On the other hand, there is the chance of the "Arabian Nights"; for example,
the story of the third one-eyed dervish within the Story of the Porter and the
Three Ladies. The protagonist, Ajib, shoots down the brass horseman and then
swims to an island, where he secretely watches a group of people escorting
a young boy into an underground chamber. After they leave, he descends into
the chamber and makes the boy's acquaintance. The boy tells Ajib that
when he was born, his father was told: "Your son will live fifteen years,
after which there will be a conjunction of stars, and if he can escape it,
he will live. For there stands in the salty sea a mountain called the
magnetic mountain, on top of which stands a brass horseman. Fifty days
after this horseman falls from the horse, your son will die, and his killer
will be the man who will have thrown the the horseman off the horse, a man
named Ajib, son of King Khasib." So the boy reaches his fifteenth birthday
and then his father hears the news that the brass horseman has indeed been
thrown into the sea. So he builds the undergroung house and deposits his son
in it to stay there until the fifty days have passed and the danger is over.
When Ajib hears the boy's story, he says to himself: "I am the man who has
overthrown the brass horseman, and I am Ajib, son of King Khasib, but by God,
I will never kill him". So he stays with the boy in the underground house,
and of course winds up, by accident, killing him.
This is a mind-boggling story. The prophesy does not declare the boy's
death as an inescapable fate: there will be a conjuction of stars, and
the boy may or may not escape its influence. The father, in order supposedly
to hide the boy, lovingly deposits him within swimming distance from the
magnetic mountain, where -- given that his murderer is to be the man who
unhorses the brass horseman -- he is in fact _more_ likely to be killed.
Then Ajib seems to completely disregard the strikingness of the coincidence
that it is he, of all people, who winds up finding the boy in the underground
house, and instead of running away he just stays with him.
One might say: they all act as if in a dream. They submit themselves to the
seeming innocence of sleep, and in this "innocence" become complicitous of the
boy's death. There is in the story a Nietzschen element of raising the
stakes, but the agon seems inverted: it is almost as if chance here was being
cornered -- challenged to try and work, against increased odds, so as to
save the boy rather than kill him.
-m
the story of the third one-eyed dervish within the Story of the Porter and the
Three Ladies. The protagonist, Ajib, shoots down the brass horseman and then
swims to an island, where he secretely watches a group of people escorting
a young boy into an underground chamber. After they leave, he descends into
the chamber and makes the boy's acquaintance. The boy tells Ajib that
when he was born, his father was told: "Your son will live fifteen years,
after which there will be a conjunction of stars, and if he can escape it,
he will live. For there stands in the salty sea a mountain called the
magnetic mountain, on top of which stands a brass horseman. Fifty days
after this horseman falls from the horse, your son will die, and his killer
will be the man who will have thrown the the horseman off the horse, a man
named Ajib, son of King Khasib." So the boy reaches his fifteenth birthday
and then his father hears the news that the brass horseman has indeed been
thrown into the sea. So he builds the undergroung house and deposits his son
in it to stay there until the fifty days have passed and the danger is over.
When Ajib hears the boy's story, he says to himself: "I am the man who has
overthrown the brass horseman, and I am Ajib, son of King Khasib, but by God,
I will never kill him". So he stays with the boy in the underground house,
and of course winds up, by accident, killing him.
This is a mind-boggling story. The prophesy does not declare the boy's
death as an inescapable fate: there will be a conjuction of stars, and
the boy may or may not escape its influence. The father, in order supposedly
to hide the boy, lovingly deposits him within swimming distance from the
magnetic mountain, where -- given that his murderer is to be the man who
unhorses the brass horseman -- he is in fact _more_ likely to be killed.
Then Ajib seems to completely disregard the strikingness of the coincidence
that it is he, of all people, who winds up finding the boy in the underground
house, and instead of running away he just stays with him.
One might say: they all act as if in a dream. They submit themselves to the
seeming innocence of sleep, and in this "innocence" become complicitous of the
boy's death. There is in the story a Nietzschen element of raising the
stakes, but the agon seems inverted: it is almost as if chance here was being
cornered -- challenged to try and work, against increased odds, so as to
save the boy rather than kill him.
-m