Here is a painting that inspired me to write this post
by Hilda Hechle
based on Christina Rosetti's poem Goblin Market
I am really touched by its magic.
Rosetti was an English poet living in Victorian times
and her brother was a famous Pre-Raphaelite.
Nevermind. Now straight to the point.
Her poem Goblin market
presents a story about a girl
who is seduced by goblin's voices and finally goes to their market
and buys the sweetest fruits
She pays with her golden curl.
Fruits give her pleasure, but then lead her to
unbearable anguish-
she does not hear goblins again
and can not even buy more fruits
to reduce her pain at least for a while.
All story is not so important in my post
so check it if you are interested.
Generally she is rescued by her sister
and she can continue her life
and warns other of goblins.
You can interpret it as you wish.
Sexual meaning or just a story about sister love.
The motif of a fallen woman so popular in Victorian times,
but reversed -she is able to come back to the proper way in the end.
It does not matter.
I am going to write about one thing that caught my attention
when reading it.
Goblins + fruits that lead to some strange
how sweet, too sweet, too bitter-sweet,
whose wakening should have been in Paradise
(Rossetti's Echo)
state.
No. I do not mean Adam, Eve and their fruit,
but my beloved Labyrinth.
Do you remember the scene when the goblin gives Sara a magic fruit
and she enters a masquerade?
She is dressed in a beautiful dress and
dances with Goblin King
she is in love with.
He is in fact the personification
of her ideal man.
Even so she is able to escape
and in the end
she defeats Goblin King definitively
with her memorable words
You have no power over me
(it is similar to Katy Perry's MV
Wide awake
where she also enters labyrinth,
eats poisoned strawberry,
but defeats it all
and daringly punches her Prince Charming.
It does not necessarily mean she grows up
from fairy tales -like most of people interpret it-
she just gets to know that she can be a princess without a prince.
Fairytales can be much more diverse)
Laura in Goblin Market
is able to gain victory like Sara,
but only thanks to her sister.
I would call it that she is able to find her way to divide
reality from dreams.
It is not for the sake of reality,
but dreams!
In Goblin Market we read a story of Jeanie
who was going to marry,
but after eating fruits she was not able to continue her life.
Her hair turned grey and she withered like a flower
who was planted on an improper ground.
I spent long time thinking about why
Sara left Jareth
who was in fact created by her dreams.
Of course there is the good already mentioned theory
that princess does not need a prince
for her princess personality,
but I would like to look for a different explanation.
Lately I read a story which was written by
Chikamatsu Monzaemon, bunraku theater dramatist,
which presents a woman who longed for her lover so badly
that she made a doll
which was a direct copy of her beloved one,
but the doll was such a perfect copy
that by contiunuosly looking at it
the woman started to feel neglected
and finally she had only hate and disgust for it
and finally threw it away.
The line between reality and unreality was completely blurred
and unreality lost its charm.
This pleasant tension between them was blown away.
Realized dream leads to its own death.
You should feel pulled by it, but you have to make a step back
and then you win.
You stay with you desires unfulfilled, but you still own a full potentiality.
Fullfilling means death of sugestion and in the end the only you are left with
is sadness of your own limits and the monotony of everyday life.
This is what Japanese iki and dandysm is all about.
And this is why Sara had to leave Jareth.
This is why Goblins' fruit is too easy and cheesy way.
In Goblin Market we do not have any Goblin King directly,
but I felt his presence very strongly between words when I was readng it.
Day after day, night after night,
Laura kept watch in vain
In sullen silence of exceeding pain.
She never caught again the goblin cry:
“Come buy, come buy;”—
She never spied the goblin men
Hawking their fruits along the glen:
But when the noon wax’d bright
Her hair grew thin and grey;
She dwindled, as the fair full moon doth turn
To swift decay and burn
Her fire away.
