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We may now begin discussion of "A Passage of the Frontier." Please don't let that deter anyone from further comments on "The Virtuous Peleg."
This one has an ominous beginning:
"The threat from the north grew stronger, and the stateless persons and undesirables began to move towards the Mediterranean and the southern frontiers. Then suddenly, overnight, the full danger was there, immediately at hand: blind tanks roared down the motorways, endless lines of trucks full of infantrymen, guns, the political police; and far ahead of them all parachutists were setting up roadblocks, directing the military traffic, requisitioning houses, carring out the first arrests. All trains were stoped, all main roads, bridges, tunnels closed."
Uh-oh.
Oddly, this story gives the characters names. In stories where I expected to know who the characters were, they were nameless - here, where the danger of being known is greatest, we know that the main character is Martin, and (is this betrayal?) we know that it was Jacob who lent Martin a hard-weather coat.
In a message dated 7/21/0 8:15:28 PM, susanwenger@YAHOO.COM writes:
We may now begin discussion of "A Passage of the Frontier."
"...the stateless persons and undesirables began to move towards the ...frontiers.
Here's another POB story with the protagonist crossing a symbolic frontier, the frontier of life and death, the search for judgment. It has a number of parallels to some of the stories we've already examined, and a couple of new features, too.
I've made a bunch of notes in the book; here are a few of the things I think I see...
1. The story pivots at the point (Joyce wd call it the epiphany) where he helps a dung beetle--he sets the lowest, dung-eating creature we can imagine upright after it's toppled over. And in the very next paragraph, presto! the clouds clear and he can find his way onward. He has passed a test and is rewarded with safety.
2. As in some of the other stories, he meets a frightening and unexplained brute placed at the frontier, and manages to get past him. The gatekeeper, we might call that brute, or Charon, or Cerberus, and we might think of the trials of the hero underground, or the dangers met by the soul in the Egyptian Book of the Dead. But he gets by, perhaps because he has nothing--no spare clothing, no food, no money.
Consider this: in some of the other stories, the hero carries a burden...a valise, a pack; at one point that burden (wch seems to represent the pilgrim's burden of memory or of sin) is described as being heavy as a child. (POB's personal burden?) But in this story, it's the Gatekeeper who has the burden, and the hero, attempting to help him with it, finds it too heavy to handle.
The hero, indeed, has been set afoot with nothing except the clothes he's wearing, and has lost even his packet of food...he is traveling unburdened. As described in the beginning, he is among the stateless persons and undesirables that the soldiers have come to round up. (POB plays a trick on us in that naturalistic, warlike, political first paragraph--those soldiers va nish from the story after getting it started, and seem to be completely unnecessary: he cd have simply begin with the second paragraph. They are in a different "mode" than the rest of the story, and I wonder at that.)
3. The trouble with his shoes. Slippery. Dangerous. Inappropriate. And the Gatekeeper, in his brute way, helps him, scratching the soles with his murderous knife. Compare the shoes in the Rendezvous, wch must be tied up with twine that the person he meets happens to have with him because they have been ruined by the journey.
4. It's the "good" mountain, shaped like hands praying, that he must pass; the other mountains are described as having deathly colors. But the good mountain has an ominous name.
5. The izards, or chamois. His first indication of them is the prints of "cloven hoofs." And later he smells them--described the way some writers have described the smell of the devil. And there, in that smell, he sleeps. It's the smell of dung. This makes him, perhaps, brother to the dung beetle (and note that the dung beetle symbolized immortality to those strange-thinking ancient Egyptians) and, in setting the dung beetle upright, hasn't he done the same thing to himself? "Whoever helpeth the least of these..." how does it go?
6. Think of the strange young shepherd he meets at the end of the story, who asks him the oddest question. That shepherd is described, if I remember right (my copy is downstairs in cellar) as having a book in one hand and a lamb in the other. John the Baptist, I'd know you anywhere.
7. That shepherd asks the hero if he's Jesus. And the hero answers "No." And then the shepherd says he won't have to kill the lamb in that case. What a wonderful, ambiguous statement, pointing in many directions. Kill the Lamb? A Paschal Lamb? A sacrificial Lamb? Supper?
Pointing in many directions--that's how the symbolism works. It isn't simple allegory; it develops into a highly complex web of thought.
And so on and so on and so on...a story loaded with symbolism, a story oddly and partially parallel to some of POB's other stories about men on journeys, an uneasy story about the progress of this pilgrim, but a story where Christian religion, pagan myth, and POB's own imagination mingle with guideposts, but not a story one can sum up as meaning just one "thing." Nor can we say whether the hero has found redemption.
In a message dated 7/22/2000 8:36:40 PM Eastern Daylight Time, Charlezzzz@AOL.COM writes:
Think of the strange young shepherd he meets at the end of the story, who asks him the oddest question. That shepherd is described, if I remember right (my copy is downstairs in cellar) as having a book in one hand and a lamb in the other. John the Baptist, I'd know you anywhere.
7. That shepherd asks the hero if he's Jesus. And the hero answers "No." And then the shepherd says he won't have to kill the lamb in that case. What a wonderful, ambiguous statement, pointing in many directions. Kill the Lamb? A Paschal Lamb? A sacrificial Lamb? Supper?
Even more wonderful and ambiguous because where Charlezzzz sees John the Baptist I would see Christ himself: the (Good) Shepherd; the Word (embodied in the Book); the Lamb of God. And then *that* person asks the hero is *he* is Jesus. (...And strange and fascinating too.)
Marian
At 7:38 PM -0400 7/22/0, Charlezzzz@aol.com wrote:
Here's another POB story with the protagonist crossing a symbolic frontier, the frontier of life and death, the search for judgment. It has a number of parallels to some of the stories we've already examined, and a couple of new features, too.
I'm just so blown away by Charlezzzz's interpretation of this story that I hesitate to attempt to add anything. But I will comment on the similarity to the episode in PC, in which war is suddenly declared, the border is sealed, and Jack and Stephen escape into Spain over similar mountain paths. PC was published in 1972, and A Passage of the Frontier was published two years later as part of a collection of short stories. It could have been written at the same time as PC or even earlier.
Guess which passages are from which story:
a. At the beginning, under the beeches, there had been a clear path, indeed several paths...
b. The path meandered, branching and sometimes disappearing among huge ancient beeches...
a. ... through the last half-mile of beeches, and now on the higher slope it was pines, scaley pines standing steep from the mountainside.
b. The beech trees gave way to pines: pine needles underfoot...
a. Then came one last belt of ancient twisted moss-clad pines, hardly more than bushes, and abruptly ... out of the trees altogether: they were ruled off as though by a line...
b. The pines, then suddenly no more pines - a few stunted bushes, heather, and the open turf. ... a forest ruled off sharp as though by a line...
I wonder what allegory might be found in Jack struggling along in his bear suit,and Stephen with a heavy pack on his shoulders.
Don Seltzer
dseltzer@DRAPER.COM writes:
I'm just so blown away by Charlezzzz's interpretation of this story that I hesitate to attempt to add anything. But I will comment on the similarity to the episode in PC, in which war is suddenly declared, the border is sealed, and Jack and Stephen escape into Spain over similar mountain paths. PC was published in 1972, and A Passage of the Frontier was published two years later as part of a collection of short stories. It could have been written at the same time as PC or even earlier.
While agreeing with you about Charlezzzz interpretation I'm amazed, Don, at those three pairs of quotes you uncovered. That's astonishing: your finding of them with such apparent ease, and the fact that they exist.
I admit I'm a little disappointed that the descriptions in the short story are so similar to those O'Brian used earlier in PC. -- sort of plagiarized himself. Composers used to do that all the time, but somehow this seems ... I don't know, somehow not quite right; a bit lazy or unimaginative or something. I'm not sure why this strikes me differently than, say, a composer using almost identical melodic fragments in two different compositions. Though that, too, bothers me some if it's blatant. I'll be interested in how others see this; and speculation about why POB may have done it.
Marian
POB is merely noting the natural progression of vegetation zones when one is climbing a mountain:
First, the hardwoods - the beeches; then the pines, then the tree line, above which no tree grows, and finally, the snows.
It would have been odd if POB the naturalist had described this natural order differently!
I don't see how a charge of plagiarism can possibly be laid against him for being accurate in his descriptions!
Jean A.
I don't see how a charge of plagiarism can possibly be laid against him for being accurate in his descriptions!
I was stating that tongue-in-cheek, as I'm not sure it's possible to plagiarize yourself.
But there are certainly ways to decribe the same vegetation and progression -- and being accurate -- without using almost identical words.
Marian
Accounts of crossing the Spanish/French frontier via the Pyrenees was a commonly treated theme in news reports, literature and films of the 30's and 40's, when American and other volunteers in the Spanish Civil War were forbidden to enter Spain, and then later when refugees fleeing Hitler's forces sought safety in Spain. POB's account may have been one of the more readable and--as Charlezzzz has shown, most deeply imaged and emblematic, but there's nothing unusual about the underlying story.
Here's one very personal and not very literary account of a similar passage, from a volunteer in the Spanish Civil War period
http://www.larkspring.com/Kid/Book2/2-21.html
And maybe someone can recall the same frontier crossing described in books, and films--which I remember seeing and reading over the years, but which my brain has not yet presented to me in repeatable form.
Based upon what POB has recounted about his use of sources, I wouldn't think any charge of "plagiarism" would concern us or him, any more than it would Shakespeare.
Lois
In a message dated 7/24/0 10:11:53 AM, RxBACH@AOL.COM writes:
But there are certainly ways to describe the same vegetation and progression -- and being accurate -- without using almost identical words.
To be sure there are, but we must consider that POB was often a very playful, very secretive, writer.
Many of his short stories are remarkable in technique, suffused in symbolism, strangely religious, twisted in myth, and perhaps most important, often grounded in the tragic part of his own history. They are in many ways private poetry, in many ways private prayers, and the burdened souls of the protagonists, on their journeys toward judgment, are unaware of what kind of journey they are making. These are private stories, and I am uneasy probing into the privacy of this man whose last year of life was tormented by the literary gossips who reached after their own small-hearted fame in stripping away his mask.
Then there is the canon: sunlit, bright, happy, funny, intelligent, beautiful--books that are immensely different in style and content from his short stories...books that seek out quite a different reader. We may picture POB, behind that mask of his, that secret man, that joker, that Trickster out of myth, enjoying the delight of transferring some of his words from one mode into another entirely different kind of fiction, and grinning at the thought that few of his readers or his editors wd ever notice what he was doing.
Charlezzzz, immensely impressed by POB's writing in both of his modes
At 1:23 PM -0400 7/24/2000, Charlezzzz@aol.com wrote:
Then there is the canon: sunlit, bright, happy, funny, intelligent, beautiful--books that are immensely different in style and content from his short stories...books that seek out quite a different reader. We may picture POB, behind that mask of his, that secret man, that joker, that Trickster out of myth, enjoying the delight of transferring some of his words from one mode into another entirely different kind of fiction, and grinning at the thought that few of his readers or his editors wd ever notice what he was doing.
I think that there is an analogy to the famous artists that frequented POB's Collioure. Undoubtedly they often sought out the same vantage points, drawing the same beach, the same rooftops, the same tower by the waterfront. Many likely painted the same scene repeatedly, each time striving for a slightly different effect.
We know from Dean King's bio that POB often hiked these paths in the mountains that led to the frontier, and camped out in these forests. To him, the mountain paths, the symbolism of the frontier, and local folklore of crossings during times of conflict might have been like the harbor scene to the painter. From this backdrop he painted at least three of his short stories, besides the PC episode. I wonder if there are more such scenes in his writings, perhaps in "The Catalans"?
For true "self-plagiarism", we have the praying mantis scene from M&C which he recycled into Picasso.
Don Seltzer
Several of the stories from "Beasts Royal" were recycled wholecloth, word-for-word into Hussein.
I think some of his Oxford Annual short stories were recycled into "The Road to Samarcand."
But it's his stuff - it's not as though he's plagiarizing somebody else's material and calling it his own.
- Susan
I agree with Charlezzzz' great post about O'Brian:
"These are private stories, and I am uneasy probing into the privacy of this man whose last year of life was tormented by the literary gossips who reached after their own small-hearted fame in striping away his mask."
I wonder what that last year in Dublin was like for him, without Mary. Was there any human support? And how humiliating the revelations in the press must have been for that most private of men.
Charlezzzz also put his finger on something else: the way the short stories differ from the Aubrey/Maturin books, and the other sunnier writings.
Are these the things that he thought about in the middle of the night?
Jean A.
Martin Kaftan, the protagonist of "A Passage of the Frontier", seems like another "holy fool", like the Virtuous Peleg of the previous story. Martin's apparent faith and lack of guile allow him to pass unscathed through a number of dangers.
The story take place most likely in late 1942 after the German occupation of formerly Vichy France, though possibly in 1940 during the first German invasion of France.
Martin is not totally innocent: he knows enough to flee when the invaders come, and he is involved in a network of some kind. "They would have preferred to get him out of the country by way of Switzerland" (p.160). Who the "they" are is not clear, except one of them is named Jacob.
What strikes me the most about this story is its resemblance to the 22nd or 23d Psalm. (It is the 22d in some translations and the 23d in others).
Here's the 23d Psalm from the King James Version of the Bible. (Taken from http://www.hti.umich.edu/bin/kjv-idx?type=DIV1&byte=2190116 )
Pss.23
[1] The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.
[2] He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the
still waters.
[3] He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for
his name's sake.
[4] Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will
fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff
they comfort me.
[5] Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou
anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.
[6] Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I
will dwell in the house of the LORD for ever.
Now here's a different version that PO'B would no doubt have been familiar with: the Douay-Rheims translation (basically the Catholic equivalent of the King James). This is now the 22nd Psalm, and was found at http://www.cybercomm.net/~dcon/OT/psalms.html
Psalm 22
1 A psalm for David. The Lord ruleth me: and I shall want nothing.
2 He hath set me in a place of pasture. He hath brought me up, on the water of refreshment:
3 he hath converted my soul. He hath led me on the paths of justice, for his own name's sake.
4 For though I should walk in the midst of the shadow of death, I will fear no evils, for thou art with me. Thy rod and thy staff, they have comforted me.
5 Thou hast prepared a table before me against them that afflict me. Thou hast anointed my head with oil; and my chalice which inebriateth me, how goodly is it!
6 And thy mercy will follow me all the days of my life. And that I may dwell in the house of the Lord unto length of days.
Now let's look at this line by line (using the D-R version):
"The Lord ruleth me"
Martin is ruled by his mysterious handlers. At their command he flees the country. He is presumably threatened by services he has done for them in the past.
"and I shall want nothing."
Martin is given "a drawing of the smugglers' path and a carrier-bag of food; and Jacob lent him a hard-weather coat." (p.160)
"He hath set me in a place of pasture"
Martin is set down in the woods, and after a few hours of walking, he comes to a level place near a river, where raspberries grow in abundance, along with "columbines and yelow lillies" (p. 161). Not quite a pasture, but close. There may be some symbolism in the last two plants: columbine is similar to the French colombe, meaning dove, often used as a symbol of the soul or of Christ. The lilly is a symbol of the resurrection.
"He hath brought me up, on the water of refreshment:"
Martin literally goes up the mountainside to arrive at the river, where he is able to "wash and drink at last" (p. 161)
"he hath converted my soul."
"'Might this be the ford?' he said" (doubt); "Yes, certainly this was the place where one could cross ... this was the frontier itself" (conviction); "He stepped into the water, unbelievably cold, and stood for a while with a foot on either side of the middle line: then he waded over, to another country" (coversion). (quotes from p. 162)
"He hath led me on the paths of justice, for his own name's sake."
Martin is on or searching for the path throughout the story: "Yet time and again when he seemed to have lost it for ever his hand would reach out for a branch whose bark was already worn to the wood, or as he leapt a small ravine his foot would land in a place worn deep by other men. The path always reappeared, and it led him high, high towards the last thinning-out of the trees". (p. 162)
"For though I should walk in the midst of the shadow of death,"
Martin walks in the the shadow of Mont Malamort (mal = badness, evil, or sickness; mort = death), seeking the gap that would take him to "the sunward side" (p. 164)
"I will fear no evils, for thou art with me."
"'The necessary pass will be clear, no doubt,' he said, 'once I can survey the whole.'" (p. 163)
And later, when faced with Joan, the ominious smuggler in the pass, Joan says, "You are afraid to be on the mountain alone with all that money and your fine coat." "Martin laughed, leaning back against the rock. He said, 'How would I be afraid on the mountain, my dear?'" (p. 167)
Note that Martin leans against the rock before answering, the rock being a symbol of the Catholic Church to Catholics: "And I say to thee: That thou art Peter (i.e., rock); and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." (Matthew 16:18; quote again taken from the D-R translation, found at http://www.cybercomm.net/~dcon/NT/mat.html)
Compare this to Joan's expletive at the beginning of their meeting. "Whore of Babylon" he said (p.166), the Whore of Babylon (a figure in the Book of Revelations) being identified with the Catholic Church by many anti-Catholics, notably some of the early Protestant Reformers.
"Thy rod and thy staff, they have comforted me."
No rods or staffs per se in this story, but there is Joan's knife, which he uses to scratch Martin's shoes, and to make a cross on the bread, and to slice the bread and the onions. (pp. 166-167)
Re: scratching his shoes,Charlezzzz earlier wrote that this is to make them less slippery, and therefore more appropriate for his mountain journey. Probably correct, but I read this as making a sign to his fellow smugglers not to molest this man.
Compare Joan's marking of the shoes and the bread to the walker (title character of "The Walker")'s desire to put his mark upon his to-be-murdered victims (p. 80).
Joan seems to be the familiar walker type seen in several of the stories, an ominious soul-dead creature, but he is also Catholic, and the two extremes battle for dominance in his psyche (much like the de-Christianizing village in "The Chian Wine"), with the Catholic side eventually winning out in this encounter.
"Thou hast prepared a table before me against them that afflict me."
So it is that Joan, who had meant to afflict Martin, ends up giving the best of his food and drink to Martin: "Drink, man, drink," he says. "I do not reckon the cost." (p. 167)
And note as well Joan's parting expletive, as he picks up his pack: "Mother of God" he says (p.168), which is not strictly speaking a reverent statement, but is under the circumstances almost one, because it refers to Mary under an orthodox Catholic title. "Whore of Babylon" showed him as anti-Catholic; "Mother of God" as pro-Catholic, a considerable spiritual progression during his meeting with Martin.
"Thou hast anointed my head with oil; and my chalice which inebriateth me, how goodly is it!"
The anointing in the Psalm refers to the future Christ. This is one of the Old Testament passages seen as a prophecy of the New Testament.
In the story, the shepherd at the end of the journey sees Martin as Christ: "And have you come at last?" he says. "You are the Christ? I have been waiting and waiting for you." (p. 174)
If Martin is Christ, the two thieves who were crucified with Christ also have their counterparts: Joan as the good thief (the one who is guilty, but repents and converts on his cross), and Espollabalitris as the bad thief. (Espollabalitris is the thief in Joan's story who cut the throat of the izard hunter "before he could say Hail Mary ... and ate his balls" (p. 167)
(Martin denies he is the Christ. (p.174))
"And thy mercy will follow me all the days of my life."
Joan "told Martin how good he was: uniquely good: took no advantage of the situation as other men might, nay would, for the laws of God were not observed and God Himself had never reached these parts." And, later, Joan says, "I can go all day and night without refreshment, to help a poor man. I do good, but I never mention it." (p. 167)
"And that I may dwell in the house of the Lord unto length of days."
Martin comes at last to the end of his journey at the shepherd's hut, where animals are all gathered around, like the manger in Nazareth, and the shepherd invites him to "Lay down on the warm bed, while I milk the cow" and decides that he shall not have to kill the lamb (p. 174).
One final comment on one of Charlezzzz'z points in his own excellent analysis. Charlezzzz wrote:
5. The izards, or chamois. His first indication of them is the prints of "cloven hoofs." And later he smells them--described the way some writers have described the smell of the devil. And there, in that smell, he sleeps. It's the smell of dung. This makes him, perhaps, brother to the dung beetle (and note that the dung beetle symbolized immortality to those strange-thinking ancient Egyptians) and, in setting the dung beetle upright, hasn't he done the same thing to himself? "Whoever helpeth the least of these..." how does it go?
If he sleeps in the dung, he also wakes up in the dung, symbolic perhaps of a new birth: "Inter faeces et urinas nascimur" ("Between feces and urine we are born") in the famous phrase of St. Augustine.
John Finneran
At 2:56 AM -0700 7/28/2000, John Finneran wrote:
If Martin is Christ, the two thieves who were crucified with Christ also have their counterparts
There is a third thief, more directly connected to Martin. The driver of the car keeps the envelope of cash intended for Martin.
Martin Kaftan, the protagonist of "A Passage of the Frontier", seems like another "holy fool", like the Virtuous Peleg of the previous story. Martin's apparent faith and lack of guile allow him to pass unscathed through a number of dangers.
I don't view him this way at all. Although my initial impression is that he is a city person out of his element, he later proves to be very cool-headed and rational in his planning and adaptation to his circumstances. I am impressed by his deliberate actions, and his lack of reliance on any miracles. He attempts what he can, he knows when to quit and rest. He does not expect any assistance, either divine or otherwise, and is resigned to what ever fate has in store for him. In his encounter with Joan, I think that he is bluffing his way out of a desparate situtation by accurately assessing the pschological state of his opponent. It really hinges upon whether Martin really did forget his food and wine on the mountain. I think he made it up to gain Joan's sympathy. If he really did forget his only meal, then I agree with John's assessment as a "holy fool".
Don Seltzer
In a message dated 7/28/0 2:01:57 AM, John.Finneran@PILEOFSHIRTS.COM writes:
Martin is on or searching for the path throughout the story: "Yet time and again when he seemed to have lost it for ever his hand would reach out for a branch whose bark was already worn to the wood, or as he leapt a small ravine his foot would land in a place worn deep by other men. The path always reappeared, and it led him high, high towards the last thinning-out of the trees". (p. 162)
As so often, John's analysis is deep and convincing. Bravo, John!
And, to follow up on the comments that POB has used some similar descriptions in both this story and in the canon, remember how, when Maturin first goes ashore in Catalonia, climbing the cliff where he shows Jack a watering-place, and he climbs in the darkness...compare that passage from M&C with the paragraph above, from the story.
Charlezzzz, delighted with the analysis