Deconstructing Liana
Deconstructing Liana
One of the best known traits of faerytales (and by extension, of every
other manifestation of literary folklore) , if conceived as such
literary manifestations, is respect for tradition both in the outline of
characters and in patterns of plot construction. When one is confronted
with an instance of collective folk expression, such as epic or folk
narrative, one would be very well adviced to bear in mind that one can´t
have the same set of expectations in reading them than one could have
with, say, Cortázar´s Rayuela. You can´t require of Homer the same depth
of subject treatment and character description than you would of
Dostoievsky. Simply the expectations raised with both works are widely
different.
In the final analysis, the core of literary success is adequacy.
Adequacy to subject matter, to the format of the story, to the
conventions of tradition, to the medium chosen by the artist for
self-expression, and, more than anything, adequacy to the expectations
of the reading public, who, if well informed and discriminating, would
never make the mistake of approaching Perrault as if he were James
Joyce. There isn´t the same set of expectations.
What, if any, would be the set of expectations a well informed
sympathetic public would require of faerytales? This was solved almost
60 years ago by Russian scholar V. Propp, who attempted to analyze
("deconstruct" in modern jargon ) Russian folk tales, and came with a
successful notion that stemmed from the core of Levi-Strauss´structural
analysis of literature: folk tales, one of whose better known
manifestations are faerytales, are best understood if broken down in
component parts ("motifs") and standard patterns of storytelling
("conventions"), and then studied as reassemblings and rearrangings of
matter.This amounts to say that the success of a faerytale lies not in
ORIGINALITY (a wildly mistaken notion if applied to folk traditional
literature), but in original, well adapted REARRANGING of previously
existing motifs. The way to capture the audience´s attention in
faerytales, as folk fiction, wouldn´t be to shock them with original
bold strokes of genius or twisted plots: rather it would be creating the
RIGHT expectations in your public, and then satisfying them by careful
handling and reassembling of perfectly known (let us stress that the
public is perfectly aware of the traditional features of faerytales and
thus knows what to expect) traditional matter (motifs and conventions).
There is such a thing as a grammar of motifs, and it is up to the
competent writer deconstructing his or her storyplot into funtional
units or patterns, and rearrange them according to such grammar. That´s
the beauty of tradition: you can always rely in the past, and have a
semblance of peace knowing that, at least in THAT instance, the world
sticks to what you know of it. Such is the tremendous force of literary
convention, as any reader of Homer would acknowledge.
Let us put an example: what would someone with the right set of
expectations (that is, someone who isn´t as uninformed as to mistake
Snow White for the Marquis of Sade´s Justine) expect to receive from a
faerytale? If I might speak from personal experience, two very simple
and very difficult things: immediate (as oposed to mediate) enjoyment,
and pristine innocence of narration. If I want complexity, I´d much
rather stick to Ulysses than to Cinderella. The summum of complexity,
though, is simplicity: does anybody still think that W. Blake is plain?
Let us take Clara "Euphoria" Gerl´s Child of Magick, Child of Eve. It is
a traditional story with a traditional handling of motifs traditionally
arranged: a half-fae girl is sent to Earth in desperate circumstances
and ends up with her memory erased. Soon it transpires that she is the
promised messiah and redeemer of her people, the Seelie, and the
chastener and executioner judge of the Unseelie, who are cast en masse
to Hell, without inquiring for their motives or their individual
behaviour. Is it wrong or unoriginal or failed because of that? The
question is, to my eyes, absolutely misapplied. The right question would
be: Is the story ADEQUATE to the set of expectations the authoress has
raised in her public? Is the story built with the RIGHT handling of
motifs?
My answer would be yes. Yes because the authoress never once leads her
public astray: she makes crystal clear from the very beginning her
intentions: a traditional story traditionally built. .
If one is let
down by such intentions, by the apparent naiveté of the black and white
contrast of the Thoroughly Bid Bad Unseelie (as a whole) vs. the
Thoroughly Good Angelic Seelie (as a whole), one is simply paying no
attention to the story, and failing to recognize its elements. If one
is distressed by the apparent lack of complexity, of nuance, that would
be a matter of individual TASTE, not a matter of the authoress´ flawed
STORYTELLING, since she has made her intentions and the direction the
story takes clear from the beginning. In case one wants twisted
unexpected handling of traditional material (in its way, a device as
clishéd as the stark black and white division of good and evil: as
stories go, nowadays I can´t feel confident to say that it is more
original or shocking or whatever to cast the good as bad and the bad as
good, than the other way round. I feel rather that it is much more bold
for modern writers to stick to such clear cut divisions with sure-handed
technique, than to fall without critic discrimination in the all too
common expedient of "there´s no black and white, there´s infinite shades
of grey"), one would be well adviced to turn to the Marquis of Sade or
Sacher-Masoch.
One last word: would anyone accuse the medieval innocent, wonderful
Vitae Sanctorum, among whose traditionally demanded features was the
damnation of the wicked en masse, without individuality, without
catering for motivation or extenuating circumstances, of lacking NUANCE
or of being too predictable? That´s the beauty of it, precisely: they
answer flawlessly to the expectations of THEIR public. Of course, if I
want a different handling of the same story, I shouldn´t turn my
attention to Vitae Sanctorum: I should read Papini´s Gog. Or Anne Rice
for that matter. I shouldn´t make the mistake of asking of Andersen´s
The queen of Frost the very same gloom it has the book by Martín Gaite
with the very same title.
So please let us not blame the authors, when maybe we are to blame for
not having read their directions and intentions correctly. If you are
enamoured of simplicity, elegancy, innocence and utter joy, if you still
marvel at the world and wonder at how everything falls into place in a
mysterious manner, like a child would, then faerytales are your thing.
Please let your analytical grown up mind aside and enter the realm of
eternal childhood. This is the Eden of innocence.
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