The storyteller essays, p.5
The Storyteller Essays, page 5
1931
ON PROVERBS
TAKE, AS a foundation, the image of women carrying full, heavy vessels on their heads without using their hands.
The rhythm in which they do this is what the proverb demonstrates.
A noli me tangere of experience speaks from the proverb.
And through this, the proverb declares its ability to transform experience into tradition.
Proverbs cannot be applied to a specific situation. Rather, they have a kind of magical character: they transform the situation. An individual hardly has the capacity to cleanse all the traces of personal experiences from the lessons learned in life. But proverbs can do this by appropriating those lessons.
Proverbs turn knowledge gained from experience into a wave in the endless, breathing chain of life lessons that come to us from eternity.
Jean Paulhan: Expérience du proverbe.
1932
THE HANDKERCHIEF
WHY IS the art of storytelling disappearing? This question had often occurred to me when, of an evening, I sat around a table with other guests and was bored. But on the afternoon when I stood next to the wheelhouse on the promenade deck of the Bellver and, with my excellent binoculars, tried to piece together every aspect of the incomparable picture Barcelona offers when viewed from the upper deck of a ship, I believed I had found the answer. The sun sank over the city and appeared to melt it. All life had withdrawn into the light-gray transitions between the trees’ foliage, the cement of the buildings, and the crags of the distant mountains. The Bellver is a beautiful, spacious motor vessel one would rather see put to more elevated purpose than ferrying people and goods between the Balearic Islands. Indeed, the ship’s image seemed to shrink the next day when I saw her waiting at the pier of Ibiza for the return journey, because I had envisaged her course as continuing on to the Canary Islands. So I stood there and thought of Captain O., from whom I had taken my leave a few hours earlier. He was the first and perhaps last storyteller I had ever come across in my life, given, as I mentioned, that the art of storytelling is disappearing. And when I remember the many hours Captain O. spent pacing back and forth on the stern deck, gazing idly now and again into the distance, then I also realized: anyone who has never been bored cannot be a storyteller. Boredom, however, no longer has a place in our lives. The activities that were secretly and intimately connected with boredom are dying out. And hence a second reason the gift of storytelling is disappearing: people no longer weave or spin, make handicrafts or do woodwork while listening to stories. In short: there must be work, order, and subordination for stories to flourish.
Storytelling is not only an art, it is even more an honor, if not, as in the East, an office. It leads to a kind of wisdom, just as, conversely, wisdom often proves to be a story. A storyteller, therefore, always knows how to give counsel. And to receive such counsel, you must be able to tell him a story. And yet we know only how to moan and complain, not how to tell stories. As a third reason I thought of the captain’s pipe, the pipe he knocked clean of ashes when he began and again when he had finished speaking, but in between he was happy to let it go out. It had an amber mouthpiece, and its bowl was made of horn with heavy silver mountings. It had been his grandfather’s, and I believe it was the storyteller’s talisman. And this is an additional reason why there are no longer proper stories to be heard: because things no longer last as they should. Anyone who has worn a leather belt until it fell to pieces will always find that at some point a story had become attached to it. The captain’s pipe must know a great many.
As I was musing on this, on the quay far below me appeared a stocky man with the most massive face I have ever seen below a captain’s cap: Captain O., on whose cargo ship I had arrived that morning. Anyone familiar with lonely departures from foreign cities knows or can appreciate what the appearance of a familiar face, even if it is not that of a friend, means in such moments when imminent departure makes any chance of a longer conversation out of the question but at the same time offers the traveler a hat, a hand, or a handkerchief in which his itinerant gaze can nestle before he sails out to sea. And now the captain had appeared, as if summoned by my thoughts. He had left home at fifteen, cruised around the Pacific and Atlantic oceans on a training ship for three years, and ended up on one of North German Lloyd’s steamers to America, which he soon left for reasons he did not explain. I could not learn more. A shadow seemed to have fallen over his life, which he did not speak of willingly. As a result, of course, he was missing the most wonderful characteristic of a storyteller: the ability to tell the story of his life, a wick that is consumed by the gentle flame of the recounting. Be that as it may, his life seemed meager compared to that of the ship, whose very ribs and spars he knew how to bring to life. Such was the ship before me when I embarked that morning. I knew as much about the year she was built and her shipping rates, her cargo hold and her tonnage, as I did about the cabin boys’ wages and her officers’ worries. Yes, those were days when freight transport was still done by sailing ships and the captain himself steered the loads into port! Back then you still heard the quip: “Give up sailing the seas and sign onto a steamship.” But these days . . . and then there usually followed several sentences from which one could gather how drastically things had been changed by the economic crisis.
On such occasions, Captain O. would now and then let fall a comment or two on politics. But I never saw him with a newspaper. I will always remember his response when I turned the conversation to that topic one day. “You can’t learn a thing from newspapers,” he said. “They always want to explain everything to you.” Indeed: isn’t half the art of journalism keeping your reports free of explanation? And didn’t the ancients set an example for us by presenting events dry, so to speak, drained of all psychological motivation and any opinion whatsoever? In any case, one has to admit that the captain kept his own stories free of any superfluous explanations, and it seemed to me that they lost nothing as a result. Some of his stories were peculiar, but none evidences this particular characteristic as clearly as the following one, which would be reflected in a surprising way that very afternoon on the pier of Barcelona.
“It happened many years ago,” the captain recounted as we sailed off the shore of Cádiz, “on one of my first passages to America, which I had joined as the most junior officer. We’d been sailing for seven days and were meant to dock in Bremerhaven at noon the next day. I made my rounds on the promenade deck at the usual time and exchanged a few words here and there with the passengers. But then I was brought up short; the sixth deck chair in the row was empty. A sense of anxiety came over me, and yet I believe my anxiety had been much greater on those mornings when I silently greeted in passing the young woman who sat in the chair, her hands folded behind her head, gazing fixedly before her. She was very beautiful, yet her reserve was every bit as striking as her beauty. Indeed, her reserve was so great, there was rarely occasion to hear her voice—the most marvelous voice I can remember hearing—demure and smoky, dark and metallic. Once, when I’d picked up her handkerchief—I can still recall my astonishment at seeing the coat of arms: a tripartite escutcheon with three stars in each field—I heard her say “thank you” in a tone that implied I’d saved her life. This time, when I’d finished my rounds, I was about to look round for the ship’s doctor to find out if the lady had taken ill, when I was suddenly enveloped in a whirlwind of white paper. I glanced up and saw the missing woman leaning over the sundeck railing, absently gazing after a swarm of notes and scraps of paper, which the wind and waves were playfully tossing about. At noon the following day—I was posted on deck and supervising the landing maneuver—I again caught a glimpse of the unknown woman. The ship was in the process of docking and the keel slowly neared the pier to which we had already moored the stern. The faces of those awaiting the passengers were clearly visible; the unknown woman surveyed the crowd feverishly. Dropping the hawsers had consumed my attention, and all of a sudden many voices cried out together. I spun around and saw that the unknown woman had disappeared; it was clear from the movement of the crowd that she had toppled overboard. All rescue attempts were hopeless. Even if we had been able to stop the vessel suddenly, the hull was no more than three meters from the pier and its momentum could not be overcome. Anyone who leapt into the gap was lost. Then the improbable occurred: someone was willing to brave the terrible odds. We saw him, every fiber in his body straining, his eyebrows contracted in intense concentration as if he were taking aim, dive from the railing and as—to the horror of all the witnesses—the steamer’s entire length moved to the starboard side and bumped against the pier, the rescuer appeared with the woman in his arms on the ship’s port side, which was so empty that no one noticed him at first. He had, in fact, taken aim and landed precisely, dragging her with all his weight into the depths and under the keel, then up to the surface again on the other side of the ship. “When I lifted her up,” the man said to me later, “she whispered ‘thank you’ as if I had picked up her handkerchief.”
The voice with which the storyteller had spoken these final words was still echoing in my ears. If I wanted to shake his hand once more, there was no time to lose. I was on the point of rushing down the stairs to reach him when I noticed that the warehouses, sheds, and cranes were retreating. We had set off. Looking through my binoculars, I surveyed Barcelona one last time then lowered the binoculars slowly toward the pier. The captain was standing in the crowd; he must have noticed me at that moment. He lifted his hand in greeting and I waved. When I lifted the binoculars again, he had unfolded a handkerchief and begun to wave it. I clearly discerned a coat of arms in one corner: a tripartite escutcheon with three stars in each field.
1932
STORYTELLING AND HEALING
THE CHILD is sick. His mother puts him to bed and sits with him. Then she begins to tell him stories. How are we to understand this? I began to have some idea when N. told me about the peculiar healing powers of his wife’s hands. He said of her hands: “Their movements were most expressive. And yet, you couldn’t describe what exactly they were expressing . . . It was as if they were telling a story.” We know about the healing powers of storytelling from the Merseburg incantations. They do not simply repeat Odin’s charm; more importantly, they recount the circumstances in which Odin first used it. We also know that the story the patient tells the doctor at the beginning of his treatment can be the start of the healing process. This raises the question of whether a story might not create the proper climate and favorable conditions for many a recovery, indeed, whether each and every illness might not be curable if only it were carried along a river of stories all the way to that river’s mouth. If one thinks of pain as a dam that impedes the narrative flow, it becomes clear that the dam will burst if the gradient drops sharply enough to sweep everything that stands in its way out to the sea of blessed oblivion. Caresses mark this river’s bed.
1932
READING NOVELS
ALL BOOKS should not be read in the same way. Novels, for instance, are there to be devoured. Reading them is a voluptuous act of absorption, not an act of empathy. The reader does not imagine himself in the hero’s place, but assimilates what befalls him. The vivid report of these experiences is the appetizing trimmings in which a nourishing dish comes to the table. There is, to be sure, a raw diet of experience—just as there is a raw diet for the stomach—to wit: one’s own experiences. But the art of the novel, like the culinary arts, begins beyond the raw ingredients. How many nourishing substances there are that are unappetizing in a raw state! How many experiences are advisable to read about, but not to have! Some readers are struck so forcefully, they would have been devastated had they suffered the experiences directly. In short, if there were a muse of the novel—a tenth muse—her emblem would be the cook. She raises the world from its raw state in order to create something fit to eat, to bring out the fullness of its flavor. One may, if necessary, read the newspaper while eating. But never a novel. These are two conflicting obligations.
THE ART OF STORYTELLING
EVERY morning, news reaches us from around the globe. And yet we lack remarkable stories. Why is this the case? It is because no incidents reach us any longer not already permeated with explanations. In other words: almost nothing occurs to the story’s benefit anymore, but instead it all serves information. In fact, at least half of the art of storytelling consists in keeping one’s tale free of explanation. The ancients were masters at this, Herodotus foremost among them. In chapter 14 of his third book of The Histories, there is the story of Psammenitus. After the Persian king Cambyses had conquered the Egyptian king Psammenitus and taken him captive, Cambyses was determined to humiliate him. He ordered that Psammenitus be made to stand on the side of the road along which the Persian triumphal procession was to pass. He also arranged for his captive’s daughter, dressed as a servant, to pass before him carrying a pitcher to fetch water from the well. Whereas all the Egyptians responded to this spectacle with wailing and lamentation, Psammenitus alone stood silent and immobile, his eyes fixed upon the ground. When, soon after, he saw his son being led to execution in a throng, Psammenitus again remained unmoved. But when he then recognized one of his attendants, an aged, destitute man, among the ranks of the prisoners, he began to strike his head and gave every sign of profound grief.—From this story, we can learn the nature of true storytelling. Information is valuable only for the moment in which it is new. It lives only in that moment. It must be completely subject to it and declare itself immediately without losing any time. A story is different: it does not use itself up. It preserves its inherent power, which it can then deploy even after a long period of time has passed. Montaigne evoked the story of the Egyptian king and asked why Psammenitus gave way to grief only at the sight of his attendant and not before. To this Montaigne answered: “he was so replete with sorrow that the slightest additional burden broke the barriers of his endurance.” The story can be interpreted this way. Yet there is room for other explanations. Anyone can discover these by putting Montaigne’s question to a circle of friends. For example, one of mine said: “The king is not affected by the fate of the nobility, because it is his own.” Another said: “We are moved by many things that we see on the stage that don’t move us in our lives; this attendant is no more than an actor to the king.” Or a third: “Great suffering builds up and is released only through catharsis. The sight of his attendant was the catharsis.”—“If this story had taken place today,” a fourth said, “all the newspapers would claim that Psammenitus preferred his attendant to his children.” What is certain is that every reporter would come up with an explanation in the blink of an eye. Herodotus doesn’t offer a single word of explanation. His is the driest of accounts. That is why this story from ancient Egypt remains astonishing and thought-provoking after thousands of years. It resembles the seeds that retain their germinative power even after being shut up in the airtight chambers of the pyramids for millennia.
BY THE FIRE
On the Twenty-Fifth Anniversary of a Novel
THERE is a story about Oscar Wilde: one day he found himself in a group of people discussing boredom. Each person had his say. Wilde remained quiet until the end. They turned to him expectantly and he said: “When I’m bored, I pick up a good novel, sit by the fireplace, and watch the fire.”
Indeed, a blazing fire and an open book go well together. And because we are holding one in our hands right now—twenty-five years after it first appeared, Arnold Bennett’s major work, The Old Wives’ Tale, has finally been translated—we would like to throw a glance into the fireplace without closing the book. No one is so devoid of imagination that not a single idea occurs to him when he looks into the fireplace. I would like to examine why the spectacle it offers is a metaphor for the novel.
The reader of a novel has a different experience than someone immersed in a poem or watching a play. The novel reader is above all solitary, not only in a different way than a member of an audience is, but also differently than the reader of a poem. The former is part of a crowd and shares in its response. The latter is ready to turn to a companion and give voice to the poem. The reader of a novel is alone and is so for an extended period of time. Moreover, in his solitude, he takes possession of the material more jealously and more exclusively than the other two. He is ready to appropriate it completely, so to speak, quite literally to consume what he reads. He destroys and devours the book’s contents as fire consumes logs in the fireplace. The tension that flows through the work is very much like the draft of air that fans the flames and quickens their dance.
This metaphor presents a different picture than has been usual in discussions of the novel as a genre. In Germany, those discussions began with Friedrich Schlegel. As a result, the fact that Schlegel was willing to recognize only artistic forms of the novel—those of a Cervantes or a Goethe—while refusing to acknowledge the broad tradition of epic narrative, was not without consequences. The novel shares this tradition with the story, which is most evident in the works of English writers: in their novels, Scott, Dickens, Thackeray, Stevenson, and Kipling remain primarily storytellers. Stories flow through them into their books and flow out of their books again as stories. On the other hand, Flaubert, who embodies the opposite stance, would read his sentences aloud to himself. Their rhythmic perfection, which he tested in this way, simply encloses the reader all the more hermetically within his magnificent works. In them, one sentence is joined to the next like bricks in a wall. Nothing more was needed to establish the cult of “construction” with its echoes of sonorous “prosody,” all very much to the advantage of ambitious impotence. But if the novel is a structure, it is less like one designed by an architect than like logs stacked in the fireplace by the maid. It is not meant to be durable but to burn brightly.
