve immortality.

Dryden, transl Metamorphoses
http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/ovid/meta/

Book 2
http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/ovid/meta/meta01.htm

University of Virginia Etext: Ovid Metamorphoses
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/latin/ovid/
a collection of translations, concordance and other links related to the Metamorphoses

Web Winds: Phaethon
http://www.webwinds.com/thalassa/phaethon.htm
a small collection of lnks that lead to online text

Web Winds: Phaethon translations
http://www.webwinds.com/thalassa/phaethtrans.htm
a compilation of translation in online text
Mandelbaum, More, Dryden et al

Ovid Metamorphoses
http://www.elizabethanauthors.com/ovid00.htm
Golding complete text
The Fifteen Books of Ovid's Metamorphoses, 1567
The first translation into English - credited to Arthur Golding

Torrey Philemon's Metamorphoses' Links
http://www.webwinds.com/thalassa/ovid.htm
has listing for translation downloads and online texts available

Mythography: Phaethon
http://www.loggia.com/myth/phaethon.html

The Geminids: 3200 Phaethon
&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
Bob Dobe: Phaethon
http://abob.libs.uga.edu/bobk/phaeth.html
A condensed version of this article titled, The Path of a Comet and Phaethon's Ride, was published by The World & I (ISSN 0887-9346) Vol. 10, No. 2 (Feb. 95) pp. 394-405.
an article relating myth to astronomical events-what if a meteor struck the earth? Includes links to major scientific studies concerning meteroites linking them to cultural myths

Great Geminids
http://science.nasa.gov/newhome/headlines/ast06dec99_1.htm
regarding asteroid 3200 Phaethon

Wierd Geminids
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2001/ast07dec_1.htm

Gary Kronk: Geminids
http://comets.amsmeteors.org/meteors/showers/geminids.html

Space Weather: Geminids Gallery
http://www.spaceweather.com/meteors/gallery_14dec02.html

Ottawa Astronomy and Observatory: Geminid Images
http://www.oaog.ca/Meteors/MeteorPhotos.htm
some very amazing pictures

Space: Leonid Showers
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/astronomy/geminid_meteors_011207.html
has a gallery for the meteor showers

Aesop and Friends

2004-08-29T11:15:00.000-07:00

29 Aug 04 Aesop and Friends
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/fairytales_myths_fables_&legends/110154

Little kids are always told by their parents to look twice when crossing the street and don't talk with strangers. Ask Little Red Riding Hood about chasing butterflies and making friends with wolves, albeit the wolf is much maligned.

Relationships though are important as they can be an asset or a liability as many fairytales and fables prove with the constant warning to choose wisely. Don't be as naive as the farmer who befriended the snake-- even a sixteen foot domestic Burmese pythons can become dangerous if the handler is ignorant of herpetology. Aesop doesn't mean to malign snakes, but he expresses serious words of caution by framing an incident into a parable of satire.

"Once there was a farmer..." he inveigles us to hear more, "who was on his way home one winter day and discovered a snake by the roadside. Seeing that it was nearly frozen, he had pity on it and put it within his shirt to take home and warm by the fire." The reader anticipates the ending as it comes naturally with ease, guffawing at the farmer's demise.

But once heard, the small story doesn't easily erase from the mind. It raises doubts and causes the person to consider his own life and his relationships. How many times has he been stung or bitten for bestowing a kindness on an unworthy person. Not all snakes are lethal—in fact, the great majority are harmless and do great good on the behalf of farmers in aerating the soil and preying on pests that can be destructive to a farmer's crop. It's not actually the snake that Aesop is blaming, but the farmer for being careless in his handling of the affair. When he picked it up, the snake was near death through hypothermia, but when he brought it home, he didn't contain it properly. He died as a result of his own carelessness, not because the snake deliberately attacked him in his own home. The farmer is at fault for his own demise as a result of negligence.

Adroitly, Aesop allows the reader to shift the blame onto the snake. We want the snake to take the blames. After all, snakes like wolves have always been maligned and used for moral tales to tell us to watch out for the bad guys. Aesop goes beyond that, in saying that the farmer is culpable for his own actions. Although moved by compassion and praiseworthy love for the world and its diverse creatures, he acted in a brainless way and therefore became a victim of his own heedless behavior. The fable nags at the conscience, pointing out all the times that we have wrongfully blamed others for our own fallibility and refusal to accept responsibility for ourselves.

Although often the fables from Aesop are humorous and satiric in their portrayal of human behavior; they are usually subtle in their message—open to many different interpretations, keeping the reader thinking long afterwards. They are a good handbook for personal management whether domestic or private, exploring human psychology in succinct vignettes. In all aspects of life, it is important to be circumspect in whom you trust and to shut the door on destructive relationships. Not everyone who knocks on your heart will be a friend, and not all have your good at heart.

Below are three stories warning of the dangers of risky friendships and human gullibility.

Aesop, The Snake and the Farmer
http://www.pacificnet.net/~johnr/cgi/aesop1.cgi?2&TheFarmerandtheSnake&farmersnake.jpg&farmsnak.ram
illustrated

Aesops Fables
http://www.aesopfables.com/
650 fables plus more

Fairytale Collection: Aesop
http://www.fairytalescollection.com/Aesop_Fables/Aesop_biography.htm

Brothers Grimm, Cat and Mouse in Partnership
http://mythfolklore.net/andrewlang/048.htm
Andrew Lang, Yellow Fairy Book

Yellow Fairy Book
http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/cgi-bin/sdb/t9.cgi?entry=640&full=yes&ftpsite=http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/
Six Swans

Andrew Lang, The Yellow Fairy Book
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/LanYell.html

Lang, Green Fairy Book The Three Pigs
Green Fairy Book
http://mythfolklore.net/andrewlang/364.htm
a very different text than the commonly watered down one in children't books

Lang , The Green Fairy Book
http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/cgi-bin/sdb/t9.cgi?entry=7277&full=yes&ftpsite=http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/

Grimm, The Seven Kids and their Mother
http://www.dal.ca/~barkerb/fairies/grimm/005.html

Magaret Hunt, Grimm's Household Tales
http://www.dal.ca/~barkerb/fairies/grimm/
complete online copy

Sur la Lune: The Wolf and Seven Kids
http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/threepigs/stories/wolfsevenkids.html
has an illustrators archive that accompnies each story plus extensive external links for similar stories

Jacobs English Fairy Tales
http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/cgi-bin/sdb/t9.cgi?entry=7439&full=yes&ftpsite=http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/

English Fairy Tales
http://www.blackmask.com/books116c/7eftldex.htm

White Doe

2004-07-18T11:11:00.000-07:00

18 July 04 White Doe
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/fairytales_myths_fables_&legends/109924

The story of the White Doe is found in Andrew Lang's, Orange Fairy Book. A slight twist on Sleeping Beauty, it presents a King and Queen who are childless, but instead of a frog there is a crab who grants the Queen's wishes.

Similar to Sleeping Beauty, a great party is ordained for the christening, but the Queen forgets to thank the Crab Fairy who made the event possible. Instead of death, she is restricted to living in an underground world where there's no sunlight—metaphoric of a living grave.

Political intrigue of marriage is apparent as the Kings jostle for an advantage in the contentious world of petty egos. The prince is little more than a spoiled three-year-old who falls in love with a portrait and ditches his engagement for a charming image, causing vengeful retribution from the offended party which is represented by fairies.

Although moralistic, the writer of the tale seems oblivious to the the concepts of self-responsibility as all events are blamed on external supernatural forces., turning the story into a oversweet pie for gullible children. Such fairytales present love and personal relationships in an artificial light where superficiality of appearance dominates reality. The princess is wonderfully beautiful, but equally brainless, raised to the sound of charming madrigals and quadrilles in a world where light never penetrates. Obviously with such a dull mind, it would be difficult to enlighten such a person.

The prince is a dull boy whom Oscar Wilde could parody endlessly, wanting only to fawn over a miniature portrait and cry. He has no education and certainly no manners.

And unlike The Goose Girl, White Doe arouse pathos. The plight of the Goose Girl offends us with the brutality to the princess and the horse, Falada, who is slaughtered and beheaded. The audience is appalled with the image of the wonderful horse's head hanging over the city gate, evoking sympathy in us for the princess. Offended by such an outrage, the reader reacts bitterly to the deception played on the prince. The story evokes a reaction from the audience. Nor is there the clumsy intervention of fairies and political scheming behind the scenes. The reader glimpses the brutality of jealousy, avarice and ambition and reacts with a healthy sense of righteousness at the fraud perpetrated.

In telling tales, Brothers Grimm are far greater storytellers, making the events flow into each other as if they were natural, removing the elements of supernatural interference. No fairies dash about catching hockey-pucks before they cross the goalie line. The characters are those met anywhere. They blunder through their lives, sometimes achieving and other times failing their goals. The Mouse gets devoured by the Cat and the Goose Girl suffers terribly. Not only the work of herding geese is a come-down in life, but she must see daily the head of her beloved horse on the city gate. The wrong is repeated constantly just as in reality. The story resolves naturally as the princess and the false waiting-maid confront each other at a banquet—The King asks for advice on a matter of dishonesty and the imposter imposes the sentence on herself. Justice is due; the audience is not offended with the awful sentence. Anyone who can slaughter a marvellous animal and hang its head on a city gate deserves being put in a barrell.

She gave the sentence herself; the audience is satisfied with the fall of the wicked woman.

White Doe employs all the tricks of fine writing, but like a faulty chord progression heavily ornamented it fails to make beautiful music. The prince and princess are cardboard figures manipulated by the hidden supernatural powers pulling strings. The switch is made in identities, but there is never the abhorrence to the false princess as found in Goose Girl. She's ugly and skinny like a toothpick—so what. The audience is not persuaded. Why? The prince is a bit cracked to start off with by falling in love with a portrait and demanding marriage before the girl is fifteen. Then there is all the rigamarole with the carriage and darkness and windowless chamber—the credibility is stretched too far.

Rather than die at fifteen, or fall into a hundred year's sleep as Sleeping Beauty, the princess bounds off in the shape of a doe. Ooopps. We've read that story before in Brother and Sister, but the sexes are reversed.

The moral coming at the end with the witless prince in pursuit is that True Love Must Suffer. She gets it in the hoof or should we say, Achilles tendon?

And everything comes out all right because the brainless prince must have his witless princess.

The opera, Freischutz by von Weber, with libretto by Johann Friedrich Kind, is also taken from the White Doe legend. However Viennese opera required an aritificial happy ending. A wreath miraculouslly saves the life of Agathe.

However, there is another version in which things do not turn out so well: the White Doe is shot and doesn't survive and the sharpshooter has sold his soul to the devil.

Altogether much more credible in this world where illusion and superficiality usually convinces the gullible public to buy just about anything, so long as the price seems cheap.

Madame d'Aulnoy, The White Doe
http://www.mythfolklore.net/andrewlang/133.htm
Andrew Lang, Orange Fairy Book full text

Grimm, Sleeping Beauty
http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/sleepingbeauty/index.html
Sur la Lune by Heidi Anne Heiner
A collection of illustrated children's classics, particularly European fairytales. Bibliographic information given. Author/illustrator can be retrieved. Well-organized it contains interpretations, historical summaries and bibliographies.

Brothers Grimm, Cat and Mouse in Partnership
http://mythfolklore.net/andrewlang/048.htm
Andrew Lang, Yellow Fairy Book

Grimm, The Goose Girl
http://www.mythfolklore.net/andrewlang/300.htm
Andrew Lang, Blue Fairy Book

Weber, Freischutz
http://www.iclassics.com/iclassics/album.jsp?selectionId=50288
2003 recording, Vienna State Opera Chorus and Philharmonic

Etext Library at the University of Virginia
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/ebooks/subjects/subjects-young.html
A-Z index for yong readerss
Lang,Andrew: Red, Blue, Violet and Yellow Faity Books
with illustrations for MS Reader and Palm

Kings and dogs

2004-06-13T11:04:00.000-07:00

13 June 04 Kings and dogs
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/fairytales_myths_fables_&legends/109267

Three moral tales, The Dog and the Shadow, Sleeping Beauty and the Fisherman and his Wife, seem unrelated but have a common theme.

Once a dog was crossing a bridge when he confronted an opponent carrying a leg a lamb. Unwilling to pass up the chance, he jumped to his death.

We snicker. Enron. Greed. Greed that overshadows common sense. Any right thinking animal recognizes a reflection on water for what it is. Unwilling to be satisfied with what he has, he takes the desperate plunge for more. The pigeon that exploded from eating too much. So easy to recognize in a story, but in business ignored. There must be always more taken from the hands of the laborer to satisfy the tables of the owners. The history of literature is filled with novels and political essays based on this.

Sleeping Beauty? What caused the demise of the young princess? Was it her fault? Did she do something wrong or did she pay the penalty for someone else's vanity? Once there was a King and Queen, who said to each other every day of their lives, "Would that we have a daughter," and yet they had none. Go on, how goes the rest of the story?

The King had a banquet.

Yes?

He invited everyone in the kingdom to his party.

Everyone?

Well, no—He invited his family, friends and acquaintances.

In that order?

Yes, because when you are a King you rule by blood. Inter-marriage is politics. Cliques form power centers. You want to marry your daughter off to the right person and build through bedroom policies, like the Hapsburgs or Queen Victoria.

And?

Friends come next because you don't want to offend them and make them your enemies.

And acquaintances?

Oh, they're very important, because you never know who can help you in the future. You keep the fishy handshake ready. While talking stalemate with China, you keep your delegate in Russia. It's a matter of utilizing your knights correctly while keeping the courts occupied with bishops. You know Kissinger is doing thriving business.

So it was thought out?

Of course he planned his party. They went through the list four times to make sure that everyone who was anybody and anybody who might become somebody was invited. It's that way with political shindigs. Do you think it's any different now?

Then why?

Why the twelve gold plates? You're really dim. Don't you know that thirteen is unlucky? There are twelve months in the solar calendar, but there are thirteen moons? Don't you know that thirteen symbolizes Death? Hecate or Artemis and that sort of thing?

So he was making a power play?

You bet, but he was pretty stupid for a King. You can't deny death in this world.

So he was really trying to be like the dog with the shadow?

You got it. he wanted to have it all—beauty, wealth, grace—he wanted control over every aspect of his daughter's life, so much that he even thought he could burn all the spindles in the kingdom.

Is it possible?

No, of course not—didn't you ever bother to read the story?

Well, not so closely as you. And after all, it came out happily in the end.

You think so? You think to wake up a hundred years behind the time without any understanding of the contemporary civilization blossoming around you is a happy ending? Give me a break, will you? How would you like to be a living anachronism?

Okay, then what about the third story about the Fisherman and His Wife.

Man, you are illiterate—and dense. It's obvious. The old bag kept nagging after her worn out rabbit of a man for a bigger fish and bigger house. She was never satisfied with anythign. She wanted to be King and Pope at the same time just like all those medieval pretenders-- you know the ones that got thrown out and exiled from their own countries—and in the end, she ws consumed by her own greed and ambition.

Pretty harsh, don't you think?

Not, really—the underdogs are usually happy to watch the castle topple in the sand while the sand-fleas do a hornpipe on the ruins.

So what do you think?

Human nature never changes—never in a thousand ages.

Boy, you are pessimistic.

So-- I've been through a lot—and besides the stones in the earth have their secrets.

and so you think--

the fleas will celebrate.

Aesop's Fables: The Dog and the Shadow
http://www.pacificnet.net/~johnr/cgi/aesop1.cgi?1&TheDogandtheShadow2
dog crossing over a bridge

Sur la Lune, Grimm: Sleeping Beauty
http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/sleepingbeauty/index.html
by Heidi Anne Heiner

Golden Fish by Pushkin
http://www.sunbirds.com/lacquer/readings_printable/1006
with lacquer illustrations

Fisherman and his Wife
http://www.fln.vcu.edu/grimm/fischer_e_crane.html
illus by Walter Crane Engl/German text

Lang, Green Fairy Book : Fisherman and Wife
http://www.rickwalton.com/folktale/green35.htm

Lang, Green Fairy Book : Fisherman and Wife p343
http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/cgi-bin/sdb/t9.cgi?entry=7277&full=yes&ftpsite=http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/
download

Aesop and Jatarka Tales

2004-05-13T11:00:00.000-07:00

13 May 04 Aesop and Jatarka Tales
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/fairytales_myths_fables_&legends/108550

In the preface to Indian Fairytales, Joseph Jacobs surmises that approximately one-third of European fairytales derive from Indian sources, transferred into the west through the Gipsies, Jews, Crusades and travellers that criss-crossed the trade-routes.

Many taken from the Tales of the Bidpai and Barlaam and Josaphat were very liely added into the anthologies of Aesop's fables duting the Middle Ages because they were conducive to strong moralism and lent well to sermonizing.

Similarities between the tales within Jacob's collection and Aesop are strong with some fables easily comparable. In the Jataka collection there is the story of The Lion and the Crane and in Aesop, The Wolf and the Crane. The theme is nearly identical, but the characters are not. In the Lion and the Crane, the crane acts in a purely idealistic manner, expecting no reward. However, he is no stupid bird and props the lion's maul open wiht a stick before retrieving the bone. He is circumspect and maintains a proper respect for life. In the Aesop version, Wolf and Crane, the crane is rpesented as foolhardy, sticking its head down the lion's maul without any forethought. The dialogue between characters within the Indian version is extended, showing the characters to be sophisticated; but in the Aesop, the characters are scarcely sketched as the importance of theme overrides characterization. In the Aesop, the crane aids the wolf out of purely self-seeking motives of gaining a reward and thus risks his life. In the original Aesop, the fables had no morals attached—the morals were added on later for dogmatic reasons. In the Jataka, the morals are written into the stories as the overall theme of the collection is spiritual development, but often enlightenment is present in comical ways.

Another significant difference between the two collections is that the Indian fables have a mixed cast of humans and animals with about equal participation. Moreover, there are transformation myths included in the collection as people change into animal forms or animals change into human form. The dialogue is also extended, often witty as the animals try to outwit one another through trickery and deceit. In Aesop, the animals are stereotyped. The frog, an object of ridicule in ancient Greece, is ridiculous. The turtle or tortoise, being slow of movement, is slow of mind as it demands of the eagle to give him subsonic free-fall lessons. However, in the Indian fables, this is not so. The crane appears as circumspect and saintly in its benevolence toward the lion, appears later as cruel and grasping in trickery regarding the fish. The crab outwits the wily, using not only its brain, but its redoubtable might.

In Aesop, there are no real transformation, but revelations or snapshots of characters. The wolf dons sheep's clothing, but his nature remains the same. In The Fox and the Mask, the superficiality of appearance is tersely depicted, but there is no internal change. It is a statement on social presentation and values. In the Indian fables, the major theme is that of spiritual transformation, attaining a higher plane of existence. In the story, Loving Laila, Laila must not only travel across space, but time in order to win the love of her beloved. Moreover, she must demean herself and be transformed into lower forms before she attract the affection and attention of her beloved who does not recognize her, but is terrified of her for being an evil demon.

In the Indian fables, man is never superior to the animals, but often relatively inferior as he cannot understand his own limitations and his beastiality to beasts. The tales are often comical, evoking a snicker of amusement from the dialogue which would not lend so well to medieval sermonizing on the evils of this world.

Indian Fairy Tales ed Joseph Jacobs
http://www.gutenberg.net/etext04/7iftl10.txt

http://www.gutenberg.net/etext/7128

Aesop Fables
http://www.aesopfables.com/

History of the Jataka Tales
http://www.indiaprofile.com/religion-culture/jatakas.htm
a brief history of the development and spread of the Jataka Tales

Eloise Hart: Aesop's Fables, Jataka Tales -- Truths Older than Time
http://www.theosociety.org/pasadena/sunrise/36-86-7/ge-elo2.htm
an essay on Aesop and the spread of Aesop's fables

Aesop's Fables Bibliography
http://aesop.creighton.edu/jcupub/fables3/catalog/years/1990to1994.html
annotated bibliography

RELATED
&&&&&&&&
20 July 2003 Aesop and the Fisherman
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/102241
http://pogoland.blogspot.com/2003/07/aesop-and-fisherman.html

13^th Apr 04 Aesop and Indian Influences
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/107885

29 Aug 04 Aesop and Friends
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/fairytales_myths_fables_&legends/110154

Apuleius Golden Asse

2004-04-18T10:49:00.000-07:00

18^th Apr 04 Apuleius Golden Asse
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/108039

Apuleius (124-170CE) is best known for his Metamorphoses, better known as The Golden Ass. The name is borrowed off Ovid's work, but is not nearly the same, although it presents a series of tales that are related through Lucius. in a Chinese box structure.

However old the book might be, it is a hot topic among literature and classics students, generating a sub-industry of commentary and study in itself. Why? Because Apuleius himself is a very controversial figure who appears in the letters of St Augustine to Volusianus and Marcellinus as a threat to the new Christian faith as they found him comparable to Christ. What ho? Apuleius was an devotee of Isis and initiated into the secret mysteries of Osiris, a renown student of Plato, of ancient mystery cults and of Asclepius. he was known as a wonder-maker and accused as a magician around 156 in Alexandria in a case concerning a elderly widow, Pudentilla—I kid you not, not somebody out of a Mozartean comedy. However, he was skilled in rhetoric, which always helps in a Roman court and part of the argument that he presented was the scandal of reading rivate love letters in front of the opfficial statuary within the courts of law. The Romans being rather superstitious, treated the statutes as if they were living and doing anything profane or construed as shameful before them could result in a death penalty... this only added in his favor as presumably the trial had to be considered a mistrial on grounds of improper handling.

Apuleius was from Mdaurus, a Roman colony in Numidia, where from St Augustine also originated. He studied Platonic philosophy in Athens adn wrote three discourses on Plato, two exist: De platonis et eus dogmato/ On Plato and his teaching; De Deo Socratis/On the God of Socrates.

He also went off to Egypt and entered into the cult of Isis, nearly 400 years after the Isis cult had disappeared which appears in Plutarch's writings. He distinguishes between the left-hand destructive magic which Robert Graves associates to the Triple Goddess as Hecate and the right-hand magic of Isis which has productive powers within the story of the Goden Ass.

Frequently, the book has been seen as autobiographical, so much so, tht Apuleius was given the name he bestowed the ass, Lucius. Lucius is a poet, who in seeking for enlightenment through the mysteries of socery inadvertantly gets transformed into an ass. Curiously enough, the ass is a beast repellent to Isis as it symbolizes Python who ambushed and killed Osiris her brother-husband. The structure of the book is of Chinese-box pattern with a story embedded within a story: the most famous of these is Cupid and Psyche, frequently interpreted as a platonic allegory. However, the entire work can be seen as an allegory of human suffering and transfomation into a higher being. There are scholarly comparisons between the work and eastern literature as Apuleius, himself, refers to it as Milesian tales. There are strong parallels between the eastern influence flowing in from India and the Isis cult.

Apuleius, or the Golden Ass, has strongly influenced literature, including Bocaccio's Decameron; Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel; Shakespeare, Midsummer Night's Dream, Swift, Gulliver's Travels; Defoe, Moll Flanders in the rowdy mood of adventure.

The Cupid and Psyche myth can be found within the stories of Beauty and the Beast where love transform something which is ugly or despicable into something cherished. The last book of the Golden Ass is dedicated to the worship of Isis, as the ass is once more transformed into human form. It is difficult to know where the jest stops and where reality begins, what is fantasy or biography in the mix of tales. The narrative is lively, dynamic and not something you can put away until read straight through. it includes the profane, the dirty, the tawdry and bawdry as well as the yearning for the divine.

On the long list of books to be read, T E Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) carried it in his saddle bags during the Arabic Uprising—and surprisingly enough, he did not give us his own translation, but delivered us homeric verse instead. Translations and commentaries on this work now abound as it stimulates interest in ancient mystery cults, history and is fille with the best medicine of all: laughter.

Apuleius Golden Asse
http://eserver.org/books/apuleius/default.html
Adlington's translation, 1566. This edition by Martin Guy, 1996
11 books

The Golden Asse. by Lucius Apuleius. Adlington's translation, 1566.
The Life of Lucius Apuleius. Briefly Described.

LUCIUS APULEIUS ...
http://eserver.org/books/apuleius/life.html

Luca Graverini Apuleius
http://www.unisi.it/ricerca/ist/anc_hist/online/apuleio/apucover.htm85

Bruce MacLennan
Apuleius The Home Page
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/jod/apuleius/home.html

http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/jod/apuleius/
biography

Golden Ass
http://www.jnanam.net/golden-ass/
well-annotated commentary and discussion on Apuleius and the Goldebn Ass
gives insight into ancient religion, structure of the text and the tensions which create its structure

Apuleius The Golden Ass
http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/apuleius.html
downloadable Cupid and Psyche marked

Apuleius Rhetorical works
http://www.let.kun.nl/V.Hunink/hhh.htm
translated and introduced by S.J. Harrison,
J.L. Hilton, and V.J.C. Hunink (Oxford University Press, Oxford)

Stephen A. Nimis, Prof Classics Miami University
http://montgomery.cas.muohio.edu/nimissa/

http://montgomery.cas.muohio.edu/nimissa/apuleiusintro.pdf
introduction to Apuleius

Elizabethan Authors
http://www.elizabethanauthors.com/sources.htm
Sources for Shakespears works

Apueius
http://www.cs.utk.edu/~mclennan/papers/Apuleius-long.htm

Main Page for Latin Library
http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/classics

Apuleius gets on Blogspot
http://apuleius.blogspot.com/

Toothpaste Dentifricim
http://www.ukans.edu/history/index/europe/ancient_rome/E/Roman/Texts/secondary/SMIGRA*/Dentifricium.html
in reference to the Apologia: Apuleius was accused of socery and toothpaste was apparently to be his mode of murder.

Rabelais Gargantua and Pantagruel
http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/r/r11g/part252.html
has reference to Apuleius

Electronic Texts for classics
http://www.flwi.ugent.be/IAHRG/ElectronicTexts.htm

Montclair Classics Dept
http://chss2.montclair.edu/classics/Homepage/links.html

Fabricius Flavius Links to the Roman World
http://www.magellannarfe.com/favoritelinks/
a directory of links but not well designed or organized

Aesop and Indian Influences

2004-04-13T19:34:00.000-07:00

13^th Apr 04 Aesop and Indian Influences
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/107885

According to legend, Aesop was a Phrygian slave, living in the sixth century ( 620-520 BCE), who bought his way to freedom through his skill as an arbitrator, using fables to illustrate arguements. Like Herakles, many places claim his origin, among them: Thrace, Phrygia, Aethiopia, Samos, Athens and Sardis.

His existence is related through Herodotus that he was a slave of Iadmon of Samos who met with violent death by the inhabitants of Delphi. Herodotus does not give the cause of his death, although legend offers many explanations, one being that like Socrates, he offended the sensibilities of the people and died a martyr. Another is that as the treasurer of Croesus, he embezzled public monies and so incurred capital punishment. Other sources say that he defended a Samian demagogue, recorded in Aristotle's Rhetoric and he dined with the Seven Sages of Greece with Periander at Corinth. Supposedly, he presented the Fable of the Frogs Demanding a king to Peisistrattus, which could e the germ of Aristophanes, Frogs. He gained a collection of lore, explaining his existence, much like Herakles which was embellished upon and circulated well into Middle Ages: he was ugly and deformed according to the preface written by Maximus Planudes. Aesop appears as a figure within Plutarch's Symposium of the Seven Sages, in which jokes are made on his origins as a slave. Athens commissioned a public statute by Lysippus that showed no deformity.

Aesop's fables appear in Aristophanes', Wasps and cited in Plato's Phaedo by Socrates. They were alwso transcribed by Demetrius of Phaelerum (345-283 BCE) into ten books, Lopson Aisopeion Sunagogai, which has been lost. Babrius, the tutor to the son of Alexasnder Severus, translated the fables into choliambic in the third century CE. Phaedrus, a freedman of Augustus, anthologised another collection in Latin which was widely circulated throughout the Middle Ages and Avinus produced another anthology of 42 Latin elegiacs in the fourth century.

Probably, the Fables accompanied Alexander on his way east, entering India where they mingled with early folk tales. Similar tales existed in India at the time. The most widely recognized collection of tales ar the Jataka. However, an earlier collection of The Perfections of Buddha began by Asvagosha, who died after he ahd completed the thirty-fourth tale. The tales were meant to express the divinity of Buddha in his various incarnations. The Jataka Tales, possibly originated in Ceylon around 241. They present commentary on the gathas, moral verse, composed by Buddhaghosa school of the fifth century. The tales are coupled, presenting a Story of the Present which introduces a reflection of Buddha's past life, reflecting A Story of the Past which relates folklore introducing a moral lesson based on the former incarnations o the Buddha: Lion and Crane; Monkey and Crocodile.

In the 19^th century, these stories became of major literary interests with translations from Rhys-David, Pausboll and R Morris. There are 550 tales in total and are similar to Aesop in their prsentation. Joseph jacobs in his introduction to Indian Fairy Tales conjectures that the Kasyapa fables ante-dated both the Bidpai and Jataka Tales. The Bidpai stories are very similar to Aesop in that they eliminated Buddha as the central figure and presented only animal wisdom tales. Many are difficult to assess their origin for their striking similarity to Aesop. Moreover, to confuse the heritage, in 52 CE, King Chandra Muka Siwa of Cinelaesia sent a delegation to Emperor Claudius in Rome. The collection was translated and known as the Kybsis, many of which were later incorporated into the collective works of Aesop by Babrius and Avian. The collections of Babrius and Avian circulated among the Medieval scholars and brought with them their corruptions and additions as they were popular material for sermons. They entered into literature through the Italian Novellari, Boccaccio and crossed through Chaucer, entering into the Elizabethan stage and Shakespearean opera. Indian fables were collected and circulated throughout the Middle Ages during the Crusades—a notable collection, Disciplina Clericalis, was translated by Petrus Alphons, a Spanish Jew, who converted, around 1106.

In the 19^th Century, British colonization in India reaped literary rewards in the collection of Indian fables by M. Frere, Old Deccan Days, published in 1868 with Mr Murray; 1880, Ellis & White pubished Indian Fairy Tales by Stokes; 1883, Macmillan published Folk-Tales of Bengal by Ralston; and Trubner published Wideawake Stories by Steel and Temple; 1891 W H Allen published Tales of the Sun by Kingscote an anthology of an earlier work by Pandit Natesa Sasstri, Folk-Lore of Southern India. In 1887, Truebner's Oriental Library added Folk-Tales of Kashmir by Knowles; 1892 Snatal Tales by Campbell and Ramaswami Raju's Indian Fables. In 1889, Thornhill produced Indian Fairy Tales and 1885, Robinson Tales of South India.

In the time that Jacobs wrote his preface for Aesop's Fables and Indian Fairy Tales, he noted that the Fables were circulated in 38 languages with more than 112 different versions, with at least 28 versions in English. The mingling of East and West is not easy to decipher as corruptions of Buddhist literature entered the Christian catalogue with stories such as life of St Buddha assimilated as St Josephat in Barlaam and Josaphat.

However, one thing is sure, Aesop lived many years before the collection of the Bidpai and Jataka collections and so it is unfair to Aesop to say he borrowed his fables from the east. Phaedrus and later collectors mixed fables indisciminately, confusing the issues of origin.

Wikipedia: Aesop
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aesop

Joseph Jacobs Short History of the Fable
http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/a/a3j/a3j_hist.html

Rare Titles of Aesop
http://www.seattlebookfair.com/2003featured/aesopb.htm

Sacred Texts Bidpai
http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/ift/ift31.htm

Main Lesson Bidpai Stories
http://www.mainlesson.com/books/dutton/tortoise/front.html

Bidpai ed Joseph Jacobs
http://www.authorama.com/indian-fairy-tales-31.html

Aesops Fables
http://www.aesopfables.com/
650 fables plus more

Fyler's translation
http://classics.mit.edu/Aesop/fab.html

Fairytale Collection: Aesop
http://www.fairytalescollection.com/Aesop_Fables/Aesop_biography.htm

RELATED
&&&&&&&&
20 July 2003 Aesop and the Fisherman
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/102241
http://pogoland.blogspot.com/2003/07/aesop-and-fisherman.html

13 May 04 Aesop and Jatarka Tales

http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/fairytales_myths_fables_&legends/108550

29 Aug 04 Aesop and Friends
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/fairytales_myths_fables_&legends/110154

Pygmalion

2004-03-14T18:59:00.000-08:00

14^th March 04 Pygmalion
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/107233

We long for that we cannot have and yearn to be loved. Ovid's use of mythology went beyond the simple narrative of gods chasing nymphs and men fighting wars to delve the human psyche. Although ancient, his writings are still fresh, inspiring new inspiration and interpretation in literature throughout the ages. Of the myths collected in the Metamorphoses, Pygmalion is one certainly well-known, not only in sculpture, but in painting, theater and music.

Pygmalion was recast by George Bernard Shaw, ironically, the man of the chaste marriage. The play reflecting somewhat autobiographically of his own life with the exception of physical entanglement.

Ovid's Pygmalion revels in the beauty and sensuality of his sculpture although he shuns the society of women. The other myths that come from the Metamorphoses with this theme are not so kind, Narcissus falls over the edge and Orpheus is torn to pieces by Maenads, neither a desirable end as a result of spurning women. Pygmalion doesn't want a real woman, but an image he has created for himself—the problem found in Strindberg's Doll's House. When GBS takes up the matter up, he invariably creates a real woman out of the model he molded and the role of Eliza was handed to Mrs. Patrick Campbell, with whom he had maintained questionable, if not scandalous relations. He took her on as a mediocre actress that he was to perfect, but the relationship was something more than that. Although he tantalized, but did not satiate her appetite. The fires of love would not only be consumed, but quenched and so he toyed with her cat-and-mouse over years.

This causes the problems with the ending of Pygmalion, for no one was very happy with the one he presented and in Lerner and Loewe, the song and dance flowed a more natural course as Liza gets her man.

Ovid's Pygmalion, though sculpts a figure, becomes enamored with it and it comes to life under his caressing fingers. The story is a twist on Narcissus, because in reality, the woman is only an image of his own creation and imagination. It isn't real, pointing to the psychological dilemma that many confront: we often fabricate illusions regarding the beloved when infatuated, but then one day we wake up to find the god/goddess to be stone cold toward us. The problem may not be that the person was not ideal, but that we are too busy imagining and imposing our ideals on an object or person rather than accepting reality.

And as myth can be interpreted many different ways, another is that we tend to fall in love which reflects our own identity, our own creativity, and manage to stay on safe ground without falling into the black hole along with Narcissus who went over the edge.

Shaw walks the tightrope, keeping us on edge. His Professor Higgins sets out to create his goddess, but in the end he loses control of it, almost like rabbi Loew and his Golem. The Golem becomes self-destructive because it is an automaton that doesn't know when to stop, a bit like the vehicles piling up in the Mojave Desert in behalf of military creativity to invent a roaming robot. Higgins cannot recognize that Eliza is of the same intellectual level because she comes from the lower society with the wrong dialect. Shaw parodies the hypocrisy of affluent society which prides itself on being superior to the working-bloke because it has the "hay-ches in the right places", but perhaps the reverse is true as Eliza has the mettle to parry with her pedant and doesn't succumb.

All three forms are linked below from Ovid's Metamorphoses Book X to the stage play and later Lerner and Loewe production of My Fair Lady which is now suffering a revival on Drury Lane. It is also a zany must see in German if ever in Vienna at the Volksoper.

Ovid, Metamorphoses Bk X : Pygmalion
http://www.pygmalion.ws/stories/ovid1.htm
1713 rather free verse translation with illustrations

Ovid, Metamorphoses Bk X: Pygmalion
http://www.pygmalion.ws/stories/ovid2.htm
in prose 1850 transl

Ovid, Metamorphoses Bk X: Pygmalion
http://www.uvm.edu/~hag/ovid/garth/garthb10p96.html
Garth transl 17^th c with Dryden

"The University of Vermont's rare book department contains an extensive collection of illustrated works of Ovid. Included are several editions of engravings by the 17th century German artist, Johann Wilhelm Bauer, depicting 150 scenes from the Metamorphoses. Each scene has a brief description in both Latin and German. Some plates from a 1640 edition of the translation done by George Sandys are also available"

main page
http://www.uvm.edu/~hag/ovid/

Ovid, Metamorphoses Bk X: Pygmalion
http://www.mythfolklore.net/3043mythfolklore/reading/ovid/pages/09.htm

Ovid, Metamorphoses Kline translation
http://www.tkline.freeserve.co.uk/Webworks/Website/Ovhome.htm
page for downloading etext: Kline, Dryden and Caxton

Short Bio: George Bernard Shaw
http://www.english.upenn.edu/~cmazer/mis1.html

Kirjasto: GBS
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/gbshaw.htm

Shaw the Socialist and founder of Fabian Society
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/shaw/

Abacci: George Bernard Shaw, Pygmalion
http://www.abacci.com/books/book.asp?bookID=1901
brief article and free ebook download of GBS play

Palm digital: GBS, Pygmalion
http://www.palmdigitalmedia.com/feature/book/category/149

at Gutenberg, GBS, Pygmalion
http://www.gutenberg.net/browse/BIBREC/BR3825.HTM

Mouth Shut: Review of Pygmalion
http://www.mouthshut.com/readreview/41496-1.html

Lerner & Loewe, My Fair Lady
http://www.myfairladythemusical.com/
Drury Lane Theatre, West End London

"The Hilton Award for Outstanding Musical Production:
My Fair Lady book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner, music by Frederick Loewe, adapted from Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion and Gabriel Pascal's motion picture"

imbd portal: Pygmalion 1938
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0030637/
Anthony Asquith, Leslie Howard

on Amazon DVD: My Fair Lady
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00011D1OA/104-1738239-8519117?v=glance
Rex Harrison, Audrey Hepburn 1964 2discs Limited

A brief history of the filmed musical
http://www.imagi-nation.com/moonstruck/albm25.html

imbd portal: My Fair lady
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058385/

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058385/fullcredits
Audrey Hepburn doubled by Marnie Nixon

From Stage to Screen: My Fair Lady
http://www.geocities.com/TelevisionCity/Studio/8849/Moviemusicals/Loverly/Loverly.htm

Rotten Tomatoes: review of My Fair Lady
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/MyFairLady-1014503/

TV Guide review: My Fair Lady
http://www.tvguide.com/movies/database/ShowMovie.asp?MI=7952

Pyramus and Thisbe: Death do us not part

2004-02-14T19:21:00.000-08:00

15 Febr 04 Pyramus and Thisbe: Death do us not part
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/107233

On March 20, 43 BC in Salmo, Ovid was born into a knighted family. He was sent to study law in Rome, but disappointed parental expectations by developing into a poet. Seneca remembered him for not being good with logical arguments and writing briefs. Ovid rather failed at law, but succeeded with poetry, leaving a legacy of The Amores, Tristia and Metamorphoses. Rebelling against the establishment of Virgil and Horace, he associated with the rebels, Propertius, Tibullus and Catullus.

His affairs with the Emperor's daughter, didn't earn him brownie points. In 8 AD, he was packed off to the Black Sea , where he wrote the Tristia. The same year, he published the Metamorphoses. He helped to establish the romantic movement, passed down generation after generation, as medieval romances and Elizabethan literature drew from his writing. His works were standard exercitia tedia for students from the 12^th-14^th century alongside Petrarch, Virgil, Horace and Cicero. The first known English translation of Metamorphoses came from no one less illustrious than William Caxton, returned to England in 1480. His writing influenced just a few: Boccaccio, Petrarch, Chreten de Troyes, Chaucer and Shakespeare.

William Golding is oft accredited for the first English translation in 1567, but never mind. Dryden took him up tenderly in 1657 as a writer to be examined for the divinity of God in man.

Ovid is the crossroad between classical myth and modern romanticism as the emphasis of myth, presented in the Metamorphoses, is not superstition or etiological; but psychological study of man: a rich source for the Renaissance when man became the proper study of man.

The story of Pyramus and Thisbe appears in Book IV, introducing and ever memoralizing romantic love in the story of two neighbors, separated by a wall, who whisper through a chink.
Ach yes, who can ever forget the Prologue to Romeo and Juliet:

"Two households, both alike in dignity
In fair Verona, where we lay the scene,
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where cold blood makes civil hands unclean
From forth the fatal loins of those two foes
A pair of star-crossed lover's take their lives..."

However, Shakespeare reverses the roles. In Ovid, Pyramus takes his life first on discovery of the bloody cloak and Thisbe does likewise.

And yes, it does appear in Midsummer Night's Dream, Act V. Theseus and Hippolyta enter introducing the theme of romantic love:

"Theseus: More strange than true: I never may believe
These antik fables nor these fairy toys.
Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,
Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend
More than cool reason ever comprehends.
The lunatic, the lover and the poet
Are of imagination all compact—
One sees more devils than vast hell can hold,--
That is, the madman: the lover, all as frantic,
Sees Helen's beauty in the brow of Egypt:
The poet's eye, in fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes, and gives them airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.."

The rustics present the play, garbling the names as truly as any public schoolkid forced-fed Latin would. Remarkably close to the original, Shakespeare's version parodies. Whether Ovid meant his as a tragedy is doubtful. His wit is sharp, making Pyramus a coward, afraid of shadows and vainly killing himself. Shakespeare hams it up majestically:

"Pyramus: O wherefore, Nature, didst thou lions frame?
Since lions vile hath here deflower'd my dear:
Which is—no,no—which was the fairest dame
That lived, that loved, that liked, that lookt
with cheer

Come, tears, confound;
Out, sword and wound
That pap of Pyramus,--
Ay, that left pap,
Where heart doth hop:--

Thus die I, thus, thus, thus:
Now I am dead,
Now I am fled;
My soul is in the sky:
Tongue, lose thy light;
Moon, take thy flight:--

Now die, die, die, die, die."

Leaving Pyramus sprawled on the ground with his blood spurting over the mulberry, which then came only in basic white. Thisbe re-enters after dodging the lion:

"Asleep my love?
What dead, my dove?
O Pyramus, arise!
Speak, speak. Quite dumb?
Dead, dead? A tomb
Must cover thy sweet eyes.
These lily lips,
This cherry nose

These yellow cowslip cheeks,
Are gone, are gone:
Lovers make moan:
his eyes were green as leeks.
O Sisters Three,
Come, come to me,
With hands as pale as milk;
lay them in gore,
Since you have shore
With shears his thread of silk.

Tongue not a word:
Come, trusty sword;
Come blade, my heart imbrue.

And farewell friends,--
Thus Thisbe ends,--
Adieu, adieu, adieu."

This makes for great death scenes in all hot-blooded romances ever after, including Wagnerian ones with 45 minute duets. Gotterdammerung and Tristan und Isolde are relatively easy to spot even by the operatically uneducated.. And yes, Tristan and Isolde, Troilius and Cressida extend that far into classical mythology. In the Middle Ages nothing was more delightful than creating new classics akin to the Aeneid, but with the theme of Pyramus and Thisbe star-crossed love. Chretien de Troyes established the ideals of chilvalry. His romances translated into English via the roaming poet, Chaucer, erstwhile international diplomat, ambassador and what-all.

And if Chaucer, who was but a kitchen-page could reach such heights, then it should be no surprise that a few centuries later, another copied—but conveniently not getting shipped off to Italy for a war. Shakespeare fought his battles on the stage vicariously, not in the field.

In the last century, Ovid was spurned; but in the 1990's new scholarship blossomed. Used in psychology by Jung, incorporated into innumerable forms of literature, Ovid is very much alive and thriving once more.

And the theme? Never ends. Bernstein turned out West Side Story to improve on the dynamics of Wagner's static staging. The best thing about Wagnerian opera is that you can do your ironing and never miss anything on stage.

Ovid, 43 B.C. - 17 or 18 A.D.
The Metamorphases of Ovid; Translated by William Caxton, 1480. New York: G. http://www.uwm.edu/Library/special/exhibits/clastext/clspg056.htm
Braziller, in association with Magdalene College, Cambridge, 1968. 2 Volumes.

Reference : Kline, A. S., (poetry translation) “Ovid The Metamorphoses
http://www.tkline.freeserve.co.uk/Webworks/Website/Ovhome.htm
enjoyable reading with an in-depth mythological index, fully hyper-linked. 4 MB .pdf 880 MR downloadable

Ovid Metamorphoses
http://www.webwinds.com/thalassa/ovid.htm
dryden

Dryden, transl Metamorphoses
http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/ovid/meta/

Book 4 with Pyramus and Thisbe
http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/ovid/meta/meta03.htm
look for the side note that begins the section

University of Vermont Ovid Project
http://www.uvm.edu/~hag/ovid/
special Ovid exhibit with illustrated works from the 17th century German artist, Johann Wilhelm Bauer, depicting 150 scenes from the Metamorphoses with a brief description in Latin and German. plates from a 1640 edition, transl by George Sandys

Ovid Metamorphoses, transl Golding
http://www.elizabethanauthors.com/ovid00.htm
The Fifteen Books of Ovid's Metamorphoses, 1567

BOOK IV
The piteous tale of Pyramus and Thisbee doth conteine
The headie force of frentick love whose end is wo and payne. ... [Ep.110]
The snares of Mars and Venus shew that tyme will bring to lyght
The secret sinnes that folk commit in corners or by nyght.
Hermaphrodite and Salmacis declare that idlenesse
Is cheefest nurce and cherisher of all volupteousnesse,
And that voluptuous lyfe breedes sin: which linking all toogither
Make men to bee effeminate, unweeldy, weake and lither.

A reading list for Metamorphoses
http://lib5.leeds.ac.uk/rlists/classics/clas1412.htm
from U of Leeds with hypertext links

Chaucer
http://www.uwm.edu/Library/special/exhibits/clastext/clspg073.htm
special exhibit

Snow Queen: Old Woman's Flower Garden

2004-02-04T18:52:00.000-08:00

4 Febr 04 Snow Queen: Old Woman's Flower Garden
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/106388

From the beginning of the story, Andersen introduces blindness and journey as symbols. Eons before the story takes place, a demon constructed a mirror that contorted the images of reality so that beautiful things looked loathsome. The demon becomes the foil of Kay who goes out one day to skate. A splinter of the broken mirror his pierced his eye and froze his heart so that anything that previously beautiful became ugly and distasteful.

However, simplistic this sounds, the message conveys psychological truth. How often, we become embittered by a particularly shattering experience and are no longer able to see the beauty within the world. We lose a job, and suddenly life becomes a terrible struggle without the means for financial support or social engagement. We no longer have the means to enjoy public entertainment or spend money on delightful things. Our perspective becomes twisted like the images in the mirror made by the demon.

Kay goes off to skate, abandoning his friend, Gerda. Entranced with the Snow Queen, he ties his sled to her sledge and vanishes from Gerda's life. His disappearance alarms Gerda. Although not rich, Gerda is determined to find him and bring him back into her life. The theme is that of Rake's Progress, composed by Strawinsky and written by Auden, based on the etchings of Hogarth. Abandoning the security of her home, Gerda forsakes persoanl belongings, sacrificing her new red shoes to the river in hopes of finding Kay again.

More poetically Shakespeare presents Sonnet 116, using the ship following the stars to reach its goals. The turmoil and dangers in the sonnet are hidden, as the lofty goal of love is raised to its zenith.

Shakespeare, Sonnet 116 Let me not to the marriage to
http://www.shakespeares-sonnets.com/116comm.htm

Gerda is no poet or lady of the white glove. She is as poor as the Goose-girl, but more generous. Climbing into a boat, she entrusts her fate and journey to God, and sets out. In the third chapter, Gerda enters the garden of the Old Woman. Andersen, contrives the accidental encounter. We do not see him scheming in the background with the meeting of the two women: one is old and childless; the other, young and childless. Andersen insists that the old woman is not a bad witch, but still a witch who can order the arrangement of her garden to suit her needs, manipulating the memory of Gerda. The one is childless from old age—and also possibly selfishness. She cannot take the risks that Gerda is willing to make and she will not give up the comfort of her tidy world to venture into harsh realities outside. The garden is an image of containment, self-interest and selfishness. Gerda is isolated where no outside force is allowed to influence or touch her. The old woman desires selfishly to retain her company. She will take no risk in allowing Gerda any freedom, including Gerda's dreams and past memories. She contrives to erase all memories of Gerda's past life by banishing the roses underground and maintaining an eternal springlike season in her garden.

In comparison, Gerda began her journey by casting away her new red shoes. Although the gesture is foolish, the reader sympathises with someone so selfless as to endure discomfort in hopes of recovering a lost love. And although, the old woman seems to be quite kind and compassionate to Gerda, she is cruel. Through deception, Gerda comes to believe that Kay is dead. Nothing can be much moer cruel than this. It ranks among the top ploys of extracting information out of a prisoner under torture and rendering a person to a zombie state.

The selflessness of Gerda is further contrasted with the stories of the flowers who are filled with self-admiration. Each is absorbed in its own small story. The Tiger-Lily sees itself as a martyr, the Convolvulus winds itself about a fantasy readily found in immature romances that idealize love as the waiting princess on a balcony. Gerda has no patience for this. She is practical and recognizes the limitation of time; she is also aggressive in her endeavor. Goals are not won by dreaming about them in airy ways. The epitome of inhumane callousness, though, is found in the Hyacinth, who repeats its story like the knell of a funeral bell and then snaps at Gerda, "We do not tolling for little Kay—we don't know him; we only sing our song, the only one we know."

Although the garden is well-ordered and flowers beautiful, there is no compassion among there. The narcissim wears away Gerda's patience. When she brushes against the Jonquil—daffodil or narcissus—her patience ends. Bending over to catch the words in hope of discovering some information regarding her lost friend, she hears,

"I can see myself! I can see myself!"

The Jonquil is immersed in absurd fascination with its own image. Of all the flowers in the garden, only the Roses have some relevant response. The imagery fits: roses have thorns. Love brings pain into the beloved's life. Without pain, there is no real love; without love, there is also no deep pain. Asleep under the ground, they have not seen him and so assume that Kay must still be among the living on earth, offering small hope to Gerda.

Remaining within the garden is not for Gerda, regardless of the easy life and the eternal joys of spring. Yearning to confront reality and overcome life's obstacles to achieve her goal, she breaks out. She leaves with no shoes and nothing in hand but hope. Regardless of the length or harshness of the journey, she is determined to find Kay and bring him back into the world she understands and sees as beautiful. Her love will sustain her through all perils. She has no real selfish interest and she puts the welfare of her beloved above her own. She is the ideal of romantic love, the idealist who lives for a dream and the peole who give themselves to their professions for a higher cause.

Shakespeare's Sonnets
http://www.shakespeares-sonnets.com/

116 Let me not to the marriage to
http://www.shakespeares-sonnets.com/116comm.htm

RELATED
&&&&&&&&
7 Dec 03 Snow Queen
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/fairytales_myths_fables_&legends/105068
http://pogoland.blogspot.com/2003/12/snow-queen.html

2 Oct 04 Flower Stories
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/111294
http://pogoland.blogspot.com/2004/10/flower-stories.html

Lewis and Alice Expedition Through the Looking-Glass

2004-01-12T18:42:00.000-08:00

12^th Jan 04 Lewis and Alice Expedition Through the Looking-Glass
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/105856

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, the third child of Charles Dodgson II, was born on January 27, 1832. He was one of eleven children that included seven girls and four boys.

His father was a brilliant scholar, who studied at Westminster and then Oxford, before entering the church. He was conservative with leanings toward Newman and Anglo-Catholicism and inclined toward High Church. Charles, father, retired to the country after marrying a cousin in 1827, eventually obtaining the office of Arch Deacon of Ripon and translated Tertullian.

Being the first-born son, he was named after his father and grandfather before him. He was precocious, already reading Pigrim's Progress when he was seven. Although naturally left-handed, he was forced to convert to his right, which caused complications throughout his life. When he was twelve, he was sent to school at Richmond, In 1845, he moved on to Rugby where he was apparently sexually abused during the night. In 1851, he entered Christ Church, Oxford when his mother died unexpectedly from a brain fever. Charles achieved Honors and received a Studentship and later given a Lectureship for Mathematics at Christ Church, which he maintained much of his life.

He suffered whooping cough when he was seventeen which caused an inner ear infection and resulted in a slight stammer from the haring loss. The stammar is often over-dramatized in biographies and played as if Dodgson was a shy, retiring fellow. In fact, he was not.

The world recognizes Charles Dodgson as Lewis Carroll who was born on March 1, 1856. The pseudonymn first appeared on a poem, Solitude in a Train. Dodgson was then teaching reluctantly at Christ Church when Henry Liddell appeared as Dean of the College with his wife and three daughters: Ina, Alice and Edith. Much has been written about the paedophile tendencies and the relationship between Alice and Charles Dodgson. Dodgson befriended the family, taking the girls and their mother on outings and on one such outing, the story of Alice falling down the rabbit hole was born. Alice requested the story written out, and Dodgson, seeing the potential of publication, did so.

Lewis Carroll became the public image of the author.

Later he described his relationships with younger women as "child-friend", but this did not necessarily indicate the person of whom he was speaking was a child or juvenile. He maintained relationships and correspondence with his younger acquaintances over a span of years until they were fully mature women, and frequently caused scandal within society for not conforming to the social pressures of Victorian High Church morals. The problem is that it is rather difficult to tell which is who—whether Dodgson was Lewis Carroll or Carroll really a myth looking back at society through the warped surface of the Looking Glass.

Dodgson was a prolific writer, keeping a lifetime of correspondence and diaries. He not only kept them, but indexed them, understanding the value of documentation of his life. However, his life and habits offended his family. Although not married, he was also not retiring and quite likely not chaste, certainly not the virgin of the lore spun by later biographers. He enjoyed the company of women and was active in society. At times, he kept company of married women and widows alike so that his sister feared of public scandal. Ladies were an integral part of his life, at times moving in and living with him, supping alone with him in his rooms. Not exactly the proper thing to do as an Arch Deacon's son or Mathematics Lecturer at Oxford. He defied the rules. Consequently, when he died suddenly after buying properties in Guildford, his brother took over the estate, liquidating it at public auction and destroyed much of the documentation that Dodgson had meticulously created. Much of his papers were not only destroyed, but the remaining diaries expurgated. Pages were cut out and the official biography of his life presented as a myth of what the family wanted the public to believe. Hence came the image of Lewis Carroll being reticent, stammering and a chaste pedophile, afraid to tangle with women after the age of fourteen. Unfortunately, biographers, like sheep, follow the herd without questioning the base of things, so that layer upon layer of myth has been added without much consultation to the documentation that does exist.

Unexpurgated letters and the diaries of Lewis Carroll were only published after 1970, nearly nineties years after his death. Recently past myths have been challenged as new evidence reveals the distorted image of Charles Dodgson laughing at those who try to penetrate the reflection of twisted image found in the Looking Glass where the world goes in reverse and things are backward.

Lewis Carroll links
http://www.hoboes.com/html/FireBlade/Carroll/

Lewis Carroll Page
frames
http://www.lewiscarroll.org/carroll.html
nonframes
http://www.lewiscarroll.org/nfcarroll.html
gives links to online texts and Lewis Carroll societies and organizations

Kirjasto: Lewis Carroll
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/lcarroll.htm

Victorian Web: Lewis Carroll
http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/carroll/carrollov.html

Through the Looking-Glass 1899 edition
http://www.geocities.com/throughthelookingglass20k/
very beautiful site with Tenniel's illustrations
the biggest problem is the damnable yahoo dropdown

Through the Looking-Glass
http://www.kellscraft.com/throughthelookingglasscontent.html
twelve full page color illus by Blanche McManus

University of Virginia Etext Library Through the Looking-Glass
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/CarGlas.html
title of contents Published: 1862-1863 illus Tenniel

University of Virginia: Alice in Wonderland 1866
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/CarAlic.html

University of Virginia: Hunting of the Snark 1876 illus
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/CarSnar.html

Literature Net : Through the Loooking-Glass
http://www.literature-web.net/carroll/lookingglass
searchable version with short bio of Lewis Carroll

about 800 articles recovered by Find Articles
http://www.findarticles.com/cf_0/PI/search.jhtml?magR=all+magazines&key=Lewis+Carroll

RELATED
&&amp;&&&&&&&
4 Febr 04 Snow Queen: Old Woman's Flower Garden
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/106388

2 Oct 04 Flower Stories
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/111294
http://pogoland.blogspot.com/2004/10/flower-stories.html

7 Dec 03 Snow Queen
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/fairytales_myths_fables_&legends/105068
http://pogoland.blogspot.com/2003/12/snow-queen.html

The Little Match Girl

2003-12-21T11:45:00.000-08:00

21 Dec 03 Little Match Girl
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/fairytales_myths_fables_&legends/105331

Little Match Girl
http://hjem.get2net.dk/chenero/hca/hcaev040_en.html
in multiple languages illus written in 1846

McGonagall :Little Match Girl verse
http://www.mcgonagall-online.org.uk/poems/mpgmatch.htm

Andersen leaves fantasy behind as he opens the story. Familiar with the Christmas bustle and expectations of snow, we envision clearly the girl walking along the street with her head uncovered. Andersen wastes not a word.

Little Match Girl illus by Rachel Isadora
http://picturingbooks.imaginarylands.org/style/isadora.jpg

She had been wearing slippers, but thery were too big. Why? the answer is immediate—they were her mother's. As little kids we donned our parent's shoes and hobbled about in them, doubling over in giggles by the very immensity of them, our miniature feet lost in the cavernous depths.

Relating something commonplace to the external world, Andersen opens the door for us to enter into a different world of poverty. We are not the onlookers peering in through the windows with Scrooge at his nephew's celebrations; but involved directly. We feel the cold, hear the mumbled words of the boy and feel numbness overtaking our minds as the snow falls in flurries about the child in the thin clothes.

Andersen increases the tension by contrasting the season of generosity with that of utter poverty. She hadn't sold a match all day. The repetition of the thought identifies the child's despair and fear of returning home, the utter hopelessness of her life. The fear of being beaten is softened by the repetition of the unsold matches. The lines dull the pain as she loses consciousness. Reality and hallucination mix as her mind wanders into a different world where food is readily available. Only the very hungry dream of apples and roast goose in technicolor.

We understand and see the misery and beauty surrounding the child as she leaves this world. Her vision gives us hope for the next and peace in this as we return back into the bothersome, bustling season of Christmas when greedy shoppers trample each other in the stores, trying to nab the last bargain of the day.

The portrait haunts us a day later as we pass the beggars on the streets or avoid the homeless people in the metros and train stations, but Andersen had the courage to look within the soul and see that underneath the poverty and hunger, they were people, too, needing as much love and attention as you or I.

Match Seller illus by Naszra Ksiegarnia 1950
http://www.klaban.torun.pl/children/andersen/bajka6m.jpg

Instead of calculating your Christmas presents or Christmas budget to spend on friends; make a commitment of tiem to care about those whose lives are hard. Dedicate a portion of your time to a community project or involve yourself in establishing a new one. It doesn't have to be a major investment, but only a matter of a few hours per month—visiting the ill or shut-in in the local nursing-home or collecting old magazines to create a magazine exchange in the hospital or library for those who cannot afford to pay subscriptions. America is the great wasteland of wealth. So many things could be recycled, but are not. So much can be given directly to those in need. Volunteer at a local youth group; work on a crisis line; help develop resources for a website; organize kids to clean trash off the streets—there's a million things possible. Read stories to kids—do something to make this world a better place. Think how different Malvo's life could have been had someone cared for him and showed him the meaning of love. Inside, he's human, too; but he grew up in a brutal world shaped by blind indifference. What can be expected when kids are taught from very young age to play computer games with the major objective is ultimate destruction and televisions are saturated with violence? Save a life by reaching out to someone in need. Carry an apple in the pocket to give to someone in need of food. It's not the biggest sacrifice you'll make in life, but it might warm someone's heart and offer hope to live.

Letter and Story of Little Match Girl
http://www.gazette.de/Archiv/Gazette-Dezember2001/Andersen.html
in German with a sketch by Andersen from the Gazette Archive
background of the story

Odense City Archive: Little Match Girl
http://www.odmus.dk/andersen/manuskript/billedstart.asp?sprog=engelsk
Archive: manuscripts of HCA

University of Southern Denmark: Andersen Project
http://www.andersen.sdu.dk/rundtom/faq/index_e.html
biographical website with several essays regarding works and life

Tale of Christmas Eve 1850
http://www.mcgonagall-online.org.uk/poems/lpgeve.htm
verse

Christmas Goose
http://www.mcgonagall-online.org.uk/poems/pggoose.htm
obviously influence Dickens' Scrooge

CHRISTMAS STORIES
&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
14^th Dec 03 Fir Tree by HCA
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/fairytales_myths_fables_&legends/105215
http://pogoland.blogspot.com/2003/12/fir-tree.html

23 Nov 03 Humperdink's Children Hansel u Gretel Making Gingerbread B
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/fairytales_myths_fables_&legends/104793
http://pogoland.blogspot.com/2003/11/humperdinks-children-hansel-u-gretel.html

16 Nov 03 Nutcracker
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/fairytales_myths_fables_&legends/104652
http://pogoland.blogspot.com/2003/11/nutcracker.html

7 Dec 03 Snow Queen
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/fairytales_myths_fables_&legends/105068
http://pogoland.blogspot.com/2003/12/snow-queen.html

5 Dec 2004 Kidnapped Santa
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/112042

1 December 2004 Winter Festival Event
http://www.suite101.com/event.cfm/277

The Fir Tree

2003-12-14T11:35:00.000-08:00

14^th Dec 03 Fir Tree by HCA
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/fairytales_myths_fables_&legends/105215

The Story of the Christmas Tree
http://morning-glow.com/holidays/xmas/xmastree.html
Oh Christmas Tree

The Fairytales of HCA : The Fir Tree nr 26
http://hjem.get2net.dk/chenero/hca/hcaev026_en.html
translated by H P Paull, illus by Pedersen

In the city square stands the Christmas Market arrayed in stalls with great Christmas trees standing guard all around it, dressed in glittery finery. Small children visit the little stall covered with hay to talk to the llama, sheep and goats and toddlers hang onto the noble ponies that amble in a crowded circle. Tourists gawk at Christmas wares, thinking about their credit accounts. In the corner, children skate in the ovoid rink across from the Tyn Church. Young couples gossip together, warming their hands on hot mulled wine while others admire the horses standing in the fiaker line. Everywhere, Christmas lights dazzle, blinking against the wintry sky and the drab walls of Prague.

Christmas is for the wealthy to enjoy themselves and the poor to struggle through the coldness of the season. They see too the Christmas Market with its enticing luxury, dreaming of days when their stomachs shall be satisfied with proper food and they can enjoy spending money on useless baubles serving to decorate a room or table. They come to watch the children skating on the rink or the outdoor performances presented on the Christmas center stage. At home, there are no trees or presents. Life is lived from pocket with scarcely enough to survive. They search through the small, inexpensive gifts found within the many craft stalls: a string of rose quartz or amethysts; a puppet or mug to satisfy the demand for giving presents.

Everyone needs acceptance. Everyone wishes to be admired or loved. In the center of the forest lived a small fir tree, beneath the branches of the great. He, too, wanted admiration and acceptance as he viewed the great trees towering over him. How grand it would be to live to old age with birds' nests in the branches.

Mallet's Nurseries: Christmas snow and trees
http://www.homefarm100.fsnet.co.uk/christmas%20tree.JPG

London Film Festival: Christmas Tree
http://www.londonfoodfilmfiesta.co.uk/Artmai~1/images~2/christmas%20tree.gif

Andersen transfers the longing for acceptance to an inanimate object, yet we accept it, understanding the agony of exclusion. We 've experienced standing outside to watch the party in process in a brightly lit room, to be excluded from cheerful company. The futile hopes of the fir tree are starkly contrasted against reality. His glory is transient, decked in Christmas baubles a brief time. His value is lost the moment the party is finished.

The longing for acceptance is reflected in many of the Andersen stories, including the Steadfast Tin Soldier, Ugly Duckling, and Match Girl. Although the soldier is neither rich nor poor, he is minus a leg, excluding him from the normal company of soldiers. He sees himself as unworthy. The Ugly Duckling is persecuted until it flees the banyard society and only by glancing into the pond at the end of the story realizes its own beauty; but the Fir Tree suffers belated enlightenment. Cut from the forest, he is dragged into the artifice of affluent society and decked with the superficiality in a transient holiday. Within a short time, he is rejected and put out on the trash heap where the little rodents visit to hear stories. As he knows but few and none within their interests, he is again rejected. Still confused by the ordeals of his arduous life, he believes himself young when spent and ends as kindling.

Deftly, Andersen transfers our sympathy to the tree, the common symbol of Christmas, the season of gaiety and giving, while making us aware of the misfortunes of those suffering from poverty and rejection. Without becoming maudlin or moralizing, Andersen expresses the suffering of society' rejected, forever watching the happy festivities within the lighted room. He does it without Dicken's Ghost of the Christmas Past or Old Scrooge reminiscing on the younger on a merry Christmas Evening. Nor is there any Tiny Tim to bless us at the end. Instead, the reader is put into the center of the story as the silent tree, unable to express its longing. The themes of silence and yearning thread their way through many stories, through the eyes of the Mermaid, the loneliness of the Ugly Duckling and the open arms of the Fir Tree yearning to embrace the nests of birds and hear the twitter of the young among them.

Giving gifts is a risky business, for in giving something, a bit of the giver is also given. Tourists search the Christmas Markets for that special present coming from Prague, hoping never to find a telltale label franked, "Made in China" . We look for the original, the unique. In doing, we overlook the beauty before us, losing value on the more important things. Being accepted often entails sacrifice, submitting to the demands of peers or friends. They dislike favorite clothes or insist on different appearance and behavior. So hard to learn to eat lettuces with knife and fork in a strictly aristocratic European manner, but we suffer the humiliation of rejection if our etiquette doesn't match demands.

The tree symbolizes not only Christmas but symbolizes eternal life in literature. The roots reach into the underworld with the branches reach towards the heavens where God reigns. Another symbol would not make the allegory as powerful-- the tree is not only symbolic of life and spirituality, but also of giving. Under it presents are placed and around it children play games, dominating the holiday season, gracing city and town squares across the Christianized world. What would Rockerfeller Square be without its annual tree?

Christmas Tree in NY
http://www.moochtrain.com/christmas/nyxmastree1.jpg
in the midst of the city, stands a Christmas tree

http://www.moochtrain.com/christmas/newyork.html
home pages with some funky Christmas pics

The origins are older than Christianity, reaching to into religious and social culture found in ancient Egypt. In classical literature, trees are associated with various dieties. Just as Judaism took ancient rites and transformed them to new meanings, Chritianity converted old symbols into new, endowed with new mythology, ursurping old festivals. Now Saturnalia is limited to one night annually on New Year's Eve with strong prohibitions against imbibing and drinking. The darkness of the pagan festivals is transcended by enilightenment of Christian monotheism and the emphasis of giving, if only once a year. And true, Christmas is commercialized as the Season of Consumer Sales, but beneath all the guadiness and greed, there lurks the tragedy that Andersen so clearly sees: the need to be loved and accepted in a world where affluence buys acceptance based on the superficiality of appearance

Captain Jack's Christmas Tree Farm
http://www.christmas-tree.com/where.html
history of Christmas trees

Christmas Archives
http://www.christmasarchives.com/trees.html
The History of the Christmas Tree

Christmas Legends
http://www.christmasarchives.com/legends.html

Christmas card
http://www.christcenteredmall.com/stores/art/kinkade/christmas-tree-cottage-zoom.jpg
Thomas Kincaid, artist

Georgia Trust: Christmas tree
http://www.georgiatrust.org/images/Special%20events/Christmas-tree.gif

The National Christmas Tree Association
http://www.christree.org/treetype/hist_chr.html
many various types of Christmas trees to choose...

Sandor's Christmas Picture Album
http://www2.pro-ns.net/~sandor/ny_pictures.htm
pictures from NYC

Classic Reader: Brief Bio of HCA
http://www.classicreader.com/author.php/aut.44/

HCA in 123 Languages
http://www.odmus.dk/andersen/eventyr/start.asp?sprog=engelsk
a directory of Hans Christian Andersen tales in 123 languages.

CHRISTMAS STORIES
&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
21 Dec 03 Little Match Girl
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/fairytales_myths_fables_&legends/105331
http://pogoland.blogspot.com/2003/12/little-match-girl.html

16 Nov 03 Nutcracker
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/fairytales_myths_fables_&legends/104652
http://pogoland.blogspot.com/2003/11/nutcracker.html

5 Dec 2004 Kidnapped Santa
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/112042

1 December 2004 Winter Festival Event
http://www.suite101.com/event.cfm/277

Snow Queen

2003-12-07T11:24:00.000-08:00

7 Dec 03 Snow Queen
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/fairytales_myths_fables_&legends/105068

Sur la Lune- Snow Queen
http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/snowqueen/index.html

Illusrations
http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/illustrations/snowqueen/index.html

Across Europe in the last weeks of November, the elves are outside busy building the Christmas markets that stand in the city squares and central market places. Filled with cheer, they are decorated like miniature villages where throngs of people congregate to search for that special Christmas present among the outdoor shops containing traditional crafts from black-smithery to glass-blowing to fine silver-smiths for handwrought jewelry.

On December 5^th, children dress up as angels and devils to accompany Saint Nicholas as he goes from house to house bringing the season's cheer and drinking schnapps. Firecrackers explode in the noisy streets as fireworks burst above in the night sky, welcoming the Christams Season.

In Vienna, the ice-rink by the Stadtpark is filled with whirling skaters, and the duck-pond with the Moore sculpture in front of the Karlskirche is glazed with ice for children to skate on. On the ring by the Rathaus, a miniature village is created among the towering trees with an outdoor rink where annually Freilicht Exhibitions of ice-skating and ice-dancing are performed by the new brood of competitive skaters.

In Prague, the Christmas Market assembles in the Old Town Square with a miniature ice-rink and pony rides to entertain the children. A miniature train whooshes in circles and the tourists congregate to watch the parade of saints on the great Astronomical Clock near the Tyn Church where Catholics and Protestants battled to dominate the religious front. Tourists throng the crowded narrow streets, arriving to enjoy the busy shopping season. It's Christmas. The Ice Castle surrounding the ice-rink is slowly melting, although scarcely a week old.

The story of the Snow Queen is a traditional favorite for the winter season, with the Snow Festivals that are celebrated across Europe. The larges Ice Castle is in Kemi, Finland—in Lapland where Gerda is abducted by the Robber Girl, and finally continues on the last leg of her journey with the reindeer to the icy, frozen north.

Snow Castle in Lapland, Finland
http://www.ubc.net/bulletin/bulletin1_00/pages/p15.html

Kemi, Finland with the largest Snow Castle in the world
http://www.kemi.fi/english/index.html
The largest annual Snow Castle, built in Kemi, Finland. 17 metres high with walls 1100 metres long. Area 13 500 m². The castle includes restaurants and a chapel attracts over 270 000 visitors. Weddings and parties are conducted in it.

Ulrike Elanor's Snow Church
http://www.niksula.cs.hut.fi/%7Emnikkane/linnat/ulrikaeng.html
Helsinki Finland, est 1997

Around the world, the winter festivities begin with winter sports championships. Among the most unforgettable ice-skaters are Toller Cranston and Roselyn Sumners.

Toller Cranston and Witt
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/TheIcePrincess-1079871/preview.php
film of ice-skating

Ice Princess
http://video.realbuy.ws/1572522518.html
Toller Cranston, Katarina Witt and Roselyn Sumners
60 minutes 2000

Andersen draws us into his world, through his remarkable gift of descriptive narration. In Mermaid, we are invited into the unseen world through the comparison of the invisible to the commonplace that we experience in our daily lives:

"far out to sea the water is as blue as the petals on the loveliest cornflower and as clear as purest glass..."

Similarly, he begins the narration of Snow Queen with an incident which we all can relate to through the imagery of a immense mirror being flown into the heavens. The association of words relating a splinter of glass to an eyelash or hair caught in an eye, creates the credibility fo the story. We believe, because we know the ordeal of trying to remove the foreign object from the eye and the hours of swollen eyes, the blurred, painful vision that resulted. We know intimately the sharp pain of dust particles grating against the tender surface of the eye. We suffer with Kay in his blindness and we sympathize with gerda in her long search through the world to recover the precious companionship of her childhood. We know the tingle of numb hands and the screaming pain of swollen frozen fingers. And like children, we are bewitched and entranced by the annual winter sports and festivals, dreaming of racing away in the Snow Queen's sleigh.

Meghans Fairytales
http://live-artist.com/fairytales/snwq1.html
moved 4 December introduction to the pages
The Snow Queen" translated by Naomi Lewis,
Illustrated by Angela Barrett illustration copyright 1988

Part 1 The Mirror
http://www.live-artist.com/fairytales/snwq2.html

Part 2 Kay and Gerda
http://www.live-artist.com/fairytales/snwq3.html

Part 3 The Flower Garden and the Woman Who Could Conjure
http://www.live-artist.com/fairytales/snwq4.html

Part 4 The Prince and The Princess
http://www.live-artist.com/fairytales/snwq5.html

Part 5 The Little Robber-Girl
http://www.live-artist.com/fairytales/snwq6.html

Part 6 The Lapland Woman and the Finland Woman
http://www.live-artist.com/fairytales/snwq7.html

Part 7 The Palace of the Snow Queen and What Happened There at Last
http://www.live-artist.com/fairytales/snwq8.html

Snow Queen Adrienne Segur illus
http://www.datadesignsb.com/books/snowqueenbook.html

Art Passions: Segur
http://www.artpassions.net/segur/segur.html
illustrations by Segur
please do not download site
you may link by html page but not by images
thank-you
You may also send the images as postcards

Suggested Fairytale Classics
http://www.datadesignsb.com/books/fairytale_bks.html\
a page with suggested classic fairytale books listed for beautiful gifts

RELATED
&&amp;&&&&&&
4 Febr 04 Snow Queen: Old Woman's Flower Garden
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/106388
http://pogoland.blogspot.com/2004/02/snow-queen-old-womans-flower-garden.html

2 Oct 04 Flower Stories
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/111294
http://pogoland.blogspot.com/2004/10/flower-stories.html

CHRISTMAS STORIES
&&amp;&&&&&&&&&&&&
21 Dec 03 Little Match Girl
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/fairytales_myths_fables_&legends/105331
http://pogoland.blogspot.com/2003/12/little-match-girl.html

14^th Dec 03 Fir Tree by HCA
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/fairytales_myths_fables_&legends/105215
http://pogoland.blogspot.com/2003/12/fir-tree.html

16 Nov 03 Nutcracker
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/fairytales_myths_fables_&legends/104652
http://pogoland.blogspot.com/2003/11/nutcracker.html

5 Dec 2004 Kidnapped Santa
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/112042

1 December 2004 Winter Festival Event
http://www.suite101.com/event.cfm/277

Humperdink's Children Hansel u Gretel Making Gingerbread p2

2003-11-24T11:14:00.000-08:00

23 Nov 03 Humperdink's Children Hansel u Gretel Making Gingerbread p2
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/fairytales_myths_fables_&legends/104793

Sur La Lune: Hanseel u Gretel
http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/hanselgretel/index.html
annotated Hansel

Index of illustrations on Sur La Lune
http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/illustrations/hanselgretel/index.html

Fairytales were ideal for stage adaption in a strictly controlled political world where the extremes of wealth and poverty could not be ignored. Censorship was a state institution, forcing Mozart in an earlier day to rewrite and revise Don Giovanni no less than five times and create a contrived Happy Ending. Opera houses are not private or public concerns, but state controlled. Pressure existed that is invisible today. Using fairytales gave the creators a way of escape and freedom to express what otherwise might not be allowed. Hoffmann produced The Mouse King and the Nutcracker; Strauss, Die Frau Ohne Schatten and Puccini, Turandot. Mahler contributed Das Knaben des Wunderhorn and Das Klagende Lied. All of them, works are derived from children's literature, escaping censorship by allowing the freedom of dreams in a world beset decade after decade with wars, poverty and the ravages of the industrial revolution.

Although Humperdinck is often burdened with the shadow of Wagner, being his editor, he was respected and admired by his contemporaries: Strauss, Reinhadt and Puccini. Nor was he the only composer to adapt "fairytales" for stage. He was deeply influenced by Mozart who wrote translucent works for children and produced the eternal favorite, Zauberflote.

In Vienna, Klimt formed the Secession, breaking away from stylized romantic art and across Europe, Art Noveau became the new movement, allowing myth, fantasy and fairytale to leap into paintings and onto buildings. In England, Oscar Wilde paraded Art for Art's Sake and the Pre-Raphaelites took up position against the traditional school. The golden age of fantasy and artistic expression began spreading throughout Europe, bearing sumptious fruit in the performing and applied arts. Literature followed.

Perhaps, the Grimm story would have dropped from the pages of children's books without the Humperdinck adaptation. The story appeared in the 1812 collection of Grimm's Childrens and Household Tales. The Grimm brothers originally collected the stories to create a compendium of German literature in reaction to the French nationalization and Napoleonic influence. When the stories were first published, parents were offended as they circulated among children. This was not the original intent of the brothers. In response, the stories were edited and changed to make them more suitable for younger readers. Today, school authorities wriggle like cut worms when parents complain. Not much has changed.

D. L Ashliman, Hansel u Gretel
http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm015a.html
a comparison of changes in the two editions 18112 and 1857

Hansel u Gretel
http://www.ricochet-jeunes.org/eng/biblio/books/hansel.html
bibliography with links to chief illustrators

Why did Humperdinck make the cuts? Stagework has different problems with strict restrictions on time. Humperdinck was not Wagner. Any adaptation of a novel or play has to be compressed to make it work in opera. The audience gets bored easily. In the Grimm version, the children are lost in the woods twice. They hear their parent's discussing the matter before they fall asleep. How many audiences will sit through a repetition of Babes in the Woods? Not many. The composer and librettist make assumptions that the audience knows the conflicts alluded on stage. They presume the audience is intelligent. Writing the parental asides of getting rid of the kids for financial reasons doesn't win sympathy from an audience. The perspective must be altered to bring the audience into the children's world.

However, the terror of being lost and the utter helplessness of being lost is a primal fear of man-- whether the city, woods or life. This creates the tension in both the story and the opera. The allusions and use of allegory extend beyond the children's world of the Witch and the Gingerbread House. All of us dream of being received and loved. All of us long for love and acceptance from a parent, from a father, alluding to fundamental religious understanding in Judaism and Christianity. We fear the night. We fear the dangers of the unknown. And in crisis, we find ourselves helpless against the invisible forces of social pressures or evil that we cannot easily identify. We become dependent on the "angels" about to protect us from harm. We hope that the policeman hears our cry, we hope that the official does not demand the bribe under the table. We rely on those we do not know and pray eversomuch that the doctor is competent when we enter the hospital. And when escaping narrowly from danger, we know no greater happiness than returning safely home, even if only to a damp room with cold fire. We each understand the hapless plight of Hansel and Gretel as they beseech divine protection before they go to sleep...

We hope for the good that comes the next day, to overcome the evil in our life and dream to stuff the horrible witch back into her own oven. So every year, throughout Europe, Hansel u Gretel come alive in the opera house and kids beg their parents to make gingerbread houses.

Humperdinck: Hansel und Gretel
http://www.lyricoperaofwaco.org/education/humperdinck/Hansel_and_Grethel.htm
Waco Lyric Opera—program notes with a history and illustrations

Hansel u Gretel
http://www.geocities.com/ehub035/hansel.htm
film production of live opera
polygramophone recording with Fassbaender as Hansel and Gruberova as Gretel
George Solti others: Helga Dernesch, Sena Jurinac, Hermann Prey
very worthwhile recording, sorry does not say which house, but very likely Munich or Vienna State Opera as Fassbaender doesn't like travelling and the cast was also in Vienna

von Stade / Cortrubas would be also very good combination but no info
http://webs.sinectis.com.ar/cpalacios/hansel_files/image003.jpg

http://webs.sinectis.com.ar/cpalacios/hansel_files/image005.jpg
a beautiful set of the opera

Engelbert Humperdinck
http://www.epinions.com/musc_mu-472241
Cast: Brigitte Fassbaender, Lucia Popp, Walter Berry, Julia Hamari, Anny Schlemm.
Wiener Philharmoniker, Sir Georg Solti
very good cast

Bayerisches Staatsoper
http://www.staatsorchester.de/c.php/index_bsoc.php?dom=dom3&l=en
official site has virtual tour
has a Hansel on Program , tribute to Lucia Popp
Zubin Mehta, resident conductor

Vienna Volksoper
http://www.volksoper.at/Content.Node2/home/spielplan/spielplan_detail_werkbeschreibung.php?eventid=321279
double click pictures for enlargement
at the Volksoper—they made special programs with paper ginerbread houses and cut-outs of the sets one year

Larry Ferguson, An Examination of the Structure, Pattern and Hero in Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm’s, Hansel and Gretel
http://www.ed.psu.edu/k-12/edpgs/su95/larry/han&gre.htm

Carrie Dishlip, Hansel and Gretel : Females in Fairytales
http://info-center.ccit.arizona.edu/~ws/ws200/fall97/grp17/hansel.html

Good Housekeeping: Annual Gingerbread House
http://magazines.ivillage.com/goodhousekeeping/recipes/holiday/articles/0,12873,284506_290441,00.html
instructions and recipes for gingerbread houses 5 pages

Good Housekeeping: dough
http://magazines.ivillage.com/goodhousekeeping/recipefinder/recipe/0,,399536,00.html

Good Housekeeping: frosting
http://magazines.ivillage.com/goodhousekeeping/recipefinder/recipe/0,,392705,00.html

Recipe Link : Holiday Message Board for Gingerbread
http://www.allbaking.net/holiday/gingerbread.html
has cookbooks just for gingerbread houses

Family Fun: Gingerbread House
http://familyfun.go.com/recipes/special/feature/famf1202_feat_firstginger/famf1202_feat_firstginger.html
another recipe for building the gingerbread house

RELATED
&&&&&&&&
23 Nov 03 Humperdinck's Children making Gingerbread p1
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/fairytales_myths_fables_&legends/104795
http://pogoland.blogspot.com/2003/11/humperdincks-children-making.html

CHRISTMAS STORIES
&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
21 Dec 03 Little Match Girl
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/fairytales_myths_fables_&legends/105331
http://pogoland.blogspot.com/2003/12/little-match-girl.html

14^th Dec 03 Fir Tree by HCA
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/fairytales_myths_fables_&legends/105215
http://pogoland.blogspot.com/2003/12/fir-tree.html

16 Nov 03 Nutcracker
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/fairytales_myths_fables_&legends/104652
http://pogoland.blogspot.com/2003/11/nutcracker.html

5 Dec 2004 Kidnapped Santa
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/112042

1 December 2004 Winter Festival Event
http://www.suite101.com/event.cfm/277