This fall, we debuted our new line of literary comics for ages 8 and up, the TOON Graphics. These books are some of the absolute best, and edgiest, that we’ve ever produced. They represent the kind of art and writing that inspired me to read, write, and make books when I was a kid.
In the months since releasing the books, as I move quickly between the titles and their images (for social media, flyers, etc.), I’ve noticed a dramatic theme that ties all three of these very different books together….the Labyrinth!
InCast Away on the Letter A (A Philemon Adventure), Phil, the hero, winds his way through a labyrinthine fantastical world as he tries to find his way home. At the end of his adventure, he even wanders into a literal maze.
InTheseus and the Minotaur, based on the famous Greek myth, Theseus escapes the labyrinth to end all labyrinths–the home of the fearsome Minotaur.
InHansel & Gretel, the two children get lost in the woods and (led by Gretel) succeed in escaping a witches grasp. In Lorenzo Mattotti’s fabulous drawings, the trees themselves become twisting and haunting, like walls of a forest maze.
These are all great stories, and the use of a maze/labyrinth adds a measure of drama and visual excitement that appeals to readers of all ages.
But is there something about young adults that allows them to connect to the idea of a labyrinth in a unique way?
Maybe it has to do with the complexities of life outside of home, which kids ages 8 and older really start to be aware of…the fear of getting lost, of being alone, and the joy of finding your own way.
At their hearts, in other words, labyrinths could be metaphors for venturing away from home for the first time; and these stories of escape using ingenuity, relationships, and bravery give us hope that we, too, can find a path out of adversity. No wonder these stories are so appealing to the age group!
These books encourage young people to be confident, clever, and independent. They are perfect gifts young readers, the kind that they will always remember.
But, for that matter, it’s a lesson and a story that adults and teenagers can relate to as well. The older I get, the more clearly I see that the world is not always designed to be easy. Sometimes, it truly feels like it has been designed to confuse! In that sense, these books really speak to me as well, giving me hope (through a bit of fabulous fantasy) that I can find my way through any maze–through darkness, through twists and turns, until I find my way home…
Shloof! Shlop! Read all about Philemon at the Albertine- From the process of translating the sound effects to the metaphorical richness of this French farmhand’s world. http://bit.ly/1FLVeaP
Philemon is a figure who appears in two literary works:
Ovid’s “Metamorphoses”, and Goethe’s “Faust”.
In “Metamorphoses”, Ovid narrates how Jupiter and Mercury wandered around, disguised as mortals in the hill country of Phyrgia.
Searching for a place to rest, they were turned away from a thousand homes until they were met by an elderly couple- Philemon and Baucis, who graciously invited these strangers into their humble cottage.
Philemon and Baucis had married in their youth in their cottage and have grown old together in it, accepting their poverty. To honor their guests they offered to kill their only goose. The goose took refuge with the gods who decreed that it should not be killed, and revealed themselves to the couple, saying that those around them would be punished but they would be spared.
With the Gods, they climbed into safety atop a mountain, and upon reaching the top, they saw that the entire country was flooded. Only their cottage remained, now transformed into a temple made of columns of marble and a roof of gold.
To repay their kindness, the gods granted the old couple any wish, to which Philemon and Baucis’ reply was in keeping with their deep humility and reverence.
They wished to become priests and serve in this new shrine to the gods and to die at the same time as a testimony of their enduring love. And so it happened, and when they died, the gods honored them further by tranforming them into trees so that they could continue to live side by side in this way as they had in their mortal lives.
Much later, Goethe uses the old couple as a literary allusion in his book, “Faust”.
In Faust, Goethe has Faust build a city on land reclaimed from the sea. In order to do this, Faust tells Mephistopheles (The Devil) that he wants the old couple, Philemon and Baucis, who live there, to move.
To Faust’s ultimate horror, Mephistopheles burns the old couple’s cottage, with the two still alive inside.
In 1913, during a period of psychosis, Carl Jung recounts a dream in his book, “Memories, Dreams, Reflections” in which a figure named Philemon appears to him.
Jung saw a sea-blue sky covered by brown clods of earth that appeared to be breaking apart. Out of the blue, he saw an old man with kingfisher wings and the horns of a bull flying across the sky, carrying a bunch of keys.
After the dream, Jung painted the image, because he did not understand it. During this intense period, Jung was struck by the synchronicity of finding a dead kingfisher, a bird rarely seen around Zürich, in his garden by the lakeshore.
Thereafter, Philemon played an important role in Jung’s fantasies. To Jung, he represented superior insight and functioned like a guru to him.
Philemon explained how Jung treated thoughts as though they were generated by himself, while for Philemon “thoughts were like animals in the forest, or people in a room, or birds in the air.”
Jung concluded that Philemon taught him “psychic objectivity, the reality of the psyche.”
This helped Jung to understand that there is something in us which can say things that we do not know and do not intend.
Goethe’s Faust also made a tremendous impression on Jung and held a life-long significance for him.
He felt personally implicated by the destruction of these humble and reverent figures and felt that it was his responsibility to atone for this crime and to prevent its repetition in the 20th century.
Healing this “Faustian split”- the breaking off of man’s spiritual, intuitive, and psychological understanding for the western world’s rapid emphasis on industrialization and hyper-rationality would become a central theme in Jung’s life work.
At his tower in Bollingen, Jung commemorated Philemon. Over the gate, he carved the inscription,
“Philemonis Sacrum – Fausti Poenitentia”
[Philemon’s Shrine – Faust’s Repentance].
In one of the rooms at Bollingen, he painted a huge mural of the winged Philemon, essentially reproducing the painting from the Red Book.
In a letter to Paul Schmitt in 1942, Jung wrote:
“I have taken over Faust as my heritage, and moreover as the advocate and avenger of Philemon and Baucis, who, unlike Faust the superman, are the hosts of the gods in a ruthless and godforsaken age.”
What does this all mean, and why is Philemon important?
To quote W.H. Auden:
“We are lived by powers we do not understand.”
Often, rather than us having ideas, it is ideas that instead have us.
The “Faustian split” which Jung warns us about, and vigilantly fought against his whole life is the tendency for mankind’s rationality to fall in love with itself and it’s own creations.
When we end up prioritizing specific ideologies or systems of understanding over the dignity of the individual, we risk being inauthentic, and inevitably neglect or even deny what cannot be justified by our own ideologies.
This is analogous to what happens in any tyrannical society, any dogmatic religious system, or oppresive political party/point of view.
If you need any examples of this. You need only to look around, or turn to history and you will see it everywhere you go.
You will see it in racism, sexual orientation/class prejudice, gender inequality, the holocaust, and the gulag.
If we are not careful, there is an unconscious part within each and every person that is capable of commiting horrifying actions under the justification and rationalization of any ideology.
In this sense, Philemon acts as a counter-symbol: a spiritual totem that represents the individual’s consciousness/psychological awareness behind rationality.
The symbol of Philemon suggests that there are things that cannot always be grasped by rationality and logic but can be peripherally known through other means using our own individual intuition and discernment.
If I had a nickel for everytime I’ve seen the fate of an entire race be defined by the two most powerful gays the world has ever seen having a divorce, I would have two nickels.
Which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it happened twice.
