We're gonna need bigger nails.

Watching

BEAUTY AND THE BEAST
[PANNA A NETVOR] (Lit. The Virgin and the Monster)
Juraj Herz
Czechoslovakia, 1978

Reading

Elsie Spicer Eells
THE ISLANDS OF MAGIC
Legends, Folk and Fairy Tales from the Azores

Daily Painting

Luis Paret y Alcázar
WITCHCRAFT SCENE (1780)

Daily Painting (with Detail)

Jan van Eyck
LAST JUDGMENT (1440)

JRR TOLKIEN

I have claimed that Escape is one of the main functions of fairy-stories, and since I do not disapprove of them, it is plain that I do not accept the tone of scorn or pity with which "Escape" is now so often used. Why should a man be scorned if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home? Or if he cannot do so, he thinks and talks about other topics than jailers and prison-walls?

-

Personal note: I love that Tolkien capitalized Escape.

Daily Painting

Tyko Sallinen
THE FANATICS (1918)

OLAF STAPLEDON
Last and First Men

There is much in this vision that will remind you of your mystics; yet between them and us there is far more difference than similarity, in respect both of the matter and the manner of our thought. For while they are confident that the cosmos is perfect, we are sure only that it is very beautiful. While they pass to their conclusion without the aid of intellect, we have used that staff every step of the way. Thus, even when in respect of conclusions we agree with your mystics rather than your plodding intellectuals, in respect of method we applaud most your intellectuals; for they scorned to deceive themselves with comfortable fantasies.

A woman came up to me and said
"I'd like to poison your mind
With wrong ideas that appeal to you
Though I am not unkind"
She looked at me, I looked at something
Written across her scalp
And these are the words that it faintly said
As I tried to call for help:

There's only one thing that I know how to do well
And I've often been told that you only can do
What you know how to do well
And that's be you
Be what you're like
Be like yourself
And so I'm having a wonderful time
But I'd rather be whistling in the dark

Currently Reading

Philip Pullman
FAIRY TALES FROM THE BROTHERS GRIMM
A New English Version

Daily Painting

John Bauer
THE BOY WHO NEVER WAS AFRAID (1918)

Currently Watching
[Hal Hartley Retrospective]

NO SUCH THING
Hal Hartley
USA, 2001

*Last day to watch on The Criterion Channel is Sept 30th.

**It seems like every brilliant auteur have that one film destroyed by moronic suits that one time the independent filmmaker got involved with The Studios™?

Currently Watching

ELEANOR'S SECRET

[Kérity, la maison des contes] 

Dominique Monfery

France, 2009

WALTER BENJAMIN

The fairy tale, which to this day is the first tutor of children because it was once the first tutor of mankind, secretly lives on in the story. The first true storyteller is, and will continue to be, the teller of fairy tales. Whenever good counsel was at a premium, the fairy tale had it, and where the need was greatest, its aid was nearest. This need was created by myth. The fairy tale tells us of the earliest arrangements that mankind made to shake off the nightmare which myth had placed upon its chest.

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

Human, All Too Human - A Book for Free Spirits

The eternal child. We think that play and fairy tales belong to childhood: how shortsighted that is! As though we would want at any time of life to live without play and fairy tales! We give these things other names, to be sure, and feel differently about them, but precisely this is the evidence that they are the same things - for the child too regards play as his work and fairy tales as his truth. The brevity of life ought to preserve us from a pedantic division of life into different stages - as though each brought something new - and a poet ought for once to present a man of two hundred: one, that is, who really does live without play and fairy tales.

G. K. CHESTERTON

____________________

Can you not see that fairy tales in their essence are quite solid and straightforward; but that this everlasting fiction about modern life is in its nature essentially incredible? Folk-lore means that the soul is sane, but that the universe is wild and full of marvels. Realism means that the world is dull and full of routine, but that the soul is sick and screaming. The problem of the fairy tale is—what will a healthy man do with a fantastic world? The problem of the modern novel is—what will a madman do with a dull world? In the fairy tales the cosmos goes mad; but the hero does not go mad. In the modern novels the hero is mad before the book begins, and suffers from the harsh steadiness and cruel sanity of the cosmos.

G. K. CHESTERTON

"The Red Angel" from Tremendous Trifles, 1909

____________________

I find that there really are human beings who think fairy tales bad for children, that fairy tales ought not to be taught to children even if they are true because it frightens them. If you kept bogies and goblins away from children they would make them up for themselves. One small child in the dark can invent more hells than Swedenborg. One small child can imagine monsters too big and black to get into any picture, and give them names too unearthly and cacophonous to have occurred in the cries of any lunatic. The fear does not come from fairy tales; the fear comes from the universe of the soul.

The timidity of the child or the savage is entirely reasonable; they are alarmed at this world, because this world is a very alarming place. They dislike being alone because it is verily and indeed an awful idea to be alone. Fairy tales do not give a child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon.

Exactly what the fairy tale does is this: it accustoms him for a series of clear pictures to the idea that these limitless terrors had a limit, that these shapeless enemies have enemies, that there is something in the universe more mystical than darkness, and stronger than strong fear. The point of the story and the point of the reader's feelings is not that these things were frightening, but the far more striking fact that the hero was not frightened at them. The most fearful of all these fearful wonders was his own absence of fear. He slapped the bogies on the back and asked the devils to drink wine with him.

At the four corners of a child's bed stand Perseus and Roland, Sigurd and St. George. If you withdraw the guard of heroes you are not making him rational; you are only leaving him to fight the devils alone.

DENIS O'HARE

____________________

I love monsters, I love creatures, I love beings, I love aliens. That's more supernatural and more the stuff of fairy tales. Fairy tales are as ancient as we are. I love those stories. I think always have more than simply the fright aspect.

When you think of Grimm's fairy tales, they are deeply, deeply psychological. They're so powerful, so bloody, and really, really disturbing. Think about five-year-olds reading that stuff. Even 'Little Red Riding Hood' is a really freaky story. Grandma is gobbled up by a wolf, and the wolf is going to eat the girl. That's scary stuff.

I was raised on the brothers Grimm, but my favorite fairy tales in the world are Oscar Wilde's - 'The Nightingale and the Rose,' 'The Selfish Giant.' The latter is probably my all-time favorite.

KARA WALKER

____________________

I'm fascinated with the stories that we tell. Real histories become fantasies and fairy tales, morality tales and fables. There's something interesting and funny and perverse about the way fairytale sometimes passes for history, for truth.