TALES THAT SPEAK TO PERSON AND TIME

Author: By Peter F. Neumeyer

Date: SUNDAY, January 4, 1998

Page: D3

Section: Books

The other dialect in every folk tale -- in any creation -- bespeaks the singular person and the cultural context of the teller. Necessarily that teller will reflect the assumptions and circumstances of her time and place. Also necessarily, each telling will differ from any other.

That folk tales reflect basic human predilections, as well as the contexts of their retellings and the idiosyncrasies of their tellers -- all that is true of Inuit or feminist or any other sort of tale.

``When I was growing up, we had to go out, hunt food every day. Hunting, fishing, eh? Good luck, bad luck, every day. And now look, along comes this Noah fella, eh? His big boat-ark full of animals! He's got it pretty good!''

That's Inuit storyteller Marc Nuquac's own commentary as he relates one of his 15 versions of the Noah story to writer, anthropologist, filmmaker, and award-winning novelist Howard Norman in 1979 in Churchill, Manitoba. What a matchup: the subtle and gripping author of my personal 1994 (adult) novel of the year, ``The Bird Artist,'' and his recorded Inuit informants.

The 10 stories in ``The Girl Who Dreamed Only Geese and Other Tales of the Far North'' readily reveal their dominant themes: ``An ice-breakup, a freeze-up, a second ice-breakup. That is a lot to see in one spring, isn't it?'' says the ``wife'' who had once been a seagull -- as she articulates the overarching immanence of Nature that sets the tone for these fanciful tales -- surprises, wake-ups, and antidotes for those of us who cannot abide the thought of one more reconstituted ``creation myth'' -- from anywhere.

These are tales of metamorphoses perceived as utterly commonplace. They are tales reflecting a transparent generosity and benevolence among the tellers -- an inherent nobility that may shame us for having deemed kindliness and natural reverence as declasse. And they are tales rewritten with an extraordinary elegance such as seen in the antic cadenzas of slapstick humor modulated by syntactic play, as when a character designated as the ``rude not-invited man'' is banished to a walrus island. ``Tusks to tusks, tusks to tusks, tusks to tusks, he was flung [across the island]. This woke him up!''

Color illustrations by the esteemed Leo and Diane Dillon appear familiarly sumptuous and capture the simultaneous coexistence of diverse, yet seamless, Inuit ``worlds.'' Best, however, are the 2-inch-high black and white ``friezes'' that border the top of numerous facing textual pages. Executed on scratch board to evoke the image of stonecut Inuit art, these retell the entire narrative in another mode. The result is a harmonious ``multi-media'' composite creation -- an ideal for the children's picture book.

As do the Inuit tales, so too, ``Kissing the Witch,'' Emma Donoghue's 13 reimagined literary folk tales, draw on narrative structures, perhaps on symbols, that are universal, traditional, and -- as some would have it -- archetypal.

Although you won't find the book in the children's section, the tales seem to me to be appropriate for children to contemplate with thoughtful adults. The stories of these heroes -- girls and older women -- Cinderella, the Snow Princess, Gretel, Gretel's ``witch,'' the little mermaid, and the sea witch who sets the mermaid's curious bargain, already live as veritable metaphors in our collective imaginations. Even a mere name, ``Rapunzel'' or ``Beauty,'' brings to mind in one flash the entire comfy tale.

In familiar older folk tellings, frequently a generic princess seeks a generic prince, marries him, and ``lives happily ever after.'' The morality or truth of this formula has long been assaulted by subtle writers such as Angela Carter, and by humorless, tin-eared, and strident demagogues. It is the singular genius of Emma Donoghue to assume the familiar pattern, and to twist the kaleidoscope.

With powerful brevity, with a searing irony, most of Donoghue's ``princesses'' begin shackled in their golden chains in the purblind terrible mute solitude of their own unrealized beings, understood neither by others, nor by themselves. In their isolation and their lack of another, they ``fill up with rage,'' as Rapunzel puts it in her own cluelessness. In one way or another, recognizing that their constriction means death, these girls cry out to another being, ``Make me beautiful in your beholding.'' And the response they get, as does the voiceless little mermaid from her ``witch,'' is ``Wish to speak and you will speak, girl. . . . Wish to live, and here you are.''

Each of Donoghue's tales is of learning to ``speak,'' of finding one's voice, of beginning to distinguish oneself from the expectations, sexual or otherwise, of well-intentioned or evil others. In Donoghue's telling, the folk tale's formulaic ``supernatural helper,'' the mentor, the sage, is always a woman. Frequently, at story's end, this woman holds out a promise of love to the questing girl. The girl takes the first triumphant step out of, or into, herself.

I take Donoghue's stunning tales as emblematic. The shock of self-determination, the courage it demands, and the poignant hope of finding yourself created new in the love of another -- these are truths profound, universal, and certainly not gender-specific.