Читать книгу In Search of the Swan Maiden - Barbara Fass Leavy - Страница 8

This study was originally intended as a companion to my book on the adoption by many nineteenth-century European writers of the fairy mistress theme (La Belle Dame sans Merci and the Aesthetics of Romanticism). The new work would treat the fairy’s male counterpart, a bel homme sans merci, so to speak. But despite Coleridge’s woman wailing for her demon lover, the fatal man does not often assume his supernatural form. Scott’s Ravenswood, Brontë’s Heathcliff, Lermontov’s Pechorin are rationalized versions of the demon lover—too human, too much of this world to bear the symbolic weight that emerges from the supernatural in literature. I would later discover the extent of my error in surmising that demon lovers were less prevalent than their female counterparts in the world’s narratives, that marriages to fairy women were ubiquitous, unions with fairy men relatively rare. These early speculations, however, focused my attention on gender, and when, eventually, literature moved to the background, folklore to the foreground of my research, I concluded that the stories I was collecting and trying to understand were virtual allegories of gender relations. With surprise I discovered myself in a scholarly otherworld, a literary critic “poaching”¹ on a foreign and not always hospitable territory. The domain of folklore required that I at least make an effort to adapt to a new discipline.

As I began to collect the folklore of the supernatural man, I frequently encountered a figure I already knew but had excluded from my earlier book as seeming to be outside my concerns. She is another kind of belle dame sans merci, one who, despite the many forms she assumes, is generically known as the swan maiden. Her story is that of a being from a supernatural realm who is constrained to marry, keep house for, and bear children to a mortal man because he retains her animal covering, an article of clothing, or some other possession without which she cannot return to the otherworld. When she regains her prized belonging, she flees her husband and children.

The swan maiden story is told in legends, in narratives supposedly depicting real events, their veracity accepted or questioned by those who narrate and listen to the legends,² and it is told in fairy tales, assumed to be fictions—which does not mean, however, that the stories exist only to entertain. It is arresting to discover that when the legendary captured fairy bride escapes from woman’s traditional role, she rarely comes back to her human family, and that it is mainly in the fairy tale that the swan maiden will be reconciled to her husband or be disenchanted by him in order to live as a human being in his world. The swan maiden story has been interpreted as depicting exogamous marriages, describing “the pitiable lot of a girl from another tribe and territory who has been trapped into an unsuitable union through the guile and strength of a man.” That the tale thus focuses on the woman’s side of the story has led to the surmise that “its first tellers may have been women.”³ My argument is a more radical and inclusive variation of this speculation: I will propose that the swan maiden tale could at one time be found in virtually every corner of the world because in most of the cultures that retained it and that were reflected in its variants, woman was a symbolic outsider, was the other,⁴ and marriage demanded an intimate involvement in a world never quite her own. The stories’ themes depict this estrangement.

This is not to argue that a woman who told the swan maiden’s story was necessarily conscious of telling her own. Vincent Crapanzano has pointed out about his work on demon marriages in Morocco that a modern, particularly a Western, listener who hears the folktales of Morocco will be convinced that the storyteller has achieved a contemporary insight that in fact would not be forthcoming if the storyteller were asked to explain the meaning of the folklore material.⁵ Even rarer would be a storyteller whose narratives were shaped by a conscious theory concerning the function of folklore. It is one thing for some anthropologists and folklorists to contend that narratives allow a socially approved safety valve for the release of the tensions that arise in conflicts between individuals and their societies,⁶ and quite another to find storytellers who could explain that this is what they proposed to do. It is not my purpose here to formulate or even to employ a theory about the relationship of narrative to truth or reality. Nonetheless, I will assume that folktales have meaning, that this meaning is profound, and that since narrators vary greatly with regard to intelligence, perception, and self-consciousness, folktales are often replete with a storyteller’s deep insight into significant human concerns. Whether an illiterate as well as unsung genius in some country graveyard would be capable of the psychological depth argued for in the following chapters remains, of course, one of the controversies surrounding folklore studies.

Drawing on the work of David E. Bynum, I will moreover contend that the pattern that emerges from variants of the same basic story reveals often profound meanings not found in a single version.⁷ Such a pattern is ultimately an individual creation; and I am quite aware that although I try to bring to this study of the swan maiden the objectivity of one who respects the scholarly requirement of scrupulous research and sound argument, I am nonetheless creating my own narrative. Modern theory would have it that all acts of interpretation involve recreating the text, but I usually resist the most radical forms of this premise. For example, I have never asked myself (nor encouraged my students to ask themselves) how my interpretation of “La Belle Dame sans Merci” is effectively my own (valid) reinscribing of Keats’s poem. Rather, I have endeavored to understand how ambiguities in the ballad are reflected in the scholarly debate concerning Keats’s work, both text and critics implicated in interpretation. In my search for the swan maiden, however, in my attempt to locate meaning not in one version of her tale but in what what Stith Thompson has called her “kaleidoscopic variations,”⁸ I am actively participating in the process of storymaking.

Today, when the once ubiquitous swan maiden is known mainly because Tchaikovsky put a variant of her story on the ballet stage, the tale of the dissatisfied housewife who manages to escape domestic life speaks to one of the persistent problems of contemporary life. Ibsen used the swan maiden as a model for Nora, whose escape from her doll house commences soon after her maid finds the seemingly lost costume in which Nora will dance the tarantella for the delectation and status of that archetypal patriarch, her husband, Torvald Helmer. Nora’s irrevocable slamming of the door on her marriage parallels the swan maiden’s flight, and Helmer’s hope that she may return parallels the usually vain expectancy of folklore husbands who search for their vanished fairy wives (see chapter 8). For contemporary feminists, Nora is the prototype of the liberated woman. From the perspective of folklore, however, the runaway wives and mothers who today are followed not by their husbands but by detectives their spouses hire, may be acting out what was once a widespread and surprisingly well-developed fantasy.⁹ Occasionally my reader will be catapulted out of the fairy realm into the contemporary world not only because the stories illuminate modern predicaments often described in terms reminiscent of a long-forgotten folklore tradition but also because the modern situation highlights the ubiquity and age-old nature of the fantasy.

Two of the world’s most popular (and interrelated) story groups will thus form the core of this book. Wendy Doniger has described the

simultaneous existence of two … paradigms (present in early layers of both the Indo-European and the substratum of non-Indo-European cultures)…. The myth of the mortal male and immortal female (the king and the mare, the swan maiden and the prince) … [and] the myth of the immortal male and the mortal female (the stallion and the queen, Leda and the swan). As the patterns interact, the immortal female often mimics the behavior of the female in the other model—the mortal female.¹⁰

Insofar as the swan maiden can be distinguished from the imperious enchantress found, for example, in Celtic myth and folklore, and the seductive demon lover can be distinguished from the yearning beast who wants to receive a woman’s kiss to become human, there are, in fact, at least four paradigms.¹¹ The goddess who lures her Tannhäuser into the Venusberg is, again, one about whom I have already written at length, and whom I differentiate from the swan maiden. The Venus-type will not be entirely absent from the following pages, but my focus of attention has shifted. I once invoked Heinrich Heine’s ironic account of the goddess’s domestication, but at that time “domestication” generally indicated the assimilation of the divine and the imaginative into the mundane.¹² This time, domestic life will be explored as a more literal theme in folklore.

In each narrative group that forms the core of my present study there exists a human wed to or mated with a supernatural being, the human for one reason or another losing and subsequently attempting to recover the immortal spouse. The Cupid and Psyche variant on the demon lover theme (Tale Type 425) has recently claimed the attention of feminist critics, who argue (mistakenly, I will contend) that because Psyche undertakes the difficult trip to find Cupid, she is an active character, a potential role model for contemporary women, a contrast to the passive sleeping beauties who await a prince’s kiss to awaken them to life. Be this as it may (see chapter 4), the swan maiden stories (part of Tale Type 400),¹³ which depict the husband’s comparable attempt to win back his fairy wife, have not received the same kind of attention. As recently as five years ago it was claimed that “modern scholars have not known what to do with the swan maiden.”¹⁴

Folklorists who have juxtaposed or compared the two narrative groups have, moreover, tended to do so in misleading ways. First, they deal with the genders of the otherworldly partners as if no significant thematic changes would follow from the difference. Some have actually said as much, although, admittedly, their work predates the era of women’s studies.¹⁵ Second, although Tale Types 400 and 425 are described as though the attempt to win back the lost supernatural spouse were the core episode, scholars either do not note or certainly do not follow the implications of the following: whereas Psyche is usually reconciled to her husband, the mortal man typically cannot recover the swan maiden.¹⁶ His failure is particularly ironic given the insight of Torborg Lundell, who points to a gender-based bias in folklore indexes and types. According to Aarne’s and Thompson’s accepted classifications, the mortal man quests for his lost wife; the mortal woman merely searches for her missing husband.¹⁷ A feature of the animal bride tales can, moreover, be added to Lundell’s analysis. Frog princes usually receive their liberating kisses from compliant heroines, whereas many a frog princess has been stranded by a reluctant man too cowardly or too repelled to embrace her¹⁸ (see chapter 6). But outside the specialized realm of folklore studies, not many know there are frog princess tales. If Walt Disney Studios really wanted to produce a fairy tale with feminist implications, why did they not adapt one of the many stories that could be designated—if awkwardly—Handsome and the Beastess?

In journeys to find their lost spouses, folklore searchers encounter both adversarial and helpful figures who affect the stories’ outcomes. My next chapter will reveal how my quest for the swan maiden placed me in a similar position. I nonetheless owe a debt to almost all the folklorists and critics with whom I directly or indirectly engage in dialogue, even those with whom I do not agree. But I would like especially to acknowledge those whose influence was particularly important, some of whom I have only read, some with whom I have met or corresponded, and some of whom are friends.

It is with deep regret and sorrow that I must posthumously acknowledge the great help and deep influence of the late Bengt Holbek of the department of folklore at the University of Copenhagen. He had been supportive of my endeavors to work with folklore from the time he read the early version of my coauthored book on folklore in Ibsen. He told me he had himself long been fascinated with swan maidens and read an early version of this work, conveying to me his enjoyment but also supplying a long list of “buts” that I have endeavored to take into consideration. I wish that his marginal comments, some of which were his own ruminations on the folktales, others of which were the challenges of a great folklorist to a would-be student of folklore, could be reproduced. Holbek’s own treatise The Interpretation of Fairy Tales is from my point of view the most important book on the subject ever written as well as one of the finest works on folklore. Since its appearance in 1987, I have been unable to decide whether its earlier publication could have saved me years of trying to work through problems of folklore methodology, or whether I really needed to go through the process itself in order to write this book. I will sorely miss the letters Bengt and I exchanged on how to read folktales and on our lives and interests.

The generous help of Tristram Potter Coffin goes back to our correspondence on Ibsen and Child ballad 243, “The Demon Lover.” Coffin has read parts of this book, and although he might not endorse all the liberties I have taken with folklore, he has not wavered in his attempt to be helpful and has encouraged me with his general interest in what I was trying to do. Without his book The British Traditional Ballad in North America I could not have so easily consulted the many texts I used for my analysis of the “Demon Lover” ballad. My debt to Alan Dundes goes back to his evaluation of my proposal for a book on folklore in Ibsen’s late plays. Since that work grew out of my studies of the swan maiden, I took his positive remarks as encouragement for the longer-term project. Moreover, he is one of those folklorists who is encouraging the interpretation of folklore. David E. Bynum has already been cited for his influence, his work helping me to make coherent to myself my own way of constructing the narrative that constitutes this book. William A. Lessa’s study of the swan (porpoise) maiden of Oceania contains what I hold to be the best analysis of the story available to those who are interested in meanings. His composite portrait of the swan maiden is one that I have used throughout the following chapters.

Since part of my inquiry has to do with the feminist implications of the swan maiden tale, and since I am a woman writing on this subject, I became particularly sensitive to how other women were treating the subject. I have avoided polemics, however, trying to discern voices from the past without the often ideological filter of feminist criticism. Nevertheless, I would like to acknowledge my debt to three female scholars who had a major impact on my reading of folktales. Annette Kolodny’s argument concerning men’s failure to create adequate models by which to define themselves (The Lay of the Land) influenced, if indirectly, my chapter on Orpheus. My friend Elaine Hoffman Baruch has over the past several years been more directly involved in women’s studies than I, and has shared her experiences in that area. My final pages on Ibsen’s portrayal of Nora draw on her fine study of A Doll House. And I am especially indebted to Wendy Doniger, not only for her enormous scholarly knowledge but also for the example of her willingness to dare to speculate if necessary to illuminate the significance of what she knows. As the quotation above as well as quotations in following chapters reveal, she is very familiar with swan maidens, demon lovers, and animal brides and grooms—a book about which could be gleaned from her work. Wherever I do not cite a specific published source by Holbek, Coffin, and Doniger, the ideas attributed to them were conveyed to me in private correspondence and conversations.

Many people helped me while I worked on this project. Per Schelde (Jacobsen) and I first became acquainted when he translated for me Holmström’s monograph on the swan maiden. From that early association came a book on folklore in Ibsen’s late plays, which we wrote as I continued to pursue swan maidens, and he read the earliest version of this study in which all I wanted to do was get down on paper what was still only in my mind and on my note cards, when I had little concern for unity and coherence. He has also served as my advisor on anthropological matters. Fred Kaplan took time from his biography of Henry James to help me edit my own big baggy monster; following his advice, I was able to shorten my narrative to manageable proportions. Edward G. Fichtner translated for me and supplied commentary on the Helgi and Kara episode in the Icelandic Edda (see chapter 6). William S. Wilson supplied me with lively conversation and correspondence concerning the social and aesthetic implications of fair and dark ladies, of Odette and Odile, who have come to be characterized as white and black swans. Bette S. Weidman shared with me her interest in and knowledge of the culture and lore of native North American tribes.

David H. Richter persistently encouraged me not to be daunted by methodological problems. For many years, Robert P. Miller and I had lively conversations about loathly ladies: his work on the medieval hag has influenced mine on the romantic shapeshifter. It has also been many years since Charles Dahlberg pointed out to me that “belle dame sans merci” means not only “beautiful lady without pity” but also “beautiful lady without grace.” In that duality, I believe, lies the key to the ambiguity that informs so many of the world’s supernatural enchantresses, and I have always been grateful for this insight into the double aspects of their character.

Without the vast resources of the New York Public Library, which had the financial luxury of longer hours when I began this project, and without the interlibrary loan section of Queens College’s Rosenthal Library, I would not have had such ready access to the uncountable stories I was able to read. I thank Izabella Taler and Suzanne Katz for their efforts to locate esoteric collections of folk and fairy tales. Once again I would like to express my gratitude to editors at New York University Press. Kitty Moore was the first to read my work in progress and express interest in publishing it; Jason Renker and Despina Papazoglou Gimbel were generous in their expertise and their support. And I thank my friend Anastasia Voutsara Friedman for the gift of her enthusiasm for the book at a time when such positive feedback was particularly welcome.

As I sorted through my thousands of note cards accumulated over many years, I recalled my debt to my late father, Joel Widom, who typed and filed and generally kept order for me. Once again I must offer thanks to my mother, Marion Widom, who taught me to read even before I went to school: I owe to her my early immersion in the world of fairy tales. My first book was dedicated to my children, Linda and Steven, for whom tales from many lands were an intrinsic part of early reading. As three generations of us convey our delight in story to a fourth, Abby, Jennifer, Jessica, Julie, Shelley, and Mandy, I think of my work on fairies, mermaids, and disenchanted beasts, and on woman’s role in folk and fairy tales, as an important legacy to these beloved granddaughters. Finally, on three previous occasions I have thanked my husband Peter B. Leavy for patience and assistance as I wrote a book. He deserves to have this one dedicated to him.

My pursuit of the swan maiden involves my search for stories fascinating in their own right, as well as my quest for understanding about how people use story to depict the conflicts that have existed between the sexes, to express the feelings that arise because of these conflicts, and to comprehend their roles and their lives. Many thousands of people in theaters around the globe continue to watch spellbound the swan maiden who expresses through dance her dependence upon a prince’s strength to deliver her from evil, usually to be betrayed rather than helped by him. If the lovers triumph over wickedness in the end, it is to dwell in some place other than the social world defined by the prince’s court—to bypass, that is, the implications of the prince’s taking Odile for Odette. The lovers’ leap into the swans’ lake is an ominous sign of the difficulty of resolving the conflicts that inform their story.¹⁹ Folklore is replete with similar dualities, substitute brides who reflect the unconscious ambivalence of unsuspecting grooms, and demon lovers who appear to women in the guises of their husbands or lovers. My endeavor is to reconstruct a narrative pattern, to retell, if you will, a story that has acquired special significance for our own time.