Christopher,

Thanks for your comments too.

Well, as one who is at the moment basking in my own, very different, impossible garden, I find everything you say most interesting and agree entirely that "*impossible tasks* are a means to think with, instantiating different attitudes, different modes of making choices and leading to different outcomes." 

I think though it's possible to think with even the topoi, with what they reveal about what is assumed to be conventional in the narrative. For instance, as you note, in the Japanese story, where the impossible feeling of forgiveness precedes the successful completion of the impossible tunnel, unlike most Western fairy tails where the order is the opposite, forgiveness only following upon the successfully completed impossible task. 

In considering the topoi, it seems to me that difference in rank (which fits with most fairy tales but not your examples here) might be more accurately described as a difference in power. A difference in power would locate the story within the nexus of that power, leading to very different narrative or conceptual effects: in the Japanese tale, the difference in power is posited in  crime, the murder of the father,  with Shylock and Antonio, it's posited in religion, of being a Jew in a Christian society, and in the Boccaccio tale, it's posited in sexual power, of the wife who wishes to refuse the suitor. So even though the parties may be of "the same rank" as you note in the Boccaccio story, they are not of the same power, and part of the conflict is that  they must 'meet', by means of the impossible task, and become equal. 

It might be said in the Japanese tale, the murderer bargains with himself; out of the impossibility of his crime, he not only punishes himself by exile, but assigns himself an impossible task, tunnelling through a mountain.  It is because the murderer makes this contract with himself, that the victim's son finds it possible to forgive him. So some of the conceptual nuances pertain to the culture as well, the conventions here are deeply Japanese, connected to that sense that the worst dishonor is to dishonor oneself, a burden which the murderer takes upon himself.  A convention where one's greatest moral obligation is to oneself, to one's own sense of honor.  It's not so much, I think, an unwillingness to forgive as it would be impossible to forgive another for the murder of one's father because deeply dishonorable. Similarly in the Boccaccio tale, the greatest moral obligation is to a sense of sexual honor, though I think it's impossible to read this without some consideration of gender. 

In the Boccacio tale, when you note that the suitor and the wife "hold the same rank, but because the task is an impossible one there _ought_ to be a difference in power between the parties." I think in this case, while they may hold the same rank, there is a difference in power between them, posited in sexuality, for the power to grant sexual favors rests with the wife, though it a curious sexual power, since she seems able to say only yes, so not wishing to say yes, she creates an impossible task, a yes with such an "if only" that it seems impossible.  

It's interesting too that just as these 'contracts' involve pairs, they also involve a kind of pairing of impossibility.
For instance in the Boccaccio it's the impossibile task of creating a garden out of time with the impossibility of the suitor's love being out of time: in the Japanese tale, it's the impossible task of tunneling through a mountain with the impossibility of forgiving the murderer of one's father. 

I think in a way while Shylock and Antonio do embody this sort of difference in power and a kind of pairing of unwillingness and impossibility, it is somewhat of a different order than these other two examples. Between Shylock and Antonio the relationship approximates much more a conventional social contract, a business deal, if an odd one in which a pound of flesh is posited as equivalent to so much money lent and not paid back. The impossibility in a sense resides outside the contract, there's the impossibility of being a Jew in a Christian society, and so I suspect it is so much "the contractual arrangement inverted" (as Chris J sid)  because it is a fairy tale gone wrong, the bargain so inverted, as to throw the impossibility into the larger issue of _being_ impossible.

The Boccaccio and Japanese tale end happily, the impossible is made possible, the mountain is tunneled, the garden is created out of time, and, as a result of all ending happily, all is forgiven, the murderer is released from his debt, the wife is released from her. The victim's son who could have demanded an accounting does not, the suitor whose impossibility has become entirely possible withdraws his demand of the wife. On the other hand, between Shylock and Antonio, the debt is in a sense never released, because it is now posited elsewhere, it remains impossible, hence tragic.

Best,

Rebecca

Rebecca Seiferle
www.thedrunkenboat.com  




Original Message-------
-------Original Message-------
From: Christopher Walker <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: 05/18/03 04:46 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Impossible Tasks

> 
> <snip>
Of course, in fairy tales, the impossible is often the task through which
one must go to obtain the possible. The one, assigning the task does so
expecting it to be impossible so that the other will be prevented from
obtaining the possible. Whereas the one undertaking the task does so, out
of
such desire for the possible, that the impossibility of the task is
undertaken with hope or hopelessness, but still undertaken. It's a social
contract between very different scales of value and power, the king or
queen
who commands the lake be drained with a spoon, the girl or boy (usually
rustic) who takes up the task. Hence, your remarks on the scale of value,
I
think, since, at the beginning of the contract, there is no sense in which
the one assigning and the one assigned are of equal value. The definition
of
the task, along with the definition of what is possible or not, resides
with
the one assigning the task. The one taking on the task really in a sense
'has no choice,' since to not undertake the task would be to remain
valueless and without possibility and so undertaking the task, for all it
may seem impossible, is the only hope.
<snip>

Rebecca:

Thanks for that.

I think I'd want to distinguish between topoi, on the one hand, in which
certain features (of the sort you suggest, such as differences in rank)
keep
on turning up and thus comprise the convention and, on the other, the
narrative or conceptual effects which arise both from using these
conventions and from their alteration.

Lest this sound like gibberish, let me give some examples.

There's a Japanese tale in which a murderer exiles himself and decides to
atone for his crime by tunnelling through a mountain. One day the victim's
son appears and is moved by these labours not just to forgive the murderer
but also to help him; thus the tunnel is dug.

Here *unwillingness* (to forgive) is matched with the apparent
impossibility
of the task, as per usual. But the 'contract' is made between the murderer
and himself, which isn't typical at all, and the role of outside agent
(often taken by magic) is here performed by the other party not to the
contract but to the relation of *impossibility*. As the victim's son finds
it 'possible' to forgive the murderer, so the physical task of tunnelling
becomes a possible one.

The relationship between Shylock and Antonio isn't a matter of rank
exactly,
but it certainly turns on power and on mutual (dis)respect. Shylock's
three
month term contract gives him power over Antonio. The argument which stems
that power sneers at Jewish dietary law, subverting Shylock as though from
within his world, but it makes the blood prohibition part of 'the laws of
Venice', thus keeping *unwillingness* on the 'Christian' side and
practical
*impossibility* on the other: another sort of what Chris J called 'the
contractual arrangement inverted'.

Finally there's one of Boccaccio's analogues to the *Franklin's Tale*.
Because 'No' is quite the hardest thing to say, the wife of a knight sets
an
unwanted suitor the impossible task of creating a garden out of time, just
as his love for her is perceived as out of time. This task he duly fulfils
with the help of a herb gathering necromancer. In Boccaccio (though not,
interestingly, in Chaucer) the two contracting parties hold the same rank,
but because the task is an impossible there _ought_ to be a difference in
power between the parties. However, the suitor accepts the bargain with
his
eyes open and goes in search of the necromancer, forcing the bargain into
a
counterfactual space (the obverse of the Japanese situation) in which
husband and wife agree to the consequences of the bargain, whereupon the
suitor withdraws his suit and the untimely garden disappears.

What I suppose I'm driving at is that *impossible tasks* are a means to
think with, instantiating different attitudes, different modes of making
choices and leading to different outcomes.

CW
>