Jack Zipes
HOW CAN a blind storyteller see the world more clearly than most people who have their sight? Or, do we really have our sight? Are we born only to be blinded by commodified screens and rosy glasses? Do we need a blind storyteller to waken us to the conditions that tend to blind us? Are some so-called fairy tales too dark to bear?
These are some of the questions that came to my mind after reading Adam Kuplowsky’s fascinating introduction to Vasily Eroshenko’s life and unusual stories—stories intended to unseat us and tales that make Franz Kafka’s stories, written about the same time, meek.
Like Kafka, however, Eroshenko embodied and lived his tales in metaphorical images that he could not even see. Many of them, as Kuplowsky points out, are sad if not pessimistic. Yet, in most of the animal stories, the endings reveal how life can be ironic and that we can learn from our mistakes. This is certainly true in “The Scholar’s Head” and “By a Pond.” In most of the Japanese tales, written by the grim Eroshenko, the major protagonists are talking animals or trees and plants that expose human frailties. They are portrayed in a dry style that enables readers to remain dispassionate and, at the same time, emotionally involved in the fate of these strange creatures. “The Death of the Canary” is a good example, for it deals with issues of freedom and monogamy in a humorous tone. But the tale about imprisonment and freedom that is the most poignant in this collection is “The Narrow Cage.” Eroshenko not only raises the issue of animal rights but also condemns the pathetic ignorance and voyeurism of common people, who are not much freer than the caged tiger.
In all the Japanese tales, it is clear that Eroshenko had been influenced by the socialist and anarchist movements as well as by the Russian Revolution of 1917. His dedication to radical change often resulted in his being banned from different countries. Yet, he maintained an inimitable objective style in dealing with the brutality of humans who were no better than the animals they misunderstood and mistreated. Following traumatic experiences with the police in India, Japan, and China, Eroshenko changed his style of writing and became much more dogmatic, if not more pessimistic. Tales such as “The Tragedy of the Chick” and “The Red Flower” are desperate indictments of oppressive governments and the conditions that do not allow people to flower and use their talents to create fair and just communities. There is, according to Eroshenko, no remedy to a world that has denied freedom to everyone, from insects to eagles, from children to adults.
Despite the fact that Eroshenko’s stories provide morals, they clearly are not your usual fairy tales, nor are his animal stories your usual fables. His narratives want us to see through words. They want us to open our eyes. They are desperate cries for help by a writer who wants us to understand what we are doing to ourselves, and how we are destroying the world, when we could be cultivating more just and joyous ways of living.