Second grade: Legends and animal fables
If it is the role of fairy tales to teach us to see, then what role do the legends play?
Of course the transition from fairy tales to legends is a gradual and relative thing. But still the word “Fairy tale” and the word “Legend” invoke as their keynotes two wholly different sounds. The first lies further back, deeper down, in a world of blue shadows and golden light. The heroes are pure images. But the heroes of legend are historic persons, particular human beings who lived at such and such a time, and who just by virtue of their attitude to the world have become greater than themselves, superhuman landmarks, as it were, who still tower above the landscape through which we have fought our way. If we look back, we meet them: Catherine of Siena, Francis of Assisi and the rest—the softspoken, secret guides who have actually had a greater influence on history than the emperors and the popes. All of them revealed themselves through their glances, their smiles, the touch of their hands and their actions, through their way of being. As teachers they spoke through a direct language of images: they used themselves to demonstrate an attitude to the world. They expressed themselves through deeds when they wanted to explain what a human being ought to be.
This is what legends are about.
It is the legends' task to sing about this attitude.
A great many “legends” are actually a bridge between fairy tales and true legends. We will not look at them here, but will rather try to point out a couple of characteristic aspects of the true, fully ripened legend.
Educators, parents, teachers will all have learned from experience that what you say is not decisive. What you are, and what you do, play a far greater role. And it is this above all which gives weight to the words you may say later.
Speaking truth is all very well and good. But that a long line of human beings have chosen in full freedom to let themselves be burned alive for the truth—that is a fact which weighs more. From the slain martyrs, be it from [Giordano] Bruno or Socrates or the first Christians, there issues an appeal so intense that the course of history can't withstand it. Such an effort of human will is almighty: it cannot do otherwise than change the world.
Those who lived the legends knew this. And those who wrote the legends knew it.
They laid the foundation for our culture and its ideals. Without them the world would have been worse than it is.
The legends glorify the superhuman, i.e. the free act: The beautiful act.
But the legends by themselves lead us up into an air which is too thin, too ethereal to breathe in. The saint awakens the natural longing for the criminal, precisely as the mountaintop awakens the longing for the lowlands. I think it was Voltaire who wrote that the human being is midway between angel and animal. And that is a fact which it's no use running away from.
Especially with children the tension between the two is palpable.
It's downright refreshing for a teacher to see how the children become wild and unruly when they've heard a sufficient number of pious legends. As saints they become totally unusable. If you want children to be nice and placid, you must resort to the exact opposite of the legends.
And the opposite is the animal fables—just as the satyr play is the opposite of the tragedy. For spiritual hygiene both sides are equally necessary; everything depends on the correct dosage, on balance. And while the legends nourish—sometimes to excess—that which is most highly human in the children, the fables satisfy the natural animal traits, and at the same time bring them into humor's liberating daylight.
The true “animal” in the animal fable always proves to be astonishingly human and close to us, a sort of half-brother of ours, or at least a very near relative. It would serve us ill to cut the family tie.
Of course we have archangels and saints in the family tree as well, but the snake, the wolf, the toad, the rat and above all “the fox” belong in the picture. The schoolchild's look at recognizing his relatives within the fauna usually surpasses all expectations. This harmonizes splendidly, too, with the view taken by that most holy of all saints: after all, Francis of Assisi called them variously “brother Pig”, “brother Crow”, “brother Snake” and “brother Wolf.” That he also knew brother Sun and brother Angel merely enlarges the stage. No one was more clear over the animal kingdom's place and justification in the human soul.
That they are also physically our relatives is a theme which is treated in later grades. It forms the core of the natural science curriculum when the time is ripe.
To return to Francis: anyone who hasn't heard about him is missing a chord in his mind. After the class have essentially spent a year listening to fairy tales, and have taught themselves to draw and paint, learned the alphabet, and written their first big, very colorful words in connection with Little Freddie, Tom Thumb, the Ash Lad, and a couple dozen princesses and trolls, at the beginning of second grade they meet two relatively new worlds: the cycle of legends about Francis and the cycle of fables about Reynard the Fox.
Of course such meetings are in reality a reencounter.
We are all born with both Francis and Reynard the Fox in our heart. In the stories they have simply stepped out of us, so that we meet ourselves from outside, as wholly independent figures.
I don't know if Francis and Reynard the Fox felt the same joy at the meeting as the class did—but I think so. For there is no greater joy than to meet a brother.
Francis lived in the twelfth century in a little town named Assisi. At first he wanted to be a warrior, but in spite of himself he became a saint instead. There was no help for it; that's the way he was. But this is only how it appears from outside; in reality he became that way. He lived a life which was harder than that of most warriors.
His world-shaking contribution consisted in his voluntarily exposing himself to the danger of contagion by caring for lepers without any form of protection whatever, a deed whose repercussions we can hardly imagine today; and in his creating the concepts “brother Wolf”, “sister Swallow”, “brother Murderer”, “brother Thief”, and finally “brother Ass”—the latter as a designation for his sole private property—the body in which he stood and walked.
His portrait is drawn with shining mastery in the following small legends:
One day Francis was out walking in the woods together with his disciples. They came to a green glade, a clearing in the forest. And nearby they heard the baying of a pack of hounds. Between the trees they could glimpse a leaping, fleeing bundle steadily coming closer. It was brother Bunny, alone and in mortal dread. The hare came into the clearing, looked around and caught sight of Francis. In a twinkling he was across the clearing, and with a long jump landed in Francis's arms. And Francis felt the hare's heartbeat against his breast. When the dogs arrived, they had to turn and go home again. When the bunny had rested a bit, he jumped down onto the grass and ambled off into the woods.
Another time Francis was out walking with the “lesser brothers,” as his disciples called themselves. They came upon a flowering wild rosebush, which the Benedictines revered and regarded as sacred because Saint Benedict had once, after especially severe temptations, stripped and rolled in it as a penance.
Francis went up to the bush, bent over and kissed it. When he stood up, the thorns fell off. Only the roses were left.
The first legend gets its special nuance when you reflect for a moment that the Hare is an age-old symbol of fruitfulness; he is the purest and most pious of all Eros's servants. The Dog is an equally ancient image of the intellect. The Dominicans, who saw it as their primary task to combat paganism and heresy with the aid of learning and intellectual preparedness, chose their order's name because of its meaning: domini canes, the Lord's dogs. Their work did not bear the same fruits for posterity.
When Francis was about to die, he bade the brothers of his order carry him outside and take off his clothes, so that he could lie in sister Grass while brother Sun shone on him. For he had a rendezvous with brother Death, and wanted to meet him just as he had come from nature's hand. The brothers wept profusely, but they managed to sing a few verses of the song about “brother Death, the physical body's death.”
The class made a book about Francis, with a little text and a great many pictures. The children were especially occupied with drawing Francis talking to the birds and to the fish, the same themes which Giotto never tired of painting. The dying Francis in sister Grass was likewise drawn diligently and thoroughly. Some of the drawings are uncommonly lovely.
It is very difficult to stop writing about Francis once you have begun on him. The twelve robbers, for example, who get shelter in the cloister for a night, and who go on staying there until they have one and all been accepted as lesser brothers—the twelve robbers would have deserved honorable mention. And the wolf in Urbino, the one who broke down the minute he caught sight of Francis, and was never able to be naughty again!
But we must leave them all.
A dreadful anticlimax to Francis is found in the fables about Reynard the Fox. A more intense concentration of outrageousness and villainy has never gone on four legs. He defies all description. Imagine all the sin, shame, dishonor, depravity, cowardice, falsity, insolence, treachery, greed, faithlessness and orneriness which can be crammed into one skin, and you have an inkling of Reynard the Fox.
All the same he is a brother, a brother in degradation and inadequacy, with his own ideals and his hope for improvement, with a painful awareness of his weaknesses. It's just that awareness isn't quite enough. He's a master of the art of remorse and hypocrisy, the game of intrigue.
He has scaled the Himalayas of feeling guilty; and for that very reason no one is so innocent as he when he comes down from the mountain again. In the latest vile, concrete crime he is always the innocent suspect. Precisely because he weeps so loudly over his earlier, proven sins.
Tartuffe is a shepherd boy compared to Reynard.
A couple of extracts from his biography:
Under the leadership of King Nobel, the Lion, the animals in the forest have gathered for a council. Reynard has inflicted on the bear Bruin, the wolf Isegrim, the tomcat Hinze, the she-wolf and others: Humiliation. Torture. Mutilation. The council's problem is how to get the culprit to appear for trial and punishment.
The bear, the wolf and the tomcat have all come to grief because they all had gone to Reynard in turn to fetch him to the assembly, where originally he was merely desired to answer for a few chicken murders and such. Who should be sent to fetch him next? The assembly chooses the beaver, who reluctantly sets out. They all know that Reynard is intellect incarnate, pure and absolute reason. No one can withstand him, by his trickery he lures everybody into pitfalls, sorrow and misfortune. And he tricks them in such a way that it always appears to be their own weaknesses, without Reynard's help, which cause their downfall. Everyone knows his dislike of the bear, the wolf and the tomcat. Behind it lies a long history of racial hatred and antipathy, of ancient blood-feuds. While the wolf was stuck in a cruel, bloody and painful trap, Reynard did unspeakable things to the she-wolf, whom he had lured into a pen where she was caught. He did it to humiliate the wolf, and thereby exposed an abyss in his character. (We must naturally bowdlerize a bit, even if the text is couched in Goethe's noble words!)
As I said, Reynard dislikes the bear, the wolf and the tomcat.
Does he also dislike the beaver? We'll find out. The council is waiting. And to everyone's boundless amazement, Reynard willingly returns with him.
He is accused and found guilty of all that a living being can be guilty of. He is sentenced to death, and is led to the gallows.
Reynard has been waiting for this moment. Now with the rope around his neck he comes into his own. He is in his element, even if he had hoped for acquittal.
May he have permission to speak? Now that he is to die? Now that he is to depart this life anyway, he would like to unburden his heart by confessing everything.
Nobel the Lion King is not one to hinder him from confessing further. But the bear and the wolf are suspicious. Reynard seems much too contrite. He is overcome with remorse.
His worst sin, said Reynard, was that he had known of the conspiracy without telling anyone. Now that he in any case....
“What conspiracy?” King Nobel woke up.
Oh, Reynard's father, the old, dear departed Reynard, he had in his time let himself be lured into joining it....
“What conspiracy?” The lion wants to know more exactly.
Oh, it was the treasure which had tempted him. The bear Bruin and the wolf Isegrim had inveigled the unsuspecting old fox into coming in with them.
“Treasure? Conspiracy? Will you come down from the gallows immediately!”
Here begins in earnest the bear's and the wolf's via dolorosa.
Reynard got them thrown in prison, shut up in the deepest dungeon under Nobel's castle. For since he was going to die anyway....
As a reward for unmasking the treason, Reynard was pardoned and set free. The innocent Bruin and Isegrim lay in chains. But Reynard wasn't satisfied.
He must atone, he said to the king. And therefore he must make a pilgrimage to Rome.
King Nobel gave him leave.
But he must have a knapsack and shoes for the journey. He could envision making himself a knapsack of bearskin, and if the knapsack wasn't too large, the traitor Bruin would certainly survive. Such bears have flesh that heals, as Bruin had proved before.
And the shoes he could make of Isegrim's paws. If he peeled them off, they would be so large that he could pull them on like socks outside his own paws.
Fine! He could just help himself, said the king. And Bruin and Isegrim, they didn't quite die from the operation.
But Reynard must have spiritual companionship for part of the way; there were still a few little things he wanted to confess. But they were of an intimate nature. He imagined that the ram, Pastor Bellyn, and the pious and meek bunny Lampe might accompany him for some miles southward. He was allowed to take the two men of God with him.
Here begins Bellyn's and Lampe's tragedy.
The first part of the way Reynard entertained them with godly conversation. In particular he dwelt on the cleansing pain of repentance.
But the road took them past Reynard's castle, and he had to look in on Mrs. Reynard before beginning the long trek to Rome in earnest. And Lampe wanted to go in with him. The visit lasted quite a while, and Bellyn became impatient.
Besides, he heard Lampe's voice through the gate. It was not happy. When he knocked, Reynard told him that Lampe was weeping with joy at seeing Mrs. Reynard again, a relative he hadn't had the courage to visit in several years. Now they were hanging on each other's necks. But if Bellyn would do him a service?
Yes, he would.
He, Reynard, had used the time to write a long letter to King Nobel. If Bellyn would take it to the court, he would be permitted to say that he had been involved in writing it, that is helped Reynard to do it.
This thing with the art of writing was Bellyn's sore point. He had often tried to learn it, but it wouldn't come out right. His dearest wish was to qualify as able to write, and now the temptation became too great. Reynard put the letter in the knapsack, tied it shut again, and Bellyn had to promise not to open it on the way.
The innocent cleric brought the knapsack unopened to the king. And he didn't conceal that he himself had written it together with Reynard. Up from the knapsack the majesty drew Lampe's bloody skin. And many were the witnesses who had heard Bellyn avow his participation in the “letter.” They all understood that Reynard and Bellyn together had murdered and eaten Bunny, that innocent, pious man.
Reynard's cunning was proven once again. Messrs. Bruin and Isegrim were set free, and as redress they were served Pastor Bellyn, fresh from the king's personal kitchen, executed as punishment for the vile deed of having eaten Lampe.
Reynard was never caught, but it was a consolation to bring his accomplice to justice. He himself wandered off into the darkness—pure, absolute intellect in animal form.
After the disgrace of the gallows, this victory made him a new animal. . . .
This is a fragment, an arbitrarily chosen snippet of Reynard's biography. The whole story is over a hundred pages long, and can last for two or three weeks if you tell a little of it every day.
Given such wretchedness it's a comfort that the cycle of legends about Francis of Assisi is even greater, even more inexhaustible.
When the children have heard about Reynard long enough, they don't want any more. They're tired of cowardice, mendacity, hypocrisy, and devilishness. They become strikingly docile. But this is only one side of the matter, and by no means the most important.
The main thing is that after three weeks with Reynard they are no longer the same children they were before. They know more. They've had a lesson about hypocrisy and irony which they will never truly forget. “Reynard” has become a watchword, a string in the soul which vibrates at a certain frequency. It becomes somewhat harder to be a teacher after the Reynard period. They've gone through a lot, but in fact they've also felt terribly sorry for Reynard's victims.
But the fox would be impossible without Francis. The children have become acquainted with the extremes of human possibility: the beast and the saint. People need them both.
A synthesis of these two themes is found in such a legend as the story of Raniero di Raniero, splendidly told by Selma Lagerlöf. Raniero is a weaponsmith in Florence, later a fighter—a brawler and man of violence, the worst kind of bully. He becomes a Crusader, and is the first to scale the wall surrounding Jerusalem. He is the bravest, strongest and at the same time the most brutal warrior in the Crusaders' army.
All along his shining bloody route he has been wont after each battle to send his most costly trophy to a certain Madonna icon in the city of his birth—not out of piety, but so that the town can follow his triumphant progress through the world. He was as vain as he was brave.
After the conquest of Jerusalem he gets a special reward for his fighting spirit and his daring. He is the first to be allowed to light his candle at the eternal flame which burns on the altar in the Holy City. But the same evening, during a drinking bout, the army's jester says to him that this time he can't do as he usually does. The holy fire from Jerusalem he cannot bring to Florence.
“Oh, no?” says Raniero, “can't I?”
The wager is made, and the next morning the Crusader sets out, on horseback, in armor, with weapons, with a bundle of unlit candles in his belt, with the holy, burning flame in his hand—and alone.
Thus begins the story of Raniero's true life. The hardships which confront one who wants to bring a living light along the highway from Jerusalem to Florence far surpass the dangers and pains which confront a soldier. The Flame must not go out. Gradually this becomes everything to him. He endures humiliations, injustice, suffering, sorrow—all that can be heaped on one pair of human shoulders. He cannot defend himself, for he has the flame to take care of. He can't flee, for the flame must not be blown out. He can't sleep. Can't rest. Armor, horse, weapons are taken from him. He becomes ragged, thin, sick, half-mad, a suspect, an outlaw—but what does that matter to someone with a flame to guard? He acquires the nickname “pazzo”—loony.
And finally he learns this lesson: he who has a flame to bear can only do it if he forgets all other thoughts, if morning, noon, evening and night he thinks only of the flame. When Raniero arrives in Florence, the light is still burning, but he himself has become a completely different man than before. He still has the same mighty strength. The will is the same, but the goals have changed. The legend summarizes a thousand years of human history; the way from Jerusalem to Florence was long indeed.
The story of Raniero is the story of humanity.
These things grasp the children at a deep level, and hence enter their dream lives. The children meet Raniero, Reynard and Francis at night as well, and it is good stuff to dream about. It shows that the images are acting in them—that they are doing their work far down in the unconscious.
Some time ago one of the children in the highest grade dreamed that the school no longer consisted of the ramshackle drafty barracks we now occupy, but that it was in reality built of white stone.
This is a response to our having not only taught them to read and write, but having given them something to dream about as well—to sleep with.
This is an interesting chapter, but it must wait.
If you go further back in the flora of legend, you find darker, more mystical, fairy-tale-like stuff. But there the pictures become even stronger, stemming even more directly from the sea of images common to humanity, even more directly bound up with sleep's river of symbols.
Most people know the story of the hermit, the pious contemplative, and the lion which had got a thorn in its paw. He helped the lion, and they became friends. Then they parted.
But the man came to Rome, and the emperor was hunting down Christians. At the same time he had caused carnivores to be caught in Africa. He needed both for the entertainment of the people.
The man and the lion meet in the Arena, and the lion, the wildest, biggest and hungriest lion in the Colosseum, recognizes him. Both are let go, because the people demand it.
This story has its background in the world of Christian symbolism, where the mastery of the “beast” plays a great role. The same theme is repeated in Francis's taming of the Wolf in Urbino. But all antiquity was marked by such symbols; the “bull” in the most widespread religion of Roman times, the cult of Mithra, is one of its signs.
And the emperor was not seeking merely to amuse the people; he also had an image to show them: the beast which conquers the man. They were to see it. Of course the spectators didn't “interpret” the picture; for that very reason it sank into them all the more deeply. It made the people into the mass a tyrant needs.
But the author of the Christian legend gives his answer: You cannot stop me, for I have tamed my lion. I understand lions. The lion is my brother, and a part of me. He cannot be tamed by violence.
Now he has become my friend, and he helps me.
And neither did the emperor succeed in stopping them.
Naturally such an “exegesis” of the narrative material is of value only because the teacher knows what he's doing when he uses it; and because he can tell the legends with full sincerity—because he “believes” in them.
For the children the stories function as living, unmediated, cliffhanging drama, giving them stuff with which to work, live and grow. Day and night it surrounds them. For ultimately they themselves are the source from which it is taken.
Every look, every gesture, every drawing and every question proclaims their kinship with “bird,” “ship,” “hare,” “witch” and “saint.” They will simply meet themselves.
First grade | Top | Home | Site Map
This page added May 1998; revised July 1999