In the Labyrinth

Old Bones, New Tales

This is an odd moment. Three book ideas I have been working on lately have suddenly come into clarity as a single cloth -- not as a trilogy mind you, for each is different enough from the other -- but organically they seem to spring from the same desire to write about early, middle, and late life. I feel as though on any given day, I could write in all three manuscripts without missing a beat. Two at least are set in Italy (thank god the research here helps both novels). The third is contemporary fantasy, so familiar ground.

As I am now in my sixties, I think this sudden meta-thinking about the novels has a lot to do with my age. When studying African oral narratives, I learned that women storytellers in South Africa (and probably in every traditional society) told the same stories (with some changes in emphasis depending on the audience) to all different ages. When the audience was a mixture young to old, the tales were meant to be entertaining and to introduce the very young to the artistry of story-telling. Other times it was intended for a specific audience such as young women going through rites of initiation, and there the same stories acquired an instructional emphasis, the tales focusing on transformation to adulthood.

However, older women also performed those same stories privately to each other. All of them so well versed in a lifetime of living and of telling those tales. They knew these stories intimately, and in the variants of the tales they told each other, there was depth and nuance in the performances. It was an opportunity for them to reflect and to comment through mature and evocative performances of the tales on their past rites of passage; their lives as young women, as wives or co-wives, as mothers, and now as elders. One of the great Xhosa storytellers Nongenile Masithathu Zenani towards the end of her life performed three, one-hundred-hour epics. Each epic was performed over about 21 days --with Masithathu speaking for 5 to 6 hours each day. And like Scheherazade, each morning she picked up the tale where she left off the night before. She composed the epics from the threads of the oral narrative stories she had learned and told throughout her life, intertwined with a wealth of cultural details and a social history of the Xhosa.  (I am still waiting to read one day the final translation of these three epics which were recorded and transcribed by Professor Emeritus Harold Scheub.)

As authors, we continue to reach back into the deep well of inherited stories -- the universality of rites of passage means every generation will want to hear them, read them, and connect to them. But unlike traditional society where the oral narratives and epics could be learned at the knee and then repeated (though different variants even within a culture suggest personal embellishment and emphasis in the telling), modern authors are always required to reinvent old tales and make them "fresh" -- sometimes with wonderful results and sometimes with stunningly bad ones. (I can never get over the dreadful Beowulf movies...Beowulf in Space, Beowulf with a Golden Stiletto-Heeled Monster mother).

So I guess this is the big challenge now for me. Trying to be faithful the tales, to take the time to reflect on how they have shaped and articulated different moments in my life, and yet, satisfy the craving to create something new, something "fresh" out of very old but venerable bones.

For more reading:

* Life Histories of African Women, edited by Patricia W. Romero which contains the autobiography of Nongenile Masithathu Zenani recorded, transcribed, and translated by Harlod Schueb.

**The Word and the World: Tales and Observations from the Xhosa Oral Tradtion. "A master storyteller of the Xhosa people of South Africa, Nongenile Masithathu Zenani gives us an unprecedented view of an oral society from within. Twenty-four of her complex and beautiful tales about birth, puberty, marriage, and work, as told to the renowned collector of African oral tradition, Harold Scheub, are gathered here. Accompanying the stories are Zenani’s detailed commentaries and analyses and Scheub’s striking photographs of her in performance.  The combination of these historical and cultural observations with a richly symbolic collection of tales from a single traditional storyteller make The World and the Word a remarkable document."

 

Art: Edward Hopper: In the Barber Shop, 11:00AM, Summer in the City

Orality and The Singer of Tales.

I am continuing with my notes on reading Walter Ong's Orality and Literacy, with some sidesteps to look at authors, whose work Ong references: Milman Parry and Albert Lord whose Singer of Tales is a fascinating study not only of the structure of Homer's Illiad and The Odyssey but also the important use of mnemonic devices in works that are orally performed and transmitted. So here are the key interesting ideas for me: 

Milman Parry analyzing Homer's Illiad and The Odyssey discover that every distinctive feature of Homer's poetry is due to the economy enforced on it by oral methods of composition. These were never performed the same, as poets in an oral culture do not "memorize" the text, but "stitched together prefabricated parts."  They recognized a collection of epithets (so many versions of "the wine-red sea") that had different meter lengths and could be used anywhere in the text as the poetry required. This certainly makes sense to me where both epics and tales were highly patterned -- usually the only consistent feature of different collected variants of the same epic or story. According to Harold Scheub's observations, even a child of five can be a reasonable good storyteller because she will have learned the patterning of the narrative, having it heard it repeated with every telling.  

Ong argues: "Homeric Greeks valued cliches because not only poets but the entire oral noetic world or thought-world relied upon the formulaic constitution of thought. In an oral culture, knowledge once acquired, had to be constantly repeated or would be lost." However, I would add, that the repetition itself, needed to be evocative and interesting, eliciting a variety of emotions out of the listener to engage them and that is when repetition becomes art, rather than a list of items to be recalled. Ong expresses David Bynum's ideas, (The Daemon in the Wood,1978) that "the clusters constitute the organizing principles of the formulas so that the essential idea is not subject to clear, straightforward formulation but is rather a kind of fictional complex held together largely in the unconscious." And so strong is the idea of the formulaic portions of storytelling that "they ride deep in the conscious and unconscious" and don't vanish the moment literacy is introduced, but often are reproduced even in early written form by those from the oral culture who have learned to write --mimicking at times the oral performance. (Amos Tutuola's brilliant The Palm Wine Drinkard is an excellent example of this -- although in Nigeria he received criticism, mainly from educated Nigerians because of what was perceived as low-class, uneducated English.)

I find this particularly interesting because when a fairy tale transforms from its oral version (which ironically we can only read in transcribed texts) into a literary tale, it runs the risk of losing its profound evocative nature. Repetition and patterning into forms organize the details of the story, creating tension when the human and the fantastic interact -- emphasizing not just the surface movement of the tale, but all the complicated feelings such arrangement of images brings forth to the listener. In some ways, it is closer to music (or indeed, singing the tale) -- we are aware of the patterning, the phrases, the way they move from introduction to increasing complicated arrangements and then a coda which feels like the beginning but isn't because of the experience of the journey to get to the end. There is for the analyst the social message -- what is the story trying to tell us? I think it's more a case of how is the story making the audience experience through its techniques, our lives as lived in that moment of the telling, and because our lives are always changing, allows us to hear the same tale over and over, and find in it something new.

Photo: "Griot" © Emile Snyder, 1963, Tittia Frasciotti, Galekea Women, 1988.

Putting Together My Father's Research With The Photos: West Africa 1963-64

Balafon performance in the streets of Conakry, Guinea. ©1963 Emile Snyder

Among the amazing documents that have floated my way over the years was a manilla folder full of gorgeous black and white photographs my father took in the Ivory Coast (well..they were developed there and some of them might have been also taken in Senegal, Mali, or Guinea). Among my mother's papers that I received after her death was a carefully cached collection of letters that my parents had written to each other during fall 1963 to spring of 1964, when they were both abroad on Ford and Fulbright grants-- he to numerous countries in West Africa and she to India, Bhutan, and Sikkim.

The letters are very interesting, and cringe worthy in places. One third love letters (with some surprising revelations about their sex life I could have survived never knowing about), one third about money (there was never enough and what there was always came late allowing for some desperate nail biting) and one third talking about the research and the separate lives they were having on their different continents.

As I read through the research parts of my Dad's letters, I learned a lot about these photographs--especially that he had done many field recordings of musicians, griots, and small village brass bands. He had made friends with many African writers at the very start of their careers as authors in 1963, he had met and become friends with Leopold Senghor, President of Senegal, and other writers and poets turned diplomats -- who also gave him music tapes and recordings (especially the radio stations eager to get their music out to the West as well as Africa.). He sent 25 or so tapes back to the states with friend and ethno-musicologist Robert Garfias who returned them to the Ethnomusicology Archives  at the University of Washington, Seattle, WA.

I went looking for the tapes in the archives -- as this was the first I knew that they had been properly given over to someone. I was so excited to find them listed here and here. So I will be sending scans of all the photos (plus more of the notes I discovered in his letters) to the archive there -- delighted that future students will have a chance to see these images and connect them to the music on the tapes. In many ways, the best part of finding all these papers is being able to share the really great parts of their careers with others -- to share those moments in history where they saw something, heard something, or wrote something that still matters.

All the photos can be found here -- or by clicking the link to "West African Musicians" in the left hand side bar. And all photos are ©1963 Emile Snyder -- please email me at the blog to request permission to use these photos.

Inspiration in "La Stigmatisée" by Georges Moreau de Tours

Portuguese artist João Lemos sent me this gorgeous and entirely unexpected painting "La Stigmatisée" by French painter, Georges Moreau de Tours (1848-1901). And what a narrative it visually suggests -- rich and full of possibilities: a sensual image of a young woman, where both the dressings over the stigmata of her hands and her clothing are unraveling. She appears languorous, almost trance-like in her calm, while the onlookers are tense, agitated, a hand gripping the sleeve of another as though threatened by the spectacle of the reclining woman. There is just so much going here, all of it ambiguous: earthy and ethereal, masculine and feminine, still and agitated, acceptance and skepticism all at once.

Johnny Fahey and The King of Crows

Many years ago in a moment of inspiration, I wrote a little short story called "King of Crows." It is till one of my personal favorites as it has threaded throughout a song or a tune humming beneath the narrative. I am almost never without a song running in my head, singing to the dishes, or driving in traffic, or even when writing I will hear the song that evokes the feelings of the moment I am describing. "King of Crows" is a small tale of love found and lost, of the transformative power of song. And I'll admit, the moment the fiddler Johnny Fahey appeared in my imagination, I loved him.  An itinerant musician, traveling the Southwest, he stops to rest in a box canyon, only to discover it is home to the King of Crows and his court. And there is one who catches his eye...(Read the full story here.)

 Excerpt from "King of Crows." 

The crows parted at Johnny’s approach, some turning astonished faces at his unexpected presence, but never stopping in their cries. It wasn’t until Johnny stood before the girl with the white skin and the black hair that the violent arguments subsided into grumbles and then at last into an uneasy silence. The girl stared at him with curiosity, her head tilted to one side as the glittering eyes fastened on his face. A smile crooked the edges her mouth, and the arched brows drew together in a challenge.

“Who are you?” she asked, voice sharp as a scythe.

“No one as grand as you,” he answered softly.

She lifted her chin proudly, the sweep of black hair flowing over the curve of her back. Opals sparkled in her earlobes like tiny stars, and around her waist she wore a belt of turquoise and fresh water pearls.

“What are you?” she demanded, shoulders hunched and face thrust forward.

“A musician,” he said, arms resting at his sides.

The cloaks of the crows fluttered in the rising wind with a dry chaffing noise.

“Play for us,” she ordered.

“Rilka, we’ve no time for this!” a man barked. Johnny Fahey turned to the man, hearing immediately the authority in this voice. A singular voice after so much discord. The man was old, the plumage of his cloak speckled at the breast and dull and ragged along the hem. But circling his forehead was a narrow crown of silver, set with turquoise. There was still power in his carriage, the heavy body leaning over his hips, his shoulders arched back. In one hand he held a scepter made from a fresh stalk of corn that gleamed as bright as newly minted gold. Johnny had no doubt but this was the King of Crows. He looked back at the girl called Rilka, and the music in his heart stumbled as he realized that the girl with moon-white skin and black hair was the King’s daughter. No chance for you, the sad chords played, no chance this haughty creature could be charmed by the fiddle’s song.

“I want to hear it, Father,” the girl demanded, “if only to hear something other than their bickering,” and she tossed her head toward the line of men who stood glowering at the quiet figure of Johnny Fahey.

The King rolled his eyes to the blue bowl sky.

“Spoiled bitch,” came a nasty whisper followed by snickering.

“Play then!” the King roared, turning on the restless court to silence them.

Rilka lowered her face, the shadow of her hair on her cheek not quite hiding the angry blush. Johnny winced seeing how the insult cut her pride to the quick. But he took out his fiddle and tucked it under his chin. He rested the bow over the strings and waited a moment more to hear what the wind would bring him. A tune came from listening, knowing what was already playing in the hearts of those gathered. He thought he could well guess at the tunes a crow might wish — something wild, with the harsh rasps of the double-stops. Then Rilka lifted her face, and he saw in the dark eyes an unexpected hint of longing, of gentleness.

"The soft whisper of her sigh touched him, and without intending to, he lowered his fiddle again and began to sing slowly in a clear tenor voice.

I met a fairy woman
At the river’s eddy.
And I asked her
Would anything unlock love?
She said to me in whispered words,
When it enters the heart
It will never be released.

There followed a silence, filled only with the rise and hollow of the wind in the grass. Johnny Fahey heard the slow beat of his filled heart. Abruptly he put the fiddle beneath his chin again and played a reel as fast as his song had been slow. He might gain her, the notes sang, but how could he keep her? He might lose her now, but she would be forever in his thoughts. Amber rosin smoked over the strings and the white hairs of his bow broke like the strands of a clinging web. He drove the tune, as if to empty the sight of her face from his heart, and yet as he finished the last notes he looked up and her glittering eyes snared him.

Salman Rushdie: The Enchantress of Florence

It's hard to imagine a more wonderful and sumptuous novel than Salman Rushdie's The Enchantress of Florence. The novel moves between the opulent settings of the Mughal Empire at its zenith and the brash, upstart world of the Italian Renaissance in that most quarrelsome city of Florence. After an arduous journey, Niccolò Vespucci, a young roguish traveler arrives in India, at the court of the Mughal emperor Abdul-Fath Jalaluddin Muhammad with an impossible tale -- that he, blond hair and all, is the descendant of a lost Mughal princess and he has arrived to make himself known as the uncle to the emperor.

After having pronounced such a blasphemous claim, Niccolò is aware that his survival depends on his consummate skill as a storyteller. And over the days and months that follow, Niccolò slowly unravels the interwoven tales of friendships, secret family histories, and perilous journeys, while the Emperor, snagged and entranced by his guest, reflects as well on the mirror image of the tales in his own family, his own journeys and his own life.

And what tales they are! Feverish, like the painter who falls so deeply in love with his subject that he paints himself permanently into the corner of a canvas; sensual, as the dream of an imaginary Queen that acquires substance and life; heroic and violent, like the boy Nino Argalia who goes to sea, is captured by the Turks and becomes commander of the formidable Janissaries. Here too is a young Machiavelli learning the lessons that a Prince must know to survive, the secret history of Qara Köz, a girl of dark eyes and occult powers who knows how to protect herself; an intimate servant who lives as a mirror to reflect her mistress, and another woman enchanted to hold the secret memories of her master at the expense of remembering anything about herself. Cultures collide as characters invent and reinvent themselves on new landscapes, from west to east and east to west. And throughout the novel, the Emperor and Niccolò and others reflect and argue on politics, religion, war, and women.  

It is a splendid novel -- one that will send you to the library with its generous bibliography at the back of the book to delve more deeply into its rich historical and literary resources.

Review By Colleen Mondor of "The Reverend's Wife."

Although written back in 2009 when the Datlow/Windling anthology Black Swan, White Raven was first published, I only recently and quite by accident discovered that Colleen Mondor gave my short story, "The Reverend's Wife"  a rather nice review -- which even though lately discovered, has made me very happy this morning. 

"Right off the bat, there are several standouts in Black Swan including Midori Snyder's very sexy take on a Sudanese tale, translated to a rural American setting, "The Reverend's Wife." (If ever a story said "fairy tales for adults," it's this one.) Tackling the nature of marital fidelity while also spinning on what it means to be a good wife, Snyder has a lot of fun here with a slight trickster take on woman having the upper hand but using their power for the sake of saving their marriages (well, okay and having some fun too). It's the sense of fun and humor that really makes this story succeed and that the gender roles are reversed to a certain degree. It's certainly bawdy in the best use of the word and also carries a sense of coyote and raven tales in how the women get one over their husbands (to everyone's benefit)"

 And just for fun, here's the opening paragraph: 

"It was funny the way it turned out. Hard in fact to feel any shame about it at all. No matter the fire and brimstone and God-avenging, hitting the Gook Book hard enough to make sin jump up into your mouth and begin to testify. Me, I don't need to testify. God knows me. Instead, I just stay quiet and get to thinking how God has a mighty good sense of humor and doesn't mind a little sinning now and again. That is, of course, if no one gets hurt and all parties wind up happy. I guess you could say Violet Thomas and I wound up pretty happy women. And our dear husbands, though they learned a thing or two about women, were never the wiser for it. "