A fable and a fairy tale: ‘The Alchemist’ and ‘Memoirs of a Geisha’
July 23, 2006 | 12:00am
This Week’s Winner
Lilia Ramos-de Leon is one of the winners of the STAR Lifestyle Journalism Awards 2006 (for PetLife). She has also won in contests sponsored by Newsbreak and Philippines Free Press. From 1966 to 1972, she wrote short stories published in Graphic, Chronicle Magazine, Asia-Philippines Leader, and The Nation. "The last issue of the Philippines Free Press before it was shut down by martial law had my short story…I started writing fiction again after martial law." In the 1970s, practicing "camouflage writing," she ran a historical column in Panorama. From 1984 to 1992 , she was an attaché at the Philippine Embassy in Madrid, Spain. She has an MA in English from the State University of Northern Virginia in Fairfax, and attended UP, Ateneo, and PWU.
The Alchemist is a fable and its very title flies you to a time and world where magic could change lead to gold and the hero transforms himself into swirling wind. Santiago is a shepherd boy who leaves his flock in his native Andalusia in quest of a hidden treasure – clearly a metaphor for the longings of the spirit. Any mother would want her children to enjoy the purity and poesy of this book by Portuguese Paulo Coelho who has long won worldwide renown for his ethereal literary works. In this fable, Coelho describes a religion: everything on Earth has a soul, whether mineral, vegetable, or animal – or even just a simple thought. The earth is alive and has a soul. We are all part of this soul.
The heroine of Memoirs of a Geisha, for her part, confides to you the nitty-gritty of the making of a sex machine to pander to man’s egotism and sexual drives. The book is touted on the cover as "the memoirs of a geisha"; the qualifying phrase "a novel" is there, but in small print and in the receding shade of blue. Undeniably, the cover aims to give Arthur Golden’s debut novel the lure of True Confessions. But as the old saying goes, a book must not be judged by its cover. It is true that the Peeping Tom syndrome – the curiosity to delve deep into the life, heart, and mind of a woman of pleasure – accounts in part for the novel’s engrossing power; but this is the least of the striking qualities that made it an international best seller and convinced movie moguls to put it on the movie screen. However, the movie fails to deliver much of what makes the book a literary masterpiece, for example, breathtaking pieces of imagery.
Memoirs is a historical work. Giving it life are details evidently gleaned from impressive research and – transcending details – insights gained from personal interviews including those with Japan’s top geisha of the 1960s and ‘70s. The very convincing "literary impersonation" of a factual character depicts the ethos of the Japanese woman and the traditions that molded her.
But why does a critic acclaim Golden’s work as "an exotic fable" and another, as "part historical novel, part fairy tale"?
The story of Santiago is a fable; therefore, abstracts are made concrete: nuggets of wisdom (some of which would be useful in the corporate world) glow and glitter as allegories and a whole religion is made clear in three sentences. Simple everyday images that appeal to the five senses are used to make a point: mint tea served in crystal glasses and enjoyed after a sweaty climb up a mountain. And a wise Old Man (who looks like anybody’s grandfather) is the incarnation of a beneficent force that takes on different forms. He appears in our lives in "the form of a solution, or a good idea" and "at a crucial moment . . . makes it easier for things to happen." He is one of the characters in this fairy tale that makes you chuckle, as when after leaving the boys, he says, "It’s too bad that he’s quickly to forget my name . . . I should have repeated it for him. Then when he spoke about me he would say that I am Melchizedek, the king of Salem." And then feeling abashed by his vanity, he looks to the skies and excuses himself: "My Lord . . . an old king sometimes has to take pride in himself."
Like its language, the plot of The Alchemist is simple. Like a child’s drawing of a path going from the foot of a mountain up to its top, it doesn’t swerve or zigzag around; but it is no less rich than the multi-textured story of Memoirs with its many ramifications.
In Santiago’s quest he meets with villains and adventures no less worldly than those which the geisha has to grapple with. Like Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s The Little Prince, or Sir Galahad of the Holy Grail, he locks horns with evil but remains as innocent as the proverbial lamb up to the last part of the novel when he finds his "treasure."
Memoirs, with its very first line, drags you inside the heroine’s skin so that you are no longer yourself but Chiyo-San, the little girl with the blue-gray eyes who lives in what she calls a "tipsy house" because "it leans to one side, like it’s had too much to drink" and stands near an ocean that has "caught a terrible cold, because it (is) always wheezing" and sneezing out a tremendous spray with every burst of wind. And because you are Chiyo, not only do you know of her innocence, it permeates you, as does her grief over a dying mother, her helplessness upon being torn from home, and her despair at finding a sister sold into a brothel. And looking back on life later as Sayuri, the most sought-after Geisha of Gion, you muse with her: "We lead our lives like water flowing down the hill, going more or less in one direction until we splash into something that forces us to find a new course."
Chiyo-San/Sayuri is no less innocent than Santiago the shepherd boy; and her pure heart is a shining armor that protects her from the reader’s antipathy despite her career of catering to venery. She evokes the classic Snow White tale. The devilish stepmother has her counterpart in Hatsumomo, the geisha who endlessly torments the heroine. But she has her fairy godmother in the person of Mameha – wise and experienced in the ways of the geisha kingdom – who protects and guides her to triumph over the wicked Hatsumomo. And through it all, even while living in a world where success is reckoned by the colorful splendor of the kimonos a geisha owns and by the wealth and power of the man who keeps her, the heroine retains the pure heart of little Chiyo who lived in a tipsy house by the eternally sneezing sea.
Chiyo’s miseries are as tragic as those of Snow White’s and infinitely more sordid. Many of the characters she deals with turn the stomach, but the writer’s pen is never heavy or somber – and its ink is most often of the colors and lightness of a cherry blossom fluttering from a bough. Always there is humor – even when Chiyo and her sister are being poked and pinched in their private parts (preparatory to being sold), the nine-year-old girl thinks of the cranky old woman torturing them as "Mrs. Fidget" because she fidgets too much; or years later, as she is painfully deflowered by the highest bidder for her hymen, she laughs at his "eel," and in her mind calls him "Mr. Crab" because he sidles and scrounges his face very much like this crustacean.
No, Sayuri-San is no Madame Butterfly who loses her man and then commits hara-kiri. Sayuri’s story ends as a proper fairy tale does: after all her travails, she is rewarded with her long-cherished, but seemingly unattainable "Ultimate Desire": a prince charming who loves her with what Santiago the shepherd boy defines as "love without ownership," which in the geisha world – where the male ego is God and self-gratification, a religion – is deemed to be but an illusion.
Both the allegory and the memoirs are stories of quest. In The Alchemist it says that when you want something with all your heart, the Soul of the World, a positive force, helps you. Sayuri and Santiago dreamed and desired with all their hearts. And The Alchemist blesses them with this: "To realize one’s destiny is a person’s only obligation."
Lilia Ramos-de Leon is one of the winners of the STAR Lifestyle Journalism Awards 2006 (for PetLife). She has also won in contests sponsored by Newsbreak and Philippines Free Press. From 1966 to 1972, she wrote short stories published in Graphic, Chronicle Magazine, Asia-Philippines Leader, and The Nation. "The last issue of the Philippines Free Press before it was shut down by martial law had my short story…I started writing fiction again after martial law." In the 1970s, practicing "camouflage writing," she ran a historical column in Panorama. From 1984 to 1992 , she was an attaché at the Philippine Embassy in Madrid, Spain. She has an MA in English from the State University of Northern Virginia in Fairfax, and attended UP, Ateneo, and PWU.
The Alchemist is a fable and its very title flies you to a time and world where magic could change lead to gold and the hero transforms himself into swirling wind. Santiago is a shepherd boy who leaves his flock in his native Andalusia in quest of a hidden treasure – clearly a metaphor for the longings of the spirit. Any mother would want her children to enjoy the purity and poesy of this book by Portuguese Paulo Coelho who has long won worldwide renown for his ethereal literary works. In this fable, Coelho describes a religion: everything on Earth has a soul, whether mineral, vegetable, or animal – or even just a simple thought. The earth is alive and has a soul. We are all part of this soul.
The heroine of Memoirs of a Geisha, for her part, confides to you the nitty-gritty of the making of a sex machine to pander to man’s egotism and sexual drives. The book is touted on the cover as "the memoirs of a geisha"; the qualifying phrase "a novel" is there, but in small print and in the receding shade of blue. Undeniably, the cover aims to give Arthur Golden’s debut novel the lure of True Confessions. But as the old saying goes, a book must not be judged by its cover. It is true that the Peeping Tom syndrome – the curiosity to delve deep into the life, heart, and mind of a woman of pleasure – accounts in part for the novel’s engrossing power; but this is the least of the striking qualities that made it an international best seller and convinced movie moguls to put it on the movie screen. However, the movie fails to deliver much of what makes the book a literary masterpiece, for example, breathtaking pieces of imagery.
Memoirs is a historical work. Giving it life are details evidently gleaned from impressive research and – transcending details – insights gained from personal interviews including those with Japan’s top geisha of the 1960s and ‘70s. The very convincing "literary impersonation" of a factual character depicts the ethos of the Japanese woman and the traditions that molded her.
But why does a critic acclaim Golden’s work as "an exotic fable" and another, as "part historical novel, part fairy tale"?
The story of Santiago is a fable; therefore, abstracts are made concrete: nuggets of wisdom (some of which would be useful in the corporate world) glow and glitter as allegories and a whole religion is made clear in three sentences. Simple everyday images that appeal to the five senses are used to make a point: mint tea served in crystal glasses and enjoyed after a sweaty climb up a mountain. And a wise Old Man (who looks like anybody’s grandfather) is the incarnation of a beneficent force that takes on different forms. He appears in our lives in "the form of a solution, or a good idea" and "at a crucial moment . . . makes it easier for things to happen." He is one of the characters in this fairy tale that makes you chuckle, as when after leaving the boys, he says, "It’s too bad that he’s quickly to forget my name . . . I should have repeated it for him. Then when he spoke about me he would say that I am Melchizedek, the king of Salem." And then feeling abashed by his vanity, he looks to the skies and excuses himself: "My Lord . . . an old king sometimes has to take pride in himself."
Like its language, the plot of The Alchemist is simple. Like a child’s drawing of a path going from the foot of a mountain up to its top, it doesn’t swerve or zigzag around; but it is no less rich than the multi-textured story of Memoirs with its many ramifications.
In Santiago’s quest he meets with villains and adventures no less worldly than those which the geisha has to grapple with. Like Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s The Little Prince, or Sir Galahad of the Holy Grail, he locks horns with evil but remains as innocent as the proverbial lamb up to the last part of the novel when he finds his "treasure."
Memoirs, with its very first line, drags you inside the heroine’s skin so that you are no longer yourself but Chiyo-San, the little girl with the blue-gray eyes who lives in what she calls a "tipsy house" because "it leans to one side, like it’s had too much to drink" and stands near an ocean that has "caught a terrible cold, because it (is) always wheezing" and sneezing out a tremendous spray with every burst of wind. And because you are Chiyo, not only do you know of her innocence, it permeates you, as does her grief over a dying mother, her helplessness upon being torn from home, and her despair at finding a sister sold into a brothel. And looking back on life later as Sayuri, the most sought-after Geisha of Gion, you muse with her: "We lead our lives like water flowing down the hill, going more or less in one direction until we splash into something that forces us to find a new course."
Chiyo-San/Sayuri is no less innocent than Santiago the shepherd boy; and her pure heart is a shining armor that protects her from the reader’s antipathy despite her career of catering to venery. She evokes the classic Snow White tale. The devilish stepmother has her counterpart in Hatsumomo, the geisha who endlessly torments the heroine. But she has her fairy godmother in the person of Mameha – wise and experienced in the ways of the geisha kingdom – who protects and guides her to triumph over the wicked Hatsumomo. And through it all, even while living in a world where success is reckoned by the colorful splendor of the kimonos a geisha owns and by the wealth and power of the man who keeps her, the heroine retains the pure heart of little Chiyo who lived in a tipsy house by the eternally sneezing sea.
Chiyo’s miseries are as tragic as those of Snow White’s and infinitely more sordid. Many of the characters she deals with turn the stomach, but the writer’s pen is never heavy or somber – and its ink is most often of the colors and lightness of a cherry blossom fluttering from a bough. Always there is humor – even when Chiyo and her sister are being poked and pinched in their private parts (preparatory to being sold), the nine-year-old girl thinks of the cranky old woman torturing them as "Mrs. Fidget" because she fidgets too much; or years later, as she is painfully deflowered by the highest bidder for her hymen, she laughs at his "eel," and in her mind calls him "Mr. Crab" because he sidles and scrounges his face very much like this crustacean.
No, Sayuri-San is no Madame Butterfly who loses her man and then commits hara-kiri. Sayuri’s story ends as a proper fairy tale does: after all her travails, she is rewarded with her long-cherished, but seemingly unattainable "Ultimate Desire": a prince charming who loves her with what Santiago the shepherd boy defines as "love without ownership," which in the geisha world – where the male ego is God and self-gratification, a religion – is deemed to be but an illusion.
Both the allegory and the memoirs are stories of quest. In The Alchemist it says that when you want something with all your heart, the Soul of the World, a positive force, helps you. Sayuri and Santiago dreamed and desired with all their hearts. And The Alchemist blesses them with this: "To realize one’s destiny is a person’s only obligation."
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