REELING AND WRITHING
or,
Miss Dermark's 2015 Advent Calendar
DAY ELEVEN
THE SPIRIT OF CHRISTMAS?
or
RALF HART, ZANGRA, AND A LOCK OF HAIR CUT OFF
"And what about me? I have my
creativity, I have my paintings, which
are sought after by galleries all over the
world, I have realised my dream, my
village thinks of me as a beloved son,
my ex-wives never ask me for alimony
or anything like that, I have good health,
reasonable looks, everything a man
could want ... Do you know what loneliness
is?
But you don't know what loneliness
is like when you have the chance to be
with other people all the time, when you
get invitations every night to parties,
cocktail parties, opening nights at the
theatre ... When women are always
ringing you up, women who love your
work, who say how much they would
like to have supper with you - they're
beautiful, intelligent, educated women.
But something pushes you away and
says: 'Don't go. You won't enjoy
yourself. You'll spend the whole night
trying to impress them and squander your
energies proving to yourself how you
can charm the whole world. So I stay at home, go into my studio
and try to find the light, and
I can only see that light when I'm
working."
Ralf Hart, world-renowned artist in his twenties, from a wealthy background in hinterland Francophone Switzerland (and my favourite Paulo Coelho character).
It's not hard to think of why Ralf Hart is my favourite Coelho character. Young, healthy, wealthy, renowned, artistic, intelligent... and still feeling empty, yearning for something more somewhere over the rainbow. Just like me.
We are kindred spirits. Ralf is 29 going on 30, I am 23 going on 24. Both of us are only children from sheltered bourgeois backgrounds, with toys and books for friends (Ralf had his trains, I had my dolls and plushies), who have finally made it to have a social life thanks to their creative talent. Yes, Ralf Hart (like to put more examples: Cassio, Portia, the princess in Story the Fourth of The Snow Queen, Brienne of Tarth, Ada Goth, Luna Lovegood, Chamsous-Sabah, Oscar de Jarjayes, Jacinto [in
Doña Perfecta]...) is a favourite of mine because I see myself reflected in that character. The words Ralf Hart says about his emotions and his past always bring me to tears. This passage in particular, if translated into French and put into verse, would make a great chanson.
Which brings me to my favourite chanson by Jacques Brel, the poet and singer-songwriter who said that "Flemish" and "Walloons" are but given names, and "Belgians" is the family name (what a statement of equality... I could not have said it more beautifully!)... Actually... No, it was
Antoine Clesse who said that (shame upon me for adscribing those Clesse verses to Brel! *facepalms*)!! Anyway, Brel was the one who wrote and sung "Zangra", a song which follows the career of a military officer through his first person POV. In the first stanza, the narrator is a twentyish lieutenant; in the last one, he's a septuagenarian general; in between, in every stanza, he's one rank higher and one decade older than in the previous stanza. There is a stark difference between Lieutenant Zangra, at 22-23, who is stuck in the predictable routine of peacetime garrison life and yearns for war to break out, to depart for the frontlines, to experience more excitement and become a war hero, dead or alive, and, while waiting and finding the idleness of waiting tiresome, seeks distractions to fill that empty slot in his life... and General Zangra, at 72-73, who finally sees war break out, but is too bereft of enthusiasm to become a war hero, and constrained by health, mood, and duty to confront the enemy not on the front, but poring over a map-decked table, as he muses that he never will be the war hero he dreamt of in his youth. For each stanza, the character ages up one decade and gleans more experience, becoming more contented with the peacetime life he leads and seeking more and more serious distractions (from butterfly-style flirtation, to commitment with a girlfriend, to male drinking friends, to romancing the widow of one of said drinking friends, before war breaks out).
It has been said since the dawn of times that impatience is a typical flaw of youth, while patience is a typical virtue of maturity and old age. Like it takes decades for wine to better, it will take decades for me to develop these strengths of character. "Zangra" illustrates these points pretty well: General Zangra is far more experienced, and thus, both more patient and grateful, on one hand, and more disenchanted, on the other hand, than his young lieutenant self. Brel describes, using a character study, facts true to life.
In "Terence, This Is Stupid Stuff", by A.E. Housman, a case of self-immunization reminiscent of Oberyn Nymeros Martell is described at the end of a poem dealing with escapism, intoxication, and the problem of pain. Just like Oberyn, the character mentioned has gradually sampled lethal substances, little by little, to make himself immune:
They poured strychnine in his cup
and shook to see him drink it up...
Strychnine? That hurts for sure: as the film
Psycho puts it, this is an "ugly way to die." So how does it fit into this article? Does a little disappointment, and ennui, and angst, and worry, and weariness, and apathy, and regret, and tempests in teacups... prepare one for the real troubles of the world, like sampling strychnine (or iocaine) in one's system does for eventual poisoning? Does what can't kill us make us stronger, like to Oberyn, and some Christie characters who needed a double or triple dose of strychnine than usual, and some characters in
Monte-Cristo who drank the Count's lemonade
and lived to tell the tale...? to face
real trials, catastrophes, like those which the Tower (XVI) on Tarot signifies?
A poem by Jane Taylor, in fact, another favourite poem of mine, tells this proverbial wisdom as a conversation between mother and daughter, one of my favourite themes, which makes it even more heartwarming and makes it go down even sweeter....
THE DISAPPOINTMENT
By Jane Taylor
In tears to her mother poor Harriet came,
Let us listen to hear what she says:
"O see, dear mamma, it is pouring with rain,
We cannot go out in the chaise.
"All the week I have long'd for this holiday so,
And fancied the minutes were hours;
And now that I'm dress'd and all ready to go,
Do look at those terrible showers! "
"I'm sorry, my dear, " her kind mother replied,
The rain disappoints us to-day;
But sorrow still more that you fret for a ride,
In such an extravagant way.
"These slight disappointments are sent to prepare
For what may hereafter befall;
For seasons of real disappointment and care,
Which commonly happen to all.
"For just like to-day with its holiday lost,
Is life and its comforts at best:
Our pleasures are blighted, our purposes cross'd,
To teach us it is not our rest.
"And when those distresses and crosses appear,
With which you may shortly be tried,
You'll wonder that ever you wasted a tear
On merely the loss of a ride."
Yes, when I have grown old or at least into middle age, and get my life's real trials (my beloved books and films and CDs may be repossessed, my parents will surely die, I might get fired, or have to choose between doing commissions for the money or doing what I like and get poorly paid...).
It would be the scenario described in my favourite Kipling verses:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
and risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
and lose, and start again at your beginnings,
and never breathe a word about your loss...
Which raises, of course, the most obvious question; Would my future self be able to never breathe a word about her loss?
I'm not sure if the prophylactic "strychnine" I had consumed in my youth will have any effect, but, just like Harriet, I will wonder if I ever wasted a tear on merely, let's say, my current disappointment: receiving only a few presents of all things I've got on my wishlist for this Christmas.
For it's how it is: like Lieutenant Zangra and like Ralf Hart, I have everything I could wish for, but I can't stop wishing and wondering, yearning beyond the rainbow, looking for ways to fill my inner emptiness. I don't believe in any gods, seeing how many incongruences both nature and free will put into human life, so, like many 90s children (and mind: I was a sheltered only child, with acquaintances and no friends or peer group), I was raised with consumerism for a religion. Yes. Mind. Publicists, advertising creatives (and this, along with illustrator and character designer, was one of my childhood dream jobs!), rely on psychologists, especially those who specialize in emotions. Watching adverts is far more satisfying than watching the 9 o'clock news (or Titus Andronicus, for that matter) because all you get is joy, without anything that reeks of negativity (like accidents, domestic abuse, warfare, terrorism, economic crises, natural disasters, losing sports teams, doping...). It's like the lotus eaters in the Odyssey, who were wired on their narcotic lotus seed capsules. All of us Sevens are, were, or have been lotus eaters. Yes, Fritz Freaking Nietzsche was freaking right, GOD IS STONE DEAD. But the assassin and the usurper that currently takes his place is not Nature: it is Pleasure.
"Gay Pleasure, frolick-loving dame!
Her mien all swimming in delight,
Her beauties half reveal'd to sight,
Loose flow'd her garments from the ground
And caught the kissing winds around:
As erst Medusa's looks were known
To turn beholders into stone,
A dire reversion here they felt,
And in the eye of Pleasure melt:
Her glance with sweet persuasion charm'd,
Unnerv'd the strong, the steel'd disarm'd,
No safety ev'n the flying find
Who vent'rous look but once behind."
This was written by an Englishman in the days when Cromwell's military,
men armed with pikes and halbards and a religion even harder than their iron breastplates, who had swept across enemy country, burning and killing whatever they could find, was no more than a painful memory that no one would bring back, when the bright colours and the entertainment of yore had returned with the rightful king's dynasty to the sceptred isles. That deliverance from strict, totalitarian dictatorship was the climate that saw English empiricism and utilitarianism, the foundations of today's moral mindset and of human rights, triumph.
But the ideals it defended were centuries older.
Epicureanism, or hedonism, is as old as the triumph of the territorial state, and so are the self-expression values that is supports: the whole mindset dates back to Hellenism, and remained powerful as long as there were complex, multinational empires in the West.
Christianity, with its condemnation of the flesh, the body, and the lust of the eyes, held it back under lock and key for a few centuries, until the conscience crisis that was caused by the Thirty Years' War set it free once more, and how did it run rampant! The English Restoration- or Augustan-era verses that introduce this section are merely the tip of the iceberg.
This mindset boomed at the turn of the nineteenth-twentieth century, with the rise of the middle class, advertising, and bohemian artists... (when Lord Henry Wotton sipped his cuppa in Kensington and a deranged Nietzsche raged against the establishment from Lützen). But the BOOM after the World Wars and the repressing dictatorships that came with them would be FAR MORE SIGNIFICANT.
For a while, dictatorial regimes and world wars held back this mindset, advocating for authority, against self-expression and indulgence, and smiting those who defended those values with fire and sword, yet the end of the war and of most dictators saw the REVOLUTION with capital letters break out. Adolescents were seen as more than just in a liminal state between childhood and mature adulthood. The survivors of the war had, like after so many natural and artificial disasters, spawned like rabbits. Consumerism became an ideology. Psychology was developing at lightning speed, and the locus of emotions was set in stone as not the heart, but the limbic system. In Prague, in Paris, in California, in Sweden, young people roared against the governments, and those belonging to outgroups fought fiercely for their rights. (Humans landed on the Earth's Moon as well, but who cares in this case?) The pill. Bikinis. LOVE, NOT WAR (a sentence I wrote yesterday in purple capital letters, with a heart for the O in LOVE and a peace symbol for the O in NOT, on a painting Amnesty was doing with students at my university). Drugs, drugs, and more drugs. And a crusade to erase all the negative emotions. The 1960s-70s LOVE REVOLUTION had given a dying God the coup de grâce. And all the young people of today are the fruit of said REVOLUTION. Including the mistress of this blog and writer of this essay.
Back from our days to the pomp and glory of the Augustan era: One of my top five works of English literature, together with Othello, Don Juan (by Lord Byron), Gustavus Adolphus (by Swinborne), and The Cattle Raid of Cooley, is Alexander Pope's Rape of the Lock, a mock epic and an affectionate look at tempests in teacups. The characters are nobles at the royal court of Queen Anne, all of them young, good-looking, intelligent, hormonal, and, having got their primary needs satisfied and living in a free country, interested mostly in having fun. Thus, the things they like and they wish for are serious business to them.
The poem follows a day in the life of court lady Belinda, part of the cream of Augustan society: like all of her friends and foes and the others of her rank, she is an evening person who sleeps snuggled up with drawn curtains in her canopy bed until 12 sharp, when her maid wakes her up (like I do myself on weekends: I must have been a seventeenth- or eighteenth-century court noble in a past life!), then spends most of the day dressing up until, in the afternoon, she sets sail on the Thames from her estate home to the royal palace to partake in the Queen's entertainments. Before that, she has been very careful with her hairstyle, the coif in vogue of those days: a bun gathered up with a pin that has been passed within her family, from mother to daughter, for generations (don't forget the hairpin!) and twin corkscrew ringlets on her temples, in perfect symmetry. During a game of cards at the palace, a young baron friendzoned by Belinda, under the influence of caffeine, snips off one of her perfectly symmetric corkscrew locks as retaliation. She reacts with living lightning flashing in her eyes, for, like to any other court lady, her appearance is serious business...
The cutting off of the lock turns the soirée of that evening into an epic battle between the ladies and the gentleman courtiers, who fight with quips, glares, and songs full of disses... except for the commanders of both armies: Belinda fights the baron mano a mano, throwing snuff up his nose and threatening to kill him with her precious hairpin (now revealed to be her dynasty's ancestral weapon, like Ice is to the Starks!), demanding him to restore her lock of hair... but it is lost, having gone missing in the battle, and not found no matter how much all of them, now in peace with one another, search throughout the ballroom... In the end, it is revealed that the lock has become a star, a new star in the night sky. Something that no one who fought in the "battle of the lock" realizes.
Such an unexpected twist ending (compare the one of The Cattle Raid of Cooley) makes us question if it was really worth it to start a war for the sake of a lock of hair.
What mighty contests rise from trivial things,
I sing—This verse to CARYL, Muse! is due:
This, ev'n Belinda may vouchsafe to view.
Yes, but what are trivial things? Why do we always make the things we wish for into serious business? For the sake of symbolism: this film, this fic, this series, or this book contains a character I identify with; this garment or this toy is a bright colour or feels soft, which I like; the lyrics or the tune, or both,
of this song awaken emotions within me; a four-leaf clover or a red white-spotted shroom will bring me good luck, and so will a coin from 1992, my year of birth... What we like, whether it be within or beyond our reach, is thought of in abstract terms and emotionally, affectively loaded and liked not for itself, but because it refers to something else positive: it has a representational value.
This is not only an issue of mine, but a common problem to most of us Eurasians... Westerners... especially in this society of information and consumerism.
And where did the spirit of Christmas go?
Secularization has taken the Christ out of Christmas and turned it into Feastmas or Giftmas, its original form, derived from the Christianization of festivals from the Age of Empires like the Saturnalia, when figurines called Sigillaria, used as toys and as ornaments, were often exchanged. When I was a child, there was a spirit of Christmas. Now that I have come of age and become disenchanted, but also always yearning and wishing for more, there's the spirit of Giftmas instead.
Remember my tirade on representational value?
Why do we always make the things we wish for into serious business? For the sake of symbolism: this film, this fic, this series, or this book contains a character I identify with; this garment or this toy is a bright colour or feels soft, which I like; the lyrics or the tune, or both, of this song awaken emotions within me; a four-leaf clover or a red white-spotted shroom will bring me good luck, and so will a coin from 1992, my year of birth... What we like, whether it be within or beyond our reach, is thought of in abstract terms and emotionally, affectively loaded and liked not for itself, but because it refers to something else positive: it has a representational value.
My entitlement and this symbolic thinking cause my wishes for certain presents to become as relevant as Iago's lieutenancy or Belinda's lock of hair. Id est, serious business. A stripling without any field experience is made a lieutenant instead of you, or an annoying admirer takes a pair of scissors and ruins your perfectly symmetric coiffure, or you can't get all the presents you have written on your wish list because of a a few slights that can be bettered (like being late for class for all of November and scratching your palate at the psychiatrist's)? Disappointment ensues. Positive feelings are shattered, and all you want to do is sulk and drown your sorrows while you bleed within and rage at the world and at yourself. No matter if, as Andersen said in one of his lesser-known stories, when one gives up the world, and oneself too, it is all over with that person.
The Stoics, enemies of the Epicureans and a great influence on totalitarianisms, said there were four passions to be shunned, and I think the strongest, and my personal favourite, is desire. To me, it has got a power that neither joy, grief, nor fear possess. Desire is the expectation of a future good, the wish for a future good. It can move mountains, start wars, lead to a signature at Runnymede, or to a victory at Breitenfeld, make an unusually intelligent princess meet her intellectual equal and become his partner, but also make a resented non-com betray the young lieutenant who "usurped" his commission. Yes, desire packs the most potent punch of all four passions, and it is also the source of positive emotions... but of disappointment, regret, ennui, fear of the inner emptiness... as well.
But... can a person bereft of emotions and passions be truly virtuous, or an empty shell? The case of Virginia and her guardian, from a literary tale by Josep Feliu i Codina (Belle Époque-era Spain) may illustrate the point: he made his ward, the orphaned only child of powerful nobles, emotionless, by replacing her seven-year-old heart with clockwork and keeping the heart in a jar. The reason why he has taken away her emotions: he wants to marry her to get a hold on her family fortune, and, when she reaches the age of consent, her guardian will be older than seventy. Virginia has grown up emotionless, indifferent to everything, into a beautiful yet callous and completely rational ice queen... until, thanks to some fairy magic, she is given a real heart during her adolescence, and she begins to see the beauty and the inspiration in the world around her: never were the flowers in her garden so colourful and so fragrant to her, never was the young man she met at the ball so dashing and so interesting... When her guardian finds out, he locks her away in a tower. And the now seventyish villain visits her and proposes to her every day, but she always rejects his advances. In the end, thinking that she rejected him because of his advanced age, the septuagenarian makes an unconscious wish for a younger heart... and realizes that he's already got one: his ward's child heart in a jar. So, obviously, our villain has his own heart replaced with Virginia's... and, suddenly, he transforms from a serious and realistic killjoy driven by ambition and greed... into a lovable eccentric with a lively and cheerful, quirky personality, who never denies himself any whim and completely lacks self-control. A seven-year-old heart has been transplanted into his seventyish chest, after all. No wonder that, after the literal change of heart, he sets Virginia free and lets her go with her suitor, giving them his blessing, when the young man promises his far older opponent a musical box for a present. Upstairs storms the guardian, with elation, as he opens the locked door and tells his ward, in a high-pitched voice, that she's free, adding: "I'll get a musical box!"
Drugs provide escapist solutions that in the end lead to nowhere. Having binge eaten ice cream and binge drunk beer and liquor to drown my sorrows, I do know what it's like, but the shadow of addiction looms over me, eager to rein me in, whispering flatteries. We may, like Henry in The Golden Legend (or Cassio in Othello) hoist the white flag in response to the initial euphoria of intoxication, our will playing the part of Tywin Lannister during the defense of King's Landing. We should first let Henry speak of how he felt when "cured" of his constant ennui by the eau-de-vie he purchased from a quack, who was actually the Evil One in civilian attire:
Lucifer (showing a flask). Behold it here! this little flask
Contains the wonderful quintessence,
The perfect flower and efflorescence...
Hold it up thus against the light!
Prince Henry. How limpid, pure, and crystalline,
How quick, and tremulous, and bright
The little wavelets dance and shine,
As were it the Water of Life in sooth!
Lucifer. It is! It assuages every pain,
Cures all disease, and gives again
To age the swift delights of youth.
Inhale its fragrance.
Prince Henry. It is sweet.
A thousand different odors meet
And mingle in its rare perfume,
Such as the winds of summer waft
At open windows through a room!
Lucifer. Will you not taste it?
Prince Henry. Will one draught suffice?
Lucifer. If not, you can drink more.
Prince Henry. Into this crystal goblet pour
So much as safely I may drink.
Lucifer (pouring). Let not the quantity alarm you:
You may drink all; it will not harm you.
Prince Henry. I am as one who on the brink
Of a dark river stands and sees
The waters flow, the landscape dim
Around him waver, wheel, and swim,
And, ere he plunges, stops to think
Into what whirlpools he may sink;
One moment pauses, and no more,
Then madly plunges from the shore!
Headlong into the dark mysteries
Of life and death I boldly leap,
Nor fear the fateful current's sweep,
Nor what in ambush lurks below!
For death is better than disease!
Lucifer (disappearing). Drink! drink!
And thy soul shall sink
Down into the dark abyss,
Into the infinite abyss,
From which no plummet nor rope
Ever drew up the silver sand of hope!
Prince Henry (drinking). It is like a draught of fire!
Through every vein
I feel again
The fever of youth, the soft desire;
A rapture that is almost pain
Throbs in my heart and fills my brain!
O joy! O joy! I feel
The band of steel
That so long and heavily has pressed
Upon my breast
Uplifted, and the malediction
Of my affliction
Is taken from me, and my weary breast
At length finds rest.
Speak! speak!
Who says that I am ill?
I am not ill! I am not weak!
The trance, the swoon, the dream, is o'er!
I feel the chill of death no more!
At length,
I stand renewed in all my strength!
Beneath me I can feel
The great earth stagger and reel,
As it the feet of a descending god
Upon its surface trod,
And like a pebble it rolled beneath his heel!
This, O brave physician! this
Is thy great palingenesis!
Prince Henry (sinking back). O thou voice within my breast!
Why entreat me, why upbraid me,
When the steadfast tongues of truth
And the flattering hopes of youth
Have all deceived me and betrayed me?
Give me, give me rest, O, rest!
Golden visions wave and hover,
Golden vapors, waters streaming,
Landscapes moving, changing, gleaming!
I am like a happy lover
Who illumines life with dreaming!
(His head falls on his book.)
But in the end, Henry was completely broken, physically and psychologically, by ethyl addiction. As his retainers say:
Until one morning we found him there
Stretched on the floor, as if in a swoon
He had fallen from his chair.
We hardly recognized his sweet looks!
In the same Andersen story from which I quoted earlier, The Philosopher's Stone, four brothers and a sister go forth one by one in pursuit of the precious titular gem, the party dwindling one by one until only the sister remains, finds the Stone, and recovers her missing brothers, who had all of them disappeared because when one gives up the world, and oneself too, it is all over with that person. Only the sister has not given up on her quest: on one hand, the two older brothers have given in to despair, while, on the other hand, the two younger ones have given in to euphoria. The third brother is the one I identify with: a poet blessed with the gifts of seeing beauty and goodness and of putting them and the feelings they cause into verse. Ostensibly, since he is the one whose verses become internationally popular, spreading the seeds of goodness in the hearts of humankind, the young poet is the one closest to reaching the Philosopher's Stone. But, indeed, an evil spirit wants the Stone for himself and comes up with the best plan to foil this creative youth's attempt:
But the evil spirit was angry at this, and he could not tolerate it, so he set to work with royal incense and church incense and all kinds of the strongest incense, which he knows how to distill; the strongest kinds of incense, which suffocate all the others, and which he can mix so artfully as to make an angel feel lightheaded, and how much more easily a poor poet. The evil one knows well how to manage such people. He so completely surrounded the poet with incense that the young man lost his head, forgot his mission and his home, and at last even lost himself and vanished in smoke.
While his older brothers had given in to despair, the poet, like his younger brother afterwards, loses himself in pleasant experiences, which in his case are due to intoxication, drug-induced.
Andersen wrote this in the nineteenth century, when more escapist drugs than just ethylic drinks had become available to the middle class.
In the end, the happy ending of this story, just like his three brothers, the poet will be delivered by his pure-hearted and determined sister, who never wavered or strayed from her call, not giving in to despair or to escapist euphoria. And the message delivered by the Philosopher's Stone turns out to be the powerful seven-letter word BELIEVE. And the Bard of Odense closes the tale by delivering the moral, a powerful reminder of the power of self-confidence: from the word BELIEVE arose the bridge of Hope, reaching even to the unmeasurable Love in the realms of the infinite.
But, indeed, not all of us are so steadfast, and even the most steadfast of us have faltered and fallen. A. E. Housman, for example. The poet who wrote the verses about one, who like Oberyn, made himself immune to poisonous substances by absorbing them little by little, so his enemies shook to see him drink it all up when they had poured strychnine into his cup (and iocaine, and even ethanol, wind up as being tolerated by the system and losing their effects at the same dose)... had told before how it was to go to the local fair on a holiday and return home wasted, reeling, collapsing in a ditch, and then having to cope with the wrath of hops:
Oh, I have been to Ludlow Fair
and left my necktie who knows where,
and carried half way home, or near,
pints and quarts of Ludlow beer:
Then the world seemed none so bad,
and I myself a sterling lad;
and down in lovely muck I've lain,
happy till I woke again.
Then I saw the morning sky:
Heigho, the tale was all a lie!
The world, it was the old world yet,
I was I, my things were wet,
and nothing now remained to do
but to begin the game anew.
And I have had myself the same experience described by Housman, which I had this summer in northern Germany... Let me tell you in verse:
I've been to Stralsund this July,
and fretted 'cause I don't know why,
and carried half-way, far, or near
more than a seidel Stralsund beer,
and, to feel pleased, of vodka a glass,
thus, then I seemed a sterling lass,
and, back on board, uneasy I've lain,
ill at ease till I woke again.
Then I threw up, I do not lie...
Haha, the tale was all a lie!
The world was the same old world yet,
I was myself, my clothes were wet,
and nought at all remained to do
but to begin the game anew.
To wrap it up, let's reflect on the Tale of the Three Brothers, compiled by Beedle the Bard via J.K. Rowling. As you may know, Death grants each of the titular brothers a wish. One chooses invincibility, another chooses resurrection of a loved one, while the third one, who had been ruminating his wish the most, opts for something that will let him escape Death: the Reaper gives him his own invisible cloak. While the two more impulsive brothers, who made irrational wishes thinking only of the short-term effects, died untimely and violent deaths, the third one lived to a ripe old age. Many few people make such sensible wishes: desire is a passion, and thus, usually beyond the limits of reason. Most of us make irrational wishes on impulse and thinking only of instant gratification, as seen in Othello and The Rape of the Lock, the Westeros 'verse and Doki!Doki Precure, Zenki, Shugo Chara Doki!, and the tales compiled by Beedle the Bard, the Tale of the Three Brothers being the clearest and most extreme example.
