Borderlands between the real and virtual
AS Byatt on the lure of fairy tales:
“Italo Calvino, in his lecture Cybernetics and Ghosts, makes the inevitable connection between storytelling and myth. He describes the storyteller of the tribe telling about the younger son getting lost in the forest: “He sees a light in the distance, he walks and walks; the fable unwinds from sentence to sentence, and where is it leading?” To a new apprehension which “suddenly appears and tears us to pieces, like the fangs of a man- eating witch. Through the forest of fairy tale the vibrancy of myth passes like a shudder of wind.” Calvino himself knew a great deal about the workings of the stopped-off, rule-constructed tale, but he also knew that it is haunted by the unmanageable, the vast and the dangerous. The Grimms too were interested in the borders between Germanic myths and folk tales. They like to draw connections between fairy tale trees and the World-Ash, between Briar Rose in her thorn-surrounded sleep, and Brunhilde in her wall of fire. They include Christian legends at the edge of their world - the Virgin Mary finds strawberries in the snow of the forest.”