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"All
who wander are not lost."—Tolkien
"Everything comes from somewhere."—Rushdie
"The
way to avoid tragedy is to cultivate a sense of it" (Robert
D. Kaplan). Aidan Chamber has said that the classic definition
of story is: "What happens to whom, and why," and
since, as he reminds us, "story is everywhere,"
we need to look everywhere in order to find exactly what it
is for which we should be searching. We should start with
oral tradition, with what Seamus Heaney calls: "the directness
of utterance" by the skalds, bards, jongleurs, troubadours
(and Rushdie's the "Shah of Blah"), and from there
progress through the arts up to the present.
A quest
is a search or pursuit made in order to find or obtain something.
There is a testing of some importance and obstacles to overcome.
The goal or prize could be: The Holy Grail, hidden treasure,
a castle or kingdom or fair maiden. It could well be something
intangible such as: salvation, redemption, revenge, justice,
peace, truth, glory, courage, strength, wisdom, faith, love,
or hope. Sometimes one isn't certain what it is that she/he
seeks. Some fail, others do reach their goal.
The quest
occurs in all types of literature, music, and historic events
the world over, and all forms reflect the historical and cultural
base in which they are embedded. However, there is a universality,
a basic humanism about them all—a transcending core that
resonates with everyone.
The quest
can take the form of a grand and sweeping heroic epic, it
can appear in a short poem, a long narrative, an interior
monologue, a small gem of a fable, a "pourquoi"
story, a nursery rhyme. It can be found in certain films,
television programs, music, plays, opera, novels, and even
rock songs. It can take the form of a chivalric romance, fairytale,
folktale, mythology, legend, or nationalistic or religious
saga. It can be emotionally heavy, or light and airy, and
may contain both elements of tragedy and comedy. (Barzun points
out that the word "tragedy" means "goat song"
and in the Renaissance the word "comedy" meant any
sort of play—drama in general.) He also states that the
epic, thought of as a serious genre, is "often close
to burlesque."
The quest
can be in the form of a cautionary tale, allegory, rules of
conduct, a coming-of-age work or nationalistic propaganda.
It can be gorgeous and soaring in tone, and heartwarming,
whimsical, and quaint, or raw, ugly, and petty—but always
passionate and always magical. It can entertain (hopefully,
always), anger and disturb, instruct and uplift, enchant and
inspire: one should come away thinking, analyzing, considering
and questioning—and be receptive to and expressive about
the core meaning of each story.
In each
instance the characters could be any of the following: druids,
oracles, pookas, banshees, piskies, kelpies, leprechauns,
trolls, elves, menehunes, water sprites, Baba Yagas, dwarves,
goblins, vampires, werewolves, ghosts, wizards, nissers, sorcerers,
ogres, mummies, monsters, fairies, witches, queens, gremlins,
brownies, golems, giants, genies, Black and Tans, angels,
kings, dragons, devils, talking animals, and of course, larger-than-life
heroic warriors (both male and female), their evil human counterparts,
and naturally, a large cast of "common folk" such
as farmers, innkeepers, "hoors," hobbits, beggars,
and children.
Props
include: ancient books and parchments, thunder and fire, magic
swords, cloaks, wooden legs, riddles and runes, shoes and
lamps, talking cats, flying horses, snakes and toads, secret
doorways and curses, spells, passwords, boats, bikes, rafts,
umbrellas, whales, Cadillacs and taxis, dreams, visions, portents
and nightmares, poisons and elixirs, trees and burning bushes,
vast quantities of beer, wine, mead, and weed, and of course,
gold rings.
Because,
on the whole, we in this country have been exposed to mostly
Western Canon, some may not be aware that there is a plenitude
of much admired, and many revered, works of all genres that
come from a global cultural base. Much of Western art, in
fact, is based upon, or drawn from, ancient worldwide customs
and lore.
The
following is not meant by any means to be all-inclusive—the
selections are certainly subjective. If they are top heavy
with works from Great Britain, it is because (until fairly
recently) our nation's literary canon has derived mainly from
and has glorified our "motherland's" literature.
I Western
Great Britain and Ireland
The Cuchulain Cycle, The Finn Cycle, (Fin M'Coul),
two pre-Christian Celtic epics: The Hound of Ulster and
Queen Mab. Beowulf: Anglo Saxon epic Christian
poem composed sometime between 650 AD and 900 AD. Seamus Heaney,
Irish Nobel Laureate Poet, renders a brilliant translation.
King Arthur, Knights of the Round Table, Merlin, The Holy
Grail, and Robin Hood. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
(author unknown.) The Crusades, St. George and the Dragon,
William Langland's Piers Plowman, Chaucer's The
Canterbury Tales, the Welsh White Book of Rchydderch,
Sir Thomas Mallory's Le Morte d' Arthur. Morality plays
and mystery plays for example, Everyman, dramatized
allegories of Christian life: a quest for salvation.
Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene, William Shakespeare's
English and Roman histories, tragedies and tragic-comedies.
Shakespeare was extremely knowledgeable about the volatile
social and political issues of his day: the escalating patriotism
and nationalism, the new colonialism, and concerns about the
royal succession. A.L. Rowse tells us that he (Shakespeare)
". . . knew too well how thin is the crust of civilisation;
how easy for society to break down, to fall into what dark
waters beneath." In these works, Shakespeare's quest
is for order and obedience to authority.
Milton's Paradise Lost, John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's
Progress, Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels,
Defoe's Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders, Richardson's
Clarissa, Fielding's Tom Jones, Edward Fitzgerald's
(translation) The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam,
Wordsworth's The Prelude, Coleridge's The Rime of
the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan, Blake's The
Four Zoas and Jerusalem, Shelley's Prometheus
Unbound, Keat's Hyperion, The Eve of St. Agnes
and La Belle Dame Sans Merci, Byron's Childe Harold,
Sir Walter Scott's historical novels and ballads, Dicken's
Bleak House, David Copperfield, Great Expectations
and A Tale of Two Cities, Robert Browning's Childe
Roland to the Dark Tower Came, Tennyson's
Ulysses and Idylls of the King, Lewis Carroll's Alice
in Wonderland, Stevenson's Treasure Island, Kipling's
Just So Stories, Sir James Barrie's Peter Pan,
Hugh Lofting's Dr. Doolittle, Joseph Conrad's Heart
of Darkness, Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows,
A.A. Milne's Winnie the Pooh, P.L. Travers' Mary
Poppins, Beatrix Potter's Peter Rabbit, James Joyce's
Ulysses, Yeats' Fairy Tales of Ireland, T.S.
Eliot's The Wasteland, Tolkien's The Hobbit
and The Ring Trilogy, C.S. Lewis' The Chronicles
of Narnia, Roddy Doyle's A Star Called Henry, R.K.
Rowling's Harry Potter series
North America
Highwater's Anpao (the Native American Ulysses)
The Sedna Legends of the Inuits, Paul Bunyan's tall
tales, the tales of Pecos Bill the Cowboy, Melville's
Moby Dick, Twain's Huckleberry Finn, Joel Chandler
Harris' Uncle Remus Stories (a retelling of stories
brought from overseas by African slaves), L. Frank Baum's
The Wizard of Oz, Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises,
Ralph Ellison's The Invisible Man, the Russian born
Nabokov's Lolita, Steven Spielberg's E.T., and,
with George Lucas, the Indiana Jones sagas and Star
Wars series. (Let us not forget the anal, hand-wringing,
shrink visiting of Woody Allen's panicky film protagonists,
as they frantically try to find "the meaning of life.")
French Canada
The Adventures of Petit Jean
Mexico/South America
Why the Burro Lives With Man, The Tale of the Lazy
People and many legends and myths from the Incas and Aztecs
and Mayan civilizations
Greece
Homer's
The Iliad and The Odyssey, Aesop's Fables
Italy
The Roman poet Virgil's The Aëneid, the poet Dante's
The Inferno, the poet Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered
Spain
El Cid (the epic poem El Cantar de Mio Cid),
Cervante's Don Quixote
Portugal
Comoën's The Lusiads
France
The deeds of Charlemagne, Le Chanson de Roland, Jean
de Neun's Roman de la Rose, La Fontaine's Fables,
Perrault's folktales (Cinderella), Villanueva's Beauty
and the Beast, Dumas' The Count of Monte Cristo,
Saint Exupéry's Le Petit Prince, de Brunhoff's
Stories of Babar
Germany
The Nibelungen Saga (heroic sagas), the tales of the
Brothers Grimm, Richard Wagner's Opera Cycle:
The Ring of the Neibelung
Norway/Sweden/Denmark
The great sagas involving Valhalla and the gods Thor, Odin,
Freya, and Loke; Hans Christian Andersen's tales
Iceland
The Elder Edda, The Younger Edda (ancient manuscripts),
from these comes The Volsunga Saga
Finland
The saga The Kalevala
Russia
The Legend of the Firebird, Pushkin's fairy tales,
Vasilissa the Fair
II Middle East
The sacred texts: The Holy Bible, The Torah,
The Talmud, The Koran. Firdavsi's Shah
(collection of legendary Persian epic folktales), the splendid
Arabian Nights, the Islamic legend The Night Journey
(Mohammed's Night Ride to Heaven) Nobel Laureate Isaac B.
Singer's Zlateh the Goat and Other Stories
III India
The Fables of Bidpai, The Jatake Tales of Buddha,
the cycle of fables in the Hindu collection of the Panchatantha,
Vyasa's Mahabharata, Valmiki's Ranayana, Salman
Rushdie's Shame and Haroun and the Sea of Stories
IV Africa
Tribal tales of witchdoctors and brave warriors, folktales
like Anansi the Spider, Podhu and Aruwa, Unanana
and the Elephant
IV Far East
Japan
Great shogun and samurai exploits, folktales such as The
Tongue-Cut Sparrow, The Enchanted Sticks
China
Fantastic tales of empresses and peasants, warlords and courtiers.
Folktales like Ah Tcha the Sleeper, The Story of
Wang Li
V Oceania (Australia)
The wonderful Aboriginal "dream-time" experiences
and folktales such as Dinewan the Emu
Polynesia
Many fantasy tales of how their islands were fashioned; from
Hawaii we get the myth: How Kana Brought Back the Sun and
Moon and Stars
To
quote Heaney, all of the foregoing are universal stories of
"mythic potency."
To return
to the main question: What should we be looking for, and why?
Tolkien said: "Myth is invention about truth." Joseph
Campbell states that the hero's journey is about "overcoming
the dark passions . . . to control the irrational savage within
us," and that "the journey is a life lived in self-discovery
. . . the ultimate aim of the quest must be . . . the wisdom
and the power to serve others." The hero acts "to
redeem society." Dostoyevsky said: "Man is a mystery."
The author was "an investigator of the human spirit"
always searching for truth. In Richard Tarnas' preface to
his grand The Passion of the Western Mind (and this
could certainly apply to the rich and varied canon of world
literature as well), he states: "The history of Western
culture has long seemed to possess the dynamics, scope, and
beauty of a great epic drama . . . [containing] sweep and
grandeur, dramatic conflicts and astonishing resolutions .
. . a stirring adventure and epic heroism . . ." He also
talks about: "A common vision . . . to see clarifying
universals in the chaos of life . . . the attempt to comprehend
the nature of reality." Bruno Bettelheim says that through
fables and fairy tales we can find ways "to gain peace
within ourselves and with the world . . ." In a new volume
of Yeat's essays, Writings on Irish Folklore, Legend and
Myth he tells us that in fables, "mortals are transformed
into 'perfect symbols of the sorrow and beauty and of the
magnificence and penury of dreams.'" Harold Bloom feels:
"We read to find ourselves . . .[to gain] an enhanced
sense of freedom . . . to prepare ourselves for change and
the final change, alas is universal."
Certainly
there are skeptics among us: the poet W. H. Auden said: "poetry
makes nothing happen" and Jack Kerouac's On the Road
narrator ("the road is life") says ". . . nobody,
nobody knows what's going to happen to anybody besides the
forlorn rags of growing old . . ." And U2's Bono laments
". . . and I still haven't found what I'm looking for."
To all that, Tolkien's Gandalf could well answer: "All
we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given
us."
During
the rest of our lifequest we must: read, write, travel, attend
plays, opera, museums and films, watch television and sporting
events, listen to music, political debates, talk shows, gossip,
and propaganda. We must sing and dance and work and love,
all so that we may connect in some positive and meaningful
way with our ancestors, peers, and children, thus hopefully
discovering our higher selves. By doing so, when our grand
quest comes to the inevitable and unavoidable end, we will
be able to leave behind a brilliant, universal ensemble cast
with a balanced and harmonious script full of recurring motifs
such as unity and integration, a magnificent work, a gift
of love and peace to our vast audience—all of humankind's
descendants.
"The
world is sacred,
It can't be improved.
If you tamper with it, you'll ruin it.
If your treat it like an object, you'll lose it."—Lao-tzu
Bibliography
Barzun, Jacques. From Dawn to Decadence. New York:
HarperCollins, 2000.
Bettelheim, Bruno. The Uses of Enchantment. New York:
Simon, 2000.
Bloom, Harold. How to Read and Why. New York: Simon,
2000.
Campbell, Joseph. The Power of Myth. New York: Doubleday,
1988.
Chamber, Aidan. Introducing Books to Children. 2nd
ed. Horn, 1983.
Doyle, Roddy. A Star Called Henry. New York: Penguin,
2000.
Heaney, Seamus. Beowulf. New York: Norton, 2000.
Kerouac, Jack. On the Road. New York: Viking, 1957.
Lao-tzu. Tao Te Ching. Trans. Stephen Mitchell. New
York: Harper, 1988.
Maxym, Lucy. Russian Lacquer, Legends and Fairy Tales.
2 vols. New York: Siamese Imports, 1985-86.
Norton Anthology of English Literature. Ed. M.H. Abrams.
5th ed. 2 vols. New York: Norton, 1986.
Oxford Companion to the English Language. Ed. Tom McArthur.
Oxford: Oxford UP, 1992.
Porcaro, Lauren. "Book Currents": rev. of Writings
on Irish Folklore, Legend and Myth by William Butler Yeats,
New Yorker 1, Apr. 2002: 21.
Riverside Anthology of Children's Literature. Judith
Saltman. 6th ed. Boston: Houghton, 1985.
Rowse, A.L. The Annotated Shakespeare. Vols I and II.
New York: Clarkson, 1978.
Rushdie, Salman. Haroun and the Sea of Stories. New
York: Viking, 1990.
Tarnas, Richard. The Passion of the Western Mind. New
York: Ballantine, 1993.
Tolkien, J.R.R. The Hobbit. New York: Ballantine, 1967.
Tolkien, J.R.R. The Ring Trilogy. New York: Ballantine,
1982.
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