Best Stories in the World: The Uktena

In Cherokee myths, the sun is female, and she hates humanity because whenever people look up at her they scrunch up their faces against the bright light she shines. The moon, on the other hand, likes us.

Among the various beings populating the earth are the Little Men, who are the children of Kana'ti and Selu, who are the Lucky Hunter and Corn, respectively. Well, the Little Men are sort of their children, since one of them is definitely their son, but he doesn't have a name, and the other is really a wild boy (I'nage-utasun/hi: He-who-grew-up-wild) whom they seem to have kidnapped but might also just be their son whom they threw in the water and left there for a while until their other son started playing with him and then they brought back home; it's weird, especially since the boys eventually kill Selu because she's a witch, and in part this story explains why corn grows in only a few places and not everywhere, and also why there aren't as many wolves as there used to be, and the boys are also Thunder, and they're responsible for teaching people the right songs to sing for hunting deer...man, these stories are just great, aren't they?). The Little Men are also called the Thunder Boys, and they like to help people.

So the Sun wanted to kill all the people with her heat, out offrustration and jealousy, and the people asked the Little Men for help. They changed one of the men into a big snake, called Uktena, and sent him to kill the Sun. He failed because the sun was so bright, so they created a rattlesnake to do the job. Uktena was jealous and angry, so the people forced him to go away, though he left other snakes behind.

Uktena is said to be "as large around as a tree trunk, with horns on its head, and a bright, blazing crest like a diamond upon its forehead, and scales glittering like sparks of fire. It has rings or spots of color along its whole length, and can not be wounded except by shooting in the seventh spot from the head, because under this spot are its heart and its life." The diamond is known as ulûñsû’tĭ (which means transparent). It's an item of great power, but only one person has ever stolen it from the head of Uktena, since they're so dangerous. The jewel itself is dangerous, and has to be fed blood twice a year or it will kill the person who stole it and his family. However, it grants success in hunting, love, and other pursuits.

The only one to get one is called Âgăn-uni’tsĭ. He was a Shawano, who are all magicians. His name means The Ground-hog's Mother. He was about to be killed by his captors when they spared him because he promised to find the jewel. He had heard that the uktena would lie in wait in the haunted, dark passes of the Great Smoky Mountains. He went to one gap in the mountains, but found only a monster blacksnake. He went to another pass but found a moccasin snake. He went to a third pass he found a gigantic green snake, and he called all the Cherokee to see it, but they only ran away in fear. He kept going south, finding other monsters but not the one he sought until he arrived at Gahu/ti mountain, where the Uktena slept.

He laid a trap for the Uktena by digging a trench and surrounding it with a circle of burning pine cones. Then he shot the Uktena in its heart, under the seventh spot, and fled when it woke up. It chased him, though soon the wound overcame it. It died while spitting poison at him, but most of the poison was destroyed by the fire--all save a single drop, which struck him on the head. The blood that flowed from its wound, as poisonous as its venom, filled trench. In its death throes, the Uktena destroyed trees all along the mountain. The man called birds, which came to eat the monster's flesh and bones. 

Seven days later the magician and retrieved the gem from a tree branch, where a raven had dropped it after feasting. Returning to the village, the man became a great magician, though a tiny snake hung from the place where the venom had hit him. The Uktena's blood formed a lake, and there women dye the cane for their baskets.

I was reminded of this story by Daniel Bayliss and Fabian Rangel "Son of the Serpent," recently published as part of the Storyteller series of comics based on the old Jim Henson tv shows. It's a pretty good little comic, though it doesn't hew too closely to the Cherokee original recounted above. Bayliss says he combined several stories from different traditions.

I believe that I haven't done the Cherokee story justice here. It's a long tale, and in James Mooney's Myths of the Cherokee it demonstrates the way myths often build on each other over time. Mooney numbers the myths he has collected, and the Uktena and the Little Men figure in tales 3, 5, 50, 51, and 52. You can find these stories here. Mooney was told this story by a man named Swimmer, another man named John Ax. There are many sources for the different parts, though. Here's one that's more recent, by David Michael Wolfe, which brings into the story the Tlanuhwa, which Bayliss and Rangel make the thunderbird.

There's something of a coda to this story later in Mooney's book. In a section called "Historical Traditions" the first story is "First Contact with Whites," in which Mooney writes

At the creation an ulûñsû’tĭ was given to the white man, and a piece of silver to the Indian. But the white man despised the stone and threw it away, while the Indian did the same with the silver. In going about the white man afterward found the silver piece and put it (351) into his pocket and has prized it ever since. The Indian, in like manner, found the ulûñsû’tĭ where the white man had thrown it. He picked it up and has kept it since as his talisman, as money is the talismanic power of the white man. This story is quite general and is probably older than others of its class.

 So why is this one of the best stories in the world? I like the way it sprawls through creation, hitting highs of heroism, oddity, absurdity, and sanctity. These stories, the symbols and characters in them, are semantically rich as well as narratively compelling. They've got a little of everything.

 

A Story Every Day: Who Cured the Princess?

Three brothers were left penniless after their parents die, so they decided to split up and make their way in the world, meeting again after ten years to compare stories.

The first brother traveled to India, where he became a magician. He got to know all the magic in India, and before ten years were up he learned to make a mirror that could show its bearer what was happening in far off lands as easily as it showed reflections.

The second traveled to the United States, and there he marveled at the wonders of technology. He became a pilot and engineer, and before ten years are up he built a fantastic plane that allowed him to circle the globe.

The third brother went to Nigeria, where he became a farmer. He grew apple trees in the fertile soil, and these became widely known for their heartiness and nutrition. Before ten years were up he discovered that his apples could cure diseases, both mundane and fatal.

The tenth anniversary saw these brothers reunited back home. They compared stories, and each was impressed with the others' but thought his own the most miraculous. The mirror was the first to be tested, and it showed the brothers the goings-on in a castle in northern Europe. There, the king was distraught at the illness of his eldest daughter. He prayed for a miracle, because she would not last the night.

It was time to test the airplane, and the brothers flew to northern Europe. They arrived at the castle in time to test the apple. They told the king of their powers, and the king didn't believe them. They assured the king of their efficacy, but he made them promise that, should the apples effect no cure, they would not resist a hanging for giving the king false hope.

The apple, of course, did its job. The king was thrilled, and he allowed the princess to choose one of the brothers to marry. However, after spending some time with them, she could not decide from amongst them. She asked which of them had saved her, but each had equal claim to that deed: the mirror invented by the first had revealed the problem, the plane built by the second had carried them quickly enough to perform the deed, and the apple had been the cure. The princess deferred to her younger sister, who thought a bit and then asked the brothers a single question each: "Was your object used up by the deed? The first two answered that it was not, since the plane was intact and the mirror still showed visions. Only the third said yes, since the apple was gone. The younger princess then said the farmer should be the prince.

All agreed. The other men married the other daughters of the King, and everyone lived happily ever after.



That story comes from Dov Noy's collection Folktales of Israel, translated by Gene Baharav, and retold in my own words. Noy collected it from a man named Moshe Kaplan, who heard it from an unnamed Polish rabbi, probably in the late 1950s or early 60s. Noy places it under tale type 653A, "The Rarest Thing in the World." Pretty good little story, eh?

Better than the Book: How to Train your Dragon

You guys read this book? It's by Cressida Cowell, and it's not bad. It's just not all that great, either. I never connected emotionally with Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III. I never really felt like anything of vital import was going to happen in the novel. Maybe that's because I read it when I was already about 35 years old. My son read it, and he liked it okay, but hasn't felt the need to read the rest of the series.

But the movie...the movie has music. Of course I have to bring that up, because the score is triumphant and inspiring. The whole score is worthwhile, but check out this part:

John Powell.

For whatever reason, after Hiccup's dragon Toothless has been revealed and Stoic has sailed off with it on his foolish errand, and Hiccup and Astrid are standing on the cliff and Astrid asks him what he's going to do, and he tries to dodge the question because he doesn't know, and Astrid won't let him because she wants to hear what he has to say, I get a little choked up. It's  because she trusts him, even more than he trusts himself.

Hiccup's a different sort of hero, and I appreciate that. Cerebral rather than physical, which is kind of the whole point of the movie. My kids love it because of the dragons--I don't think I've ever heard them talk about Hiccup at all, but they really get into the different types of dragons in the movies and shows. But I love it because there's something worthwhile in the human relationships. I would never have cared about that level of trust when I was a kid, but as an adult, as someone who feels like he's in that kind of relationship, I see it as laying the groundwork for understanding each other in my own children. Sometimes we need someone else to say that what we're doing is important, and that it can change the world, even just for a small group of people.

That said, I do think they missed an opportunity in the second movie when they didn't make Astrid the new chief.

Best Stories in the World: Pierre Menard

There's a guy, I think he's French but I won't hold it against him...his name's Pierre Menard, and he gets this idea to write the Quixote. The thing of it is, Cervantes already wrote it. Menard doesn't let that stop him, of course, or there would be no story.

And what a story it is. I think. Is it a story?

Menard is, apparently, deceased. He was a novelist and left behind a body of work appreciated by the narrator, who provides us with a list of those works publicly known (for example, a "handwritten list of lines of poetry that owe their excellence to punctuation" [which I absolutely love]). Of more interest to the narrator, however, is Menard's unpublished work; namely, Menard's Quixote.

Not Cervantes. That part's important. Menard didn't set out to recreate or copy Cervantes's work. He intended to write Don Quixote as himself. In other words, it's a story about context. The narrator isn't so much presented in the best light. He's kind of petty. Though, in the end, he declares that "Menard has (perhaps unwittingly) enriched the slow and rudimentary art of reading by means of a new technique--the technique of deliberate anachronism and fallacious attribution...This technique fills the calmest book with adventure. Attributing the Imitatio Christi to Louise Ferdinand Celine or James Joyce--is that not sufficient renovation of those faint spiritual admonitions?"

This summary really doesn't do it justice. 

Is "Pierre Menard" a story? There's no plot, per se. It's a sketch, fiction masquerading as non-fiction in the form of a description of a guy and his work, especially Menard's "Quixote," which Menard saw as not inevitable, like certain other works of Poe or Coleridge. Instead, it was contingent. Menard thinks of his recollection of Quixote not as a memory, but as "the equivalent of the vague foreshadowing of a yet unwritten book."

Here's what led up to this story: On Christmas Eve 1938, Borges was moving quickly up a flight of stairs. At this time his eyesight was already failing, and he hit his head on an open window, shattering the glass and gouging his head. The wound got infected, Borges was diagnosed with septicemia,  subsequently hospitalized, and spent a few weeks convalescing. During this time, he developed a fever and sort of hallucinated. He began to doubt his sanity. Up to this point, Borges had written poetry and reviews of books and movies, for the most part. He'd penned a few short stories, biographies, and a short review of a book that didn't exist ("The Approach to al-Mu'tasim"). He hadn't really become internationally famous yet, and his career wasn't certain.

After recovering from septicemia, Borges wanted to know if he could still sustain concentration enough to write, and during his convalescence, he figured he should write stories. He wanted to try something new and unfamiliar to him so that, should it fail, he could blame his failure on its novelty to him. "Pierre Menard" was his first attempt. It was followed by "Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius," which takes the form of an entry from an encyclopedia that doesn't exist.

So why is this one of the best stories in the world? You've got to read it to fully understand. 

Heroes, Super and Otherwise

I've been busy. Here are some interesting articles about Superman and Wonder Woman and Captain America.

From Polygon, by Tara Marie: Would Superman Punch a Nazi? 

The simple answer is yeah, Superman would punch a Nazi, and so would almost all of the creators of our favorite comic characters, most especially Jack “the King” Kirby. Despite this being a somewhat common sense answer, it’s caused a lot of contention.

By Eric Weiss: The DCEU Has a Problem--Everybody Likes Wonder Woman

Most of that trickles down from director Zack Snyder, the primary architect of the DCEU. In his two Superman outings, Snyder struggles with the idea of basic human decency. In fact, it seems to be utterly mystifying to him. Kevin Costner’s Jonathan Kent spent most of his screen time in Man of Steel trying to convince Clark not to be Superman, to the point that he was willing to die so his son wouldn’t have to be a hero. He lets himself get picked up in a tornado instead of letting actual Superman carry him to safety, based only on the assumption that there would be witnesses and that Clark would then become a public figure.

 I've been interested lately in the scope of Superman references out there. Here are a few that caught my attention.

First, Forbes, which decided five years ago to cover Superman's day job. Deborah Burns uses the comic book version of Superman as a springboard to discuss ways to quit your job in the most graceful manner and how to write for a blog:

But this will be a huge transition — even for a superhero. He will need to find health insurance and learn how to make money without a job. Not having a steady paycheck, he may also need to be more frugal.

 Second, a woman who married Superman: 

So obviously, Superman is not really Superman.  {What?  You thought that picture above was the real deal? :) I dug that out of Superman's files from his college graduation like six or seven years ago. I think he used it for his grad announcement.}  But he is my Superman and I absolutely love him with all my heart.  I considered never showing a picture of him to keep it all mysterious {you know, like that neighbor guy whose face you never see in Home Improvement?} but I thought better of it.  Superman is such a huge part of my life, how could I not show him?  He's an awesome husband and father and he's my favorite and best friend. 

Finally, a runner who is called the Autism Superman.

This is all pretty great.