In the last several weeks, I posted analyses of what have become two of my favourite works of art: Wagner’s final opera, Parsifal, and Patrick White’s novel, The Solid Mandala. Both works can only really be understood as part of a tradition. Wagner’s opera was an adaptation of, and a response to, an old medieval myth. White’s novel was his answer to Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. Although it’s possible to get something from both works without understanding the tradition to which they belong, the meaning of both is greatly enhanced when we understand the larger references.
A related thing that both Wagner and White have in common is that both men were master storytellers. They innovated on the deeper story structure, not as an arbitrary amusement or technical trick, but in order to express new meanings. Once again, a reader who doesn’t understand these innovations can still get something out of it but will miss the most important points.
Out of interest, I thought I would ask a few different LLMs to summarise the meaning of the two works. The results were interesting. Both Gemini’s and Grok’s summaries of The Solid Mandala were mostly quite good and yet missed the main point of the book because they think White is presenting Arthur Brown (the intuitive, “spiritual” brother) as the model to be followed. In fact, as I pointed out in my post, it was Dostoevsky who had made that claim in The Brothers Karamazov, and White was explicitly placing a very large question mark over it. Readers who don’t pick up on the Karamazov reference at the crucial turning point of the story miss this.
I had a quick look at the reviews of the novel on Goodreads, and it seems that almost all readers fall into this category. Presumably, that’s why the LLMs also didn’t include it, since they are just a summation of general opinion. The results were much the same for Parsifal. The LLMs gave a mostly correct overview but missed the crucial points.
Now, because stories are so fundamental to the way in which humans think, you might assume there would already be a discipline devoted to understanding them. In fact, that’s not exactly true. There are a number of fields where stories play a central role. Among them are literature, literary criticism, mythology, aesthetics, philology, and hermeneutics. However, none of these place the story itself at the centre of analysis. Even literature is primarily about the written word and includes non-story genres. (Note that 20th-century “literary fiction” is literature but is explicitly not stories. In fact, much of modern highbrow literature is not technically stories.)
The discipline that comes closest to making stories the sole object of study is a little-known one that emerged in Russia in the early 20th century called narratology. However, because of its structuralist focus, narratology is exceedingly formal in nature and tends to suck all the life and vitality out of its subject matter. What’s needed is a holistic approach which sees the structural aspects of a story as expressions of what Richard Wagner called Life and Nature.
This raises the question: what concepts would we need if we were trying to understand stories in a holistic fashion?
The most important would surely be Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey. However, I prefer an adaptation of this that I call the journey into the sacred. Every story begins with the hero making a sacrifice. We can understand the nature of the sacrifice better by using Jungian archetypes; thus, the archetype is the second core concept. The third would be that of “identity”, including its exoteric and esoteric aspects. Every story involves the hero needing to sacrifice their old identity and integrate a new one.
Since each of these properties applies to every character in a story, with only a few core concepts, we quickly get a very complex set of interactions, which is why I’m fond of saying that stories are a kind of communicative superpower, compressing enormous amounts of information in an understandable fashion.
All of this got me thinking of an idea that’s been brewing in the back of my mind for some time, namely, a discussion group aimed at understanding stories. Of course, I could write it up as a set of blog posts, but a more open-ended, exploratory style of discussion with differing viewpoints would be a much richer experience.
So, since a new year is a good time for new beginnings, I thought I’d throw open an invitation to readers and see who might be interested. I propose a short series of discussions aimed at elucidating the basic concepts required to understand stories at a deeper level. We’ll use Shakespeare’s King Lear as the story under discussion.
There are several reasons to prefer Lear. First and foremost, it’s a classic. Secondly, it exists in both written and video form, either of which will suffice for our purposes. Thirdly, translations are readily available, which will be of use to any non-native English speakers who might want to take part. Finally, it is a relatively short work that can be read or watched in a single sitting.
Here’s how I see it working:-
- We all read or watch King Lear in advance
- Then, we have four one-hour sessions to discuss it
- In advance, I’ll send an email introducing the concept which will be the main theme of the session to give people a chance to think about it
- The session itself will be an open-ended, Socratic dialogue as we explore how the theme relates to the story of King Lear
- At the end of four weeks, the goal is to have holistically explored the meaning of Lear. But, perhaps more importantly, we will also build out a model that can be used to access the deeper meanings of stories that most readers miss
- To begin with, I’d like the keep the group small. I think four people is the ideal number, but three or five could also work.
- Note, all the work will be completely private. No video or audio will be recorded. No personal information will be shared. Since this will be the first time I have run this kind of session, there won’t be any payment required. The invitation is open to anywhere in the world (as long as we can find a time that works for everybody).
If this sounds like something you’d like to participate in, you can register your interest here (note: you do not need to sign-in to google to submit the form).
