traits that shock us
Surfing somehow from Alicia Cohen to the mythology of the Tongva, I was rewarded by an interesting quote from Alfred Kroeber (whom I think of as the father of Ursula LeGuin). It’s long and overly elaborate, but bears on the poetry questions at hand.
[Note : 118. Kroeber (1925: 625) gives a synopsis of this myth and uses it to illustrate the quality of the mythology of the tribes of Southern California. He says:
The ethical inconsistency of this story is marked to our feelings. The heroine certainly is blameworthy, but those who rid themselves of her, even more so. Hardly is sympathy aroused for her when she dispels it by dashing out her child’s brains. Then she becomes beautiful once more, and elicits interest through the disgraceful treatment accorded her by her brother. But this hardly seems sufficient cause for suicide. Her brother, too, committed the offense unwittingly; and his fatal punishment by his father comes to us as a shock. That the old chief should cruelly revenge himself by his magical powers on the foreigners who had first attempted his daughter’s destruction seems natural enough; but the focus of interest is suddenly shifted from his means of vengeance to the successful escape from it of the old woman and her grandchildren. Then these, brother and sister as they are, marry. Now it is the old lady who is abused but suddenly it is her granddaughter who is persecuted and finally slain; after which follows the episode in which the loving and grieving husband is the central character.
Nothing can be imagined farther from a plot according to the thoughts of civilized people than this one; it appears to revel in acmes of purposeless contradictions. And yet, this trait is undoubtedly the accompaniment of an effect that, however obscure to us, was sought for; since it reappears in traditions, following an entirely different thread, told by the Luiseño and Diegueño, and is marked in the long tales of the Mohave. This deliberate or artistic incoherence, both as regards personages and plot, is thus a definite quality of the mythology of the southern Californian tribes. It has some partial resemblances to the Southwest, but scarcely any in central or northern California except in the loosely composite coyote tales. In central California we have the well-defined hero and villain of the normal folk tale of the world over; and however much the oppressed endure, there is never any doubt as to who is good and who wicked, and that before the end is reached the wicked will be properly punished. That in the southern California traditions this simple and almost universal scheme is departed from, is of course not due to absence of aesthetic feeling, but rather an evidence of subtle refinement of emotion, of decorative overelaboration of some literary quality, to such a degree that the ordinary rules of satisfaction in balance and moral proportion become inconsequential. The traits that shock us ethically and artistically were the very ones, we may be sure, that gave the keenest satisfaction to the craftsmen that told these tales and the accustomed public that delighted to listen to them.
The Indians of Los Angeles County: Hugo Reid’s letters of 1852. Edited and annotated by Robert E. Heizer, page 68
Watch out for deliberate incoherence, acmes of purposeless contradictions, and decorative overelaboration. In our case, it’s not clear who is getting any satisfaction.
Robert Bringhurst’s Tree of Meaning covers similar territory. But it left me wanting more. I think what I want is to be among that delighted public.