Post by whitewolfstark on Dec 21, 2015 0:08:07 GMT
A collection of Archetypes
An Audio-Visual catalog of archetypes for everyone to make reference of and perhaps deconstruct and reconstruct characters into.
Archetype Number One (because I feel like talking about this one now):
1. The Moon Lady
The moon in most of Western classical myth and legend is associated with the "divine feminine". To put it as Dany's Dothraki maids would put it: "moon is wife of sun, everyone knows that." And that is the traditional Western interpretation of most Moon symbolism.
Characters in ASOIAF who are definite "Moon Ladies":
Danaerys
Sansa
Lysa
Let's start with the easy one first: Lysa
Lysa's most similar character outside of ASOIAF would be akin to that of the "Queen of the Night" from Mozart & Schikenader's opera, Die Zauberflote (aka The Magic Flute). Her incarnation seems to be "Crazy Moon Lady". It's long been associated through myth and legends that the moon, while being "divinely femine" also has been associated with the "crazed" the "insane" and "madness", and finally transformation--most specifically during full moons. Recall that werewolves turn under a full moon where they lose their sanity and go half mad and bestial. The word "lunacy" of course coming from the same root as "Luna" and "Lunar"--the Latin-derived words for the moon.
With this legacy of insanity with the moon, one can see its full fruition here with Lysa and the Queen of the Night. Think back to early AGOT as you read further on, when Lysa's letter which begins the actions by claiming her husband was murdered by the Lannisters arrives at Winterfell. I find similarity here between Lysa's actions and those of the Queen of the Night in her first meeting she has with our hero of the opera: Tamino. She begins through misdirection and lies by invoking an "innocent" character into helping her protect her child (O Zittre Nicht):
For those who like to know what's going on I've provided a rough translation based partly on my own low-level knowledge of German but also a few competing translations.
Lysa and Cat's meeting when Catelyn arrives at the Eyrie is eeriely similar in that Lysa in public adopts one tone of false happiness to see her sister has arrived, and is overly sweet. It falls in line with her letter where she earlier implored Catelyn that she left for fear of her and her son's safety. The Queen of the Night had her daughter Pamina stolen from her, Lysa plays up the idea that her husband was murdered and exaggerates it in order to help put into conflict two factions that would otherwise not be in conflict with one another. Similarly, the Queen of the Night, by lying to Tamino hopes to strike a serious blow against Sarastro, pitting two people against each other for her own means.
What I find interesting about the archetype is that Mozart's version is actually a twist on the old archetype. Originally up until that point the Moon Lady imploring for help was played absolutely straight. In fact Schikenader originally had the Queen of the Night being good in the first draft of the opera, but when a competing entertainment group produced a singspiel with a similar plot, it can be easily seen that Schikenader made his Moon Lady evil as a twist in the plot. What's interesting is the effect this plot twist on the traditional symbolism has had as an effect down the line for many many years, with Lysa likely unconsciously inheriting the legacy of the plot twist Schikenader made out of necessity.
Let us look to the scene where the Queen of the Night next appears and the plot twist is made apparent that this is a power struggle between a Crazed Moon Lady and the newly chosen Sun-King. Link again, provided for the audio-visually needed: (Der Holle Rache)
The intimidation done through the aria at the end of the scene between mother and daughter is reminscent in ASOIAF of Lysa's final scene with Sansa, when she attempts--through the Moon Door--to intimidate Sansa with the threat of death for associating herself with Petyr.
The elements are all very much the same, but all mixed up and reconfigured to create a slightly different soup, though with all the same basic ingredients.
Death threat
Moon Lady
Intimidated Girl
Another Man
Back to Die Zauberflote, it turns out the Queen lied, and a more complicated political situation was going on where her husband and she were on the outs. This is expressed slightly differently in both Lysa and the Queen of the Night's story, but the rough ingredients are much the same: husband didn't trust her with power or responsibility of raising their child, so he arranged for another man to inherit his power and told him to raise his child right--away from the bad influence of its mother.
The common theme here between Die Zauberflote & ASOIAF is that the heavens are "out of sync" and a shift in power due to the death of her husband has caused the Sun and the Moon to fall out of alignment as they struggle for dominance and a new union. The Queen of the Night seeks to dominate with her alone having sole power of both the Moon and the Sun, while Sarastro appears to wish for a new union to occur by him training a successor for himself in Tamino the Prince, and using the love that Tamino has for Pamina to act as a new form of celestial marriage between a moon and a sun to bring balance back to the mystical land of "Aegypt". In Lysa's case, she seeks--under Petyr's influence--to get "revenge" against her own family so she can live happily ever after with Petyr. The Moon has been taken over by a puppet whose puppetmaster keeps her dangling on a string, until he cuts those strings when she is no longer of use to him.
I am not saying that GRRM is referencing The Magic Flute in the least through Lysa (although I would say that it has a great influence on culture that GRRM might or might not be aware of regardless), but in both scenes you can tell an archetype of the crazed moon lady is invoked, and the similarities in how that archetype acts and plays out. There are central issues that are all similar which speaks to some kind of older retelling. Further, beyond that, unreasonable mother figures (and mother-in-law figures) are older than The Magic Flute and ASOIAF after all. One only has to look to the Late Roman Antiquity "fairy tale" of Eros and Psyche to see a similar situation of a mother-figure (the goddess Venus) demanding a daughter undergo trials and tests and bullying the girl who she sees as a threat and at the same time something of value. Heck you see this constantly with Sansa, with her relationship with Cersei and Lysa both, but that's getting into the next archetype: the New Moon Lady. Which I'll save for post two.
I hope my slightly coherent ramblings are of some interest to you all. I further enjoy looking at the archetypes with the rest of you.
~WWS
An Audio-Visual catalog of archetypes for everyone to make reference of and perhaps deconstruct and reconstruct characters into.
Archetype Number One (because I feel like talking about this one now):
1. The Moon Lady
The moon in most of Western classical myth and legend is associated with the "divine feminine". To put it as Dany's Dothraki maids would put it: "moon is wife of sun, everyone knows that." And that is the traditional Western interpretation of most Moon symbolism.
Characters in ASOIAF who are definite "Moon Ladies":
Danaerys
Sansa
Lysa
Let's start with the easy one first: Lysa
Lysa's most similar character outside of ASOIAF would be akin to that of the "Queen of the Night" from Mozart & Schikenader's opera, Die Zauberflote (aka The Magic Flute). Her incarnation seems to be "Crazy Moon Lady". It's long been associated through myth and legends that the moon, while being "divinely femine" also has been associated with the "crazed" the "insane" and "madness", and finally transformation--most specifically during full moons. Recall that werewolves turn under a full moon where they lose their sanity and go half mad and bestial. The word "lunacy" of course coming from the same root as "Luna" and "Lunar"--the Latin-derived words for the moon.
With this legacy of insanity with the moon, one can see its full fruition here with Lysa and the Queen of the Night. Think back to early AGOT as you read further on, when Lysa's letter which begins the actions by claiming her husband was murdered by the Lannisters arrives at Winterfell. I find similarity here between Lysa's actions and those of the Queen of the Night in her first meeting she has with our hero of the opera: Tamino. She begins through misdirection and lies by invoking an "innocent" character into helping her protect her child (O Zittre Nicht):
For those who like to know what's going on I've provided a rough translation based partly on my own low-level knowledge of German but also a few competing translations.
| Rough Translation | ||
| Deutsch | English | |
| Königinn. | Queen | |
| Recitativ. | Recitative | |
| O zittre nicht, mein lieber Sohn! Du bist unschuldig, weise, fromm; Ein Jüngling, so wie du, vermag am besten, Dies tief betrübte Mutterherz zu trösten. | O tremble not, my dear son! You are innocent, wise, pious; A youth, just like you, can best, Comfort this mother's deeply saddened heart. | |
| Arie. | Aria | |
| Zum Leiden bin ich auserkohren; Denn meine Tochter fehlet mir, Durch sie ging all mein Glück verloren -- Ein Bösewicht entfloh mit ihr. Noch seh' ich ihr Zittern Mit bangem Erschüttern, Ihr ängstliches Beben, Ihr schüchternes Streben. Ich mußte sie mir rauben sehen, Ach helft! war alles, was sie sprach; Allein vergebens war ihr Flehen, Denn meine Hülfe war zu schwach. | I am condemned to much suffering; Because my daughter has been taken from me, With her goes all my happiness-- A villain has taken her. I still see her trembling, shaking with fear, with fitful agitation, and feebly struggling. I saw them rob her from me, Oh help! was all she said; But her cry was in vain, Because I was too weak to help. | |
| Allegro. | Allegro (the fast section) | |
| Du wirst sie zu befreyen gehen, Du wirst der Tochter Retter seyn. Und werd ich dich als Sieger sehen, So sey sie dann auf ewig dein. | You shall set her free, You shall be my daughter's savior. And if you should rescue her, She shall be yours for forevermore. | |
Lysa and Cat's meeting when Catelyn arrives at the Eyrie is eeriely similar in that Lysa in public adopts one tone of false happiness to see her sister has arrived, and is overly sweet. It falls in line with her letter where she earlier implored Catelyn that she left for fear of her and her son's safety. The Queen of the Night had her daughter Pamina stolen from her, Lysa plays up the idea that her husband was murdered and exaggerates it in order to help put into conflict two factions that would otherwise not be in conflict with one another. Similarly, the Queen of the Night, by lying to Tamino hopes to strike a serious blow against Sarastro, pitting two people against each other for her own means.
What I find interesting about the archetype is that Mozart's version is actually a twist on the old archetype. Originally up until that point the Moon Lady imploring for help was played absolutely straight. In fact Schikenader originally had the Queen of the Night being good in the first draft of the opera, but when a competing entertainment group produced a singspiel with a similar plot, it can be easily seen that Schikenader made his Moon Lady evil as a twist in the plot. What's interesting is the effect this plot twist on the traditional symbolism has had as an effect down the line for many many years, with Lysa likely unconsciously inheriting the legacy of the plot twist Schikenader made out of necessity.
Let us look to the scene where the Queen of the Night next appears and the plot twist is made apparent that this is a power struggle between a Crazed Moon Lady and the newly chosen Sun-King. Link again, provided for the audio-visually needed: (Der Holle Rache)
| Pamina. | Pamina |
| Mutter! Mutter! meine Mutter! | Mother! Mother! My mother! |
| Königinn. | Queen |
| Verdank es der Gewalt, mit der man dich mir entriß, daß ich noch deine Mutter mich nenne. -- Wo ist der Jüngling, den ich an dich sandte? | Owe it to the violence with which they snatched you from me, that I still hear you call for your mother. -- Where is the young man, that I sent to you? |
| Pamina. | Pamina |
| Ach Mutter, der ist der Welt und den Menschen auf ewig entzogen. -- Er hat sich den Eingeweihten gewidmet. | Ah mother, who of all the people in the world I thought I'd been deprived of. He has joined the initiates. |
| Königinn. | Queen |
| Den Eingeweihten? -- Unglückliche Tochter, nun bist du auf ewig mir entrissen. -- | The Iniates? -- Unfortunate daughter, now you are torn from me for forever. |
| Pamina. | Pamina |
| Entrissen? -- O fliehen wir liebe Mutter! unter deinem Schutz trotz ich jeder Gefahr. | Torn? O we'll flee dear mother! Under your protection and despite every danger. |
| Königinn. | Queen |
| Schutz? Liebes Kind, deine Mutter kann dich nicht mehr schützen. -- Mit deines Va- ters Tod gieng meine Macht zu Grabe. | Protection? My dearest child, your mother can not protect you. All my powers went with your father to the grave. |
| Pamina. | Pamina |
| Mein Vater -- | My father-- |
| Königinn. | Queen |
| Dein Vater! Übergab freywillig den siebenfachen Sonnenkreis den Eingeweihten; diesen mächtigen Sonnenkreis trägt Sarastro auf seiner Brust. -- Als ich ihn darüber beredete, so sprach er mit ge- -falteter Stirne: Weib! meine letzte Stunde ist da -- alle Schätze, so ich allein besaß, sind dein und deiner Tochter. -- Der alles verzehrende Son- nenkreis, fiel ich hastig ihm in die Rede, -- ist den Geweihten bestimmt, antwortete er: -- Sarastro wird ihn so männlich verwalten, wie ich bisher. -- Und nun kein Wort weiter; forsche nicht nach Wesen, die den weiblichen Geiste unbegreiflich sind. -- Deine Pflicht ist, dich und deine Tochter, der Führung weiser Männer zu überlassen. | Your father! He voluntarially handed the sevenfold Sun-Circle to these initiates; the mighty Sun-Circle carried by Sarastro on his chest. When I tried to persuade your father against this, he told me with a furrowed forehead: Woman! My last hour has come! All the treasures I possessed are yours and your daughter's. I hasitly asked him why he had given the all-powerful Sun-Circle to the Initiates, he replied: Sarastro will manage it as I have previously as he's a man. And now not another word; the female spirit is too brash and incomprehensible. -- You and your daughter's duty is to leave guidance to wise men. |
| Pamina. | Pamina |
| Liebe Mutter, nach allem dem zu schließen, ist wohl auch der Jüngling auf immer für mich verloren. | Dear mother, I conclude that he is likely lost to me for forever after all. |
| Königinn. | Queen |
| Verloren, wenn du nicht, eh' die Sonne die Erde färbt, ihn durch diese unterirdische Gewölber zu fliehen beredest. -- Der erste Schimmer des Tages entscheidet, ob er ganz Dir oder den Eingeweihten gegeben sey. | Lost, if you do not, 'ere the son turns around the earth, convince him to flee through this underground passage. -- The first light of day, decides whether he will have you or join the initiates. |
| Pamina. | Pamina |
| Liebe Mutter, dürft ich den Jüngling als Eingeweihten denn nicht auch eben so zärtlich lieben, wie ich ihn jetzt liebe? -- Mein Vater selbst war ja mit diesen weisen Männern verbunden; er sprach jederzeit mit Entzücken von ihnen, preißte ihre Güte -- ihren Verstand -- ihre Tugend. -- Sarastro ist nicht weniger tugendhaft. | Dear mother, might I not love an initiated youth, as I now love him tenderly? -- My father was also a member of these wise men; He told me about them many times with delight, praising their kindness -- their wisdom -- their virtue. -- Sarastro is no less virtuous. |
| Königinn. | Queen |
| Was hör ich? -- Du meine Tochter könntest die schändlichen Gründe dieser Barbaren vertheidigen? -- So einen Mann lieben, der mit meinem Todfeinde verbunden, mit jedem Augenblick mir meinen Sturz bereiten würde? -- Siehst du hier diesen Stahl? -- Er ist für Sarastro geschliffen. -- Du wirst ihn tödten, und den mächtigen Sonnen- kreis mir überliefern. | What do I hear? My daughter can dare defend the shameful reasons of these barbarians? -- To love a man connected with my mortal enemies, who would work every moment to bring about my downfall? -- Do you see this knife? I have sharpened it for Sarastro. -- You shall kill him, and the mighty Sun-Circle will be mine. |
| Pamina. | Pamina |
| Aber liebste Mutter! -- | But dearest mother!-- |
| Königinn. | Queen |
| Kein Wort! | No more words! |
| Arie. | Aria |
| Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen, Tod und Verzweiflung flammet um mich her! Fühlt nicht durch dich Sarastro Todesschmerzen, so bist du meine Tochter nimmermehr: Verstoßen sei auf ewig, verlassen sei auf ewig, zertrümmert sei’n auf ewig alle Bande der Natur, wenn nicht durch dich Sarastro wird erblassen! – Hört, hört, hört! Rachegötter – hört! – der Mutter Schwur! – | Hell's vengence seeths in my heart, Flames of death and despair engulf me! If Sarastro doesn't die by your hand, you will no longer be my daughter: Forever disowned, forever abandoned, Forever will the ties of nature be destoryed, if Sarastro does not become pale with death! Hear, hear, hear! Gods of vengeance - hear! - a mother's oath! |
The intimidation done through the aria at the end of the scene between mother and daughter is reminscent in ASOIAF of Lysa's final scene with Sansa, when she attempts--through the Moon Door--to intimidate Sansa with the threat of death for associating herself with Petyr.
The elements are all very much the same, but all mixed up and reconfigured to create a slightly different soup, though with all the same basic ingredients.
Death threat
Moon Lady
Intimidated Girl
Another Man
Back to Die Zauberflote, it turns out the Queen lied, and a more complicated political situation was going on where her husband and she were on the outs. This is expressed slightly differently in both Lysa and the Queen of the Night's story, but the rough ingredients are much the same: husband didn't trust her with power or responsibility of raising their child, so he arranged for another man to inherit his power and told him to raise his child right--away from the bad influence of its mother.
The common theme here between Die Zauberflote & ASOIAF is that the heavens are "out of sync" and a shift in power due to the death of her husband has caused the Sun and the Moon to fall out of alignment as they struggle for dominance and a new union. The Queen of the Night seeks to dominate with her alone having sole power of both the Moon and the Sun, while Sarastro appears to wish for a new union to occur by him training a successor for himself in Tamino the Prince, and using the love that Tamino has for Pamina to act as a new form of celestial marriage between a moon and a sun to bring balance back to the mystical land of "Aegypt". In Lysa's case, she seeks--under Petyr's influence--to get "revenge" against her own family so she can live happily ever after with Petyr. The Moon has been taken over by a puppet whose puppetmaster keeps her dangling on a string, until he cuts those strings when she is no longer of use to him.
I am not saying that GRRM is referencing The Magic Flute in the least through Lysa (although I would say that it has a great influence on culture that GRRM might or might not be aware of regardless), but in both scenes you can tell an archetype of the crazed moon lady is invoked, and the similarities in how that archetype acts and plays out. There are central issues that are all similar which speaks to some kind of older retelling. Further, beyond that, unreasonable mother figures (and mother-in-law figures) are older than The Magic Flute and ASOIAF after all. One only has to look to the Late Roman Antiquity "fairy tale" of Eros and Psyche to see a similar situation of a mother-figure (the goddess Venus) demanding a daughter undergo trials and tests and bullying the girl who she sees as a threat and at the same time something of value. Heck you see this constantly with Sansa, with her relationship with Cersei and Lysa both, but that's getting into the next archetype: the New Moon Lady. Which I'll save for post two.
I hope my slightly coherent ramblings are of some interest to you all. I further enjoy looking at the archetypes with the rest of you.
~WWS
