After reading Morgan’s blog and contemplating the significance of the mysterious Maelstrom in A.S. Byatt’s The Biographer’s Tale, I revisited Morgan’s question of whether the Maelstrom has become a “metaphor for the multi-layered, woven tapestry that literature has become since the advent of spoken language that no author (s) can ultimately isolate or detach themselves from?” By considering this question I found myself relating the deep “multi-layered woven tapestry” of literature to a reference in Ibsen’s Peer Gynt with Peer being opened up like an onion.
“You’re no Emperor. You’re just an onion.
Now then, little Peer, I’m going to peel you
And you won’t escape by weeping or praying.
[Takes an onion and peels it layer by layer]
The outmost layer is withered and torn;
That’s shipwrecked man on the upturned keel.
Here, mean and thin, is the passenger;
But it still tastes a little of old Peer Gynt….
What a terrible lot of layers there are!
Surely, ill soon get down to the heart?
[pulls the whole onion to pieces.]
No-there isn’t one! Just a series of shells
All the way through getting smaller and smaller!
Nature is witty (271).
This passage conveys the revealing of distinctive layers of an individual which I believe might be a clue into the technique used by the dramatist Henrik Ibsen in the formulation of his characters. Like James discusses in his blog, Ibsen was capable of observing “his inner nature, which was a haunting portrait of the human framework.” Through my own encounter with The Biographer’s Tale, I would express this further through Ibsen’s parallel of the human psyche to an onion. Through this perspective, is it possible to manifest a basic foundation of any individual? One may ask how “does such a man set about constructing another human being, in some sense ex nihilo” (97). Ex nihilo: a latin phrase meaning creation out of nothing. This is a concept that was contemplated in all forms of ancient myth[i]. The Greek poet Hesoid for example explains cosmogony as arising from chaos, the formless void state of nature and primal foundation of reality that the Greek gods and the world originated from[ii]. Is this the approach that Ibsen used to manifest each character? We have discussed consistently the three phases that Ibsen applies to approach the development of each individual, however each character cannot be generated out of nothing. Analogous to an onion, each human being has the same essence or the same basic core which I believe corresponds to the Maelstrom; with a heart of chaos. Ibsen therefore I have speculate must discover or impose “order” within the natural chaos of a being to transform each one of his characters in his dramas.
However, by conveying this relationship an examination of the method operated to create this order has to be pursued. Is it an inspiration originating from of science or art? I consider it to have an arbitrary dynamic that cannot be labeled one or the other. The genesis of a human entity encompasses all aspects of imagination that would be inhibited by placing “order” to its ingredients.
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