The Palm-Wine Drinkard, Amos Tutuola, 1952 - Part 13
The causes of the famine to An egg fed the whole world
Welcome back to Seventy years of books, where I'm blogging my way through the seventy titles originally compiled for the Big Jubilee Read. This week I’m continuing with the first book, Amos Tutuola's The Palm-Wine Drinkard.
The causes of the famine
This chapter is a lovely little piece of mythology, telling the story of a disastrous hunting trip Heaven and Land take together during the “olden days” - Heaven comes down to visit Land.
Unfortunately, the only mouse they manage to catch is too small for them to share and both are determined to keep it.
Who will take the mouse?
Heaven and Land cannot agree who will take the mouse so they both leave it and return home.
However, Heaven decides to stop all rain and water being sent down to the Earth and so everything begins to die. This story has a lot of parallels with Demeter stopping the growth of all plant life while Persephone is in the Underworld with Hades.
Of course the story of Persephone was to explain seasonal changes in Europe, particular the change from the harsher winters to the new growth of spring when Persephone would return to her mother on Earth. Nigeria, where the palm-wine drinkard is set, has only two seasons: wet and dry. The dry season features dusty winds with low rainfall and humidity, so the story of Heaven refusing to send moisture to the Earth because of an argument with Land, could be used to explain this in a similar way.
In many retellings of Persephone’s story, Hades sees himself as having the “right” to take her, firstly because he wants her and secondly because he can - though there are many alternative interpretations that imply her passiveness in the relationship may have been over-exaggerated. In the Heaven and Land myth, Heaven sees himself as superior to Land and is therefore willing to destroy the Earth through blatant neglect. Even though Land also sees himself as the superior, it is Heaven who is able to wield enough power to have disastrous consequences for Land.
This emphasises the point that holding onto an argument long past when you can’t even remember what it was about, can have catastrophic effects on the future.
An egg fed the whole world
As predicted last time, the palm-wine drinkard’s magical egg holds the key to solving the problems of his hometown’s famine.
He uses the egg firstly to produce food and drink for his family and then for his friends in the town. Unfortunately though, word soon spreads and he is overwhelmed by people coming from far and wide to get food and drink for their towns.
The palm-wine drinkard and his egg have solved the problem and changed everybody’s lives, but at what cost?
This week in 1952
A little late (1956), but this is a lovely reel about a found purse which is essentially a time capsule of American high school life in the 50s.
You can see a beautiful royal warrant, which was used between 1936 and 1952, and read about some of the preparation for the 1953 Everest exhibition, a year prior to the failed 1952 Swiss exhibition, in this lovely post about a Welsh hotel.
Noel Coward’s romantic comedy Quadrille premiered in London’s Phoenix Theatre on 12 September.
Yesterday was Agatha Christie’s birthday. The Queen of Crime released three novels in 1952: They do it with mirrors, Mrs McGinty’s Dead and A Daughter’s a Daughter (as Mary Westmacott).
On 16 September, Vesta Tilley, a music hall performer who at one point was England’s highest earning woman, passed away.
1952 film of the week: Moulin Rouge
No, not that one! I actually haven’t even seen that one…
The 1952 Moulin Rouge is loosely based on the life of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and his connections with Paris’ iconic burlesque palace.
And speaking of iconic, we open with footage of the red windmill. Dancers in the Moulin Rouge are being sketched by Toulouse-Lautrec (José Ferrer) who is enthusiastically finishing off a bottle of cognac. When questioned by a waitress, he tells he that he is thirsty, and she tells him that “wine is for thirst”, a sentiment which would no doubt be greatly appreciated by our palm-wine drinkard.
A flashback to Toulouse-Lautrec’s childhood shows the accident which broke both his legs leading to his shortened stature in adulthood. He is rejected by his father and aristocratic society, becoming embittered and aggressive, particularly towards any women he has a romantic interest in.
After Toulouse-Lautrec designs a poster which increases the success of the Moulin Rouge exponentially, the world and people he was familiar with fade away. Throughout the film he increasingly drinks more and more alcohol, even hiding it in his cane. The world of late nineteenth century Paris is dark and drags people into its underbelly, and even the son of a Count is not safe from its effects.
Probably the darkest film I’ve looked at for 1952, it does play a little fast and loose with some of the facts of the artist’s life, but is an interesting portrayal of a man whose work remains admired today.
1952 song of the week: I went to your wedding, Patti Page
This is a passionate heartbreak song about someone saying goodbye to the person they love as they literally get married in front of them.
A guitar is strummed throughout and heavy rhyme gives the song a feeling of finality while the lyrics also indicate a feeling of acceptance.
Rather unusually for the time, some of the imagery in the song strongly indicates that it’s the bride and not the groom Page is heartbroken over, which considering society’s attitudes at the time, just makes it all the more poignant.
1952 product of the week: Barcode
OK, so a barcode isn’t so much a product as something which is put onto products, but it’s hard to imagine shopping (offline) today without them.
Barcodes began when a stressed supermarket manager begged the Dean at the Drexel Institute of Technology, Philadelphia, to streamline his customers’ experience and his stocktaking efforts. The Dean didn’t offer any solutions, but postgraduate student Bernard Silver overheard the conversation and told Joe Woodland, a graduate of Drexel and inventor, about the problem.
Inspired by the Morse Code he had learned during his time with the Boy Scouts, Woodland sat on the beach and drew three dots in the sand, and considering different ideas, dragged them out into four lines.
This is when the idea hit him: that a combination of wide and narrow lines could be used as a code instead of the dots and dashes used in Morse.
Working together, Woodland and Silver managed to invent a reader, but it was cumbersome and had a number of issues with functionality. It wouldn’t be for over twenty years that the technology was at a point where it revolutionised supermarkets, but that first patent, inspired by an overheard conversation and day at the beach, was granted back in 1952.
A quick note to let you know that I’m having surgery in a couple of days, so will be taking a short break from posting while I recover. Take care and speak soon!