Beauty dines with the Beast in an illustration by Anne Anderson (Photo credit: Wikipedia
My last two posts were an analysis of a fable by Jean de La Fontaine, “L’Ours et l’amateur des jardins,” “The Bear and the Gardener.” The corresponding fable by Æsop is entitled “The Bald Man and the Fly,” but the fable reflects Le Livre des lumières ou La Conduite des roys, fables by Bidpai.
You may remember that I could not find the fable’s Perry Index number. I simply forgot that Aesop’s corresponding fable was entitled “The Bald Man and the Fly.” It is numbered 525 in the Perry Index. For information on fables,Laura Gibbs’Bestiaria Latinais the site one visits. Æsop and his numerous followers are Laura’s area of specialization.
Animals in Literature: a Project
This post is a progress report. Several years ago, I had to prepare a course on animals in literature during a sabbatical leave I was devoting to my book on Molière. I taught the course and have continue researching the subject, but the effort ended my career.
However, I have written so many posts on Animals in Literature that they should be listed on a page. There are gaps to fill. As for the texts, many are on the internet, such as the collections of fables I listed on 2 March 2017. Would that there had been an entry on Beast Literature or Animals in Literature, when I prepared my course.
Fables and Fairy Tales: Anthropomorphism and Metamorphoses
Our starting-point will be a clarification of the concept of anthropomorphism. Animals in literature are human beings in disguise. I have already written a post on this subject, but it has been refurbished. But metamorphoses, many of which were told by Roman poet Ovid, are also central to both fables and fairy tales. Ovid’s Metamorphoses has been the source of a large number of literary works.
A year ago, I wrote a post on Magical Realism and used Marc Chagall as an example of a strange blend of the real and the unreal and, the “unreal.” I then quoted Professor Matthew Strecher. Magical or magic realism is “what happens when a highly detailed, realistic setting is invaded by something too strange to believe.”[1]
Apuleius‘ (c. 125 – c. 180 CE) Golden Ass features magic realism. The Golden Ass is a short novel and the only novel to have come down to us from Greco-Roman antiquity. It has an ‘outer tale’ within which are inserted several ‘inner tales,’ called “digressions,” most of which reflect the ‘outer tale,’ with the possible exception of Cupid and Psyche.
The story of Cupid and Psyche is a subject-matter borrowed from Greco-Roman mythology (See RELATED ARTICLES, below) Cupid (in Latin, ‘desire’) makes himself invisible, an underlying wish in most human beings, and flies to Milet with strict instructions from his mother Venus, the goddess of love and the Roman counterpart to Greek mythology’s Aphrodite, to kill Psyche, called Psyches in Apuleius’ novel. The story resembles a fairy tale. Instead of killing Psyche, Cupid takes her to a castle, they make love, and she eventually becomes an immortal.
Although Cupid is a winged creature as is Eros, one of the Greek primordial gods and the god of love, Cupid, Cupidon in French, never quite rises to the stature of Eros and is not a god in Roman mythology. In Greek mythology, Eros’ name is associated with eroticism (sensuality and sexuality). However, Cupid belongs to Jean-Antoine Watteau(10 October 1684 – 18 July 1721) ethereal Pilgrimage to Cythera, a painting in which Watteau all but created the fête galante or fête champêtre.
Eroticism (adj. erotic) is a word associated with Greek mythology’s Eros. As for Cupid, he hovers above as lovers exchange vows waiting for the ship that will take them to Cythera, the birthplace of Venus, a locus amœnus. He is the little “angel” whose arrows make people ‘fall in love.’ There is very little room for Cupid in angelology, the study of angels, but Cupid has wings, as does Pegasus, and he is a rather lovely departure from the realm of angels. Falling in love, in amorous literature, is like falling ill. Once stricken by one of Cupidon‘s (FR) arrows, one cannot recover.
Mise en Abyme or the Droste Phenomenon
In literature, in-set tales are usually linked to the outer tale. Sometimes, a teller makes a story-teller tell the tale. This technique is sometimes called a “mise en abyme,”[2] but in the visual arts, such an effect is the image within the image, repeated ad infinitum. It is the box within the box, within the box. There is no end to that picture. It is a vanishing point: a point de fuite. (See Cupid and Psyche, Wikipedia.)
The woman holds an object bearing a smaller image of her holding the same object, which in turn bears a smaller image of her holding the same object, and so on. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Mise en abyme: the Mirror Effect
Mise en abyme is perhaps better called the picture within the picture or the mirror effect. The concept was presented to me when I studied the fine arts. We were discussing the Arnolfini Portrait. In Jan van Eyck‘s (before c. 1390 – before c. 9 July 1441) painting, a small round mirror reflects the larger picture and gives it dimensionality. We see the people the Arnolfini couple are looking at, one of whom may be the artist. We also see the objects that are behind the Arnolfini couple, not all of which belong together.
For instance, the frame of the mirror has images showing the passion of Christ. Moreover, the head of the bed features a carving reminiscent of a misericord showing two elements, one of which is a winged animal (zoomorphism) There is a tassel and a set of beads. I think these objects are symbols. Jan van Eyck‘s rather large signature is on the wall: writing on the wall!
Genre Painting and Illusionism
The Arnolfini Portrait is one of the visual arts’ most intriguing and complex images. It includes oranges, a little dog, slippers, a window, an oriental rug, a chandelier, a bed… These are the mostly ordinary elements of genre painting[4]. The Arnolfini Portrait may in fact be the first example of “genre” painting. However, the convex mirror creates a mise en abyme, which may serve illusionism or mimesis.[5] According to Wikipedia, it is a painting that gives the impression that the artist “shares the physical space with the viewer.” (See Illusionism, Wikipedia.)
There can be no doubt that the artist strives to create as representative an image as possible. However, techniques are required to guide the eye, such as “trompe-l’oeil,” literally “to fool the eye,” or foreshortening which “is basically concerned with the persuasive projection of a form in an illusionistic way, it is a type of perspective.”[6] There had been little depth or dimensionality to previous paintings and these had not featured mise en abyme: one little convex mirror that does “shar[e] the physical space with the viewer.”
The Arnolfini Portrait (detail), Jan van Eyck (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Conclusion
The Arnolfini Portrait dates back to 1434, an early date, but a time when Flanders was part of the Duchy of Burgundy and the cultural hub of Europe. There was a Giovanni di Nicolao Arnolfini (c. 1400 – after 1452). He was an Italian merchant from Lucca, Tuscany, who lived in Bruges with other members of his family. He traded in fabrics and the manner in which he and his wife are dressed demonstrates wealth. Both are wearing fur-lined garments. Arnolfini’s wife is not pregnant, but is holding her “full-skirted dress.” (See Jan van Eyck, The National Gallery, UK). It was customary at that time in history to receive guests in a bedroom.
The Golden Ass is an outer story with inner stories called “digressions,” but these stories within the story, may be mises en abyme. The Golden Ass was first entitled Metamorphoses, but Augustine of Hippo gave it its current title. Ovid‘s (20 March 43 BCE – 17/18 CE) Metamorphoses is the better-known Metamorphoses and one of world literature’s most influential texts. However, The Golden Ass is an ancestor to such authors as Chaucer (see Apuleius’ Cupid and Psyche, RELATED ARTICLES below) and its tales within tales may also make it an ancestor to mise en abyme.
If a text is penned by one author, the same author, can there be such a thing as a true digression? It could be a subtle reflection of the text, a mise en abyme. It is all so mysterious.
As for the Arnolfini Portrait, its mirror is the instrument of a mise en abyme and a possible key to its meaning.
The term “mise en abyme” originates in heraldry. André Gide is credited for its first use in literature.
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[1]Matthew C. Strecher, “Magical Realism and the Search for Identity in the Fiction of Murakami Haruki,” Journal of Japanese Studies (Volume 25, Number 2 [Summer 1999], pp. 263-298) p. 267.
[2]Lucien Dällenbach, Le Récit spéculaire. Essai sur la mise en abyme (Paris, Seuil, 1977).
According to Professor Matthew Strecher’s magic realism is “what happens when a highly detailed, realistic setting is invaded by something too strange to believe.”[1]Magical Realism is a main characteristic of Latin-American literature, but it has gained adherent elsewhere and it is not new. It present readers with a juxtaposition of what is usually considered the “real,” the “unreal,” and the “surreal.” An angel just may enter a room and play a role in a fictitious text. (See Magic Magic Realism, Wikipedia,)
The author of Wikipedia’s entry on magic realism states that “[t]his critical perspective towards magical realism as a conflict between reality and abnormality stems from the Western reader’s dissociation with mythology, a root of magical realism more easily understood by non-Western cultures.” (See Magic realism, Wikipedia)
Marc Chagall
In the visual arts, Marc Chagall (6 July 1887 – 28 March 1985) presents us with better examples of what could be called “magical realism,” whatever “school” his paintings are attached to. In the so-called “real” world, people seldom float in mid-air. But the world is not always real and the human imagination pushes its limits. We know that angels do not exist, but we nevertheless make room for them. In fact, we swear on the Bible, in which, ironically, angels dwell.
Apuleius‘ (c. 125 – c. 180 CE) Golden Ass is a novel, the first novel we have inherited in its entirety from Greco-Roman antiquity. First entitled Metamorphoses, the novel was renamed by Augustine of Hippo (St. Augustine). It is rather lewd, but The Tale of Cupid and Psyche isn’t, and mere mortals mix with immortal gods. This may confirm that magical realism has replaced mythology, but it may not.
It consists of a frame story and inner stories called “digressions.” One of these digressions, the third, The Tale of Cupid and Psyche, belongs to mythology and is a distant forerunner of magical realism in that its dramatis personæ includes mortals and immortals who mingle informally. Venus, the immortal Roman goddess of love, whose Greek counterpart is Aphrodite, is featured next to Psyche’s father and seems a mere mortal.
In The Golden Ass, Lucius is transformed into a donkey, which normally is not possible. Metamorphoses belong to a realm most would look upon as “unreal.” It is fantasy. Yet Ovid‘s (20 March 43 BCE – 17/18 CE), Metamorphoses is one of Western culture’s most influential books. Human beings do not float in mid-air, with the exception of astronauts, nor can they fly, but the human imagination can imagine another reality and that reality possesses a form of “truth.”
It remains, however, that Apuleius’ mythological third digression, The Tale of Cupid and Psyche, is pure fiction. Psyches lives in a world where gods and mere mortals mingle, which is not possible outside fiction. Consequently, The Tale of Cupid and Psyche seems an instance of magical realism avant la lettre, i.e. before the term was coined.
For instance, early in the narrative, Psyches’ father, who would like his unfortunate daughter to find a suitable husband, went to Milet, an ancient Greek city, now found in Turkey, and called Miletus, “to receive the Oracle of Apollo, where he made his prayers and offered sacrifice, and desired a husband for his daughter whose elder daughters are married to kings.” Although Apollo is a Greek god, he replies in Latin and says:
Let Psyches corps be clad in mourning weed
And set on rock of yonder hill aloft:
Her husband is no wight of humane seed,
But Serpent dire and fierce as might be thought.
Who flies with wings above in starry skies,
And doth subdue each thing with firie flight.
The gods themselves, and powers that seem so wise,
With mighty Jove [Jupiter] be subject to his might,
The rivers blacke, and deadly flouds of paineAnd darkness eke, as thrall to him remaine.
(Apuleius, The Golden Asse, Book 4, Chapter 22
Translated by William Adlington
The Gutenberg Project [EBook #1666])
Having heard the Oracle, Psyches’ father does take her up a hill and sets her “on rock of yonder hill aloft” where she is left “weeping and trembling,” but is “blowne by the gentle aire and of shrilling Zephyrus, and carried from the hill with a meek winde, which retained her garments up, and by little and little bought her downe into a deepe valley, where she was laid in a bed of most sweet and fragrant flowers.”
Instead of taking her where “she may fall in love with the most miserablest [that word should be reinvented] creature living,” as Venus has asked Cupid, Venus’ son, makes himself invisible and has the wind “Zephyrus” transport her to a “bed of most sweet and fragrant flowers.” Here again, we have an example of magical realism, even if Psyches is “clad in mourning weed,” which suggests that she has died. However, her sisters, mortals, visit her.
The “fairy tale” begins and, after the compulsory tasks—three in most fairy tales—have been performed, Psyches is transformed into a goddess, which may be her rightful self. In the “real” world, she is the victim of envy. In fact, Venus herself, a goddess who mingles with mortals, which is magical realism, is so envious of her that she wants her destroyed. However, In fact, Venus herself, a goddess who mingles with mortals, which is magical realism, is so envious of her that she wants her destroyed. However, as the most beautiful woman in the world, Psyches is an oddity, so her becoming a goddess seems appropriate.
The Golden Legend
We may have forgotten the names of the god and goddesses of mythology. However, the human imagination is such that if mythology did not exist humans would probably invent a replacement, such as magical realism. The bestseller of the Middle Ages was not the Bible, but Jacobus de Voragine’s fanciful Golden Legend(LegendaAurea), an embellished hagiography or telling of the lives of saints, in general, and martyrs (martyrologies), in particular.
[1] Matthew C. Strecher, “Magical Realism and the Search for Identity in the Fiction of Murakami Haruki,” Journal of Japanese Studies, Volume 25, Number 2 (Summer 1999), pp. 263-298, at 267.
Interestingly, in Jean de La Fontaine’s La Chatte métamorphosée en femme, a metamorphosis is used to show that metamorphoses are not possible, at least not altogether. In other words, in The Cat Metamorphosed into a Maid, La Fontaine uses a metamorphosis, his exemplum, to demonstrate that nature is mostly immutable. A cat is cat and remains a cat, despite appearances, and a woman is a woman and remains a woman, despite appearances.
Seventeenth-Century France
In seventeenth-century France, particularly after the Fronde, the aristocrats and honnêtes hommes[iii] who gathered in the salons of refined women gave free rein to fantasy and would eventually create children’s literature, but nature reigned supreme, not to mention Cartesian reason and absolutism. Absolutism had taken their power away from the highest ranked aristocrats. It was a time when one had to heed Horace’s advice: “Limit your desires” (Epistles, Book I, ii, lines 55–71), but the cast of our fable seems not to have known Horace.
La Fontaine’s fable, entitled La Chatte métamorphosée en femme (II. xviii), is about a metamorphosis — a cat is “successfully” transformed into a woman — the purpose of which, i.e. the metamorphosis, is to tell that a metamorphosis is not possible, which is somewhat paradoxical. The metamorphosis that has occurred goes amiss. In other words, the exemplum shows that, if taken away, what nature has ordained, le naturel, will always return. As the French proverb goes: Chassez [chase away] le naturel, il revient au galop [it comes galloping back]. So our cat has been turned into a woman, but the woman’s instincts, the core, are those of a cat. Let us read the fables.
La Fontaine: The Cat Metamorphosed into a Maid
In The Cat Metamorphosed into a Maid(simply click on the title to read the fable) (La Chatte métamorphosée en femme), a man so loves his cat that he wants to transform her into a woman using every trick: from tears and prayers, to charms and magic. This man succeeds in transforming his cat into a woman, but the moment she hears mice, our newly fashioned woman is crawling on the floor chasing them, but without instilling fear in the mice. Our former cat looks like a woman, so the mice have no reason to fear her in the least. Appearances are deceptive.
La Fontaine, however, does not tell us the rest of the story, i.e. what happens to the cat-woman. He simply writes a moral according to which one cannot change: “Old habits die hard.” It is as Horace wrote:
Limit your desires (Horace, Epistles, Book I, ii, lines 55-71)
A jar will long retain the odor of what it was
Dipped in when new.
(lines 69-70)
The Delights of Nature (Horace, Epistles,Book I. x, lines 1-25)Drive Nature off with a pitchfork, she’ll still press back,And secretly burst in triumph through your sad disdain.
(lines 24-25)
Æsop: Venus and the Cat
La Fontaine’s narrative resembles its source, Æsop‘s fable entitled Venus and the Cat or The Cat and Venus. This time, however, the cat herself wishes to be metamorphosed into a woman because she is in love with a man. Roles have therefore been reversed: the man is a cat. Consequently, La Fontaine’s fable is a mirror image of its sources which would be, first, Névelet or Isaaci Nicolai Neveleti’s Mythologia Aesopica (Frankfurt, 1610), a retelling of Æsop, and, second, Æsop’s own Venus and the Cat.
In Venus and the Cat, our enamoured cat so wishes to become a woman that she asks Venus, the goddess of love, called Aphrodite in Roman mythology, to turn her into a woman. The goddess Venus obliges but, when night falls or “one day,” curiosity leads her to the bride’s chamber where she places a mouse in the middle of the room. The woman leaps out of bed and goes chasing after the mouse. Contrary to La Fontaine, Aesop provides a full narrative, leaving little to the imagination. A disappointed Venus turns the woman back into a cat, which seems a form of punishment. V. S. Vernon Jones’ translation of Venus and the Cat is as follows:
Gutenberg (EBook #11339) V. S. Vernon Jones,TranslatorG. K.Chesterton, IntroductionArthur Rackham, Illustrator
“A Cat fell in love with a handsome young man, and begged the goddess Venus to change her into a woman. Venus was very gracious about it, and changed her at once into a beautiful maiden, whom the young man fell in love with at first sight and shortly afterwards married. One day Venus thought she would like to see whether the Cat had changed her habits as well as her form; so she let a mouse run loose in the room where they were. Forgetting everything, the young woman had no sooner seen the mouse than up she jumped and was after it like a shot: at which the goddess was so disgusted that she changed her back again into a Cat.”
Æsop (c. 620–564 BC)
La Fontaine’s Moral: Horace, Epistles Book I. x, 1-25
The editor of my copy of La Fontaine, Fables et Contes is quite right. The moral of La Fontaine’s fable is linked with Horace’s first book of Epistles or Letters. However, it is related to both Book I, ii, 55-71, and Book 1, x, 1-25. We may in fact have a translation for “Chassez le naturel, il revient au galop[,]” which would be: “Drive Nature off with a pitchfork, she’ll still press[.]” (HoraceEpistles, Book I, x, line 24). The two relevant morals are the above-mentioned Horatian:
A jar will long retain the odor of what it was
Dipped in when new.
Drive Nature off with a pitchfork, she’ll still press back,And secretly burst in triumph through your sad disdain.
Æsop’s Moral: “Nature will out”
In La Fontaine’s version of Æsop’s Venus and the Cat or The Cat and Venus, the moral is largely implicit, yet clear. However, some translations of Aesop’s version and the source of La Fontaine’s fable end with an explicit moral. As he concludes his 1887 Cat and Venus, author-translatorGeorge Fyler Townsendwrites that “Nature exceeds nurture.” Similarly,Joseph Jacobs‘ 1894 The Cat-Maiden ends on the proverbial:“Nature will out.”[iv]
Alishman does not include La Fontaine’s Cat Metamorphosed into a Maid in his list of fables classified as Aarne-Thompson-Uther Type 2031. Type 2031’s chief fable is The Mouse Who Was to Marry the Sun. La Fontaine’s cat is changed into a woman and the mouse, into a woman, but this motif is that of another fable by entitled The Mouse metamorphosed into a Girl (IV:vii), published in La Fontaine’s 1678 collection of fables, his second volume of fables a volume that reflects the influence of Le Livre des lumières ou la conduite des roys(The Book of Enlightenment or the Conduct of Kings), a French translation of fables by Bidpai, originating in the Sanskrit Panchatantra(Pañcatantra)and Arabic Kalīlah wa Dimnah, written by Persian scholar Ibn al-Muquaffa’. This one fable is in fact taking us all the way to Japan.
