Italo Calvino: Italian Folktales

What a lovely gem to have stumbled across in the bargain bin.  I love Calvino already, and have several of his books on my shelf, and even though not technically his original composition, this one definitely can stand happily next to them.  Discovering it was not unlike unearthing a chest of jewels in your garden when you were only intending to plant potatoes.  Each tale has its own charm, though some of them are charming merely in the familiarity of a new spin on a tale we've already heard in some other form.  Others, however, are entirely original, while maintaining the familiar flavor and tropes of a folk tale--at once sparkling new and  comfortably old.

I know people who collect trifles on a particular theme.  Some collect elephants, ducks, or cows.  Others Star Wars or Lord of the Rings memorabilia.  The feeling this book inspires is that of finding a new, previously unimagined item that fits right in with the thing you were already collecting.  The tropes are so familiar, and the stories so new, that I even set about to categorize them a bit.

Trope	Stories
Princess prisoner of a creature	2, 3, 6
Taking the place of the rightful heir/beloved	2, 3, 12, 16, 32
Prepare three unlikely bribes	3,11, 38
Three impossible tasks	3, 5, 27
Water/grass of life	3, 48
Tricked into suicide	3, 24, 29, 37
Three sisters	4, 9, 12, 19, 24, 26, 29, 35, 50
Omnipotent ring	4, 42
Stave off assault with clever delay	4, 24
Youngest child bravest/cleverest	4,9, 12, 19, 24, 26, 31, 45, 47
Young man sets off to seek his fortune	1, 6, 13, 27, 43
Jealous courtiers’ plot backfires	6, 11, 15
Smuggled into the maiden’s presence	7, 33 45
Ugly, jealous servant/stepmother etc.	8, 18, 31
Jealous older siblings’ treachery	12, 50
Giving birth to an animal	12, 19, 31
Regional characteristics	10, 21
Love beneath its station	13, 22, 31
Three brothers	14, 46, 47
Nuts filled with treasure	14, 19
The frog/snake/parrot etc. prince/ss	14, 15, 18, 19, 30
Sequestered beauty	15, 18, 33, 36
Treacherous old woman intermediary enables insidious royalty	15, 50
Reward for curing the the prince/princess	15, 18, 39, 41
“my son/husband/daughter will eat you if he finds you!”	19, 45
The boy is clever, but the girl is more clever and has her revenge!	21, 36
The comb becomes an obstacle	8, 22
Servants don’t have the heart to kill	23, 31
Maybe unique?	25, 40, 44, 49
Failing to fulfill a simple requirement	27, 35, 45, 50
Laughter is rewarded	29, 38
Maiden dressed as a man	18, 21, 31
Stealing from thieves	13, 31
Seemingly abandoned, enchanted palace	32, 35, 43, 48
Hollow animal that plays music	7, 33

I only went through the first 50 in this way, but one can see the pattern.  What a joy, one that I have already recommended to others.

박경리: 뱁새족

이와 같은 고급 책 읽으면 아직 문학으로 분석할 힘이 없다.  아쉽네.  아직 토지를 읽으면 안 되네.  그러나 문학에 대해서 배운 게 별로 없어도 내 자기 한국어 습득에 대한 걸 배웠다.  읽으면서 단어, 표현, 속담 다 노력하면 이해가 됐지만 책을 전체적으로 이해가 안 되는 것을 보니 나의 다음으로 극복해야하는 장벽을 알게 되었다.  다행이다.  앞길이 보이네.

더 익숙하게 만들어야하는 한국어의 특질은 바로 담화 표지다.  뱁새족을 읽으면서 누가 뭐라고 하는지 추적이 정말 안 되었다.  발언자뿐만 아니라 흔히 장면도 나 모르게 바뀌어 혼란스러워졌다.  이제 한 발짝 뒤로 물러서서 다시 아동책에 초점하겠다.

The Gold Rush

Sometimes we must, in the interest of fairness and objectivity, appreciate a movie in its context.  "Sure the camerawork, effects, writing, or structure weren't up to modern standards, but Intolerance was the first one to even try those things so give some credit", one might reason, or "It Happened One Night is even more impressive when you realize that all the movies of a similar style drew upon it for inspiration."

None of that is the case here.  How often does a movie do better with less technology and convention to draw on?  How often is the first example of something still the obvious best?  How often does a movie create practical effects that afterward have only been attempted in cartoons?  I'd say exactly once, and it is the oeuvre of Mr. Charles Chaplin.

As with City Lights, the director, lead actor, writer, and even composer?!?!?? of this movie did all of those jobs so well that if one didn't know its release date, one would be forgiven for assuming that it had just copied all of the tropes instead of having actually invented them.  At first I was in awe of how wonderfully he had captured the feel and style of a Looney Tunes cartoon.  What a marvelous feat to have reproduced all of those complicated gags without modern technology.  Imagine my surprise when I learned that I had it backward.  The Gold Rush predates Bugs Bunny by a decade.  Bugs Bunny copied Charlie Chaplin, but Chaplin did it so well that I just assumed the opposite.

After first watching this movie, I was affirmed in my opinion that Chaplin was a genius.  But further digging has revealed that I was mistaken.  He is a demigod.