INTRODUCTION

This informal, unorthodox essay-article is primarily concerned with exploring and musing on the Italian folktale “The Sorceress’s Head,” and this work (part analysis, part criticism, part review) is only concerned with the version of that story that is presented in Italo Calvino’s Italian Folktales. All throughout this article, I will be offering my ideas and the ideas of others to help give better insight.

In part one, I will discuss on the Expressionism, absurdist, and Symbolist elements in the “The Sorceress’s Head” story. I will make a bit of room to offer a slight comparison between a pessimistic mood in the story and an element of pessimism in Lord Dunsany’s style. This is not to say that the folktale or Dunsany’s stories are entirely pessimistic. My essay piece is only suggesting that there is a kind of undercurrent or murmur of sadness or melancholy hidden within the folk-story, which is analogous to a hint of fatalism or tragedy or angst buried within some of the techniques of Dunsany’s craftsmanship. Again, I have used my ideas and the ideas of others to get this across.

Part two of this article will be chiefly occupied with concepts of the false and of the beautifully grotesque inside the chosen Italian folktale. Fantasy gives us imagined release from the prison of crushing reality, so it can conjure artificial fancies and narratives about the artificial and the imaginary and subjective encounters. I can only hope that my words and the words of others will bring the proper illumination.

Yet do not get too lost in searching for total clarification. Allow the overall reading experience (beginning to end, end to beginning) to give you something so much better than answers.

PART I

Myths were created in the early days of the race to account for sunrise and sunset, storm-winds and thunder, the origin of the earth and of mankind. The tales men told in the face of these mysteries were naturally inspired by awe and fear. (Birkhead The Tale of Terror A Study of the Gothic Romance 1)

Storytelling and folktales have been with human beings for a long time. The superior folktale is that which is touched by both the fantastical and the frightful. These kinds are the tales that get retold and transformed again and again, especially by those who yearn to feel and dwell upon the macabre and the decadent and the most astonishing, heightened emotions brought on by elements of the grotesque and the sublime.

With that sense of the fantastical also comes a level of the absurd or nonsense, where things just appear to happen without logic or realism. Some stories can slog that approach towards artistic merit; most atrophy to immature frivolity, meta-irony, or hyper-cynical satire à la mode; furthermore, those comedic or fatuous manners are not permanently beautiful, nor are they wholly dissatisfying in every situation.

That surrealist component, a system rooted within most folktales and myths, somewhat irks me: sudden and ridiculous, magical events happening without realistic explanation or logical consequence within the story, seemingly serving to drive plot or create humor. That kind of abrupt randomness could be majestically satisfying if administered with psychedelic, grisly panache.

From one point of view—some folktales can be seen as absurdist in the way they communicate back to readers and audiences the meaninglessness or inconsistencies of hunting after explanations or patterns in a chaotic, indifferent world ruled by conflicting forces. Heroes and main characters may fail or prevail; some are supported by the reigning deities, others doomed. Sometimes, the reasons for failure or victory are never made clear. Every choice, every event, every outcome feels like another gamble in an insane fairyland where anything is possible yet everything is ephemeral and constantly in a state of transformation determined by cold luck, which at times works to the benefit or tragedy of the principal characters and the worlds around them. Not all folktales generate this kind of feeling. There are folktales focused on portraying an ideal that was preferred by certain cultures or tribes. Moments of absurdity or grotesqueness may appear, and occasionally it is only dependent on chance to save the heroes.

Speaking of combining the absurd and the grotesque—one funny little folktale that caught my attention was “The Sorceress’s Head,” which I found in Italo Calvino’s Italian Folktales (1980), translated by George Martin and published by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc.  

Concerning “The Sorceress’s Head,” the Notes section of the book tells us:

84. “The Sorceress’s Head” (La testa della Maga) from Pitrè, T. I, “told by Beppa Pierazzoli, of Pratovecchio in the upper Val d’Arno, longtime resident of Florence.”

This is obviously derived from the myth of Perseus of which several motifs are repeated: Danaë’s isolation, which still does not prevent her from conceiving; the Medusa enterprise imposed on Perseus by King Polydectes; the power to fly (in the myth, with winged sandals); the three Gray Women, daughters of Phorcys, with only one eye and one tooth among the three of them; the silver shield that serves as a mirror for viewing Medusa; blood that changes into snakes; the freeing of Andromeda from the monster, the petrification of King Polydectes. I found no other versions of this in collections of popular tales, and that would lead to the conclusion that we are dealing here with a recent popular remolding of the classical myth. (Calvino et al. Notes p.733)

 “The Sorceress’s Head” definitely has moments (slightly irritating) reflecting a combination of characteristics of absurdism and the Symbolist. One of the most striking of which was when the main character meets a stranger who gives him a flying horse and just enough information on how to complete his dangerous quest:

Along the way he met a little old man, who asked, “Where are you going, my boy?”

“To the sorceress, to cut off her head.”

“Oh, goodness me! For that you’ll need a horse that can fly, since you’ll have to go over a mountain swarming with lions and tigers that would devour you and your horse in a flash.”

“But where can I find a horse that flies?”

“Just a minute, and I’ll get you one,” replied the old man. He disappeared and returned with a magnificent flying horse.

“Now listen to me,” said the old man. “You cannot look directly at the sorceress, or you’ll turn to stone. You must watch her in a mirror, which I’ll now explain how to get. Walk down the road a little way and you’ll come to a marble palace and a garden of flowering peach trees. There you will see two blind women, who have only one eye between the two of them. Those women have the mirror you need. The sorceress spends her time in a meadow full of flowers, whose scent alone is enough to cast a spell over you. Beware of it. And look at the sorceress only in the mirror, or you’ll turn to stone.” (Calvino et al. “The Sorceress's Head” pp. 305-306) 

Rather droll; however, as I interpret it, besides it being ludicrous and illogical, the above passage does open up like a state of dreaming. The horse capable of flight; the surreal laws and surprising events of an impossible world. The transition between reality and dreaming is felt by the presence of the supernatural horse and by the eye that gives sight to those blind women. One might think of shutting one’s eyes to sleep and yet to also see reflections—like a mirror—of thoughts, old memories, and new combinations of nightmares and fantasy in a dream. Those flowers that enchant. The peach-tree garden. A monster in a meadow. An instinct occurs, something that is both beautiful and grotesque. A manifestation of divine right? The psychological ecosphere inside the mind of a legionary or a hero trying to reclaim something of ancestral importance. The reader is given a glimpse into the mission and its emotional weight. The dream or hope of victory and glory is also alive. The main character was suddenly just given everything he needed to succeed, with only a mirror and a kill left to acquire.

And yet, the aforementioned passage is an ontogenetic phantasmagoria of a soul in struggle, a being maturing from boyhood into manhood, fearing failure, fearing murderous potential, fearing becoming less than human (an object? A monster?), and yet also becoming something better than what one once was. The main character and the generous old man are the same person, for the mind and body are working together to mature and self-generate courage, ingenuity, and resolve. The monster, the natural, the man. Youth and old age. To succeed, the main character must grow up, or be stuck, petrified, transmogrified to stone. A youth must face battle, combat, conflict, and must kill or become enslaved to stone. This passage is a gateway, a liminal initiation, and it offers both a window and a doorway into this raw psychological turmoil conflicted by daring, terror, vindictiveness, and shame.

The abovementioned scene reveals a mayhem in a mind facing hopelessness, senselessness; a confusion brought about by believing in hope while also fearing there is none; a disorder of gallantry, heroism, and other passionate feelings sickened and disfigured by an awareness of the incongruity of unintelligible existence and insane events unfolding, exacerbated by changing times and by the desire for revenge in a disorganized world, when the whole world seems upended.

But there is no truth to be found; there is only an expression of inharmonious emotions, the portrayal of which yields superior insight into the heart.

And yet, even all this is but my interpretation of this small scene and its place in the story.

I am not saying that this folktale was created purposefully as a mixture of Expressionism, the absurdist, and the Symbolist. It shows certain ambiguous characteristics and faint tones comparable to the designs of those artistic movements and ideologies, especially when examined with a certain eye.

A problem with folklore and myths is—who can really say for sure what was intended? Interpretations are all we have left of them.

When we consider how the king tries to cheat reality, to cheat the way things are, we can see how he dooms himself; rather, he falls into a trap. He asks for and receives a child, but this child will cause his destruction. The girl, which the voice supposedly gives him, later has a child; this affluent grandson will kill the sorceress and then turn his grandfather the king to stone. The ambition of the king is his downfall, but it also shows the utter insignificance, and precarious limits, of human aspiration and its utter puniness. The king replaced his infertility or childlessness with a supernaturally begotten child, and then the king himself becomes replaced by his own grandson. The grandson is a tool of cruel double-edged fate, which is why he is allowed, made, to triumph—the grandson is a vessel for the natural world (or the gods who control it), which shall smite jaundiced retribution on the king, whose main crime was desiring more out of life and then becoming excessively consumed by mortal bitterness by his failure to alter destiny in his favor.

As I construe it, even the one who might be the narrator of the story plausibly feels at least a little cheated:

And there they lived a life happy and long,

But nothing did they ever give me for my song. (Calvino et al. “The Sorceress's Head” p. 308) 

Fantasy connoisseurs might recognize similarities to Lord Dunsany’s tone or style.

Laura Miller says:

Pega¯na has gods of dust, of silence, and of “little dreams and fancies” but no gods or goddesses of the harvest, of war, or of love—pretty much the core curriculum for heathen deities. Dunsany’s creation is a sumptuous pageant of Symbolist exotica that lies closer in spirit to Aubrey Beardsley and The Yellow Book than to any actual sacred text. The myths that Dunsany concocted elaborate on the futility of human ambitions and even the ephemerality of the gods themselves, who will vanish into nothingness on the awakening of a still older creator, called Ma¯na-Yood-Susha¯i. (Miller, “Minor Magus”) 

The monarch of “The Sorceress’s Head” could not master biology, could not change fate, not without enduring ruin or an overthrow. One of the biggest flaws the king has is his determination to control his family, to isolate his daughter, to remove his grandson. When things did not go his way, he betrayed the trust and love of his own blood. Then the king becomes objectified, destroyed, imprisoned. He is stone. Edifice and mausoleum. Much is already lost, and not even a sorceress nor a dragon can escape obliteration. This story is an anti-Promethean warning, but it also shows how fragile human connections (blood) truly are. In an absurd world, the real and the imaginary interlink, and human beings will become devices of retaliation. Those that go against cold reality and jealous nature meet oblivion. Even familial bonds can become corrupted. The main characters of the story are victorious, and their joy is said to be long, but their house is fragmented withal and tainted by the petrification of the grandfather. The main character has joy, but it would appear that he is stingy or unmindful, not giving the narrator any sort of compensation for the reciting of the tale of this great mission stained with thievery and murders, which puts a damper on the ending. There is never satisfaction or justice or even virtue unless it is short-lived (the king) or soiled (the grandson).

Looking at “The Sorceress’s Head” through this type of eye, and directing perception on the downfall of the grandfather character, may expose ideas and attitudes of defeatism and melancholia akin to the gloomy yet whimsical nuances existing in various writings of Lord Dunsany—e.g., “The Idle City” and The Gods of Pegāna, which are haunted by a fragrance of cosmic-horror, spurring perceptions of vanity and vast cycles of time that promise nigh-absolute nihility, wherein virtually all becomes obscurity. In “The Sorceress’s Head,” “The Idle City,” and The Gods of Pegāna, stunning fantasy and symbols of doom and of usurpation merge.

Part Two of this article can be found here.

Matthew Pungitore graduated with a Bachelor of Science in English from Fitchburg State University. He volunteers with the Hingham Historical Society. The town of Hingham, Massachusetts is where he was brought up, and he has lived there for many years. Matthew is the author of The Report of Mr. Charles Aalmers and other stories, Fiendilkfjeld Castle, and Midnight's Eternal Prisoner: Waiting For The Summer.

If you’ve liked what you’ve read here, check out some of Matthew Pungitore’s writings at his BookBaby author-page.

Contact him at: matthewpungitore_writer@outlook.com