Guest Blog: Naomi Lewis
Jun. 11th, 2010 11:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alanajoliI meant to post earlier this week about my goals for Kaz's Summer Camp, but it's Friday again, and that means guest blog day, so you'll have to wait in suspense to find out what I've been up to until another post!
For those of you who have read "Nomi's Wish," you may have heard some of the true story behind the piece. While I was working at Gale as an editor of Something about the Author, I had the opportunity to exchange letters and phone calls with Naomi Lewis, a British writer and critic, and one of the foremost Hans Christian Andersen scholars and translators. An article in Books for Keeps (linked in full here) that I read while working on her profile for the series called Lewis a fairy herself, which was a grain of inspiration for the story. Later, on the phone, Lewis told me that she sometimes gave young women wishes, so long as they never told how they used them, and wished them the very best luck in using their "fourth" wish first. (In theory, the first two wishes always bring trouble, and the third wish is always used to undo the trouble caused by the first two: if only the heroes were given four wishes instead of three, they'd have the real wish to make good use of.) During our last conversation, she gave me a wish (which I have since used and, to the present, it has come true).
I discovered, while doing some research this week, that Naomi Lewis died last July at the ripe old age of ninety-seven. She didn't use the Internet when I was corresponding with her, and I'd always meant to send her a printed copy of "Nomi's Wish," but was rather afraid she wouldn't feel as honored by it as I had been inspired by her (especially as it features the death of the character named and modeled after her!). In honor of her life and memory, today's guest blog is an excerpt from her Classic Fairy Tales to Read Aloud, for which she wrote a brilliant four page introduction, only a small part of which I'm quoting here. Cheers, Naomi, and may all your wishes in the after life be fourth wishes!
--
"The Pot of Soup, the Cauldron of Story, has always been boiling," (Tolkien wrote), "and to it have always been added new bits, dainty and undainty." Helpings from that cauldron are the contents of this book. "But why do you call them fairy tales?" asked a quibbling friend. "Where are the fairies?" They are there, all the way through, whether or not with gauzy wings and tiny wand. In these pages you will find pixies, a goblin, a troll or two, a seal-fairy, a fairy godmother (and daughter), the immortal witch Baba Yaga, and a marvelous unseen spirit ("that which was down the well"). Gifted helpers include a cat, a doll, a wolf, a fish, even a three-legged stool. Above all you will find magic itself and its ways to solve all problems.
Still, the question does have an historical answer. The term that we use so easily comes from 17th-century France: conte de fee. It stood for a tale in which needed supernatural aid came not from the Church but an older less rigid power....
Fairy tales: yes or no? What do you gain by meeting them as a child? Better to start by saying how much is lost if you fail to meet them then, or do so only through cartoon films of the Disney type, or videos. The words are part of the whole. In the landscape of the mind, whatever is planted early lasts and grows through time. Reality may be a featureless urban-suburban street; but the mind of the fairy-tale reader holds mountains, oceans, distances, a forest that is haven, shelter, and mystery, some day to be explored, with a pathway that leads to the very edge of the world. Adapt this to your liking.
The stories also offer a useful guide to behavior. Be courteous to crone and spider--or ant, or bird, any creature really. Help given is help returned, at time of greatest need. The baddies never learn that politeness serves you best. Be generous: share your crust. And, above all, wish with care. Think well before you start: your wishes may come true....
Does all this stand for belief? That's an elusive word. We believe in the moon of song and verse, while we also know that it is huge and cold and gray, pitted with craters. Fairy tales grew out of want and need, hope and dream, desire to defeat the impossible. And in every tale it is defeated, a special gift to the listener. What is that gift? Imagination. No wonder Pushkin said, "Each story is a poem." And though today we have light and flight, music and pictures at a touch, and all manner of other marvels, are there not other impossibles? So when I am asked now and then if I believe in fairies, as a fairy-tale reader I answer with prudence, "Of course. The real question, though, is--do they believe in me?"
For those of you who have read "Nomi's Wish," you may have heard some of the true story behind the piece. While I was working at Gale as an editor of Something about the Author, I had the opportunity to exchange letters and phone calls with Naomi Lewis, a British writer and critic, and one of the foremost Hans Christian Andersen scholars and translators. An article in Books for Keeps (linked in full here) that I read while working on her profile for the series called Lewis a fairy herself, which was a grain of inspiration for the story. Later, on the phone, Lewis told me that she sometimes gave young women wishes, so long as they never told how they used them, and wished them the very best luck in using their "fourth" wish first. (In theory, the first two wishes always bring trouble, and the third wish is always used to undo the trouble caused by the first two: if only the heroes were given four wishes instead of three, they'd have the real wish to make good use of.) During our last conversation, she gave me a wish (which I have since used and, to the present, it has come true).
I discovered, while doing some research this week, that Naomi Lewis died last July at the ripe old age of ninety-seven. She didn't use the Internet when I was corresponding with her, and I'd always meant to send her a printed copy of "Nomi's Wish," but was rather afraid she wouldn't feel as honored by it as I had been inspired by her (especially as it features the death of the character named and modeled after her!). In honor of her life and memory, today's guest blog is an excerpt from her Classic Fairy Tales to Read Aloud, for which she wrote a brilliant four page introduction, only a small part of which I'm quoting here. Cheers, Naomi, and may all your wishes in the after life be fourth wishes!
--
"The Pot of Soup, the Cauldron of Story, has always been boiling," (Tolkien wrote), "and to it have always been added new bits, dainty and undainty." Helpings from that cauldron are the contents of this book. "But why do you call them fairy tales?" asked a quibbling friend. "Where are the fairies?" They are there, all the way through, whether or not with gauzy wings and tiny wand. In these pages you will find pixies, a goblin, a troll or two, a seal-fairy, a fairy godmother (and daughter), the immortal witch Baba Yaga, and a marvelous unseen spirit ("that which was down the well"). Gifted helpers include a cat, a doll, a wolf, a fish, even a three-legged stool. Above all you will find magic itself and its ways to solve all problems.
Still, the question does have an historical answer. The term that we use so easily comes from 17th-century France: conte de fee. It stood for a tale in which needed supernatural aid came not from the Church but an older less rigid power....
Fairy tales: yes or no? What do you gain by meeting them as a child? Better to start by saying how much is lost if you fail to meet them then, or do so only through cartoon films of the Disney type, or videos. The words are part of the whole. In the landscape of the mind, whatever is planted early lasts and grows through time. Reality may be a featureless urban-suburban street; but the mind of the fairy-tale reader holds mountains, oceans, distances, a forest that is haven, shelter, and mystery, some day to be explored, with a pathway that leads to the very edge of the world. Adapt this to your liking.
The stories also offer a useful guide to behavior. Be courteous to crone and spider--or ant, or bird, any creature really. Help given is help returned, at time of greatest need. The baddies never learn that politeness serves you best. Be generous: share your crust. And, above all, wish with care. Think well before you start: your wishes may come true....
Does all this stand for belief? That's an elusive word. We believe in the moon of song and verse, while we also know that it is huge and cold and gray, pitted with craters. Fairy tales grew out of want and need, hope and dream, desire to defeat the impossible. And in every tale it is defeated, a special gift to the listener. What is that gift? Imagination. No wonder Pushkin said, "Each story is a poem." And though today we have light and flight, music and pictures at a touch, and all manner of other marvels, are there not other impossibles? So when I am asked now and then if I believe in fairies, as a fairy-tale reader I answer with prudence, "Of course. The real question, though, is--do they believe in me?"
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no subject
Date: 2010-06-12 03:47 am (UTC)What she writes about the lessons of fairy tales is definitely something I've always believed: the virtue of respectfulness to all things, including the smallest, and the ties of gratitude.
Lovely post, truly.
no subject
Date: 2010-06-14 11:26 am (UTC)Thank you!