ONCE UPON 24 TIMES: STORY XXII

Story the Twenty-Second:
Queen of Cups
The Selkie Wife

Wing-Clipped Veelas 

A sealskin, or swan wings, or a hagoromo shawl, left on the ground next to a maiden. A young mortal man spots such a precious sight and woos her.
Or he bends at a lake to quench her burning thirst, and she pops out of the crystal-clear freshwaters, but only up to the waist. Or he meets her at the village dance, dressed in a long-skirted gown. Gods know why, but she insists that he should never see her from the waist downwards.
Maybe she has webbed feet, like those of a duck or a frog. Maybe she is a nagini, a female naga, serpent from the waist downwards. Maybe she has really shapely, beautiful human legs from toes to thighs, but in between a cunt full of teeth, sharp rows of glistening incisors and fangs smirking within the labia (the lips of the nether region).
The fear of the toothy cunt among men is as justified as that of the piercing rod among women.
The hard rod that pierces and tears maidenheads, the mouthlike cunt that devours throbbing raw male members, both of these are interchangeable. Both males and females feel this irrational dread towards sexual intercourse.
He is smitten with love at first sight — smitten enough to commit several crimes against the very object of his desire for the sole purpose of keeping such a magical creature within his grasp. These crimes culminate in marriage and the attempted domestication of the wild, fantastical beast-maiden, turned into a family mother, subservient to the authority of her husband and the whims of their children. She maintains a modicum of her fantastic identity within the guise of a human wife; and the husband certainly benefits from her power. The taming of the shrew, one might say. So this is less a tale about young love than one about marital coercion and confusion. 
Neither husband nor wife is on the same page; their union is at best a tenuous détente, made possible only by the husband's theft of the feathered wings, or the sealskin, or snakeskin, or whatever sign of her animality, forcing her to remain human and estranged from her own world. The husband has done nothing to earn such a powerful wife, and the maiden has no opportunity to choose her own fate. This is a marriage that cannot last in its fractured form. It must either go forward to find a level playing field for husband and wife, or it must end in miserable dissolution, whether it be violent tragedy or bloodless cold separation due to irreconcilable differences.
We can almost imagine the mother's sigh of relief to be herself again, her true fantastic self, and not the pale wife weighted down by domestic drudgery. Regaining, with her estranged animalistic nature, the creative potential she brings to the marriage. And yet, she offers a spark of hope for the future of the broken marriage, in the form of the offspring that connect her to her spouse, just before flying out the window.
"No matter how compliant a swan maiden or selkie or lamia may appear as a wife, there remains an unspoken anxiety and tension beneath the surface of her marriage. Her husband can never be certain of her affection, for it has been held hostage by her stolen skin. He offers her his cloak, but it is an exchange of unequal goods. Her feathered wings or sealskin or snakeskin are the sign of her wild nature, of her freedom, and of her power, while his cloak becomes the instrument of her domestication, of her submission in human society. He steals her identity, the very thing that attracted him, and then turns her into his most precious prize, a domestic ersatz pet, a pale version of the original creature of magic and the creative potential she brings to the marriage.
These stories suggest that there are marriages that will themselves to dissolution because of the inability of the pair to mature and to integrate into each other's world. In the human world, the beast-maiden loses her fantastic nobility and is subjected to the daily labors of a human wife – including childbearing, which is portrayed as so distasteful the wives often seem to have few qualms about leaving their children behind the moment they recover their skins. The husband either cannot find her world (and dies of melancholy, ie "a broken heart"), or, when he does succeed in arriving in her domain, he cannot accept the fantastical world on his wife's terms. These are, at best, temporary reunions... Added to this, the wife has now returned to her original form. She seems barely touched by her years of human marriage; once freed, she refuses to surrender her power again to a man not worthy of it. It is as though both husband and wife exist in a permanent adolescence.
"There was considerable renewed interest in these tales in Europe throughout the late 19th century. For the English Victorians it was the era of the 'Married Woman's Property Acts' and of the 'New Woman.' Marriage roles, divorce, and the appropriate role of a wife were being re-examined and questioned. The tamed maiden, with her ability to effectively fly or swim away from her marriage and her children, became a fascinating study for Victorian folklorists, who saw in the narrative the evolution of the institution of marriage. According to Carole Silver in her illuminating article 'East of the Sun and West of the Moon': Victorians and Fairy Brides, the interpretations of the tale varied widely, and depended on one's attitudes toward women's role in marriage, an imbalance of power between the sexes and women's sexuality.
The wing-clipped maiden as representative of a matrilineal society with 'easy and primitive' marriage bonds that could be more easily broken. Silver reports that Jacobs believed 'that the "eerie wife," in separating from her mate, forfeited the audience's respect; her behaviour... "the fickle, mysterious maid that leaves her spouse for the break of a taboo?" Victorian folklorists were expressing anxiety over the emerging institution of divorce, believing that the looseness of the marriage bond was a trait among 'savages.' Silver continues: 'Clearly, free and easy separation was associated with primitive societies and savage eras. Complex and difficult divorce, on the other hand, was the hallmark of a highly evolved society. . .  By diminishing the claims to superiority of the fey bride, neutralizing her sexuality, and limiting or denying her right to divorce, Victorians rendered her acceptable to themselves and their society.'

In the Balkans, we come across a boisterous example of a tamed maiden known as a samodiva (another regional name for the veela). This Samodiva resolutely despises her forced domestication. At a party intended to celebrate the birth of their firstborn, her drunken husband Stoian asks her to dance. She agrees, but argues that the dance would be much better if she could wear her feathered gown. Her fool of a husband, intending to impress his fellow huntsmen, agrees and retrieves the hidden garment. Changed back into her original form, the Samodiva maximizes the humiliation of her husband by taunting him with a song:

"Hear my words, O Stoian; seek not
For thy wife a Samodiva —
Samodivas are not thrifty,
Know not how to tend the children.
Said I not to thee, O Stoian,
Samodivas are not housewives?"

Unlike other beast-maidens, who most frequently take French leave of their spouses and children, this samodiva or veela has the pluck to give Stoian the middle finger as a sign of their hostile parting.

If the selkie maiden in Victorian folklore studies was to be relegated to an outmoded and primitive expression of marriage and dreaded matriarchy, popular imagination found in her a powerful call to transformation. English women were jolted by the appearance of Nora, the heroine of Henrik Ibsen's 1879 play A Doll's House (Et dukkehjem). Torvald, Nora's patronizing husband, calls Nora a "skylark," and an "elf." In a plot twisted by threats of blackmail, Nora tries to prevent Torvald from discovering the blackmailer's letter by putting on a ruffled costume kept in a closet and "dancing a tarantella" for her husband. It is a gesture worthy of a Samodiva, or of the Japanese crane wife whose dance mesmerizes her hapless husband as she tries to manufacture her escape. But Nora is not successful and, later, a frightened Torvald unfairly blames Nora for the blackmail, verbally attacking his wife and accusing her of being unfit to raise their children. When the blackmail is withdrawn, Torvald forgives his wife — but it is too late. The final scene is not one of reconciliation, but of the slam of the door as Nora leaves. It is the modern version of divorce selkie–maiden style.

Can we love this tamed and freed maiden? She seems to offer both an image of feminine power and feminine weakness: a girl who submits to the deceptions of a suitor and a wife who rejects the terms of an unfair marriage. She is at once a doting mother and one who will happily abandon her children, taking French leave of them, in favour of her own needs. Her ambiguous tale can be read as the suppression of women's rights and women's creative power through enforced domestication, but it can also show such a woman's resolve to not only survive a questionable marriage but to remain true to her nature. When given the chance, no amount of suppression can keep the maiden down. I want to shelter her from the routine ordinariness of her human marriage, given over to the demands of others. And I want to cheer, relieved and inspired, when she finds her own true self again, and rises to soar.

Frozen Heart: Growing Up with “The Snow Queen”

LISA LIEBERMAN

It was one of those glass splinters from the magic mirror, and poor Kai had now got it into his heart. It did not hurt any longer, but it was still there. Soon his heart would become hard and cold like a lump of ice. Even this tiny splinter had the power to make him see as evil everything that was good, and it had its effect immediately.

—Hans Christian Andersen, “The Snow Queen”



(Illustrations by Bagram Ibatoulline)

I was eight when I read “The Snow Queen” in a collection of Andersen’s fairy tales, a birthday gift from my Aunt Clementine in 1963. Earlier that year, my mother, a manic-depressive, had stopped taking her lithium and headed out to San Francisco, leaving my sister, our father, and me behind in Philadelphia. Periodically she’d call to fill us in on her doings; at some point she divorced Dad, married a truck driver she met in Haight-Ashbury, and moved with him to Arkansas. We did not see her for several years.

I still have the fairy tale book with my aunt’s inscription: To Lisa-Jo with love, Aunt Clem. Paging through it, I recognize all of Andersen’s best-known stories. “Thumbelina,” “The Princess and the Pea,” “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” “The Ugly Duckling,”“The Little Mermaid,” “The Steadfast Tin Soldier,” “The Little Match Girl,” “The Red Shoes.” Some of these tales were already familiar; others I encountered for the first time. “The Snow Queen” was the one I returned to again and again. Gerda’s quest to rescue her friend Kai from the Snow Queen’s palace spoke to my desire to get my mother back. I’m sure I found solace in the happy ending, when the two children returned home “and all around them glowed bright, warm, glorious summer.” But the resonances of Andersen’s story went far deeper, providing a way of looking at my mother’s illness that made sense to my eight-year-old mind while confirming my worst suspicions about the world.

Andersen was a perfectionist who could work for a year on a single tale. And yet he completed “The Snow Queen” in a matter of days; the story “came out dancing over the paper,” he marveled to a friend. At forty-three pages, it was the longest story in Aunt Clem’s book, but it danced for me as well. Indeed, it sang. Andersen’s heroines had a disconcerting way of dying at the end of their stories. The little match girl and the little mermaid (neither of whom had names) expired poignantly after failing to attain their desires. Crippled by the devilish red shoes, poor Karen’s heart broke and her soul was transported to heaven. But not only did Gerda achieve her goal and survive the ordeal, she went through a series of thrilling adventures in faraway lands not ordinarily permitted to girls in fairy tales. She took risks and got away with them, consorted with robbers and rough women, rode a reindeer to the very edge of the Snow Queen’s territory, and ventured as far as the North Pole without remembering to wear her warm gloves and fur-lined boots.

The story opened with the vignette of the goblins' mirror, a malicious device that magnified all the ugliness in the world and shrank the good to almost nothing. The mirror shattered and fragments of it blew through the air, lodging in people’s eyes and perverting their vision. “The worst off were those people who had by misfortune received a little splinter in their hearts. That had terrible results. Their hearts became cold and hard like lumps of ice.” The glass splinter in Kai’s heart turned him against his playmate Gerda and led him to torment the people who loved him most. One winter day he hitched his sled to the white sledge of the Snow Queen and was never seen again. 





The remainder of Andersen’s story follows Gerda as she sets off alone to find Kai and regain his love.

“The Snow Queen” explained the world I knew and I read it literally. Kai’s transformation after the glass splinter entered his heart reminded me of my mother in the grip of her illness: her increasing remoteness. The furious tirades I overheard late at night, when I was supposed to be asleep. The unaccountable outbursts of tears or rage. I couldn’t decide which was worse, the bouts of sadness that took hold of her for weeks at a time or her terrifying anger. In either case, I felt helpless and yet vaguely responsible. And when she left us, I feared that this too was somehow my fault.

The tale of the goblins' mirror absolved me. Gradually I stopped blaming myself for my mother’s problems, but I soon faced new problems of my own. My third grade teacher was exasperated with me. I held my pencil wrong and my handwriting was so poor that I was not allowed to learn cursive with the rest of the class. I handed in work unfinished and was afflicted with mysterious headaches in the middle of the school day, headaches so severe that the only remedy was to lie on a cot in a darkened room off the nurse’s office until I was sure that math was over. In the spring, when we were given standardized I.Q. tests, I couldn’t be bothered to read the questions and fill in the appropriate circle on the machine-readable forms. I amused myself by making zigzag patterns up and down the columns while my classmates laboriously followed the instructions. The school psychologist summoned me to her office and made me take the test again under her supervision. Then she began to ask me a series of questions about my “home situation.”

I knew what to expect. My sister and I had been interrogated by some of the kids on the school bus when Judy let it slip that our parents were separated; divorce was still uncommon in our community and first-hand information was hard to come by. But my mother’s non-appearance at birthday party pick-ups, P.T.A meetings, and synagogue functions piqued the curiosity of adults as well. I’d grown accustomed to being plied with questions about my “home situation” by the mothers of my friends during after-school play dates. How much anyone outside the family knew about my mother’s illness is unclear. She’d been in and out of mental institutions for several years, beginning when I was in kindergarten. I remember visiting her once or twice, playing with a wheelchair in the corridor while my parents talked in the lounge, drinking a coke in the hospital cafeteria. It seems unlikely that Dad could have kept up the façade of normalcy throughout these absences. Well before my mother left for good, my maternal grandmother had moved into the spare bedroom to help take care of us. She was the person who was waiting when we got off the bus and who went hunting around the neighborhood when we failed to come home in time for dinner, calling our names in her operatic voice that echoed across the suburban backyards. “Liiiii-sa! Juuuuu-dy!” The outline of my “home situation” was undoubtedly known, but the details may well have been sketchy.

I was never instructed on what to say and what not to say to the adults who asked questions about my mother. My own questions went unanswered, for the most part, and what little I managed to glean from eavesdropping on my father’s and grandmother’s conversations, I kept to myself. If the school psychologist wanted information, she’d have to find another source. I didn’t trust her; and besides, I had Gerda’s example before me. Along her journey to find Kai, she accepted the help of forest animals: a raven, a flock of wood pigeons, a reindeer. But trusting forest animals didn’t count; everyone trusted forest animals in fairy tales. They understood without having to ask for details: witness Bambi, another motherless creature.

Gerda’s self-reliance impressed me. Her closest human companion was a little robber maiden about her own age who slept with a dagger in her hand and threatened to hurt Gerda if she didn’t stop sighing about her beloved Kai. The robber maiden was not the wisest choice of companions, from the point of view of safety, but she had her uses. The wood pigeons who told Gerda where to find Kai belonged to the robber maiden, as did the reindeer who carried Gerda to the North Pole. Threats aside, the robber maiden was really quite thoughtful, tying Gerda firmly to the reindeer’s back, so she wouldn’t fall off, providing her with a little cushion for comfort, warm gloves (stolen from her mother) and the fur-lined boots (which she’d stolen earlier from Gerda), along with two loaves of bread and a piece of ham.

“The Snow Queen” taught me a valuable lesson: Don’t trust anyone unless you are desperate, least of all well-intentioned adults. 



The old lady who took Gerda in at the beginning of her quest turned out to be a witch, albeit a harmless one who only wanted a little girl for company, not to eat like the witch in “Hansel and Gretel.” But Gerda lost precious time amusing herself with the talking flowers in the old lady’s garden, bewitched into forgetting her friend. 



The prince and princess who took pity on her were completely out of touch with reality. They thought they were doing Gerda a favour by outfitting her with a golden coach complete with a coachman and footmen and outriders, all wearing golden crowns. The minute she left the palace grounds in this lavish get-up, robbers attacked the entourage, stabbed the servants, and looted the gold. Gerda herself was dragged from the carriage and would have become the dinner of an ugly old robber wife if the little robber maiden had not intervened in the nick of time.

Toward the end of the story, Gerda did accept food and shelter from a Lapp woman who possessed a kind of crude wisdom. The Lapp woman sent her to seek the aid of a more powerful enchantress, but even though the reindeer pleaded Gerda’s case, the Finmark enchantress claimed—much like the Wizard of Oz, another disappointing grown-up—that she had nothing to offer Gerda. “Her power is greater than anything I can give her,” the enchantress explained; “it proceeds from her heart—from her being a loving and innocent child. If this cannot give her access to the Snow Queen’s palace and enable her to pull the splinters out of Kai’s heart and eye, we can do nothing for her.”

Gerda eventually managed to reach the Snow Queen’s realm. Though barefoot and wearing only a summer dress, her prayers sufficed to protect her from the intense cold and cutting winds, not to mention a host of ice monsters. She found Kai in the frozen palace, playing with blocks of ice. Her friend was entirely without feelings: cold, silent, motionless. Gerda was wounded by his aloofness and began to cry. Her tears fell upon Kai’s chest and melted his icy heart, dissolving the splinter of glass. Would that my own wounds could be so easily healed! Tears had no effect upon my mother’s indifference and crying tended to make things worse when she was angry. Of course, I was nowhere near as pure and trusting as Gerda. It wasn’t obvious to everyone because I was quiet and generally polite—our grandmother schooled my sister and me in Old World manners—but my refusal to fill in the circles on the I.Q. test answer sheet was just the tip of the iceberg. At home too, I made my own rules, proud of my ability to look after Judy and myself, wary of even the most well-meaning offers of help or advice.

You never knew when you might have to go it alone. My paternal grandfather had killed himself during the Depression, abandoning his family when my father was still a boy. We didn’t talk about it often, but the knowledge hung there like a threat. Dad loved us without conditions; I never doubted his devotion. In an era when few fathers were involved with child rearing, he gladly took on the responsibility of raising us while working to get his business off the ground. More than one of his former associates has told me how he would walk out of a meeting in order to be on time for some performance of ours. On summer nights, we’d all get in the car and chase the ice cream truck through the neighborhoods of row houses just across the Philadelphia line from our suburban development. Once I was eating a push-up Popsicle and I pushed too hard, sending the tube of ice cream sailing out the car window. “There goes John Glenn!” Dad said. He always knew how to make me laugh in the midst of small disasters.

As Judy and I grew older, Dad worried about Grandmother’s ability to keep up with us. I think he also lacked confidence in his own ability to handle two teenage girls. He tried hiring a live-in governess, who turned out to be nothing like Mary Poppins and didn’t last long; Grandmother claimed that she drank. When I was eleven he remarried and we moved into a large new house with my stepmother and her three children. Taking a generous view, I can see how difficult the situation was, in the late sixties especially. Family therapy was in its infancy and the media barely acknowledged the existence of blended families like ours. There was the von Trapp Family, but Maria didn’t bring any children of her own to the marriage and the need to flee the Nazis soon overshadowed the family’s interpersonal problems. Sanitized sitcoms like “The Brady Bunch” missed the point entirely. The domestic dramas in our household could not be resolved in half an hour and none of those programs was about divorced families.

Fairy tales offered greater insights into our conflicts than television or movies. My stepmother was not wicked, but she did favor her son over my sister and me—and over her own daughters, I should add. Although I did not feel that she wished me ill, neither did she take pride in my accomplishments. It seemed as if there was not enough love to go around in our household. Damaging rivalries developed, many of which persist to this day. I saw myself as an outsider in the family, like Cinderella, and spent as little time as possible at home. I stopped being a problem child at school. In fact, I became a model student, a good girl. But the Finmark enchantress’s words haunted me: only a pure-hearted child had the power to restore lost love. How could I restore my innocence?

When I was thirteen, my mother moved back to Philadelphia with her husband and two-year-old son, my half-brother Mike. Shortly after the birth of my half-brother Rob, she left her husband, an alcoholic, and moved into an apartment near Grandmother’s. I recall an afternoon here, a weekend there, when traces of her illness emerged. Winter days when she kept the shades down in her apartment and never got dressed, letting Mike and Robbie watch television all day and eat cereal out of the box. Screaming arguments with Grandmother over everything and nothing. A trip we all made with an old friend of hers, a woman she’d met years before in the mental hospital, the two of them laughing, drinking, chain-smoking, talking ceaselessly and making no sense, when it seemed like we’d never get home. I still cannot pinpoint the time when our roles reversed, when I took on the burden of being the parent and she became the child.

I imagine another ending to “The Snow Queen” where Gerda finds Kai but cannot melt the splinter of glass in his heart. Despite Hans Christian Andersen’s assurances to the contrary, the power of childhood innocence is tragically overrated. So her friend remains cold and cruel, unreachable, and Gerda is stuck in the frozen palace forever. Or perhaps she never finds him but carries on the search to her dying day, always believing that he was a victim, a prisoner whom she failed to free. I suspect that it makes no difference, whether Gerda found Kai or not, because by the time she reached the Snow Queen’s palace, she had lost the ability to cry. Somewhere in the course of her journey to the barren north, a splinter of glass from that same mirror had pierced her own heart. It is there still.

LANDS OF LORE III: OBALSA

Obalsa, a haven and bulwark of the creative arts (fine art, literature, music), is the largest of the Islands of Wisdom.
Formerly a feudal kingdom, it is now a republican nation-state, whose egalitarian government, in the early twentieth century, supported divorce and free love (like Dorne in Westeros or like Northern nation-states of the real world).
German explorers discovered Obalsa in the Roaring Twenties, and called the island after "ob als", "as if" in their mother tongue, ostensibly after the national character, that adjusts reality to desire and imagination.

Wenn man sich mit leidlich gebildeten aber nicht gerade erleuchteten Menschen über hochwissenschaftliche Leistungen unterhält, so stößt man oft genug an die Frage: wozu dient das? was kann man im Leben damit anfangen? Und man gerät dann wirklich in Verlegenheit, weil jene Leistungen eben nur sich selbst bezwecken. Hier zum erstenmal auf den entlegenen Inseln zeigte es sich, daß rein theoretische Dinge auch einer lebendigen Gestaltung fähig sein können. Und so traf uns auch die Kunde nicht ganz unvorbereitet, daß in der Nähe von Tivarela sich ein anderes meerumspültes Gebiet befände, dessen Kultur sich auf ein ursprünglich abstraktes Prinzip gründe.
Es handelt sich um die Insel Obalsa, deren Bevölkerung ein, wie ich glaube, recht lohnendes Studienobjekt darbietet. Denn sie verwirklicht bis zu ansehnlichem Grade ein Prinzip, das im neuzeitlichen Denken zu immer stärkerer Geltung gelangt. Ich spreche von der »Philosophie des Als Ob«.
Wenn wir von ihr reden, so denken wir zunächst an den berühmten deutschen Weltweisen Hans Vaihinger, der sie zuerst systematisch entwickelt und sie zugleich zu einem Instrument für künftige Denkforschung geschärft hat. Aber gerade er hat auch in Vorläufern, zumal in Kant, gewisse Urquellen des Als Ob nachgewiesen, und ich nehme an, daß auf der genannten Insel noch andere, uns unbekannte Quellen gerauscht haben mögen. Der an sich einfache Grundgedanke zeigt uns das Gesicht eines gedanklichen Abenteuers: der denkende Mensch erreicht seine Wahrheiten nur auf Wegen, die mit lauter Unwahrheiten gepflastert sind. Auf diesen Unwahrheiten spazieren wir dahin, »Als Ob« sie selbst Wahrheiten wären. Wir schreiten auf Unmöglichkeiten, um bei Gewißheiten zu landen. Man denke an den Reiter, der über die dünne Eisdecke des gefrorenen Bodensees dahintrabt. Er müßte logischer- und dynamischerweise einbrechen und ertrinken. Trotzdem erreicht er das sichere Ufer. Ohne bildlichen Vergleich: in allen Wissenschaften werden bewußtfalsche Begriffe und Urteile angewendet, Fiktionen, die als solche gänzlich unhaltbar sind, die sich aber in aller Falschheit als vortreffliche Werkzeuge zur Wahrheitsfindung erweisen. In der Physik, Chemie, Mechanik, Mathematik, aber auch in der Ethik und Religionsphilosophie wimmelt es von solchen Fiktionen, deren wir uns bedienen, »Als Ob« sie richtig wären. Sie sind sozusagen die Falschschlüssel oder Dietriche, die wir probieren müssen, um die Geheimfächer der Natur zu öffnen und die darin verborgenen Echtheiten herauszuholen.
Auf der Insel Obalsa hat dieses Prinzip blühendes Leben angesetzt. Die Staatsform war vordem konstitutionell-monarchisch, und der König hatte sich so zu benehmen, Als Ob er sich durch seinen Eid ganz streng an die Verfassung gebunden fühlte. Bei einer bestimmten Gelegenheit wurde der Monarch entthront, und seine Getreuesten schwenkten von ihm ab, Als Ob sie niemals in ihrem Blut einen Tropfen monarchischer Überzeugung verspürt hätten. Diese Getreuen bekannten sich nunmehr zur republikanischen Staatsform, und man glaubte an ihr Bekenntnis, Als Ob sie niemals vorher das Entgegengesetzte beschworen hätten.
Die Diplomatie und das Rechtswesen sind auf Treu und Glauben gestützt, haben unbedingte Ehrlichkeit und Offenheit zur Voraussetzung. Man fertigt Aktenstücke mit einem sittlichen Ernst, Als Ob man fest entschlossen wäre, jede Zeile in der Ausübung zu bewahrheiten, man unterschreibt sogar unmögliche Verträge, Als Ob man an deren Möglichkeit glaubte. Jedes Gesetz erhält eine klare Fassung und lautet so präzis, Als Ob es nur einer Auslegung fähig wäre und nicht etwa auch einer anderen, die seinen Sinn ins Gegenteil verkehrt.
Im Staatsetat der Insel Obalsa figurieren Summen als Aktivposten, die arithmetisch so sicher auftreten, Als Ob sie vorhanden wären. Der Kämmerer verwaltet den Schatz und er verknüpft dabei Finanzkenntnis, Umsicht und Gewissenhaftigkeit derart, Als Ob er in seinem Schatze wirkliches Geld vermutete.
Bezüglich der Unterrichts- und Religionsanstalten möge eine Erinnerung das Verständnis erleichtern. Wir besitzen alte Dokumente, die uns darüber belehren, daß schon in grauer Vorzeit die bewußtfalsche Fiktion förderlich gehandhabt wurde. Ich zitiere aus den Bekenntnissen eines Isis-Priesters zu Memphis: Man bekümmert sich nicht darum, uns zu überzeugen, daß Isis und Osiris, Horus, Serapis und Typhon wirklich Götter sind; aber man gewöhnt uns an, ihnen, ihren Bildern und Allem was nur die mindeste Beziehung auf ihren Dienst hat, so zu begegnen, »Als Ob« sie Götter wären ... Wer weiß besser als wir Priester, daß dieser Apis, ungeachtet seines weißen Dreiecks auf der Stirn ebensosehr ein Stier als irgendein anderer Stier, daß der Ibis eine Art von Störchen, und daß es lächerlich ist, einer Katze wie einer Göttin zu begegnen oder vor einer Meerzwiebel sich demütig im Staube zu wälzen? ... [Fußnote] Wenn es also Betrug ist, Wahrheiten vor dem Pöbel zu bekennen, deren Glanz er nicht ertragen könnte, so ist es ein heilsamer, ein notwendiger Betrug; und eben dadurch hört die Sache auf, diesen Namen zu verdienen. Jenes Als Ob wird gerechtfertigt, und es macht keinen Unterschied, ob die Augurn nach Memphis, nach Rom oder nach Obalsa versetzt werden.
Ihre professoralen Gefährten von den Wissenschaftskanzeln ähneln ihnen auffallend. Sie halten Vorlesungen in allen erdenklichen Disziplinen und dozieren so, als ob sie das wüßten, was sie dozieren. Und eben dadurch offenbaren sie ihr Ingenium, denn wie schon Montesquieu hervorgehoben hat: man braucht viel Geist, um das zu lehren, was man nicht weiß.
Es wird auf der Insel sehr viel geheiratet und geschieden. Und beinahe in jedem Fall von Eheschließung und Ehetrennung absolviert der Mann zwei fiktive Erlebnisse; da er zuerst der Vorspiegelung unterliegt, er könne nicht ohne, und später, er könne nur ohne diese Frau existieren. Genau so, Als Ob ananfänglich nur diese eine in Betracht gekommen wäre, und nachher, Als Ob gerade diese eine nicht hätte in Betracht kommen dürfen. Ist ein Hausstand begründet, dann gibt das Paar, so lange die Ehe vorhält, Gesellschaften, Als Ob nicht ein Dasein zu zweien, sondern nur zu sehr vielen einen rechten Sinn hätte. Die eingeladenen Gäste reden über Tische alle gleichzeitig, Als Ob dies das beste Mittel wäre, sich zu verständigen und angenehm zu unterhalten. Sobald eine Gesellschaft bis tief in die Nacht dauert, sucht man die Teilnehmer mit aller Gewalt am Aufbruch zu verhindern, Als Ob man nicht froh wäre, daß sie endlich nach Hause gehen.
Kunst und Literatur finden auf Obalsa ausreichende Pflege. Romandichter und Bühnenschriftsteller schaffen Werke über Werke mit einem Produktionseifer, Als Ob ihnen bei der Niederschrift etwas einfiele. Die Komponisten entwickeln in Sonaten und anderen Konzertstücken wahre Wunderbauten polyphoner Steigerung, Als Ob sie Themen und Motive besäßen, aus denen sich etwas entwickeln ließe. Die Autoren empfinden bei ihren Arbeiten eine Art Wollust, Als Ob sie die Muse begatteten. Wie ja auch die Verschnittenen gewisser sinnlicher Erregungen fähig sein sollen, die ihnen ein sexuelles Vermögen vortäuscht. Jene Autoren der Insel stellen vielleicht eine Art geistiger Eunuchen dar, die ihre Fähigkeiten so anzuwenden wissen, Als Ob durch sie eine Befruchtung erfolgen könnte.
Das Zeichen des »Als Ob« ist das Symbol. Dementsprechend verlangt das Prinzip der Insel, daß dem Symbol die allergrößte Wichtigkeit beigemessen werde. Die Fahne gilt als bedeutsamer, als die Sache, die durch die Fahne symbolisiert wird. Hunderte von erfindungsreichen Bürgern zerbrechen sich unablässig die Köpfe darüber, welche Veränderungen man an den Farben, an den Dimensionen, an den Stellungen der heraldischen Vögel auf der Flagge anbringen könnte; und sie legen größeres Gewicht auf die zeichnerische Einzelheit eines Dokuments, eines Aktensiegels oder behördlichen Gummistempels, als auf den Inhalt der zugehörigen Urkunden. Die Tatsachen, die hinter oder unter dem Symbol stehen, mögen ja oft genug unerfreulich sein; allein sie wirken doch so, Als Ob sie durch das Symbol gedeckt ihren eigenen verdrießlichen Charakter verleugneten. Und das gilt den Als-Ob-Leuten genau so, Als Ob die Tatsachen an sich angenehme Erscheinungen wären.
Alles in allem genommen gehören also die Bewohner dieser Insel zu dem kleinen Bestand der relativ Bevorzugten. Auf dem Polynes zwischen Hawai und Aleuten dürften sie in dieser Hinsicht in der vordersten Reihe stehen. Ich glaube aber, daß auch wir in den alten Kontinenten ihnen kaum den Rang streitig machen können. Weil bei uns das Prinzip des Als Ob noch nicht als Lebensnorm durchgedrungen ist, unsere Völker sich vielmehr so verhalten, als ob nur die Wirklichkeit, nicht aber irgendwelche Fiktion für sie Geltung besäße. Hierfür dient als Grundlage die durchgreifende Ehrlichkeit im Bewußtsein unserer Völkerkonzerne, und ich hoffe, mit dieser Annahme auf keinen Widerspruch zu stoßen.
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