Two different ways to open a tale
“Turn round, my boy! How ridiculous you look! What sort of a priest’s cassock have you got on? Does everybody at the academy dress like that?”
With such words did old Bulba greet his two sons, who had been absent for their education at the Royal Seminary of Kief, and had now returned home to their father.
His sons had but just dismounted from their horses. They were a couple of stout lads who still looked bashful, as became youths recently released from the seminary. Their firm healthy faces were covered with the first down of manhood, down which had, as yet, never known a razor. They were greatly discomfited by such a reception from their father, and stood motionless with eyes fixed upon the ground.
“Stand still, stand still! let me have a good look at you,” he continued, turning them around. “How long your gaberdines are! What gaberdines! There never were such gaberdines in the world before. Just run, one of you! I want to see whether you will not get entangled in the skirts, and fall down.”
“Don’t laugh, don’t laugh, father!” said the eldest lad at length.
“How touchy we are! Why shouldn’t I laugh?”
“Because, although you are my father, if you laugh, by heavens, I will strike you!”
This is how Gogol opened his great tale of Taras Bulba (taken from the http://www.gutenberg.org edition of Taras Bulba and Other Tales, taras10.txt). It is what is called a mid start or opening in media res. It’s also what they call in movies a ‘cold start.’
Cold Starts
Movies usually open with the main titles. These start with the distributors’ logos, then whatever ‘names above the title,’ the title, and the main cast and crew credits. At last the main titles fade out, and the first scene fades in. Nowadays scripts are so packed with back-story that it often happens that a special filmmaker is contracted to create a title sequence, to go with/under the main titles, that sets the time and place and some of the background we need to know. Saul Bass was famous for creating abstract title sequences that gave hints for what the story would be about, and to set up the mood for us in the audience, and put us in the proper frame of mind: This is the kind of movie you’re about to see and enjoy.
But sometimes movies opened ‘cold’ with no titles at all. The house lights dim and scene one flashes on screen; bang! we’re off and running in the movie tale.
(This practice was hated by projectionists, the people who actually ran the film through the projectors, because they could use the main titles to set focus, after which all the story part of the movie was in focus, at least until the first reel change. Then theaters spliced the whole movie onto a single roll on a platter, and robots focused the image. And soon all theaters will project digital images and there won’t be any prints to deal with.)
A cold start in a tale that isn’t a movie, dumps us into not only the middle of the story, but into the middle of a scene as well. At least that’s how I look on it. Any tale that opens with an action without an introduction, or an experience without an introduction, or a line of dialogue, as M. Gogol opened Taras Bulba, is a cold start. Something is happening and we have to ‘catch up’ with it; explanations follow events; this gives us a sense straight off of an exciting tale.
Mid Starts
A mid start will begin with an introduction to the first scene. It might also have an introduction to the tale as a whole, as the Iliad of Homer does. But the first scene takes place well into the overall conflict, so again the result is a sense in us the audience of a running start.
Oral Tales and Cold and Mid Starts
I harbor some doubts as to whether an oral tale can bear a cold or mid start. (But compare to the Iliad or Odyssey of Homer, where the formal introduction, a dozen or so lines long, allows an entrance to the first scene, though that scene takes place in the middle of the tale. More, Homer spoke to an audience he knew was familiar with both tale-cycles, and would thus need no more than a small guidance as to where in the cycle the first scene took place.)
An oral tale (an oral tale that is original, and unfamiliar to its audience) is subject to all manner of interruptions by its audience, in ways that no recorded medium is, and that even a more formal live presentation such as a drama on stage, would suffer. ‘Wait, wait!’ the audience exclaims (or at least the loud-mouth in the back exclaims). ‘What are you talking about? Where is this, who are these people? Don’t you even know your own tale, man?’
There is also, in an informal tale-spinning, a period of settling-in to the tale proper. Take the example of some men in a bar. At first they are all equals, drinking and chatting about the day and their lives and the world in general. ‘That reminds me,’ says one, ‘of the time I saw the Duchess in her dress…’ ‘What! you never saw the Duchess in your life!’ rebukes another. ‘Ah, but I did…’
During such exchanges as this, the talesman (or would-be talesman) moves slowly out of his guise as fellow-drinker, into the talesman, the master of the tale; his cups-men slip back into audience. Their roles turn and shift. It is during this time that the formal introduction to the tale helps the talesman adopt his role, and draw his fellows into their role as audience.
(Composed on keyboard Wednesday, May 28, 2008)
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