The book begins with a boy named Max dressed in a wolf suit misbehaving, terrorizing the dog and talking back to his mother. He is sent to bed without any supper. But a strange thing happens: his room magically transforms into a forest with a nearby ocean. He boards a boat and sails across the ocean for nearly a year before he comes to an island inhabited by terrible monsters known in the book as “wild things.” Max manages to tame them, and they crown him king of all the wild things. After an indefinite amount of time, he grows lonely and wishes to return home. He gives up being king, boards his boat, sails back across the ocean, and returns to his room. He finds there his supper waiting for him.

Many fantasy novels have characters who journey between our world and another world. In some works, like C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia or J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, these other worlds are accepted as true: within the story, that is, they exist as real places. In others, though, like Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland or The Bridge to Terabithea, the voyages to these other worlds are presented — even within the story — as dreams or as journeys of the imagination. It is not clear how to classify Max’s voyage to the land of the wild things along these lines. The narrator, on the one hand, always describes the events of the story in factual terms:

In Max’s room a forest grew […] and the walls became the world all around.

He sailed off through night and day and […] he came to the place where the wild things are.

Max stepped into his private boat and waved good-bye and sailed back […] into […] his very own room.

But on the other hand, one subtle element in the artwork convinces me that Max’s adventure is meant to be understood as an imaginary one. An illustration of an early scene contains a picture Max drew before he went on his adventure. Max had not yet been to the place where the wild things are when he made this drawing, yet his drawing looks exactly like one of the wild things he would later meet.

The text of the story does not refer to Max’s drawing at all, but it is an important clue in how to understand the story. I think the similarity between the drawing and the wild thing demonstrates that both originated in his imagination. Even though the narrator takes Max’s journey at face value, I think it is intended to be understood as an imaginary journey.

Throughout this imaginative journey, a change occurs in Max. At the beginning, he is just a naughty little boy. He is eager to escape his room, where he serves his sentence for misbehaving, and imagines himself as the “most wild thing of all” instead of as a well-behaved boy. He sends the wild things to bed without any supper — perhaps directing some negative feelings for his mother towards these innocent creatures of his own imagination. But as he sits alone, he has a change of heart:

Max […] was lonely and wanted to be where someone loved him best of all. […] So he gave up being king of where the wild things are […] and sailed back […] into […] his very own room.

He no longer wishes to be with the wild things: he now wants to be with his mother. Max’s imaginative journey gave him a new perspective on his life, and this new perspective resulted in a different attitude and (presumably) in different behavior after his return. The illustrations capture this effect on Max in a subtle but powerful way. Before Max’s journey, the illustrations of Max’s real world are always contained by a white border on all four sides. As his room transforms into the forest, that border slowly shrinks until the illustrations fill the whole page. (The added black border represents the edge of the page.)

The world of Max’s imagination is larger, more wonderful, and less bounded than the real world. Every page depicting the land of the wild things has illustrations that bleed to the edges of the page; not one of them has a white border surrounding it on all four sides. When Max returns to his room from his imaginative journey, though, the border does not return.

The broadening of the illustration nicely mirrors the broadening of Max’s perspective. In the very first article here, discussing how we define “myth” on this site, I said that the mythic narratives found in ancient mythology and modern fantasy can dramatically change the way we look at our own world. As we read the story of Max’s imaginative journey, we can engage our imaginations to participate to some degree in his journey. We may even be able to have our perspective, our attitudes, and our behavior transformed in a similar way. In both the plot of the story and in some subtle details of the artwork in his Where The Wild Things Are, Maurice Sendak conveyed the role of imagination in this transforming power of mythic narratives.

Reference

• Sendak, Maurice. Where The Wild Things Are. Harper & Row: 1963.

Alciato’s Emblematum liber was the single most influential of the emblem books. First published in 1531, Alciato’s book gave rise to hundreds of imitations throughout continental Europe. As a general rule, the text remained stable while the images themselves were often significantly different from edition to edition. Alciato himself was not happy with the woodcut illustrations in the 1531 edition, nor with what he considered to be the careless layout of the pages, where sometimes the motto and the image appeared on separate pages as you can see here in the Prometheus emblem:

Emblematum liber (1531). View larger image »

The motto (on the lower left-hand page) reads Quae supra nos, nihil ad nos, “What (is) above us (is) nothing to us,” a saying attributed to Socrates. The motto is a warning that we should have nothing to do with things that are above and beyond us. Accordingly, the image shows Prometheus’s punishment, as a bird eats away at his liver.

Below the image is the verse commentary in elegiac couplets. Here is a literal English translation:

Prometheus hangs for all eternity on a rock in the Caucasus; his liver is shredded by the talon of the sacred winged one. He might rather not have created man — and, detesting the potters, he curses the torch lit from the stolen fire. The breasts of wise men are gnawed by diverse cares — those wise men who feign to know the ways of heaven and of the gods.

The text thus explains, albeit briefly, the events of the mythical story: how Prometheus created man (but now regrets it), and how he shaped the first men from clay (but now he hates the potters and their art), and how he now curses the fire which he stole from heaven to give life to his earthly creation. In some versions of the story Prometheus is viewed as a rebel (see Randy’s discussion of the myth to illustrate two themes concerning man’s relationship to the divine), but in this version, Prometheus is instead a bitter failure. The commentary explains that Prometheus thus symbolizes would-be wise men who seek to know the ways of the gods, and who end up feeling only an endless inner anguish as a result.

In 1534, a new edition of the book was published in France, with woodcuts by Mercure Jollat. In this edition, the presentation is much more systematic, with each emblem (motto and image and commentary) starting on its own page:

Emblematum Libellus (1534). View larger image »

The text is unchanged but the image is quite different, and much more detailed, than in the 1531 edition. There are four flaps of skin carefully peeled back to reveal the viscera on which the bird is gnawing, and Prometheus is now shown tied to a tree — a detail that is not part of the traditional myth, and which is not explained in the text.

Was the artist adapting the message of the suffering Prometheus to the symbolic “tree” on which the body of Jesus was crucified and pierced? Are there mystical echoes here of the iconography of the sacred heart of Jesus? Images, like texts, can be allusive, and the meaning of a visual emblem can certainly go beyond the accompanying text, resonating instead with a larger visual code.

In later editions, the tree is replaced by a rocky promontory, more closely aligning the image and the traditional myth as recounted in the text. For example, in this French edition from 1584, you can see the rocky setting of the Caucasus mountains along with the chains which bind Prometheus in place:

Emblemata (1584). View larger image »

It is this image which finds its way into the first emblem book in the English language: Geffrey Whitney’s A choice of emblemes, published in 1586. Whitney created his book by borrowing from a variety of sources, including approximately 80 emblems from Alciato.

Geffrey Whitney: A choice of emblemes (1586). View larger image »

While Whitney borrows the image from Alciato, he uses a new motto and a new verse commentary. The new motto is adapted from the ancient Roman writer Publilius Syrus and reads: O vita, misero longa, “O life, which is long for the person who is wretched.” This new motto makes no mention of the specific reason why Prometheus is being punished, and the same is true of the commentary, where Whitney has shifted the focus exclusively to suffering, without any details of the myth. Here is Whitney’s poem, with modernized spelling:

To Caucasus, behold PROMETHEUS chained,
Whose liver still a greedy vulture does rend:
He never dies, and yet is always pained
With tortures dire, by which the Poets meant,
That he, who still amid misfortunes stands,
Is sorrow’s slave, and bound in lasting bands.

For when that grief does grate upon our gall
Or surging seas of sorrows most do swell,
That life is death, and is no life at all;
The liver, rent, does the conscience tell,
Which being lanced and pricked with inward care,
Although we live, yet still we dying are.

For Whitney, Prometheus is now a symbol of someone who is dying eternally, in a life made endless by perpetual suffering. Whitney’s Prometheus is not a divine rebel, nor even an emblem of the wise man’s curious and inquiring mind. Instead, Prometheus is simply “sorrow’s slave,” a character whose story consists entirely of “tortures dire,” but without explanation of these “misfortunes.” In Alciato’s emblem book, Prometheus was so consumed by his punishment that he regretted his earlier rebellion but now, in Whitney, there is not even a rebellion left for Prometheus to regret. This Prometheus anticipates a kind of existential angst, a cousin to the Sisyphus later made emblematic by Camus: we feel the torments of Prometheus with every care that gnaws our guts, not even knowing for what crime we have been punished, or what we stood to gain before we were condemned to this life that “is death, and is no life at all.”

Even without the emblem books, of course, we would know that the Prometheus myth has had many different meanings for its many different audiences over the past several thousand years. What is special about the emblem books, however, is the way that they combine both image and text in tandem to tell the story. There were works of art from the ancient world that depicted Prometheus in images, and there were also stories told about him recorded in words (see Theoi.com for an extensive survey). The emblem books of the Renaissance, made possible by the technology of printing, offered something new — the chance to combine text and image into a single multimedia experience, telling a story in words and “beyond words” at one and the same time.

Online Resources

If you are intrigued by the way the emblems work, both illustrating and symbolizing the ancient myths, you can find some wonderful resources online to explore them in detail:

• You can browse through Whitney at the English Emblem Book Project: http://emblem.libraries.psu.edu/whitntoc.htm
• You can browse 22 editions of Alciato at the Glasgow University Emblem web site: http://www.emblems.arts.gla.ac.uk/alciato/index.php
• And for a change of pace, you can browse 27 Dutch love emblem books at the Emblem Project Utrecht: http://emblems.let.uu.nl/

Randy Hoyt: When did you first encounter the works of Tolkien? What impact did they have on you?

Ted Nasmith: My older sister gave me a copy of The Fellowship of the Ring when I was 14. It hit me really strongly, as it does so many people. I just loved it right from the start. It was set in the distant, romantic past, amid traditional English-style landscapes, and it was all very nostalgic, fairy-tale and storybook material. It really grabbed me. I was an art student at the time, and I started to draw pictures inspired by the book fairly quickly. That was a big turn for me: I had been drawing spaceships, cars, and all kinds of more mechanical stuff. Tolkien was a big new element in my artistic imagination.

RH: How did you get started publishing your Tolkien illustrations?

TN: The first Tolkien calendar came out in 1973. It contained Tolkien’s own artwork, but then calendars with other artists’ work quickly followed, which greatly impressed me, since it demonstrated that The Lord of the Rings had struck a resounding chord of artistic inspiration with others, too. I had already accumulated my own paintings and drawings through high school and into the ’70s. The calendars in theory provided a way for me to get my stuff in front of the publishers; it proved to be a process that required persistence, but that eventually bore fruit. My work started appearing in the calendars in the late ’80s, fifteen years after I first sought its publication.

RH: When did you first encounter The Silmarillion?

TN: I read The Silmarillion as soon as it came out in 1977. It was not nearly as enjoyable as The Lord of the Rings, but it was more of Tolkien’s Middle-earth. More images came to me through these ‘new’ legends. I deliberately included something of Beren and Lúthien or one of the other major stories for the calendars, in order to integrate more of Tolkien’s legendarium into my growing body of paintings.

RH: I imagine many people seeing those calendars would have been familiar with The Lord of the Rings but possibly not The Silmarillion. What did you hope your art communicated to those who did not know the story you were illustrating? Obviously you lose some elements like dialogue, and you are limited to a single, frozen moment: but what extra elements can artwork use that make it more powerful?

TN: Hopefully they convey the sense of enchantment, the otherworldliness and remoteness, or simply the romance and nostalgia, or the poignancy and sadness — all those things and more you can convey using color, mood, shadow, etc. Someone looking at these illustrations who is unfamiliar with The Silmarillion can definitely see there’s something going on. Even if you know the story depicted, a work of illustration can still speak to you at a deeper level. Images are powerful. Tolkien dealt with archetypal material, the stuff of dreams, and through visual images that material can tap into the human subconscious in ways that augment prose.

As I would start drawing a scene based on the written description, I would notice visual associations that I didn’t really intend or appreciate originally. These associations emphasize the sub-text or the background ideas a bit more, filling them out and amplifying them. They definitely seem to complement the written part of it. I’d often think, “This really has a life of its own, a separate validity to it.” Sometimes a person will get a strong reaction to a work of art and they will say, “That’s what I saw in my head. How did you know?” That’s an amazing compliment to an artist. If you received a comment like that once in a blue moon, it would be enough to make you feel like you were achieving a level of success, but I actually get comments like that fairly constantly in letters from fans; it’s really, really flattering.

RH: You mention images coming to you. Many authors, Tolkien included, describe their stories as something that they discover more than something they invent. Do you find that to be the case with your paintings?

TN: Yeah, I definitely understand why they would say things like that. There have been times where something just sort of came through me in a way. I didn’t overly deliberate on it: I just got out of the way and let it come onto the page. So yeah, I really relate to that kind of creative description of what happens. It is a bit of magic, for sure.

RH: Do you have a favorite piece of all the ones that you have done?

TN: That’s a question I get often. I could probably narrow it down to ten or fifteen or something. There are so many individually that are successful, for one reason or another.

RH: My personal favorite is The Kinslaying at Alqualondë from the 2004 illustrated version of The Silmarillion. Would you include that one in the list?

The Kinslaying at Alqualondë. 2004. View larger image »

TN: Yeah, that came to mind. There are a couple of things I wanted to show there. Firstly, it’s an opportunity to show a glimpse of the lost city of Alqualondë and the wonderful culture of the Teleri. The ships are described as the Teleri’s greatest work (Tolkien 86). I imagine they would have been so beautiful that no artist could truly have captured this accurately — but it’s my job and fascination as an artist to approximate it as best I can. I couldn’t imagine them any other way than each having its own character, for instance. Compositionally, the curving wharf portrays a more feminine and dynamic setting. The battle taking place was difficult; scenes with many figures interacting are not my strong suit. But you just get down and you work on it much more to make sure that it’s up to the standard level of the other parts. I used to work mainly as an architectural renderer, so I have a facility for architecture; it was interesting to try to envision Elven architecture of the First Age. What would that be? Certainly it would be exotic, all carved, elegant and otherworldly.

Then there’s the problem of lighting; the scene is under starlight with no sun and moon. The text mentions lamps on the quays and piers (Tolkien 77), so that gives you something. I played a bit with the color of the water to make it almost luminous. When you try to do as realistic art as I do, you get caught sometimes thinking you have to do it according to all the laws of physics. But this is fantasy. I have learned to take liberties to convey more than just the hard facts and the surface of things, and not to worry about someone saying, “Hey, that isn’t real.” None of it is ‘real’, although it is famously realistic to a high degree, and thus presents tantalizing dilemmas.

RH: I saw on your web site an earlier image you did of this scene, which you called a “sketch.” I thought that sketch was excellent. What’s the relationship between that sketch and the image from the book?

The Kinslaying at Alqualondë. Sketch. Source »

TN: That first color sketch was based on a thumbnail drawing of a raw impression of the wharfs, ships, and the battle. Christopher Tolkien worked with me in choosing illustrations, and I was encouraged that he expressed great praise for this initial rough image. I tried to preserve what was good about the sketch but make it more sophisticated.

RH: The scene in the sketch felt like it took place at night, but in the final illustration it really feels like it took place before the sun and the moon, before day and night existed. I often forget that the sun and moon hadn’t appeared yet, and I often picture these scenes as if they were in daylight. This illustration really drives that home.

TN: I’m glad. It’s difficult. That’s often the way you draw a scene, with that daylight impression. It may make for a nice picture, but isn’t accurately illustrating it. I used to wonder why there weren’t more great illustrations of the Fellowship traveling through the countryside as they came south to Moria, but it’s because they traveled mostly at night! The Peter Jackson movies showed the Fellowship against these wonderful landscape shots — but in the daytime. The Tolkien illustrator is often left with a serious limitation. Take Bilbo and Gollum and the riddle game: it’s pitch black except for Gollum’s eyes — not too great for an illustrator! You’ve got to take a little license on some of these things.

RH: A big theme I see in Tolkien is the interaction of beauty and sorrow, which this illustration captures really well: the beauty of the ships on the left and the sorrow of the battle here on the right.

TN: Right. That was an important part of it for sure. Somehow you’ve got to underscore this terrible kinslaying scene, the violence and obscenity of it. Paradoxically, the beautiful is that much more tragic because of the incongruity of something terrible and violent juxtaposed with it.

RH: What new projects are you working on and what new artwork should we expect to see from you in the near future?

TN: I provided all the artwork for the 2009 Tolkien Calendar, featuring landscape images from the First and Second Ages of Middle-earth from The Silmarillion. I’m also doing various commissions, mostly new Tolkien paintings; projects done recently or upcoming. Last year, I did the scene with Frodo, Sam, and Pippin meeting Gildor and the Elves in the Woody End. I always loved that scene, right from the first time I started imagining and creating the illustrations. I never found a chance to illustrate it earlier, though; I never felt I was in the right moment or something. Yet it was an immediate hit, and I was commissioned to do another version of that same piece because the first one sold quite quickly at the exhibition!

Elves in the Woody End. 2006. View larger image »

I’ve also been fortunate enough to get involved with George R.R. Martin, another amazing fantasy author. I’ve done a lot of new work in ‘Westeros,’ his imaginary universe, for an upcoming big-format reference book on his fantasy novels [see examples]. I’ve also recently accepted an offer for the 2010 Tolkien Calendar, which will feature landscapes of the Third Ages.

You can learn more about Ted’s work by visiting his web site, tednasmith.com. The 2009 Tolkien Calendar featuring Ted’s paintings of landscapes of the First Age of Middle-earth is available from HarperCollins at Amazon.com and other booksellers.

References

• Tolkien, J.R.R. The Silmarillion. Christopher Tolkien, editor. Ted Nasmith, illustrator. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2004.

Let’s take, for example, this fresco by Maso di Banco (d. 1348), an  Italian painter of the early Renaissance who worked in Florence, Italy. His most important surviving frescoes are in the beautiful Basilica of Santa Croce in Florence. Those of you who are admirers of Italian painting might notice similarities in style here to the work of Giotto di Bondone (d. 1337), who was a great influence on Maso:

Miracle of the Dragon. By Maso di Banco. Circa 1340. View larger image »

Take a close look at the painting: do you recognize the story? It is the legend of Saint Sylvester and the Dragon. Saint Sylvester was one of the early popes of Rome, who lived at the same time as the Emperor Constantine, who famously converted to Christianity. The legends of Saint Sylvester are closely entwined with those of the Emperor Constantine. In addition to the story of Saint Sylvester and the Dragon depicted here, Maso’s cycle of frescoes in Santa Croce showing the life of Saint Sylvester includes paintings of the Baptism of Constantine by Saint Sylvester, Constantine and the Magicians, and the Dream of Constantine.

To discover just what story Maso tells us in this painting, we can turn to the life of Saint Sylvester as recorded in the famous Legenda Aurea (“Golden Legends”), a massive collection of the lives of the saints compiled by Jacobus de Voragine around the year 1260. The Legenda Aurea was translated into the vernacular languages of Europe starting already in the fourteenth century, and the advent of printing in the fifteenth century allowed the book to become even more widely known. The pioneering English printer William Caxton published his first edition of the Golden Legend in 1483. Here is an excerpt of Caxton’s version of the story:

In this time it happed that there was at Rome a dragon in a pit, which every day slew with his breath more than three hundred men. Then came the bishops of the idols unto the emperor [Constantine] and said unto him: O thou most holy emperor, sith the time that thou hast received Christian faith the dragon which is in yonder fosse or pit slayeth every day with his breath more than three hundred men. Then sent the emperor for S. Silvester and asked counsel of him of this matter. S. Silvester answered that by the might of God he promised to make him cease of his hurt and blessure of this people. Then S. Silvester put himself to prayer, and S. Peter appeared to him.

Peter gives instructions for how Silvester can subdue the dragon, which Silvester follows. Here is what happens next:

When [S. Silvester] came to the pit, he descended down one hundred and fifty steps, bearing with him two lanterns, and found the dragon, and said the words that S. Peter had said to him, and bound his mouth with the thread, and sealed it, and after returned, and as he came upward again he met with two enchanters which followed him for to see if he descended, which were almost dead of the stench of the dragon, whom he brought with him whole and sound, which anon were baptized, with a great multitude of people with them. Thus was the city of Rome delivered from double death, that was from the culture and worshipping of false idols, and from the venom of the dragon. (Read a full version online.)

This is the story Maso has told in his painting. As often in medieval and early Renaissance work, the artist depicts multiple events of the story in a single panel (see my earlier article on Aesop’s fables for more examples of this style of “simultaneous narration,” as art historians call it). So, to read this story, let’s begin from the far right. Here you can see the Emperor Constantine with whom the story opens and closes. The pagan priests have come to Constantine to tell him about the angry dragon, and the story concludes with their conversion, impressed as they are by Sylvester’s miraculous deeds.

Meanwhile, on the far left, you can see Sylvester taming the dragon. Notice how one of his assistants is holding his nose. The dragon’s stink is a key motif in the story, and Maso di Branco has managed to convey that olfactory motif in visual form.

Then, in the center, is the second miracle: Sylvester finds the two “enchanters,” or pagan magicians (Latin magi) lying unconscious on the ground, struck nearly dead by the stench of the dragon. By the power of God, Sylvester is able to raise the men up. As you read from the foreground to the background, you see the two magicians at first lying down, then rising up to receive the saint’s blessing. By juxtaposing the two narrative moments in this way (a marvelous example of simultaneous narration), Maso di Banco dynamically illustrates the resurrection of the stricken men.

Although you might be surprised to see a historical pope depicted as a heroic tamer of dragons, Saint Sylvester’s exploit here is a typical Christian story of how God’s hero — or heroine — is able to defeat the monstrous serpent; similar stories are told in the Legenda Aurea of Saint Philip, Saints Simon and Jude, Saint Matthew, Saint George, Saint Margaret, and Saint Martha. The basic story of the “dragon-slayer” is one that Christianity shares with many other traditions as well, such as the Greek god Apollo slaying the Python, the Hindu god Indra slaying the serpent Vritra, or the Polish hero Skuba the cobbler slaying Smok Wawelski (“the dragon of Wawel Hill”), among many others.

It is fitting that we take a moment to recall the legend of Sylvester at this time (in Issue 7 on January 1) because this saint has a special meaning for the New Year and our New Year’s celebrations. Historical accounts tell us that Sylvester died on December 31 in the year 335, and his “saint’s day” is thus celebrated on December 31. In many Catholic countries, New Year’s Eve is referred to as “Sylvester,” much as the name of Saint Valentine has become attached to the holiday of “Valentine’s Day” on February 14. In Poland, for example, on New Year’s Eve you celebrate “Sylwester” and the greetings that you exchange for the New Year are called “Sylvester Wishes,” Życzenia Sylwestrowe. In Italy, New Year’s Eve is called “La Notte di San Silvestro” (“The Night of Saint Sylvester”). So you may have already celebrated Saint Sylvester on New Year’s Eve — but if not, then remember to take a moment when the next New Year’s Eve rolls around and celebrate the heroic deeds of the dragon-taming saint when you pop the cork of your champagne!

Happy New Year from Journey to the Sea !

These great columns are often referred to as “story-telling poles” (Malin 104) because the multiple figures depict or illustrate a narrative. These narratives might recount recent historical events involving members of a particular family or timeless legends involving mythological characters. The Raven pole belonging to a Tlingit tribe in Wrangell, Alaska, for example, depicts a story found among various tribes that explains the origins of the sun and moon. In addition to its aetiological components, the story includes many elements similar to those in narratives from various Western traditions — the theft of fire, the trickster who benefits mankind, and even the virgin birth — and more mundane themes like the danger of spoiling grandchildren.

Long ago, the world was covered with darkness. (This story appears with minor variations in many tribes; the summary here includes details from the Tlingit tradition.) Raven grew tired of stumbling around and went in search of light. As he came near the house of an old chief, he overheard the chief talking with his daughter. Raven learned that the chief kept all the light of the world locked away in a box; predictably, he promptly devised a plan to steal that box. He transformed himself into a hemlock needle and landed in the river; the chief’s daughter became pregnant after unknowingly drinking him and in time gave birth to a son — Raven in human form. The chief loved his new grandson greatly. Raven soon began begging for the box as a toy. When his grandfather refused, Raven began crying and screaming and throwing tantrums and pleading for the box. After many days of this, the chief reluctantly gave him the box. Raven immediately changed back to his bird form, carried the box through the smokehole of the house, and placed the light (in the forms of the sun, the moon, and the stars) in the sky.

The Raven pole shown in the three photographs above contains this story. It was carved in 1896 for Chief Shakes of a Tlingit tribe, and it stood for eighty-two years before collapsing in a windstorm. After that, a replica was built for a nearby park (Stewart 104). A detailed drawing of each figure on the pole is shown below.

The top figure in the pole is the old chief from the story, sitting atop the box containing the light. The combination of human and bird-like features indicates he is a being with supernatural powers. (In the Tlingit version of the story, the chief could take either human or raven form; the straight beak identifies the birdlike form as a raven.) The second figure is his grandson Raven who stole the box; the halo around his face references the sun, which connects him with the sun he placed in the sky. The daughter of the chief is either the human figure in front of Raven or the third raven below him. (The identity of the fourth figure is much less certain but is most likely a mythological character connected in some way to this raven family.)

Among all the tribes of the Pacific Northwest, the figures depicted on the carved columns follow highly formalized stylistic rules. These rules make the characters on the poles easy to identify. Birds have beaks of an identifiable shape: while carvers have much freedom in depicting these creatures, the raven must have a straight beak and the eagle must have a curved beak. Wolves and bears look similar but can be distinguished by the shape of their teeth and the length of their snouts. Beavers always sit upright, have two large front teeth, and hold a stick in their paws. Other symbols can be added to figures to communicate further details: multiple dorsal fins indicate that a whale is supernatural, and figures with features from two forms (for example, one set of human ears and one of birdlike ears) have the power to transform between those forms.

Though these great columns are undoubtedly related to narratives, the exact nature of that relationship is difficult to define. It provides an interesting dilemma for narratological studies. Though the columns are often referred to as “story-telling poles,” the poles do not really tell a story. Someone unfamiliar with the myth of Raven stealing the light, for example, would not learn it by studying the Raven pole in Wrangell. The figures are not arranged in any chronological order like panels in a comic book would be, nor does the pole as a whole depict one particular scene from the story like a painting world. Instead, the combination of characters together seems to suggest a particular narrative — more like a montage-style book cover or a movie poster would (see examples). The narratives related to a column were most likely recited at the ceremony in which it was raised, and even those well-versed in the myths of the culture might not be able to identify with certainty the story depicted without knowing the history of that ceremony.

We do not know how long the Native Americans in this region have made such carved columns. The tribes had developed no system of writing and thus kept no records, and the columns themselves (like all wooden objects) decompose and deteriorate. The earliest evidence comes from descriptions made by European and Russian explorers and traders in the eighteenth century. The stylistic rules for the figures appear to have been already established by that time. However, the columns themselves were much smaller and simpler than the familiar columns of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Most of the columns stood inside the houses, decorative but also essential components of the houses’ structure. Only a small number of poles stood outside the houses, rarely more than one or two in any given village; these were erected as memorial poles to honor past leaders. The columns at that time do not appear to have been connected in any way to the mythological narratives of the tribe.

Contact with Europeans and Russians created conditions that radically changed the art of column carving. The introduction of iron tools and the increase in overall wealth caused by the fur trade increased the efficiency of the carvers, the detail and quality of their carvings, and the demand for their columns. With these changes, the so-called “golden age” of column carving began — roughly one hundred years from the end of the eighteenth century to the end of the nineteenth century. The columns began to display a much larger number of figures, which made them more apt for containing narratives. The Haida on Queen Charlotte Island first began carving these larger and more elaborate narrative poles; the practice then spread in varying degrees up and down the coast.

When commissioning a new pole, custom forbade the hiring of a carver from one’s own clan or tribal group. Preferably, the carver would come from another tribe altogether. Completing one of the larger columns of the nineteenth century could take as long as two years, during which time the carver and his immediate family would often live in the patron’s own house. The patron spent a great deal of time communicating to the carver the histories, the legends, and the myths belonging to his family. These carvers, with their many travels and exposure to stories from other clans and tribes, were perhaps the most culturally-aware members of their society. They would also compose songs, perform dances, and speak during important ceremonies. More than just carpenters or craftsmen, they had a rich understanding of the significant narratives of their culture and could then portray those narratives in their magnificent carvings in cedar.

References / Works Consulted

• Malin, Edward. Totem Poles of the Pacific Northwest Coast. 1994. Portland, Oregon: Timber Press, 1986.
• Reid, Bill, and Robert Bringhurst. The Raven Steals the Light. University of Washington Press, 2003.
• Garfield, Viola E., and Linn A. Forrest. Wolf and the Raven : Totem Poles of Southeastern Alaska. University of Washington Press, 1961.
• “The Strange Stories the Totem Pole Tells.” New York Times. 26 September 1909. (Full article available online.)
• Stewart, Hilary. Looking at Totem Poles. University of Washington Press, 1993.
• Keithahn, Edward L. Monuments In Cedar. 1945. (Full text available online.)

Images

The four images of the Raven pole in Wrangell, Alaska, come from a variety of sources.

1. The first photograph comes from the 1909 New York Times article, which is available online. View article at NYTimes.com (PDF)
2. The second photograph, taken by Edward L. Keithahn, comes from his 1945 Monuments In Cedar (page 90). All of Keithahn’s photographs from the books are available online with the full text. View page at Alaskool.org | View image file (JPG)
3. The third photograph was taken by Flickr user “brewbrooks” during his August 2007 vacation to Alaska. He has graciously made these photographs available under a Creative Commons license. View photo at Flickr
4. The line drawing of the pole comes from Hillary Stewart’s 1993 Looking at Totem Poles. View sketch at Google Books

Many children leave behind this type of adventurous work of imagination for the world of romance and relationships to be found in Barbie dolls (or Bratz dolls, these days) or the epic battles enacted by G.I. Joes (still the top listed action figures in a Google search). Then, when they are told that playing with toys is an act, not of imagination, but of childishness, they leave these things behind. Those who are lucky enough discover they can tell the same kinds of stories sitting around a table with some dice, or using a video-game controller and console, their customizable hero appearing on screen, moving as they specify. The world of role-playing games, both the table-top and computer or console versions, is a continuation of the need for acts of imagination, for storytelling, which, according to writers from Joss Whedon to J. R. R. Tolkien,  is a  “basic human need” (Whedon) or even a spiritual exercise (Tolkien 79). Interactive storytelling, which comes so naturally to children, could be considered an expression of the mythic impulse — the movement of a modern human toward a more sacred or mythic understanding of the universe.

This is not to say, of course, that playing HALO is akin to a divine experience (though some truly devout gamers would surely disagree with me). An article from the International Game Developers Association certainly claims that computer games solve the problem of storytelling being a static medium:

Computer games promise the potential to move beyond this strictly linear form by offering stories that interact with the player, allowing them to participate in the decisions or actions that shape the narrative. (Source)

But while there is some argument that computer games have greater potential to immerse the player in a storytelling environment, this type of storytelling is limited by its programming. There are certainly more options in the story than offered by a movie, but given the number of visual and auditory elements provided for the player, the game might have only the same level of imaginative interactivity as a novel: in a novel the story doesn’t change, but the details of how scenes are imagined might. In an interactive computer game, the player brings a certain set of instructions — inside the boundaries of the program — for how the story is told. In a novel, though the story doesn’t change, the reader brings the setting, the smells, the colors, and the sounds of voices, creating all of the visual and audio in their heads.

Table-top role playing games, on the other hand, require little more than rule books and dice before they say, “Go. Be the hero.” From the instant you choose to interact, to take part in the story, you and your peers around the table are creating a shared reality that you gleefully inhabit for the next several hours. Many of the elements of Joseph Campbell’s “hero’s journey” pattern find their way into the tale from the start. Characters often fit Jungian archetypes, have had unusual births, or have already left home and begun their journey into a mythical realm. The themes of fantasy are all wrapped up in mythology and the language of the fantastic, and it’s easy to intentionally embrace those elements.

I’ve just begun a game that takes the mythic connection of group storytelling and mythic elements quite literally. The setting is mythic Greece, during the era just before the Trojan War. Mythic time moves differently than more linear storytelling, which makes it hard to pin down which heroes are active when, as their stories tend to intersect the chronology of other tales. The players in the tale are all children of the gods, and they have already received their first quest from the Oracle at Delphi. They have encountered pirates and nereids, have competed in contests of strength, and have poured libations on herms to ensure that their journeys will go well. Over the course of the tale we create together, they will meet many of the well-known heroes and participate in or derail some of the traditional stories. They’ve told me they’d like to take over Egypt. It could happen.

But while I’ve played in games where I’ve sought out the Holy Grail in Edwardian England and run games where people of the bloodline of the Tuatha de Danaan of Irish mythology teamed up with urban-fantasy-styled demon slayers to stop an invasion of the human world, not all games have to have a mythic element to maintain that feeling of enacting creation. The real magic (to use the term loosely) in a table-top role playing game is that the story incarnates: the tale being created takes place in the people sitting around a table, sharing the telling while they share pizza and Doritos. I won’t go so far as to say that the ritual of storytelling echoes religious rituals or coming of age ceremonies where the participants are said to become the mythic personages they represent. But in a modern world where there aren’t too many coming of age ceremonies left, where stories are often told to us by boxes that carry all of the sounds and images with them, where we so rarely have the chance to be a part of a larger story than the one we act out in our everyday lives, sometimes connecting to that mythic spirit of storytelling is as simple as sitting down with some dice, some paper, and some friends, and seeing where the story takes you.

References

• Whedon, Joss. “More Joss Strike Talk.” Whedonesque. 7 Nov 2007. Online article.
• Flieger, Verlyn and Douglas A. Anderson. Tolkien On Fairy-stories. HarperCollins: 2008.
• International Game Developers Association. “Foundations of Interactive Storytelling.” 13 Nov 2001. Online article.

A typical fable usually has a two-part plot sequence: the confrontation, and the outcome. Unlike modern comic book art, where a plot sequence can be shown in a series of panels, in these illustrations the artist uses only one panel to depict the plot. In that one panel, the artist may depict the confrontation, or the outcome, or both, as you can see in the examples below. In each case, however, the reader must still apply additional information in order to get a mental picture of the whole story. That additional information might come from the text, or it might come from the storytelling tradition itself, since many of these fables were well established in European folklore and well known in the oral tradition long before being printed in books.

In the famous story of the wolf and the lamb, for example, the wolf accuses the lamb of muddying the water, while the lamb protests that he is innocent; this is the confrontation. The wolf eats the lamb anyway; this is the outcome. The artist has chosen to render the confrontation scene, including the important detail that the lamb is drinking downstream from the wolf. Any reader who knows the fable already can supply the outcome based on what they see here.

From Steinhowel’s Aesop, 1479. View larger image »

For an illustration which shows the outcome instead, consider the frog and the mouse. The frog offered to help the mouse cross the stream, and the mouse tied itself to the frog so that it would not drown. The treacherous frog then plunges under the water, trying to drown the mouse; this is the confrontation. In the outcome, a passing kite swoops down and carries away both the mouse and the frog. For readers who know the story, the confrontation is can be easily deduced from the dramatic denouement.

From Steinhowel’s Aesop, 1479. View larger image »

Sometimes the artist shows a series of events occupying the same space even if they unfold separately in time. Consider, for example, the story of the old lion: he is attacked first by a boar, then by a bull, and finally by a donkey, which is the most humiliating of all. The illustration shows all three attacks as if they were simultaneous, but readers who know the story realize that the attacks happen in a sequence, culminating with the despicable donkey.

From Steinhowel’s Aesop, 1479. View larger image »

Meanwhile, to understand the meaning of the fire coming out of the boar’s mouth, you need a knowledge of the  Latin text of the story, which explains that the boar had dentes fulminei, “teeth that flash like lightning.” With this detail, the Latin text exerted a specific, direct influence on the illustration; later on, we will see an example of an image which instead challenges the text.

But first, let’s look at another example of multiple scenes in a single panel, the story of the lion and the mouse. A lion caught a mouse, and the mouse begged for mercy, promising he would do the lion a favor in the future. The lion scoffed, but let the mouse go. This is the mouse in the lower right, pinned under the lion’s paws. Later, the lion was caught in a snare and the mouse then chewed through the ropes, setting the lion free. This is the mouse in the upper right, chewing through the rope wrapped around the lion’s neck. Without the text of the story, you might think there are two mice, but there is really only one. In addition, you might think the lion is caught in a snare when he traps the mouse, but not so: you are seeing two different moments of time, superimposed.

From Steinhowel’s Aesop, 1479. View larger image »

You can even find sequences of three scenes combined into a single panel, as in the story of Zeus and the frogs. As the story begins, the frogs ask Zeus to give them a king, so he hurls a log down into the water; you can see Zeus hurling the log on the left. At first the frogs are impressed by the big splash made by the log, but they grow bored with their king, and hop on the log to show their contempt. You can see the frogs hopping on the log in the lower right. They then ask Zeus to send them another king, so he does: you can see the bird (a stork? a crane? a heron?) in the upper right, as he eats his subjects one by one.

From Steinhowel’s Aesop, 1479. View larger image »

But where did this bird come from? The text accompanying the image says it was a water snake, not a water bird, who devoured the foolish frogs. All the classical and medieval Latin texts are clear on this: Zeus sent a snake to devour the frogs. Did the artist know a different version of the story? Or did he simply prefer the bird for artistic reasons of his own? Whatever its origin, the bird in the illustration to Steinhowel’s Aesop in 1479 became firmly established in the tradition of Aesop illustrations, as you can see here in Hieronymus Osius’s verse fables published in 1574. The illustration features a bird, even though the Latin text still maintains that it was a snake which ate the frogs.

From Osius’s Phryx Aesopus, 1574. View larger image »

Over time, the bird not only inhabited the illustrations of the fables, but also started to appear in the texts as well, both in Latin and in the other European languages. Let’s leap forward in time several hundred years, to the lovely Baby’s Own Aesop of 1887, illustrated by Walter Crane; by this time, the water snake was long forgotten and Walter Crane did not even realize that “King Stork” was a late medieval interloper in the history of this fable. The image, the text and even the title of the fable now all refer clearly to a stork, with no trace of the snake to be found.

From Walter Crane’s Baby’s Own Aesop, 1887. View larger image »

As folklore, Aesop’s fables are always shifting and changing in their various retellings, and the images used to illustrate the fables, just as much as the words, are part of that creative tradition. The images are not simply extras added on to the story. Instead, these images can contribute their own distinctive elements to that endless mix-and-match process by which new versions of the fables are created — a process which has kept the Aesop’s fable tradition going strong for three thousands years, and counting.

Works Discussed

• Steinhowel, Heinrich. Aesopus: Vita et Fabulae. 1479. (Illustrations available online at Aesopica.net.)
• Osius, Hieronymus. Phryx Aesopus Habitu Poetico. 1574. (Available online at Aesopica.net.)
• Linton, W.J. The Baby’s Own Aesop. 1887. Illustrations by Walter Crane. (Available online at Aesopica.net.)

Folklorists and narratologists have observed and insisted that the same story might exist in different versions. Mythology and folklore epitomize this fact: many stories from the distant past have been recorded and retold at different times by different authors. Though the versions may differ in length, emphasis, and many other details, they tell one story. C.S. Lewis, for example, the twentieth-century literary scholar, observed this in the story of Balder from Norse mythology:

We all agree that the story of Balder is a great myth, a thing of inexhaustible value. But of whose version — whose words — are we thinking when we say this? For my own part, the answer is that I am not thinking of anyone’s words […] [but of] a particular pattern of events. (Lewis xxix-xxx)

While the patterns of events in mythology have historically been transmitted in multiple texts, this is nothing peculiar to myth: any narrative can be told and retold in different versions. Also, there is no reason that a “version” must be a written text. For centuries, narratives have been communicated in plays that use spoken words and live performances; in the last hundred years, new narrative art forms have emerged like comic books that use still images with written words and movies that use moving images with spoken words and music. In America today, movies and television shows have surpassed books as the dominant narrative art form.

Movies, comic books, and plays are typically considered narrative art because they undeniably tell stories, but the connection of some other art forms to narratives is less clear. Take as an example the small portion of a stained-glass window shown below, dated around 1180 CE, from the Canterbury Cathedral. It clearly references a narrative (that of Lot’s wife turning into a pillar of salt from Genesis 19:17-26), but it also clearly does not tell the narrative: anyone wholly unfamiliar with the story would not, upon seeing this window, learn the pattern of events that it depicts.

Narratologists have puzzled over the exact relationship between a particular narrative and its depiction in non-narrative art forms. (Two articles in this issue explore along these lines the fifteenth-century woodcut illustrations of Heinrich Steinhowel and the nineteenth-century totem poles of the Pacific Northwest). But to look at the role that works of both narrative and non-narrative art might play in our experience with a myth, I turn again to C.S. Lewis:

What really delights and nourishes me [in the case of the Balder myth] is a particular pattern of events […] [that gives] (at the first meeting) as much delight and (on prolonged acquaintance) as much wisdom and strength as the works of the greatest poets. (Lewis xxx, xxxii)

Narrative forms of art such as books and movies are essential for that “first meeting” with a myth that brings delight. Though Lewis had in mind only narrative art in this context, I would add that non-narrative art forms can bring about this “prolonged acquaintance”: for someone who has already had that first meeting with the story of Lot’s wife, this window can recall the myth to mind and prolong that acquaintance that brings wisdom and strength.

Two of my personal favorite art forms related to myth are non-narrative: Greek pottery and movie soundtracks. First, the Greek water-pitcher shown below, dated to the early sixth century BCE and displayed in the Louvre in Paris, depicts a scene from The Iliad using the black-figure pottery technique. When Achilles decided to return to the fighting in order to avenge the death of Patroclus, his mother Thetis commissioned the divine smith Hephaestus to fashion a shield and other weapons. In the scene on the water-pitcher, Thetis delivers these divine objects to her son (Iliad XIX.1-36). Many of the Greek vases, including this one, have the names of the characters painted in the gaps to help the observer identify the scene.

Second, the audio clip below comes from the Star Wars soundtrack. (Click the arrow on the slider below to play the one-minute clip; Flash required.) The movie as a whole tells a story, but the musical score alone does not. Even so, I have found that listening to the soundtrack can effectively recall the myth to mind and prolong my acquaintance with it. In this climatic scene, Luke Skywalker pilots his aircraft on a nearly-impossible mission against the massive battle station known as the Death Star. Darth Vader and other pilots from the enemy fleet chase Luke as he nears the target. The audio clip accompanies the final minute before Luke successfully launches the missiles that destroy the battle station. (I recommend a recent post at AMC’s blog that discusses musical scores in science-fiction movies.)

Go get Adobe Flash Player!

On this site, we will primarily explore myths contained in works of written words: ancient mythological and religious texts, fantasy and science-fiction literature, and the like. But since it is important to remember that myths can be contained in more than just written words, we are devoting the next two issues to a series titled “Myth Beyond Words” with articles exploring myths in various other forms.

References

• Lewis, C.S. “Preface.” George MacDonald: An Anthology. 1947. New York: HarperOne, 2001. xxiii-xxxix. (A slightly-modified version of this preface can also be found as an introduction to Erdman’s editions of George MacDonald’s Phantastes and Lilith.) Full text of this preface available online at HarperCollins.

Images

• Lot’s Wife from Canterbury Cathedral, courtesy of Sacred Destinations. Circa 1180 CE. (The window containing this scene, the so-called “Second Typological Window,” can be found in the north choir aisle. The cathedral originally contained six windows windows illustrating events in the Old Testament thought to foreshadow events in the New Testament; the limited number of panels that have survived from the twelfth century have now been combined into two windows.)
• “Thetis Brings Weapons To Achilles” photographed by Marie-Lan Nguyen, courtesy of Wikipedia. Circa 575–550 BCE.

Music

• Williams, John. “The Battle of Yavin.” Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope. Sony: 1977. This individual track can be purchased online as an MP3 download.
• Much thanks to Jeroen Wijering for making available his JW FLV Media Player that plays MP3 files on a web page using Flash.