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Introduction
- University of Wisconsin Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
Introduction Story is at the heart of the way humans see themselves, experience themselves within the context of their worlds. And emotions are the soul of storytelling. Story is a major means of gaining access to the past, of remembering it, assessing it. It is not, thereby, the past, of course. It is not an attempt to photographically reproduce or even record what has happened. To assume that this is its role is wholly to misunderstand the significance and the role of storytelling in human society. Implicit in storytelling is fantasy imagery, poetic rhythm, and a complexity of tropes, none of which argues for a literal view of the real. It is true, as has been noted, that story usually involves a cause-and-effect narrative movement from conflict to resolution, but to measure story solely from that point of view is to distort its essential nature, which is really a subverting, an undermining of such narrative flow. The purpose of story-to "tell a story"-has only minimal reference to "and then" consequential movements and everything to do with poetry, with rhythm, with a tropic turning of narrative on its head. And storytelling is nothing if it is not the organization of emotions, an ordering that is itself constructed of emotions: feeling is foremost. Story is a means whereby people come to terms with their lives,1 their past;2 it is a way of understanding their relationship within the context of their traditions.3 It is a means of accessing and valuing history : in the end, story is history. 4 And this means-because of the very nature of story as never being frozen in time-that history is constantly being revisited and retold.5 Is storytelling, then, one grand mirage? There is concealment but no secrecy here. It is a question not so much of secrecy as of seeking to go beyond the image, beyond the word, beyond the moment, and, for the uninitiated, this seems to be arcane, obscurantism. It is cryptic only to those who do not comprehend the language of story. For those who do command such language , then there is no mystery, only the richness of layered, patterned images that move the observer beyond the moment. It is not a question of triumphantly ferreting out what is "hidden" in the work of art but of reveling in the power and resonance of images in electric opposition and union. Storytellers, like those who create music, art, and dance, manipulate emotion by means of evocative imagery and rhythm or pattern. Involved in story in the oral tradition are images having to do both with empirical reality and with fiction.6 Woven into story are history 21 Copyrighted Material 22 Part One: Emotions and a mimetic account of reality, as well as images of the fictional ideal and didacticism. Literary story is essentially the same as oraL? Everything , in fact, that will later form the novel is actively engaged in the oral tale.s Hear the storyteller Assia Djebar: "By means of understatement, proverbs, even riddles or traditional fables, handed down from generation to generation, the women dramatize their fate, or exorcize it, but never expose it directly."9 She writes of the effect of the storyteller's words: "Of their bodies, they retain only the ears and eyes of childhood which hang on the lips of the wrinkled storyteller-this matriarch who intones in the corridor, handing on the heroic saga of the fathers, the grandfathers, the paternal great-uncles. The low voice steers the words through waters awash with the dead, prisoners never to be freed...." And she discusses the performer's role as memory of the people: "Retaining their role of story-teller, figurehead at the prow of memory. The legacy will otherwise be lost-night after night, wave upon wave, the whispers take up the tale, even before the child can understand, even before she finds her words of light, before she speaks in her turn so that she will not speak alone...."10 Story is nothing if it does not contain and channel emotion. The essential shaping mechanism of storytelling involves the emotion-evocative images given form by patterns. From this rich interweaving of image and pattern emerges meaning. But meaning is complex: it is as much the experience of emotions worked into engaging forms as a philosophical statement, a political conclusion , a historical observation. Statement, conclusion, observation: These can be unspoken, felt, and that is the power, the danger, the...