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Author
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Comment
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Wraith
Five
Registered User
(5/26/06 2:19 pm)
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Fast-forward film: identification/origination question
"It is strange that man does not fear himself. The children
are right to look into this society of unknown spirits at once with
curiosity, and yet also fearfully. Every single one of eternal Time's
atoms can hold a world of happiness, but can also open up to reveal
an infinite abyss of suffering and terror. I understand
now that old fairy tale of the man who was cursed by a sorceror
to live many years in only a few moments: for I have, myself,
experienced the fearsome omnipotence of imagination.
Since I received the last of your sister's letter - today it was three days ago -, I have felt the pains of a whole lifetime, from the sunlight of glowing youth to the pale moonlight of white age.
Every little circumstance she told me of your illness confirmed my opinion, won by talking to the doctor and observing you myself, that the illness was far more dangerous than you thought, nay, not even simply dangerous anymore, but practically fatal."
I'm not really here to talk about the strange state of mind of the
protagonist (or indeed, the author) in Friedrich Schlegel's 1799
sort-of novel LUCINDE
(a difficult, but rewarding little non-tale written in awesomely
powerful prose, but that only by the way). Nor do I want to brag
about my (anyway rather pedestrian, I'm afraid) translation skills.
Rather, I'd like to know something about this fairy tale Schlegel must have known more than 200 years ago. The image/motive of your life (sometimes even your possible/future life) flashing in front of your eyes is a rather common one. But I can't for the life of me find a source that's older than 200 years. The closest I've come is Dickens' CHRISTMAS CAROL, which doesn't exactly stick to the formula, but twists it into one of the greatest Christmas stories of all time. Still, the above quotation proves that Dickens didn't come up with the general idea.
Specifically, I'd like to ask whether anyone here might know a fairy tale (or a myth) with the same (or a similar) plot element. I realize there's probably more than one, especially taking into account non-European traditions (which I don't have a clue about, but am interested in). Still, one would suffice for my purposes (which is really only one purpose: a quenching of my burning curiosity; this question has literally haunted me for several days).
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pacifiquesea
Registered User
(5/26/06 8:00 pm)
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Interesting...
The only situations that sprung to my mind were that of Dorian Gray and Westley in The Princess Bride when he gets fifty years sucked away.
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Rosemary Lake
Registered User
(5/27/06 4:42 am)
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time
Of course there's the motif of someone going into Faerie for what seems like a short time, but coming back years later by our time. And I think the other way round (like living years in Narnia and coming back to near the same time you left) may have been known long before Nesbit. But I don't recall anything in traditional European maarchen ('fairy tales') about someone suffering with an /experience/ of too much happening too fast. The traditional Grimm/Lang sort of tales don't get into anything that abstract iirc. Perhaps some 'local legend'? Medieval Romance?
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DividedSelf
Registered User
(5/27/06 2:24 pm)
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Re: time
There's this one: www.mythfolklore.net/andrewlang/151.htm.
Does anyone know much about "Major Campbell"?
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Rosemary Lake
Registered User
(5/27/06 5:13 pm)
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motif
But that King/Paradise story has the usual time-motif. The king didn't notice anything odd in his experience of time. He suffered from loss of his world after he got back and found his world gone; but his time-sense felt normal to him even then.
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Wraith
Five
Registered User
(6/7/06 5:01 pm)
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Re: motif
Sorry for not replying sooner, but I had troubles accessing ezboards.
Thanks for what has already been suggested, even though there's not yet been what I'm really looking for.
There does not necessarily have to be an actual experience of the events happening, though. That's what the protagonist of the novel thinks he's going through (metaphorically) and that's also what the narrator tells us of the märchen. That's one type.
The other type would be one where events from "other times" are simply shown, without the hero being (physically, at least) affected by it. There are many tales of wise men/women telling heroes/heroines what their futures are going to look like, of course. I'm only interested for the moment in the one specific image of life (past and sometimes future) flashing before your eyes. Like what some people who have had near-death experiences are reporting, only more magical, if you know what I mean.
Dickens' use of the motif (which, as I said, is very probably a deviation from the original form) is sort of a mixture: In a way, Scrooge experiences these time-jumps; they are quite real to him. But Scrogge doesn't really do anything. He's not the one performing any action, he's not actually living his life in fast-forward speed. He's just watching the life of others.
The point about Medieval Romance might be valid. Schlegel was a Romanticist, after all. Then again, if this was so, there's little hope of retrieving Schlegel's original source. I don't think there are many of these Medieval texts left (and if they are, they aren't readily available, and anyway not written in a German I could understand).
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