Where: Olivier Theatre, National Theatre
Why: I loves me some fairy tales
Philip Pullman appeared at the National Theatre to do a
little chat about his new book – a re-telling of some of Grimm’s fairy tales.
I’d seen him give a lecture once before at Newcastle Uni, about story telling
and his writing, and he’s a very captivating speaker. I always find him
interesting because I like a lot of what he says about story telling and his
matter-of-fact manner, but I don’t entirely agree with certain aspects of his
thought about religion and literature (dissertation, yo). But he was great on
the subject of fairy tales on this occasion, on the effect these stories have
on children and their importance in the modern world and in defence of fairy tales as a type of fiction.
He spoke quite a lot about the process of writing the Grimm
tales, and how his intention was not to create a poetic, imaginative version
like Carol Ann Duffy or Angela Carter, but to be true to the original sense of
the stories and to keep a rigid simplicity in the telling of them. His main aim
was apparently to keep the writing “as clear as glass”, partly through
simplicity and partly by viciously eliminating adverbs: “… just use a better
verb”. Wise words. He also accompanies each story with notes on previous versions, its background and so on.
Regarding the tales themselves, one thing which he had found
very different to his usual style of writing was that the characters within
fairy tales are often blank, almost cardboard cut-out figures to whom
interesting things happen. There are no fully developed, deep personalities but
rather the stories carry them along without delving particularly far into their
motivations and history. This allows listeners to project their own ideas onto
the characters, to picture them more clearly and allow their imagination to
flourish. It’s sort of a two-way street – you hear the story from one end but
contribute just as much back to it with your own imagination and additions to
the characters. (I wonder what Pullman would think then of the new Hansel
and Gretel film coming out which portrays the siblings fifteen years later,
messed up and seeking revenge…).
Pullman also refused any illustrations in this version – to
allow it all to appear in your head, as it should. This blankness of the
characters also serves a protective purpose, to disconnect you from some of the
horrifying scenes in these tales. This lets any young listeners engage with the
scary aspects of the stories but also protects them a bit. One other example of
this is that in many of the very first versions of some stories, we see a
mother figure at the centre of things, but in revised tellings she becomes a
step-mother – one step removed from true family, perhaps to make it easier to
accept the awful things they do that you wouldn’t want a real mother to be
capable of.
Some questions were taken at the end of the
panel, and one which I found intriguing was a mother asking whether these
stories were problematic in that they don’t offer a reflection of our world, in
terms of justice. These tales are very black and white, moralistically, but we
don’t live in a world as simple as that. Pullman’s response was that yes, we do
also need the more realistic dramas to show how things really are, but it is
the whole nature of a fairy tale to be black and white – if it is not, then
it’s not a fairy tale. He argued that children do see things in terms of simple
right or wrong and so deserve this kind of story too. I also think that at the
time when these stories were told as folk tales, the world was just as unfair
as it is now, and that these were told as a kind of comfort or a standard to
uphold.
When asked whether he disliked any of the stories, Pullman interestingly picked out a “too pious” tale which has overtly religious themes – where a father prays to the devil and cuts off his daughter’s hands in exchange for money. She goes away and suffers, then prays and gets her hands back. He saw this story as “stupid” and unfair, as there is no punishment mentioned for the father. It’s interesting that he focuses on retribution, as you could view it as a story of pure faith, based on what happens to the girl and her reward for a life of innocent suffering. But I get what he means. The dad sounds like a total knob.
His recommendations for further fairy tale reading included Italo Calvino’s fairy tales, and an old version by Catherine Briggs. He ended by considering the state of oral storytelling today and his sadness that it is a dying art, and urged people to see reading and writing as a gain but not a replacement for telling tales out loud.
The book is out now - it's on my list!
Brixpig x
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