More: \ X U

[Keith DeWeese x422 <kpd000@dns.colum.edu>]

"[...feather on the breath of God...]," an association with Hildegaard 
von Bingen.

I believe this woman who is dancing is always dancing with preternatural 
beings, hence her surprise by, but not fear of, the malicious, red-shoed 
tricksie.  And though I know the feathered adornment atop the trickster's 
head is a representation of some small, black bird, I like toying with 
the idea that the woman is the Black Swan of the lake.

The burned and bandaged hands are part of a ruse, of course, but, perhaps, 
her fingers came too close to the devil's fork, from which red slippers 
once dangled--an old French folktale, "The Old Maid's Red Slippers," 
comes to mind.  Also, Karen, of Andersen's story, snatches her ragged, 
red shoes from the stove.  

I have memory of this, from an early December 1993 telephone interview 
session: when asked, "What inspired the song 
and your film?" Kate answered, "The story I know is about a young woman 
who wears magic, red slippers each night and goes off dancing with the 
fairies until she's exhausted."  I'm intrigued by this answer because it 
does not recall the plot of Andersen's tale but  does recall the story 
collected by the Grimms, "The Dancing Princesses," I believe, and the 
British folktale of Kate Crackernuts or Crackercorn.

Seemingly, too, the woman tricked is compelled to journey to not just 
one but, at least, three underworlds by agents of increasing power and 
spiritual dominion.  The coniving diva is something of a dwindled 
entity, perhaps a fallen angel of one of the lower orders.  She is 
rather like the doppelganger of Dante's Virgil leading the woman to 
the snowy, frozen, innermost point of the Inferno.  I might conjecture, 
too, that Lily, as an extension of the Mary concept, is seated in 
Purgatory, a place of weeping but not inescapable.  Lily is motherly, 
she is enthroned, she is in blue, she is first seen through a veil of 
water-like substance (Mary, meri, mer-).  She knows there is 
suffering, yet certain prayers will deliver the woman from eternal 
damnation.  

Then, oddly, the most harrowing excursion...into "Moments of 
Pleasure."  The woman is known to cherish family and friends, so 
imagine the horror of never or barely touching them again, seeing them float 
just outside of reach, Tantalus's reach for sure, in desolation, in a 
snow storm, without anchor.  Then a sobering slap, a crash to a field 
of snow spread over by her heart.  Seems rather like a season in Hell 
to me.

\ X U is personal and catholic at once.

The woman's race to snatch back her symbols leads her to the Elysian 
Fields for a time.  There, once she has recovered her three golden 
apples, she is fortified.  But it is not only her strength that 
defeats the wicked one: she stuns her enemy against a 
wall of running, purifying water.  I do believe that Lily-Mary takes 
care of the rest.      

Like so many baroque and renaissance paintings of mixed-metaphysical and 
mixed-cultural elements, Kate does a very good job of depicting "where Hell and Heaven 
dance."  I like knowing that she is "quite a happy little soul."


I have neglected Kemp's character in the film.  Next time.  Thanks for 
reading.  

Keith