From: barb@zurich.ai.mit.edu (Barb Miller)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: literary lions
Date: 12 Nov 92 11:09:52
Organization: M.I.T. Artificial Intelligence Lab.
Reply-To: barb@zurich.ai.mit.edu
NNTP-Posting-Host: chamartin.ai.mit.edu
In-reply-to: fi@grebyn.com's message of 11 Nov 92 18:13:45 GMT


In article <1992Nov11.181345.21178@grebyn.com> fi@grebyn.com (Fiona Webster) writes:

*   I've been thinking lately about the iconography of the lion--
*   traditional image of courage, strength, and fearsome power--and
*   especially about "literary lions," and "to lionize" as used in a
*   literary context. 
*
*   What else does the lion represent?  [large number of references deleted]

A lion is one of the three beasts that stand in Dante's way when he
tries to escape the Dark Wood before Virgil comes to lead him through
hell.  Dante himself does not identify what the lion represents;
interpretations I have seen include pride (Helen Luke) or violence and
ambition (Ciardi).

Later, in the Great Chain of Being (familiar to students of
Shakespeare, at least of my era), the lion is the most noble of the
animals, as the king is the most noble man, the rose is the most noble
flower, and so on.

And I remember reading a blurb about Santillana's book _Hamlet's
Mill_, which quotes the _Atlantic Monthly_ as saying that the book "is
likely to remain, like Robert Graves' _The White Goddess_, a lion in
everybody's path for years."  I had never tracked this metaphor down,
but the OED places it in the book of Proverbs, referring to "a danger
or obstacle, esp. an imaginary one".  Judging by the nature of the two
books, I assume the metaphor refers to the fact that they both bring
up very provocative ideas which are neither proved nor disproved and
yet are presented so inherently that enough people will find truth in
them so that others working in the field will have to deal with the
ideas in one way or another.

*   So, I'm wondering now, how do we come by this image of writers as
*   lions?  The pop tune that got me started on this chain of thought
*   figures the lion as oral rage, and thus speech.  

Or at least an emotion which, when acknowledged, makes speech possible
(i.e. a barrier to speech while still unconscious).

*   I remember an essay
*   by Annie Dillard (reprinted in _The_Writing_Life_) in which not only
*   does she make many comparisons between writing and chopping wood for
*   fire, but she cries "Bring on the lions!" at the start of her writing
*   day, and also writes of horses (another fire-energy animal) and lions
*   [reference deleted]
*   Here the literary lion is not the writer herself, but the part of
*   herself that is her writing energy--or, at even more of a distance,
*   the work itself.

Or perhaps Chaos, which she feel she needs to use her intellect to
heroically tame (see below).

*   Somewhere though, obviously before these recent references, there was
*   a decision to dub authors "lions" and to "lionize" their achievements,
*   when other ancient images (a serpent as bearer of wisdom, an eagle as
*   air/mental energy) might have been used instead.  Turning to the OED,
*   I find that while "lion" is often applied to authors (as in "the
*   vulgar honours of literary lionism"), it's actually a general term for
*   a celebrity, or even a place of interest.  "To have seen the lions"
*   means the result of a sightseeing trip, and also (more archaically) to
*   have had a full experience of life.

I think the idea of celebrity came first. I got the impression from
the references that what a writer did to achieve lionization (i.e. put
words on paper) was not lion-like, but rather it was the attitude of
society toward the Famous Writer afterwards.  The process that the
writer went through to create the literary work was not of interest to
society so much as the fact that afterward the writer could rule
majestically over a drawing room and be an attraction to other guests,
as the lions at the Tower of London were a drawing card for tourists.

*   Maybe we don't call authors lions anymore, though.  I note that in a
*   recent review of Susan Sontag's _The_Volcano_Lover_, the author is
*   described as a "black-clad high priestess."  Interesting how if you
*   map this onto the Tarot card of Strength (although trump #2, the
*   Papess, might be more appropriate), Sontag is not the lion, but the
*   woman who control the lion.  

I think it is more likely that the "black-clad high priestess" would
map onto the Papess, who sits at the door to the mysteries and has a
book in front of her all the time.  I can't imagine her having much to
do with a lion, other than perhaps using it as an image for something.
Not the physical involvement of the woman in the strength card.  If
anything, the process of lionization of an author may be society's way
of rendering the author's words "harmless": by giving the author a
role in social gatherings the discomforting insights may be absorbed,
or even seen as applying to "them" rather than "us".  So society could
become the woman in the Strength card, if the lion is the writer.  I'm
not advocating this interpretation, by the way, but it does seem to
follow.  

*   I must say, I prefer the image of a
*   writer as an elemental force that may be dangerous--or at least as
*   containing a duality of conscious control and unconscious power--
*   rather than Dillard's image of the writer as a rational being who has
*   to wrestle her writing into submission.  (Maybe here, Barb M., I'm
*   stabbing at an answer to your question about what I meant, in my
*   oblique objection to Dillard's view of violence in fiction, by agree-
*   ing with Lauren C. that Dillard overemphasizes analysis and thought.)  

Well, certainly an alien who read only Dillard could get a rather
skewed vision of what it can be to be human.  I'm inclined to see her
lion-taming metaphor for writing as an expression of her need to be
emotional about SOMETHING.  If she doesn't think it appropriate to
express emotions openly, then they will be channeled into this sort of
metaphor of the Heroic Task.  Actually, I find much of her writing to
be highly charged under the surface, with an interesting tension
between the elemental simplicity of the emotions she is experiencing
and the sometimes tortured process she goes through to turn these
emotions into something sufficiently analytical that she will permit
herself to present it to the world.

*   I'm inclined to think of the "real" writer as the Beast of Disney's
*   movie, who paces back and forth, enraged, on all fours, before his
*   fireplace, but who also can be "lionized" in a civilized social
*   setting, looking a bit silly, but sexy nonetheless, standing up on his
*   hind legs and dressed in tight trousers and a jacket.  (Surely I'm not
*   the only little girl in America who finds it disappointing, at the
*   end, when the Beast reverts to human form.)

Well, it's true he's not quite so interesting any more...But really,
could the Beast have gone into society dressed that way anywhere but
in his own castle?  It seems to me that he has to go one direction
(toward humanity) or the other (back to accepting himself as a beast),
that the clothes in fact just don't fit him as a beast.  Since society
has projected its own beastliness onto him and is going to try to deny
it by destroying him, the clothes are not going to protect him.  Nor
are they likely to make a difference to the "society" he is trying to
impress, since Belle has already seen below his surface and presumably
continues to do so regardless of the clothes.

Where does this leave the writer?  We may be back to the question of
surfaces again.  It would seem to me that in the matter of the
literature that the writer creates, both surface and substance, form
and content, have their place.  But if the writer dresses up and
ventures into a mannered society, the question of whether the lion is
seen as a curiosity in a cage or a raging beast may say more about the
society than about the writer.

Barb Miller
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books