Ariel the Siren, Ariel the Mermaid trades her beautiful, beguiling voice for human legs...
From the H.C. Anderson tale:
'Your beautiful form,' said the witch, 'your gliding gait, and your speaking eyes; with these you ought surely to be able to bewitch a human heart. Well! have you lost courage? Put out your little tongue, and I will cut it off in payment for the powerful draught.'
'Let it be done,' said the little mermaid, and the witch put on her caldron to brew the magic potion.
'There it is,' said the witch, and thereupon she cut off the tongue of the little mermaid, who was dumb now and could neither sing nor speak."
cut to after she's drank the potion and has lost her voice and her tail (tale?!!?)
"When the sun rose on the sea she woke up and became conscious of a sharp pang, but just in front of her stood the handsome young prince, fixing his coal black eyes on her; she cast hers down and saw that her fish's tail was gone, and that she had the prettiest little white legs any maiden could desire; but she was quite naked, so she wrapped her long thick hair around her. The prince asked who she was and how she came there. She looked at him tenderly and with a sad expression in her dark blue eyes, but could not speak. Then he took her by the hand and led her into the palace. Every step she took was, as the witch had warned her beforehand, as if she were treading on sharp knives and spikes, but she bore it gladly; led by the prince, she moved as lightly as a bubble, and he and every one else mar- velled at her graceful gliding gait.
Lots of parallels and opportunities can come out of Ariels rather myopic trading with the witch. However the situation is not quite a complete tracing of the Echo and Narcissus tale - in Echo and Narcissus (well according to the Ovid version I've been feinding over) the love is not mutual, Echo loves Narcissus and would like to tell him that she loves him but cannot, Narcissus, nymologically, only loves himself and has no time for Echo. In Hans Christian Andersens tale the love between the Prince and the Mermaid is painfully mutual. The tragedy of not being able to vocalise love is where a predicament that both The Mermaid and Echo share (or harbour - Bore!?!):
"Day by day she became dearer to the prince; he loved her as one loves a good sweet child, but it never entered his head to make her his queen; yet unless she became his wife she would never win an everlasting soul, but on his wedding morning would turn to sea- foam.
'Am I not dearer to you than any of them?' the little mermaid's eyes seemed to say when he took her in his arms and kissed her beautiful brow.
'Yes, you are the dearest one to me,' said the prince"
"Day by day she became dearer to the prince; he loved her as one loves a good sweet child, but it never entered his head to make her his queen; yet unless she became his wife she would never win an everlasting soul, but on his wedding morning would turn to sea- foam.
'Am I not dearer to you than any of them?' the little mermaid's eyes seemed to say when he took her in his arms and kissed her beautiful brow.
'Yes, you are the dearest one to me,' said the prince"
Whereas Echo could only echo, the last fragments of Narcissus' sentences and twist his words, twist his meaning, warp his logos through re-uttering his last breath (E.g. "are you here?" - "Here!" etc)... through the forest at a distance; The Mermaid has the exact inverse of this problem. She has her love in her arms (unlike Echo), she has the proximity that Echo yearned for, but, importantly,..... not the capability to communicate verbally.
The other mode of communication, a mode prior to linguistics is action, and both The Mermaid and Echo find themselves in positions to express their love through action at the end of their tragedies, they both resort to expressing their love through action after the verbal, vocalistic opportunity to do so is rendered impossible. Echo's ultimate act is to fling her arms around Narcissus:
"To throw her longing arms around his neck.
He bolted, shouting 'Keep your arms from me!
Be off, i'll die before I yield to you.'
And all she answered was 'I yield to you'"
The Mermaid also has an opportunity to express her love through her own actions, she has to kill her love to lift her curse (to die upon the prince's wedding night unless it is to her). The Prince is to be wed to someone else and she is given the opportunity to kill her love:
Once more she looked at the prince, with her eyes already dimmed by death, then dashed overboard and fell, her body dissolving into foam."
Echo expresses her love overtly and is shunned, The Mermaid makes the ultimate expression of love covertly, she saves the princes life and sacrifices her own unbeknownst to the Prince. This shows action as of greater truth than love but there is a darker facet to these two tragedies - they both re-inforce the 15th century proverb: "A mayde schuld be seen, but not herd.". Let's examine Echo's fate after acting boldly:
The nymph, when nothing could Narcissus move,
Still dash'd with blushes for her slighted love,
Liv'd in the shady covert of the woods,
In solitary caves and dark abodes;
Where pining wander'd the rejected fair,
'Till harrass'd out, and worn away with care,
The sounding skeleton, of blood bereft,
Besides her bones and voice had nothing left.
Her bones are petrify'd, her voice is found
In vaults, where still it doubles ev'ry sound.
Whereas The Mermaid, who committed the ultimate act of love, who committed self sacrifice - but covertly, finds a silver lining in her tragedy:
Then the little mermaid lifted her transparent arms towards God's sun, and for the first time shed tears.
On board ship all was again life and bustle. She saw the prince with his lovely bride searching for her; they looked sadly at the bub- bling foam, as if they knew that she had thrown herself into the waves. Unseen she kissed the bride on her brow, smiled at the prince, and rose aloft with the other spirits of the air to the rosy clouds which sailed above.
'In three hundred years we shall thus float into Paradise.'"
Posts
