Reporter | Dong Ziqi
Edit | Yellow Moon
1
British writer Angela Carter, when translating charles Bello's fairy tales, found that all cradle stories are elaborately disguised political fables, animals are repressed sexual desires, beasts in human nature, fairy tales can reveal the lies that people try to distinguish themselves from animals, which reminds us of the role of fairy tales in addition to healing and education.
The classic fairy tale The Wind in the Willows was originally a bedtime story written by Kenneth Graham to his son, first published in 1908. The main theme of the story is this: in the spring, the mole that is wandering around after cleaning the house meets the well-informed river rat drifting on the river, and the river rat introduces the mole to more friends, including the rich toad, the social-averse badger, and the nobility-like otter, they talk and play together for a big meal, and they are united by the misfortune caused by the toad. The recent publication of "The Voice of the Willows (Norton's Annotated Edition)" also shows us a vast space for a fairy tale work to interpret.
"The Sound of the Willow Forest"
[English] Kenneth Graham by [American] Anne Gauger translated by Kang Hua
Pu Rui Culture, Hunan Literature and Art Publishing House, 2022
Anne Gauger is a fellow at the Harry Ransham Center for the Humanities at the University of Texas at Austin. The Norton Annotated Edition of The Wind in the Willows combines the biography of Kenneth Graham, letters from Graham, and Peter Hunt's fairy tale study the sounds of willow forest: The Broken Peach Blossom Garden, Humphrey Carpenter's The Secret Garden: A Study of the Golden Age of Children's Literature, and illustrations in different editions.
Symbolic: Upstart toad and poor rabbit
The characters in "The Wind in the Willows" are all anthropomorphic: the mole will clean up, the river rat will spend the day in poetry, the toad has a luxurious mansion, and the annotations also show the different attributes of the mole, the river rat, the toad, the badger and the otter, and from their conversations and behaviors, the reader can also infer the real people they are most likely to represent.
The moles that were cleaned up in the spring were London commoners, for he had no servants or wives to help, like late Victorian Londoners trapped in the city by smoke and work. The mole, which once showed its friend the river rat its small nest, was carefully arranged, but consisted mainly of bargains and discounts. He realized the difference between his mole garden and other animal mansions, and even covered his nose with his paws and cried, regretting why he had brought his friend home.
The commentary argues that the mole seems to be the reality that the author Graham himself was eager to escape from the position of secretary of the Bank of England. The well-informed river rat tells the mole about his adventures, fishing with otters at night, and hiking in the wilderness with the badger, and this image of the desire for the wilderness also has a shadow of Graham himself, who has been described as "a huge St. Bernard or Newfoundland dog on the sidewalk of London, eager to be taken to the wilderness to get rid of the dog chain and hang out".
Rackham painting of a passing lunch basket, 1940
Mr. Toad is the image of an upstart who likes the new and the old, and the riverside animals know that the Toad House is the most luxurious in the surrounding houses, but they avoid mentioning it in front of the toad. There are obvious flaws in toad's personality: it is easy to be interested in new things, and obsessed with anything will not last long. One of the most typical examples is that the toad began to invite the river rat and the mole to swim together in the gypsy caravan, and later became interested in the car because the caravan was destroyed by the car, forgot his aria about the caravan, took the train to town early in the morning, and ordered a "super big super expensive" car. Later, the car frenzy put him in jail.
On the one hand, the image of the toad comes from a real-life, spirited, flamboyant, chattering upstart, and by satirizing the wealthy of his contemporaries, Graham is relieved of some frustration; on the other hand, the toad's aestheticism has something to do with Oscar Wilde, and toad's lament in prison is very similar to the opening letter of Wilde's "From the Depths" – presumably the author is paying tribute to Wilde in a different way.
Payne painting the Boat Woman, 1927
Mr. Badger hates socializing and retreats when he sees a large number of people, which reflects his combination of high status, vulgar behavior, grumpiness, shyness and kindness – children who meet such a Badger will later develop a deep understanding of human nature and British social history. It also embodies much of the author's character, becoming an old country manor owner and a symbol of Graham's ideal life.
Otters have a calm and familiar attitude towards all classes and are probably the closest of the animals to the nobility. As for the rabbits, they are completely stupid, and the moles call them "onion sauce" in the opening scene, because the onion sauce is the ingredient for roasting rabbits, and it is mentioned later that the rabbit is an endlessly busy animal, just like the "poor busy" people in humans, busy breeding and coping with family life, and have no time to meditate for a moment. The note points out that the theme of the fool rabbit is also continued in Winnie the Pooh – in addition to the Fool Rabbit, there is other evidence that traces of The Wind in the Willow Forest run through Winnie the Pooh.
Sense of the times: walking and caring, returning and eating
By the time Graham wrote The Wind in the Willows, the railway had been extended to all of Britain's countryside, and industrial civilization had a huge impact on the rural countryside. The walking of moles and river rats sets off the importance of walking in the age of trains and cars. Graham wrote in his early works that space-time can be annihilated, but that people's steps are the true standard by which distance is measured. In fact, where the river rats roam—fields, pastures, wheat fields—Graham loves to go, and the wheat waves and the sky are like personalities: "The wheat waves roll, rustle, rustle, sway quietly, speak softly." River rats like to wander around here a lot, passing through large areas of vigorous and stiff wheat straw. Overhead was the golden sky held up by the straw, which had been dancing, shining brightly, whispering softly. And the river is also anthropomorphic, and the river is "a smooth, twisted big guy with a smooth body, chasing and laughing, grabbing and grabbing, clucking when it catches something, and hahaha when it is released." In his letters, Graham also revealed that he longed to travel free from family or professional responsibilities.
Toad's caravan was destroyed by a car, but in the blink of an eye he went to order a "super big super expensive" car, which was interpreted as the industrialization process defeating rural traditionalism. Unlike the toad, the other riverside residents are wary of cars, and the mole has never seen a car or known what to call it, he calls the mysterious car "Thing", as if the car is a monster in Gothic literature, and the toad who is crazy about cars is also about to become a monster (Object) in the eyes of other residents. He resisted the car's start like Odysseus resisting the siren's song, with Odysseus tying himself to the ship's mast with a rope, and toad clutching the table leg tightly. Moles, river rats, and badgers all guard the toads at the Toad House, correcting their undesirable habits like helping the toad quit their addictions.
And Mr. Toad's later adventures—escaping from Toad's mansion, stealing a car from the city and escaping from prison disguised as a washerwoman—are like the progress of the "18th-century tramp novel" (a literary work based on the adventures of a liar or a troublemaker), and Toad is also known as "the kind liar in standard folk tales". The notes remind people that during the creation of The Wind in the Willows, a series of car suspense novels surged in popularity, in which the flying car pirates wore head-to-toe leather coats and goggles, similar to toads (toads "wear goggles, duck-tongue hats, boots and oversized coats"). Kipling, a contemporary of the author, was also very enthusiastic about driving.
Payne's painting of Mr. Toad's Escape, 1927
The main part of the fairy tale "The Wind in the Willow Forest" can be seen as the growth novel of the protagonist mole, who drills out of his cave and swims with the river rat as a journey to "join a more desirable society". Along the way he learned to row and fish, and after living with the river rat and deepening his friendship with the other riverbank residents, the mole was suddenly struck by a feeling of homesickness—an epiphany that seemed to come from a fairyland call, which he sensed with his nose sniffing around (the story says that humans have lost this subtle physical sensation that can only be described by smell), "Home! The soothing call, the gentle touch that floats in the air, and the invisible little hand pulling and pulling in one direction all convey the message of home. In the end, the mole returns to its humble birthplace, which represents a typical pattern of family and experience cycles, where people are always looking for new paths and reaching harmony in old places.
The mole led the river rat back to the humble mole garden, and the most important thing was to invite the river rat to eat, but his home was only canned and sausage, no bread and butter, which made him groan sadly, or the laughing river rat comforted him. The protagonists are always eating in the important moments of "The Sound of the Willows", and cooking is an important theme in all families - the mole and the river rat enjoy a pleasant picnic together when they first meet, the long food list is like a literary parody; after the blizzard, the two little friends are warmly welcomed at the badger's house, the kitchen and meals represent that they have been tested, everything is stable, the badger's kitchen table is like a table in the Oxford and Cambridge university restaurant, in Harry Potter. We can also see such a restaurant example; even the fantasy of Toad after going to prison is the jingle of the table in Toad's mansion.
People often demand or expect children's literature to be free from sex and violence, and after sex and violence are removed, it seems that all that is left is food, and every important moment in the fantasy is "interrupted" by food, and the scene of eating is rich enough that this "interruption" becomes an important plot itself.
The illustrations in this article are from the "Liulin Wind Sound (Norton Annotated Version)", which is published with the permission of Pu Rui Culture