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Authors: John C. Wright
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the perfect symbol and image of innocence is virginity. That is a word that is not much in use these days, except perhaps as a badge of shame, for reasons too uncouth to mention in this article.
The odd thing is that even the modern cynics—provided they do not notice or do not admit to themselves what these symbols mean or which longings of sad human nature fairytales satisfy—even they can have hearts fit to hear fairytales. What they cannot do is reconcile this with their heads. They must compartmentalize and separate with thought-tight cells their love of fairytales with the empty and empty-headed cynicism that passes for wisdom in this modern world.
In this regard, let us briefly touch on the masculine side of the question. Why is it that Siegfried and Mowgli and Tarzan have this same Disney Princess oneness with nature, but it has no domestic flavor to it, no sweetness and charm? To ask the question is to answer it: boys are different from girls, and it is only the modern mind, and the perversions encouraged by the modern mind both intellectual and sexual, which have the effrontery to say otherwise.
Where the innocent virgin princess lures nature across the gap of Eden to our side, and heals the primordial loneliness by making companions of the wild beasts, the noble savage prince rips off his shabby cloak of civilization, dons his leopard-skin loincloth, takes his knife between his teeth, and leaps across the gap to the savage side, clawing his way up via dangling vines and man-eating plants to the brink on that far side, there to wrestle apes and strangle lions. If you don’t get the difference, then you don’t understand what makes girls girlish and boys boyish.
Now, let me not be accused of saying that in imaginative tales the girls are cooperative with nature and boys are competitive. That is not what I am saying at all. Both sexes, merely because we all are human, are prone to that sorrow and loneliness which the contemplation of the beauty of nature soothes, in the same way that looking at the photo of a distant loved one is soothing; but it also, like adoring a photo of a loved one, tempts and exasperates the same mood that it soothes. We still feel apart from nature.
The loneliness is not a desire for companionship alone. Dog owners and cat owners have an emotional rapport with their pets. The loneliness is a desire for camaraderie, that is, for speech and communion with other intelligences beside man.
I call it communion because there is more involved in this longing than merely interaction with nonhuman intelligences. In the earliest science fiction story I’ve read that stars nonhumans,
The War Of The Worlds
by H.G. Wells, the Martians are simply monsters. They do not speak and make no bargains with mankind any more than Cthulhu does. Their intelligence involves no community or common ground with man.
And, again, because Science Fiction is a naturalistic genre, one where supernatural events are foreign to the suppositions of the tale, often what is emphasized in a tale starring alien beings is precisely that they are alien. As John W. Campbell, Jr. famously challenged his writers, a truly alien alien would be as smart as a man but not think like a man. For me, the best example of nonhuman intelligence in a story was in
A Martian Odyssey
by Stanley Weinbaum. Tweel the Martian has only limited communication with the human with whom he travels, and the major appeal of the character is both his obvious high intelligence and his sheer incomprehensibility.
The first story, (and best example), I can recall where an alien with a speaking role spoke in a truly alien fashion was
The Moon Era
by Jack Williamson, where an alien called ‘Mother’ was portrayed sympathetically, albeit clearly not human. She was an alien and not a monster.
Oddly enough, the second best example comes from
Heroic Age
, a Japanese anime, where the Silver Tribe were portrayed as both elfin and highly intellectual, whose concerns
The odd thing is that even the modern cynics—provided they do not notice or do not admit to themselves what these symbols mean or which longings of sad human nature fairytales satisfy—even they can have hearts fit to hear fairytales. What they cannot do is reconcile this with their heads. They must compartmentalize and separate with thought-tight cells their love of fairytales with the empty and empty-headed cynicism that passes for wisdom in this modern world.
In this regard, let us briefly touch on the masculine side of the question. Why is it that Siegfried and Mowgli and Tarzan have this same Disney Princess oneness with nature, but it has no domestic flavor to it, no sweetness and charm? To ask the question is to answer it: boys are different from girls, and it is only the modern mind, and the perversions encouraged by the modern mind both intellectual and sexual, which have the effrontery to say otherwise.
Where the innocent virgin princess lures nature across the gap of Eden to our side, and heals the primordial loneliness by making companions of the wild beasts, the noble savage prince rips off his shabby cloak of civilization, dons his leopard-skin loincloth, takes his knife between his teeth, and leaps across the gap to the savage side, clawing his way up via dangling vines and man-eating plants to the brink on that far side, there to wrestle apes and strangle lions. If you don’t get the difference, then you don’t understand what makes girls girlish and boys boyish.
Now, let me not be accused of saying that in imaginative tales the girls are cooperative with nature and boys are competitive. That is not what I am saying at all. Both sexes, merely because we all are human, are prone to that sorrow and loneliness which the contemplation of the beauty of nature soothes, in the same way that looking at the photo of a distant loved one is soothing; but it also, like adoring a photo of a loved one, tempts and exasperates the same mood that it soothes. We still feel apart from nature.
The loneliness is not a desire for companionship alone. Dog owners and cat owners have an emotional rapport with their pets. The loneliness is a desire for camaraderie, that is, for speech and communion with other intelligences beside man.
I call it communion because there is more involved in this longing than merely interaction with nonhuman intelligences. In the earliest science fiction story I’ve read that stars nonhumans,
The War Of The Worlds
by H.G. Wells, the Martians are simply monsters. They do not speak and make no bargains with mankind any more than Cthulhu does. Their intelligence involves no community or common ground with man.
And, again, because Science Fiction is a naturalistic genre, one where supernatural events are foreign to the suppositions of the tale, often what is emphasized in a tale starring alien beings is precisely that they are alien. As John W. Campbell, Jr. famously challenged his writers, a truly alien alien would be as smart as a man but not think like a man. For me, the best example of nonhuman intelligence in a story was in
A Martian Odyssey
by Stanley Weinbaum. Tweel the Martian has only limited communication with the human with whom he travels, and the major appeal of the character is both his obvious high intelligence and his sheer incomprehensibility.
The first story, (and best example), I can recall where an alien with a speaking role spoke in a truly alien fashion was
The Moon Era
by Jack Williamson, where an alien called ‘Mother’ was portrayed sympathetically, albeit clearly not human. She was an alien and not a monster.
Oddly enough, the second best example comes from
Heroic Age
, a Japanese anime, where the Silver Tribe were portrayed as both elfin and highly intellectual, whose concerns
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