Εleftherotypia 30/07/2011 Review by Stavroula G. Tsouprou of Lily Lambrelli’s ‘Folk Tales for Big Girls and Boys/Older Children who Hope’

The Shrew

Τhe Folk Tale and Symbolic Approaches to it.

Series: And if I Speak to you in Parables…

Patakis Publications, pp 64

What we have here is a series of wonderful little books which are no more nor less than a discovery. Their readers will be those lucky people whose eyes will be opened to the sight of a new world or rather to an old new world, and thus to a world that is ageless, where folk tales are no longer intended for children, as indeed they never were, but speak, as they originally spoke, to adults of the story-teller’s generation about the ‘spark of consciousness’, about ‘the speck of awareness that shone at the beginning of time within the infinity of the world and has ever since lived hidden in all creatures’ (according to the Hopi indians).In this world of folk tales we make the mistake of believing that the kings and queens are those who are rich and powerful, while they are but ordinary people like ourselves. In essence it is we who are the kings and queens when we become ( if we ever do become) rulers of our selves and mature enough to grasp the meaning of life. As for wealth, in folk tales it is always spiritual rather than material and is measured, as the author writes, in terms of self-knowledge, self-control and being at peace with oneself, which is the deepest form of happiness.

The title for the series is taken from the poem ‘Last Stop’ by  Yorgos Seferis, four lines of which introduce the reader to each of the seven ‘raw, uncensored, magical folk tales’ of this volume, which follows on ‘The King of Beans’ and will in turn be followed by ‘The Semolina Woman’, ‘Tearful John’, ‘The Girl with Hands Cut Off’, ‘The Luckless Woman’ and ‘The Daughter of the Sea’. All these tales are from the oral tradition, with subjects ranging from family feuds through incest and cannibalism to finally being set free and, being magical, they are parables (with no trace of the didactic, however) and ‘conceal secrets of ancient customs and ceremonies beyond our reach, and speak -always in a symbolic way- of people’s ability to recognize the essence of things deep inside themselves’. It is these symbolic images in the tales that Lambrelli attempts to interpret in the third part of each little book, as if in obedience to that old exhortation we read of in Nikos Kazantzakis’s ‘Asceticism’: ‘Whatever you feel when in a state of ecstasy you will never be able to describe, but yet you must struggle ceaselessly to do so. Fight using myths, using similes, using allegories, using common and rare words, fight with screams, with laughs and tears to say it’. Besides, she has done something similar in the fourth part of her ‘theoretical’ book ‘The Fragile and Immortal Word’ where she attempts a symbolic approach to the magical tale ‘The Longing’ through the five senses (asking the tale about the colours, sounds, tastes, smells and textures in its life) and in this sense the present series of seven little books is a continuation of this approach. As for the story-teller being in a state of ecstasy while telling the tale, the theoretical book makes constant reference to it, but nevertheless I will refer the reader to the fact that there is a hierarchy of story-tellers in the African country of Mali, where the highest rank is accorded to the ‘masters of silence’. They remain hidden and no one has ever seen them, ‘but men say that when they tell a tale all those who listen are raised an inch above the ground. These hidden men are the keepers of the keys to the source of every word.’

Τhe book begins with a short but enlightening introduction and closes with a section entitled ‘A Few Words About Story-tellers’ and a rather extensive extract from her blog pages, while the attractive back cover, in a contrasting style to the text of the book, gives us information about its contents. The first part of the book itself consists of a version of ‘The Shrew’ from Skiathos, chosen to show its contrast with Lily Lambrelli’s own rendering of the same story, which appears in the book’s second part along with along with  explanatory notes and details of the additions and inconspicuous alterations she has made to the original, always within the limits of the acceptable if not the necessary. This is followed by a third section with her personal interpretation of the tale’s symbolism. Lambrelli’s natural talent as a story-teller  enables her even on paper to convey a good approximation of the antiquated sing-song language in the transcript of the original story, an element which though basically oral bears no relation to the speech patterns of everyday life. In the section entitled ‘symbolic approach’ we can mine rich veins of information (though ‘information’ is too dry a word) on subjects as wide-ranging as sociology, comparative religion, psychoanalysis and philosophy. Though hard to understand, this is always given in terms of the author’s personal experience, which makes it more accessible. In addition, in the symbolic approach to ‘The King of Beans’ Lambrelli goes as far as to compare the humble hero of this folk tale with the Odysseus of  Homer’s epic poem, pointing out the travails shared by these otherwise so different characters.

I will close my presentation of this exceptional series, the next five volumes of which I await impatiently, with the words of the story-teller herself: ‘Magical tales “do not tell us what they want to say” but with their symbolic language, however slight and unrealistic it seems, tell us what we must do “to leave childhood behind us”. In their heroes’ progress towards initiation they show us that in life we will encounter people who wield power. Their good or bad intentions are neither here nor there -what matters is that we should not allow them to keep us immobilized beneath their sway. We have to realize they are only there to give us the key to a gate that leads elsewhere’. That ‘elsewhere’, often incredibly difficult to reach, lies deep inside us.