The Lion of the Knight

“And what are you trying to find?”

“Adventures…”

This is a book for me!

     Yvain, the Knight of the Lion, is a 12^th century tale written by the French author Chretin de Troyes.  Thankfully, it has been translated into modern English by Burton Raffel.  Featuring knightly battles and derring-do, high adventure and courtly romance, this is the book to have when relaxing by the fireside on a long winter night. 

     While riding through the woods, our gallant knight, Yvain, is attracted by the sounds of a ferocious battle between a lion and a snake.  Not just any ordinary snake - a treacherous, venomous snake with fire leaping from its mouth.  Such a description leaves me visualizing a serpentine, junior-grade dragon.  A chivalrous knight seeking adventure cannot pass by such a battle without becoming involved.  Yvain naturally sides with “that noble, highborn beast”, the lion.  He draws his sword and promptly hacks the treacherous, fire-breathing serpent into little pieces. 

     After finishing off the snake, he turns to meet the lion, naturally expecting no gratitude from a wild animal.  And the sight surprises him:

“Now hear what the lion did!

Showing his nobility and goodness,

He began to make it clear

That he surrendered himself to Yvain:

Placing his front feet together,

He stood erect on his hind legs

And bowed his face toward the earth.

And then he knelt again,

And his face was wet all over

With humble tears” (Yvain, 102-3).

     The descriptions used in these passages make it clear that in the twelfth century, snakes were associated with evil and treachery.  Lions, while respected as wild animals, were associated with nobility, and as we see in later passages, with courage and loyalty as well.

     Yvain and the lion become insepearable and have many adventures together.  Yvain and the lion go hunting together, as one would normally hunt with a hound.  On these hunts, the lion brings deer to Yvain.  At night, the lion stands guard over both Yvain and his horse.  I find it surprising that the horse tolerates such a close proximity of its natural enemy.  When reaching a castle, the servants did not want to allow admittance to Yvain’s faithful companion.  To this, Yvain replied, “If he can’t come in, neither can I.  Either receive us both or I remain out here:  I love him as I love myself” (114).  At this point, it becomes evident just how attached to the lion that Yvain has become.

     The lion fully reciprocates Yvain's attachment, as is shown in other scenes.  Yvain, exhausted and overcome with sorrow at the loss of his lady-love, faints.  The lion, distraught at the apparent death of his master, takes Yvain’s sword in his mouth and intends to end his own life until Yvain revives and prevents him from doing so.  Later, in a terrific battle with an evil giant, the lion comes to Yvain’s aid and together they defeat the giant.  After this fight, Yvain begins to call himself ‘The Knight of the Lion.’

     And so, we have a noble, high-born lion.  A beast possessed amply of both courage and loyalty, and an adoration for his master that would prompt him to end his own life rather than live without him.  Yvain, too, loves the lion and comes to depend on him.  He even changes his title in honor of the lion.  In view of these details, I am left with one nagging question.  Why does this remarkable lion not have a name?

Thoughts on The Life of an Unremarkable Person

     Picture a man who strongly dislikes change.  Dutilleul thrives on the unvarying routine of his daily life, wears old-fashioned clothing, and does not want to try anything new, even something as simple as the way he addresses a letter.  This is the type of character that I can strongly identify with in almost every respect.  I, like Dutilleul, love routine.  My favorite corduroy jacket looks exactly like one from my favorite 1929 movie, and I also strongly dislike change.  Perhaps because of this similarity, but also because of the delightful style and humor, I highly enjoyed Marcel Ayme’s The Man Who Could Walk Through Walls.

Suddenly and by accident, this predictable and ordinary man discovers that he possesses an unusual talent – he can walk through solid walls.  As if this peculiarity was as simple as the common cold, he goes to see a doctor.  The doctor also views Dutilleul’s complaint as something seen every day, and prescribes him pills made of tetravalent pirette powder, ground rice, and centaur hormones.  These pills, along with exercise, are sure to cure Dutilleul’s dreaded abnormality.   This particular passage leaves me extremely curious concerning the variety of doctor that Dutilleul consulted. 

Dutilleul calmly accepts the doctor’s diagnosis and decides not to make any further use of his unusual talent.  He still enters his house by the front door.  He still goes to work as always, still dressed in his old-fashioned clothes, and he still addresses his letters in his customary old-fashioned manner.  This resolve begins to change when Dutilleul finds himself working under a new manager, Monsieur Lécuyer.   Monsieur Lécuyer tries to change and update everything, including the old-fashioned way that Dutilleul addresses letters.  Dutilleul resists, and “disgusted by this backward willfulness, which compromised the success of his reforms, Monsieur Lécuyer relegated Dutilleul to a poorly-lit closet next to his own office. One ...labeled with the following inscription: TRASH.”  This creates enough resentment to inspire Dutilleul to put is head through the wall of Monsieur Lécuyer’s office, and in a scene which fully displays the author’s sense of humor, he calls his boss the nastiest names he can think of: “Monsieur, you are a brute, a boor, and a rascal.”  Dutilleul continues to penetrate the wall of his manager’s office, and after gaining more courage, severely frightens his manager with tales of werewolves.  Within a few days, the nice people in white coats come to take Monsieur Lécuyer to a home for the psychologically disturbed.  At this point, I am beginning to wish I could walk through walls myself. 
 "The first burglary that Dutilleul carried out took place in a large credit establishment on the right bank.” This particular line came as a surprise, as there had been no previous indications of Dutilleul’s criminal tendencies. Such surprises as this keep readers on the edge of their seats throughout the story.  Dutilleul, once very timid, began to outright brag about his villainous escapades.   After all, no prison can hold a man who walks through walls.  He began to wear more modern clothes and became more outspoken.  And he even began to chase women, which led ultimately to his undoing.  In combating a headache, he mistook his centaur hormone pills for aspirin.   Later, in a nocturnal visit to a beautiful blonde, Dutilleul became stuck in a solid wall, where he remains to this day. 

     Yes, this is ultimately a story about the potential of power to bring about corruption.  In the beginning of the story, Dutilleul is very much on the boring end of ordinary.  His acquaintances would not believe him to be capable of crime.  With the discovery of an unusual talent, Dutilleul found within himself the potential for crime, and does things that he would have considered himself incapable of only a few weeks before.  Whether studied as an allegory warning against the corrupting influence of power or simply enjoyed as an account of a man with an unusual talent, The Man Who Walks Through Walls is a fun story to read.

The Universe is a Library

     The Library of Babel can be a confusing story to read.  This story is full of strange descriptions of strange rooms filled with strange books, the contents of which are debated over by strange people with strange philosophies.  Such a stretch of imagination can be a little overwhelming.  This story also deals with opposites and conflicting views.  When I first approach a text such as this one, I do not worry about real-world implications or deeper symbolic meaning.  Instead, I enjoy the story simply for what is printed on the page. Somewhere within the imagination of Jorge Luis Borges, there is a universe entirely comprised of books.  On face value, this sounds like a place where I would be very happy.

     This vast library is made of identical hexagonal shaped rooms, each containing shelves filled with books, a bathroom, and a closet where people sleep standing up.  Besides having to sleep standing up, the lack of a kitchen apparently never bothers anyone.  These connected hexagons apparently go on forever, “The Library is a sphere whose exact center is any one of its hexagons and whose circumference is inaccessible.”  In traveling forever, one would still never reach the end of the library, although some speculate on the possibility that an infinite traveler making his way in the same direction would at some point reach a place where he has already been.  Thus dealing with the conflicting relationship between infinity and inevitable limitations, the unnamed narrator proclaims, “I say that it is not illogical to think that the world is infinite.  Those who judge it to be limited postulate that in remote places the corridors and stairways and hexagons can conceivably come to an end -- which is absurd.  Those who imagine it to be without limit forget that the possible number of books does have such a limit.”

     The content of these books is another interesting point.  Each wall of every hexagonal room has five shelves.  Each shelf has thirty-five books.  Each book has four hundred and ten pages.  Each page has forty lines and each line has eighty black letters.   If there is some deeper symbolic significance in these numbers, I do not intend to lose sleep over it.  The letters on each page are in random order.  Some combinations of letters form great and meaningful works of literature, but “…for every sensible line of straightforward statement, there are leagues of senseless cacophonies, verbal jumbles and incoherences.”   Some librarians spend their entire lives attempting to derive meaning from meaningless jumbles of letters and words. 

     Another subject discussed in this text is the origin of the universe and mankind, a highly debatable topic.  As with other issues, arguments for both sides are presented, and readers are left to draw their own conclusions.  In comparing the theories of chance and divine, the text argues that “Man, the imperfect librarian, may be the product of chance or of malevolent demiurgi; the universe, with its elegant endowment of shelves, of enigmatical volumes, of inexhaustible stairways for the traveler and latrines for the seated librarian, can only be the work of a god.”  After these arguments are presented, a comparison is made which seems to favor the theory of divine creation: “To perceive the distance between the divine and the human, it is enough to compare these crude wavering symbols which my fallible hand scrawls on the cover of a book, with the organic letters inside: punctual, delicate, perfectly black, inimitably symmetrical.”  From this statement, we can also infer that printers, and even typewriters, are unknown to the narrator of this story.   

      This story is definitely one which encourages higher levels of thinking and engagement. While it deals with contradictions and extremes, such themes should not deter people from reading it.  In approaching a story like this one, I first detach myself from this reality and look at simply what is written on the page.   This prevents a great deal of confusion.  After that, I go back and reread what was most interesting, or perhaps what seemed most contradictory or confusing.   From this method, I can enjoy imaginative stories like this one, without becoming confused or frustrated.