How the Past Possesses the Present in "Symbols and Signs"

When we come to the essence of the stories we tell today, every story can really be condensed into a displaced myth of sorts.  Some of them are more obvious than others; these displaced myths are generally allegories and are thus fully intended to be read into at the allegorical level.  Others—possibly most works of fiction published today—are unintentionally mythical because their authors have little to no understanding of the rich cultural tapestry from which their lives and therefore their works have sprung.  Still others, like Nabokov’s “Symbols and Signs,” are intentionally displaced to the point where the original myth is difficult to divine.  Such works are often a distillation of several myths into a single piece of literature, be it a full-length novel or a short story like Nabokov’s.

This then begs the question:  what is myth?  There are the obvious answers; the Greco-Roman and Old Norse traditions are prominent examples of ancient stories commonly recognized as myths.  However, this narrow, religion-tinged definition of myth fails to recognize an important aspect of the very myths it cites.  Myths are true—perhaps not in the factual, realistic sense of the word, but in the conceptual, ideological sense, they attain a level of overarching truth that no “realistic” story can ever hope to reach.  Thus, by this definition, any story which conveys a truth about human existence could be considered a mythic story, though maybe not a “proper” myth as it lacks religious connotations.

No doubt to some this definition seems unnecessarily, even somewhat laughably, broad.  Perhaps it is.  However, if we think of mythic stories in this way, it becomes easier to see the ways in which the past and the present and even the future each contain the spirits of the other in the truly mythic stories.

Vladimir Nabokov demonstrated his mastery of the mythic in his short story, “Symbols and Signs.”  “Symbols and Signs” is a nuanced condensing of several traditional myths, and indeed of human experience as a whole, which puts it squarely in the category of mythic story.  There are many mythic concepts present in Nabokov’s story, one of which is possibly the myth of Icarus.  Icarus, the son of Daedalus, famed builder of the labyrinth for the Minotaur on Crete, escaped from the labyrinth with his father on wax wings.  Daedalus warned him not to fly too close to the sun, but he did, and his wings melted and he fell to his death.

The son in Nabokov’s story could be viewed as a sort of modernized analogue of Icarus.  The first clue to this inclusion of the past is the “tiny unfledged bird twitching helplessly in the puddle.”  The second is the son’s attempted escape from his prison of day-to-day life in a reality he is sure is malevolent: 

“The last time the boy had tried to do it, his method had been, in the doctor’s words, a masterpiece of inventiveness; he would have succeeded had not an envious fellow-patient thought he was learning to fly and stopped him just in time. What he had really wanted to do was to tear a hole in his world and escape.”

Like Icarus, the boy wants to escape through flight, but ultimately is unsuccessful in terms of physical escape.

On the other hand, it could be argued that both Icarus and the boy in Nabokov’s story were actually successful in their bids to escape from their prisons.  Death is certainly an alternative to imprisonment.  This is another recurrent idea in many myths and mythic stories; in fact, it occurs in the oldest known written myth—the Epic of Gilgamesh.  Gilgamesh goes in search of immortality, but finds that immortality is not what he thinks.  No human can live forever; only a legacy can really be immortal.  Gilgamesh comes to see death as an escape from the heartache he experienced in the world of the living as he realizes that immortality would only prolong the pain, not end it.  This is also true to some extent of the boy in Nabokov’s story.  Rather than fearing death like most human beings, he clearly welcomes it as an escape from the torment of his fear-filled life.

In these ways, the past is an integral part of the present related in Nabokov’s “Symbols and Signs.”  While Nabokov may not have directly displaced the stories of Icarus and Gilgamesh in “Symbols and Signs,” he echoed their principles.  It is such an echo of the past and of the truth contained therein that identifies a mythic story.  The past is a constant undercurrent to the present, and when we find the undercurrent, we find the rich truths the past and the present have to offer us.

The Cherry Tree

Wernersville is not a large town by any stretch of the imagination. It is about ten miles west of Reading, which is in turn about 65 miles northwest of Philadelphia. In the modern era, its sole and somewhat dubious claim to fame is the Gosselin family.

It also houses an inpatient drug rehabilitation clinic, and it was at this clinic that Pearl was staying. She was on a scholarship; there was no way her family ever could have afforded to send her to the clinic, even if they had wanted to. They had seven boys to feed at home, so they spared little thought for the reprobate eldest daughter. No, some rich benefactor had specifically chosen her to be cleansed, and she had no idea why. The rich had been a pain in her ass the whole rest of her life. Why would someone suddenly decide to be nice to her, of all people? She, who had corrupted one of those rich white kids--well, he was Italian--and pulled him down into an addiction. Surely they must all hate her. Hell, she hated herself. She thought she deserved what she got, even though she knew other people's choices weren't her fault.

The problem was this: she had been an addict since she was twelve—no thanks to her parents. Her father had all but given her over to the stuff. In a way, it was predestined; she had been conceived because of drugs. In her father’s permanently addled--but enviably drug-free--mind, it was only fitting that she be given over to the horror that had snared her mother and supposedly created Pearl herself. In spite of the fact that none of it was her fault, her father blamed her for the work he’d done to supply her mother with drugs. Thus, she had leaped almost happily into the shadow-realm of addiction, and had regretted it ever since.

A man walked up behind her. She was sitting in a lawn chair underneath a cherry tree in one of the coed sections of the campus.

“Pearl?”

The voice had changed with time, but she knew it well. It belonged to Mickey. Mickey the rich kid who had somehow managed to notice a poor kid.

Years ago now, they had gone to the same high school. Pearl had never understood how it was that a rich Italian kid, the heir to an international business empire, would go to the same school as a poor black kid, but that was how it was. Every time she saw him, though, poverty seemed to enclose her a little more and a little more.

And then—and then there was that one day. The day when he looked at her and smiled. It was just a half a smile, but it recognized her existence and didn’t discount her just because she was poor and looked slightly different than Mickey. It was a smile without censure, and it melted Pearl’s icy heart bit by bit.

He talked to her after that, too, but not in the way boys usually did. He was respectful and kind--he treated Pearl like a human being, not just a pair of tits and an ass. She was grateful for it, though she had been trodden on for so long that she almost couldn’t believe she deserved to be treated with respect. Mickey started to make her believe it, against her better judgment.

Yet she was still poor. She never met Mickey’s family; he lived with his mother, who ruled the business empire and who irrationally hated anyone who was not as wealthy or as "talented" as she. Mickey said he wanted to protect Pearl from his mother, but Pearl wondered if he were really ashamed of her poverty. He was with her at school, though.

There was also the addiction. She tried to hide it from him, but he found out quickly. Or perhaps it was the addiction that found out about him because it wanted to suck him in, too. Maybe it had a malevolent consciousness of its own. Pearl thought it might. Regardless, Mickey's mother forced him to go to a fancy, expensive college after graduation, just after she learned of his slide into addiction. Pearl had not seen him since. Even as she walked alone through the barren wastes of several unsuccessful detoxes, she heard nothing from him. She had gotten wind of rumors that he had dropped out of college because of some fight or other and was down-and-out somewhere in Philadelphia, but that was all. No letters, no phone calls, nothing. Not even a measly text message. She wondered if he had forgotten about her, and she had tried so hard to forget about him.

But now, here he was, standing behind her chair. She turned to look at him. He was thinner than he had been, and he looked much older than--how old was he? Twenty? Twenty-two? She couldn’t remember.

“I found you,” he whispered. “It took me four years, but I found you.”

With a shock, she realized that he was leaning on a cane. Something was wrong with his legs. She stood up quickly, suddenly conscious of the wholeness of her own body.

“How did you find me? What are you doing here?” she asked. Mickey wobbled a little, and she slipped an arm under his shoulder to steady him. He smiled down at her.

“Never mind that. I found myself and then I found you. Everything is as it should be now.”

Not quite, Pearl thought. Your legs. What happened to your legs?

“Your mother,” she said instead. “What happened to her? Did she make you come here?”

Mickey shifted his weight awkwardly and started walking slowly toward the large, gray stone building that housed a solarium.

“No… not quite. But also yes. She…” He laughed self-consciously. “She’s changed. A lot. I think it’s been good for her--everything that’s happened to me, all the stupid stuff I’ve done. She understands now. People are people. It doesn’t matter if they’re rich or poor or young or old or big or little or light or dark. We’re all the same inside--national heritage doesn't matter. We all want to be loved. She sees that now. She, uh, she actually sponsored you. I mean… that was tactless.” He fell silent. Pearl stared at him in disbelief.

“Your world-class-bitch of a mother paid for me to come here?” she demanded, not sure if she should be happy or angry. Mickey looked away and nodded.

“She gets it now. Us. You know. She… when we get out of here, she wants us to come live with her.” Pearl raised her eyebrows and shook her head.

“Are you sure you’re not still on crack?”

Mickey laughed. The sound was warm and real.

“Damn sure.”

They had arrived at the solarium. Pearl helped Mickey sit down in a chair. His face twisted into a rictus of pain, but he managed to sit down. He must have seen the question in Pearl’s eyes.

“Some wounds may never heal,” he said cryptically. Pearl sighed. If he didn’t want to tell her, he didn’t want to tell her, and that was that. He was here now, and all would be well. The smell of cherry blossoms wafted through the solarium. Yes, all would be quite well.

A Certifiable Fruitcake

In class tonight, I had this thought right in the middle but didn't want to give voice to it because I hadn't refined it enough yet. What if the way forward and back, up and down, is the same because there is no way? What if we are stationary bits of cipher in the midst of an infinite and incomprehensible Reality that whirls around us, adding to and taking away from our little nothings? Then there's only one direction to go--nowhere, because everywhere and everything and everytime are coming at us all at once.

In an apparently unrelated turn of events, I had my iPod on shuffle on my way home tonight. The second song that came on was this song by Foo Fighters. I actually hadn't thought about this song as being particularly deeply philosophical before, since I always thought it was about either rioting or some backstabbing/fickle friend/lover. Now I can't figure out if it's that or solipsist or inspired by Finnegans Wake. "I'm finished making sense / Done pleading ignorance." WHAT. I thought about it for a while and then I realized I was still driving so I should probably think about that.

And then, about three songs later--possibly more because I skipped some stuff in between--this other song by Seether came on (warning: PG-13 content, just saying). I feel like it's significant but I don't totally know why yet. Maybe it has to do with reality spinning all around and nobody feels like they belong so we're all faking. That's really cynical. "Who's to know if your soul will fade at all / The one you sold to fool the world / You lost your self esteem along the way, yeah / Good God, you're coming up with reasons / Good God, you're dragging it out / Good God, it's the changing of the seasons..." If anyone has other ideas about why that's of great import, please tell me. Or perhaps it's merely referential mania kicking in; thus in part the title of this post.

AND THEN. This song came on immediately after (another warning: semi-chauvinistic innuendo in two languages). There are two things about it that struck me. First is one of the lyrics: "...back like a crawfish in the name of progress." Bit of a stretch, but I almost backed my car into my garage door when I heard it, mostly because I'm now fairly certain I'm getting a Nabokov-worthy case of referential mania. Second was the fact that it's in English and Hebrew. I speak Arabic, which is a cousin of Hebrew, so every time I hear this song, I hear all these cognate Arabic/Hebrew words amid an ocean of kshhkkki kvisi faelsdlguasdgj that makes zero sense to me. It's again a little like Finnegans Wake--the same sense of "I should know what's going on" coupled with "hey that sounds really cool and I don't necessarily care that I don't know what's going on."

(Yes, I do have very weird taste in music. Fun factoid: via those songs, you just went to at least three different countries. You're welcome for the cultural experience.)

Last thing, I promise. This is more of an epistle than I thought it would be, though hopefully I haven't pulled too many comma-ridden Saint Paul sentences on you all yet. Anyway, as I was settling myself in for a nice, relaxing, popcorn-for-the-brain read in the form of a Clive Cussler novel (don't judge), I came to the last part of the novel. Part V: Ashes, Ashes, All Fall Down. Again, WHAT. I nearly threw the book. Incidentally, that part of the book is about flushing Hitler's ashes down the White House toilet, but as far as I'm concerned, such niggling details are immaterial. We had just finished discussing Ring Around the Rosy and then I find a reference to it in a completely unrelated, semi-lowbrow book. I don't even know.

It's at this point that I realize I will go certifiably insane if I keep thinking about this because Reality is trying to knock a hole in my brain and I can't handle it. So I guess I'll just leave this here and you all can kick it around if you like.

Myth and Magic

Well, The Magus officially took over my life for about the past five days or week or something. I couldn't put it down, which is probably why I've been feeling so stressed in other areas lately. It was totally worth the pain, though. I got the whole way through as of yesterday at lunch--just for the first time, as I'm sure I'll read it at least once more in the near future. I don't want to spoil anything for anyone, so I'll try to be as vague as possible with my remarks at this point.

The very setting of The Magus is mythical. A remote island in Greece? What better place to set a modern myth? It really is about everything, and therein lies a great part of its magic. I tried to summarize it to myself after I'd finished reading it and found that I couldn't satisfactorily fit the whole book into the usual one-sentence Library of Congress-style synopsis. Even as I sit here almost 24 hours later, my mind is still boggling at how incredibly huge the story is, though it's only from the point of view of one person. Some might call that focus narrow, but such a critique misses the significance and power of the story. That one man's story has the weight of thousands of years of myth and magic and tradition and humanity and reality. Words fail; I feel as if I'm trying to draw a magnificent sunset-washed vista with a blunt brown half-crayon that a two-year-old has chewed on.

For some reason, I keep coming back to Eliot, specifically line thirteen of Burnt Norton V. "And all is always now." I think when I read, I experience a little of what Eliot was talking about. There is no concept of time when I'm reading a good book; just the story, just the "now" of imagination. Nothing else matters for a while, until I realize I'm going to be late to class and I reluctantly have to put away the book and start to ooze my way back into the quagmire of day-to-day life. But the book yet lives in my mind, still a tiny island of "now" amidst an ocean of "presently."

Lions and Tigers and Bears but Mostly Tigers

I had the fabulous opportunity to both see Yann Martel speak at the Convocation this past Thursday and to go to his master class prior to his speech. Since I am recalcitrant and have never read Life of Pi or much of Martel's other work, I think I did not get as much out of it as I could have, which is regrettable. However, his points still resonated with me, especially the idea of reason as a means to an end, not an end in itself. I have myself been guilty of holding reason above all else. I do tend to be a realist, after all. However, to cling solely to reason, especially at the expense of faith, is to miss many of the most beautiful things in life, the things that make reality an echo in Pan's cave, or maybe in Plato's cave. Martel's mythic work mirrors a truth of life, one that we discussed in class on Tuesday: we are really just living a giant myth. Are we not all a sort of miniature Odysseus, trying to find our way home? But perhaps, like the Swimmer, we do not know what home really is; only that it probably lies beyond death. What could possibly be beyond death, though? Some would say oblivion, others would say heaven for good people and hell for bad people, and still others would say heaven for everyone. Is it the Emerald City after a poppy-sleep? Is it the Elysian Fields? Who knows? I can only speculate. But the longer I live--and I have not lived very long, so this may very well change--the more I am convinced that, bleak as it sounds, home is something after death.

Life Imitates Art

Shriek to me, O Muse, shriek, for I am dull and deaf.
Of lofty thoughts and myths of aeons past, scream,
Else I, in my little ant's reality, will not hear you,
Nor understand the import of the past,
Nor see the bones beneath my feet of soaring towers
And vast empires of thought, once great,
Now built upon by other minds,
Which, standing on the shoulders of giants
Neither acknowledge the giants' existence, if they ever knew of it,
Nor the depths from which the giants triumphantly climbed
And said, "Now, look, I stand upon the mountaintop,"
And were then trampled pitilessly by modern ants,
Who, lacking knowledge of the giants' legendary travail,
Thought themselves in all ways truly giants,
Even as they diminished themselves through their own ignorance.

From my perspective as a myopic ant muddling about on the shoulders of giants, I can begin to see the landscape from which the giant has come. The scope of the literary works we read this week is breathtaking, and I know we've only scratched the surface. What particularly struck me this week was the short story, "Where are you going, where have you been?" and the way in which life sometimes so disturbingly imitates myth. Where, though, did the myth come from? Did myth imitate life at first, or is it an extrapolation of grand, sweeping themes in life that never exactly happened, but strongly influence life all the same? Is life an allegory for myth, or myth an allegory for life? Perhaps it's some combination of all these ideas. Perhaps myth and reality, so to speak, are so inextricably bound that it's often impossible to tell where one stops and the other begins. Maybe neither ever stops.

The concept in Eliot's work of everything being "now" also stood out to me, since it seemed to be echoed through every piece we read. People living in the past did not think of it as the past. It was their present. In that regard, everything really is happening right now--everything that has happened and everything that will happen is contained in a solitary moment, be it as memory or as action or as potential. As King Solomon once observed, somewhat dispiritedly, there is nothing new under the sun. That is both a comfort and a curse; it is a comfort in that everything that happens now has happened and will happen, and a curse, especially for the individualist, because nothing is novel in the truest sense of the term. But yet, there is also the new, because it is now, and it is not something we have personally experienced. In that sense, everything is somewhat paradoxically new.