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| Starving Polar Bear Kerstin Langenberger Photography from https://www.thedodo.com/emaciated-polar-bear-1330557679.htm |
The best introduction to this universally acclaimed
Mythmaker drama is contained in the following extract from The Termite Queen, v.1. Griffen Gwidian is an entomologist
and chief of the expedition to the termite planet; Kaitrin Oliva is the
linguistic anthropologist charged with learning how to communicate with the
termite extraterrestrials. The two of
them are falling in love, and during this time they attend several stage
productions, including one of The White
Bear.
The Valley of the White Bear was an
intense allegorical fantasy of the responsibilities that human beings bear
toward one another and toward the world that gives them life. It was the most beloved of all the literature
in the Mythmaker canon, and the most widely studied. The present rendition was a holotheater
production; the settings and fantastic characters were holoimages while the
human parts were performed by live actors.
Kaitrin and Gwidian emerged
from the performance discussing the technical merits of the show, including the
effectiveness of the hologram of the god/goddess Hasta. Gwidian found it to be static and lacking in
warmth, while Kaitrin felt that the size and austerity ensured the correct overpowering
effect.
“I’m never comfortable when
gods intrude into Mythmaker lit,” Gwidian said.
“The agenda of those writers was to persuade humanity to take ethical
responsibility for its own actions rather than to blame its transgressions on infractions
of arbitrary rules laid down by some religious or political entity. A principle of behavior that our kind tended
to ignore in ages past, to Earth’s detriment.”
“I don’t know that one ought to apply the word
‘agenda’ to the Mythmakers,” said Kaitrin.
“There were so many of them, living over such a long period in so many
different parts of the Earth, that it’s doubtful many of them even knew of the
others’ existence, let alone exchanged ideas.
They didn’t compose the Precepts, after all – those were a later
formulation extracted from a study of the whole Mythmaker canon by a bunch of
social philosophers. The writers with
the loftiest imaginations, like No. 96, produced works that stand beautifully
on their own without a lot of sententious reinterpretation. And the god-figures are all symbolic. As I recall, when Hasta first appears, the
stage directions say only something like ‘Ingreaf sees on the top of the
mountain a shape with a light in it, which speaks to him.’ That’s why so many different interpretations
of it are possible – why producing it on the stage never gets old. But basically it embodies the overarching Principle
of Life.
“And then the White Bear itself
is the form the soul of nature takes so that human beings can interact with it. It’s generally acknowledged that The White Bear was the foundation for
Precept No. 20 – Everything in the
universe shares in the principle of life, hence we have a moral obligation not
to destroy life in our infinitesimal portion of the universe. I’ve always found the end of the play to be
so moving – that juxtaposition of destruction and regeneration!”
“You explicate the play very
well! But if it’s all symbolic, why call
Hasta something as concrete as god/goddess?”
“Well, isn’t the Principle of
Life sort of what a deity is supposed to be?
Something larger than ourselves – larger and more powerful than anything
we can know even with the most advanced science. The Mythmakers weren’t hidebound atheists,
you know. None of them ever rejected
deity categorically; they simply averred that neither its existence nor its
non-existence can be proved. That’s why
this trend toward deifying the Mythmakers seems misguided to me. I’m quite sure they didn’t see themselves as
beings whose existence could be neither proved nor disproved! Although they did succeed spectacularly well in
remaining anonymous!”
There
is more to this extract, but I’ll save it for a later post. As an aside, let me just quote the following
from MWFB:
Robbin
Nikalishin’s Professor of moral philosophy Alise Doone (whose hobby is acting)
says in MWFB, Part One: “I’ve done the voice of Hasta in The White Bear three times for the Consortium. Apparently our director prefers to interpret
the esteemed god/goddess as a sexless hag with a quirky Scotts burr, although
once I played it as a moon figure with a quirky Scotts burr.”
It’s
my plan to actually write The White Bear someday,
although I’m not sure I’m up to writing something that’s considered equivalent
to Shakespeare! But I also intend to
write the story of the author of The
White Bear, which will be my only dystopian tale. I’m not sure I’ll ever get that written
either, but I’m still not going to tell you anything about that sad story
because I don’t want to spoil it in case I do write it. I’ll only say that The White Bear’s author became fascinated by the story of how
Earth’s polar bear was destroyed when climate change eliminated its habitat and
he turns this into a whole set of symbolic circumstances.
The
play exists in only two slightly variant manuscripts, discovered within five
years of each other in Archivists’ caches. The first was found in what is
called in the 21st century New Mexico, and the other came to light much further
south in Mexico. Given that the setting
is the far northern reaches of the North American continent, it’s assumed that
the author lived somewhere in the middle of that continent and that Archivists
carried his/her works south during a migration.
While I won't tell you any more about the author, I am
going to summarize the plot of the drama itself. I have quite a few notes on that subject.
This
plot line came to me on 11/24/04,
with some additions at 2/7/06.
Ingreaf (the names of the characters all have
symbolic significance) is a technical scientist working in the domain of the
Great Northern Techno-Warlord; his name is Stranja (pronounced “strange-uh”
because his kind should be considered alien to the Earth) and he rules all of
Noonavik and parts of Midammerik. He
holds a competition to develop an invincible robotic warrior, so Ingreaf
concocts a mechanical bear that he covers with fake white fur because he has always
been fascinated with the tales of a time before the Sun-Scorch when magnificent
white bears roamed the now-vanished ice sheets of the North. He names it Luco, from the ancient root
meaning “light,” a name people ridicule – a robotic warrior should be dark and
menacing.
He
doesn’t give this robot the power of speech (note Precept No. 18, specifying
what it means to be human: Humans speak,
form symbols, share emotions), but he does give it the power to understand and
obey voice commands. But as he lives
with this monstrosity, he begins to get fascinated with it and it begins to
become more human to him. They form a
sort of reluctant bond. Ingreaf is a
lonely man and he keeps Luco in his bedroom and talks to it, coming to wonder
why it doesn’t respond.
Finally
the day comes for the robotic-warrior competition, where the Warlord requires
that the robots kill a man. Luco does
this so easily that it wins the competition, but as Ingreaf watches, he
realizes he’s made a terrible mistake – he should never have created a
killer.
He takes Luco and flees into the
wilderness, ending up in a valley at the foot of a peak called Hasta’s
Mountain, named for a mythical god/goddess.
(Hasta in Spanish means “until,” emphasizing the fact that Life is a process,
not a static given.) The valley is
inhabited by the ghost of a real extinct white bear, a cadaverous apparition
which obviously met its death by starvation.
As Ingreaf and Luco wander, they keep
catching glimpses of something in the forest, haunting them, shadowing
them. They catch glimpses of something
glimmering pale among the trees, and they hear noises, growls, whimpers. One night it’s particularly bad and there is
a scrambling in the bushes and Luco runs off in protective mode and leaves his
master alone. At that point, Luco is
representing the survival instinct, the desire of Life to survive at whatever
cost. While he’s gone, Ingreaf sits by
their fire terrified, and then there is this long silence (Ingreaf may speak
part of his on-going soliloquy at that point).
When Luco returns, he no longer has just red lights for eyes, he has
acquired actual bear eyes.
This is the beginning of the
metamorphosis – the merging of humanity with the natural. And it’s after this that they first hear
Hasta speaking to them. Gradually Luco
acquires more and more characteristics of the ghost as the metamorphosis
continues. And then finally Ingreaf
develops to where he can actually see the Bear – the emaciated, dying bear as
it was before it became only a spirit. Luco
has merged with the actual Bear, staring at its Creator and pleading for
understanding. Finally, Luco attacks Ingreaf,
who by now had come to accept his role as sacrificial victim. He saves the humanity
of the world by allowing Luco as White Bear (nature incarnate) to eat him and
become strong again, affirming the renewal process of nature.
When
Ingreaf decides to save the Bear by feeding him with his own body, he stretches
out his hand and cuts the wrist with his knife and the Luco/Bear laps the
blood, then approaches and seizes the hand in his mouth. The stage goes black, except for a glow where
Hasta lives, and there is absolutely silence.
Finally the lights are gradually brought up again and the Bear stands
there triumphantly at full living strength on its hind legs while a naked,
emaciated, and semi-transparent Ingreaf sits on a rock, a ghost himself now. Between them is a collection of bones and
bits of clothing. They stare at each
other and then the White Bear swells larger and vanishes into the forest, symbolizing the
impossibility of destruction of the natural.
Ingreaf cries out, “Luco, come back to me! I have given you my all – will you abandon
me?” But a compassionate Hasta says, Ingreaf, come to the top of the mountain and
let the Bear pass on its way. The cock
is about to crow. The sound of a
crowing cock is heard, symbolizing a return to reality, and Ingreaf rises
slowly and commences to trudge up toward the light. Final curtain.
Another parenthetical
note to close: I use the crowing cock symbolism in
MWFB, in a later section that isn’t even remotely ready to be published.
In the next post, I'll present the Precepts and begin an analysis.
In the next post, I'll present the Precepts and begin an analysis.
Previous posts in this series:
