More on Allegories

The line between allegory and Allegorica Mysteria

I mentioned yesterday, in ‘Allegorica Mysteria’ that I don’t like allegories, and hardly can bring myself to call them tales. But I do have a feeling that David Lindsay’s A Voyage to Arcturus is an allegory — and yet I like it. So I had to think up a new term, the allegorica mysteria, to call these allegories that are personal in nature, and refer to real events without being romans à clef, and really mean to conceal what they are actually about. Reading such tales, we get the feeling that they are allegories, but without an intimate knowledge of the talesman’s life, we can’t be wholly sure, and can only grope blindly to reach the truth or actual experiences that inspired the tale.

This leaves us in a bit of a fog or swamp of ambiguity, not knowing what it’s all about. On the other hand, these allegoricae mysteriae contain some real suspense, unlike standard allegories. They spring from real events, which have no set or pre-planned outcome.

Now I add a few points.

Suspense in an Allegory

It is possible, I think, to have real suspense in an allegory of the usual kind. Take Pilgrim’s Progress as an example. This is the allegory of the common man who finds redemption through greater closeness to living in harmony with the New Testament; it is a document of the Pilgrims, or the new Protestant revolution in England. So for any of us who knows the dogma of Protestant Christianity, we know the playbook … except …

—What if Pilgrim is not redeemed at the end?

Bunyan was writing about his own salvation, sharing his ‘good story’ as it were with any other men who cared to be saved. But he could just as well have told the tale of a Pilgrim who was not saved, who had the choice of Good or Evil, Dogma or Violation — and chose Evil and Violation, and went down into a seething pit of Fire for Eternity as his punishment. Bunyan could, moreover, have composed this tale without being sure in his own mind whether his Pilgrim would end up being saved or damned. Then indeed we readers would have been biting our nails wondering whether our hero would embrace the light (so clear to us) or fall on the path.

This sort of doubt applies to A Voyage to Arcturus as the hero, Maskull, goes from group to group, each of which lives very different lives, sees the world in different ways, and has their own moral and philosophical code to support their way of life. As he falls in with each group, Maskull adopts their philosophy, sometimes under duress, sometimes choosing, sometimes thinking that he chooses when he is in fact deceived. Each time he repudiates the morality of the previous groups in embracing that of the new. We in the audience are left unsure which is the best path (though I have my favorites, of course, and I’m sure I share them with most readers in Lindsay’s intended audience of middle-class English readers of the mid-20th century), and we are unsure what morality the hero will finally embrace.

Moreover, we are given clues, and predictions are made along the way, that Maskull might do something very bad before he is done. He might do the right thing — he himself hopes he will — he might do the wrong thing, as some accuse him. Or he might do the wrong thing while believing himself that it is the right thing, as one or more foresee.

The effect of this is to produce in me considerable suspense.

Not only do I not know where the tale is going, thanks to its reflection of personal events in Mr Lindsay’s life (as I conceive it) — for if the tale follows some events in real life, no one can tell what comes next but Lindsay himself — but I also don’t know what the talesman will end up defining as ‘right’ or the True Dogma. And furthermore, I don’t know if our hero will end up acting in accordance with this True Dogma, or breaking it, and sinning a mighty sin.

Indeed, since this appears to be an Allegorica Mysteria, I have the strong suspicion that Maskull will do the Wrong Thing in the end, and ruin what he hopes to save. For the talesman who tells his own tale with such artifice and concealment, usually seeks to hide his own secret shame, his own ruin, his own sin, and tells us all about it in an effort to purge himself of grief and guilt.

And suspense seems to be higher when we Fear for the Worst rather than when we Hope for the Best.

(Composed on keyboard Monday, June 23, 2008)