Misadventures in the Land of Fables #79
SHADOW PLAY
Seems I like shadows. I mean I wouldn’t include them in a list of my favourite things. It’s more of a revealed preference, revealed by the frequency they turn up in my writing. They are useful as narrative device, but their appeal goes beyond usefulness to their particular meaning-generating characteristics.
Shadows are spontaneous; they just happen, regardless of our intention. And yet we can exert a degree of control over them, we can manipulate them. When it we who cast the shadow, when we are the object obstructing the light, the shadows appear connected to us, extensions of our bodies, sometimes directly—you walk along the street and your shadow projects across the pavement from your feet, your feet and your shadow, your neighbour has their own. They appear as an aspect of our selves, but of course they are no such thing. This mistake—arguably innocent and childish—is fertile ground for metaphor. This is where the fascination lies and why they are a part of the fabulist imagination.
One of the first of Aesop’s tales I addressed was ‘The Wolf and his Shadow.’ A wolf mistakes its lengthening shadow for a true representation of its size and overestimates its ability to dominate the other animals in the desert. A lion disabuses it. (In my version, The Wolf Admires His Shadow,‘ the sight of its shadow looming on the towering cliffs convinces an old wolf of his continued pre-eminence, only to discover his former glory cannot be revived.) The shadow here is a projection of the wolf’s desire, of how he wants to see himself, powerful, threatening. A trick of the light and of the mind.
‘The Dog and its Reflection,’ known in some cases, as its Shadow, could be another in this genre of innocent mistakes. Instead of seeing the reflection as an image of itself, the dog mistakes it for a rival, an error produced by its inclination to greed and aggression. The challenge of a rival ousts the simple pleasure of a good meal. And in my version the dog’s error persists: it believes it has vanquished the rival.
More recently—I almost forgot!—there was an aphorism about a man who believed his shadow was subject to same forces, the same exertions as the body, and therefore needed a rest, just as he did. The latest fable, ‘The Spider and its Shadow,’ is a sweeter, less satirical iteration. The spider plays with shadows, but reality intrudes, like the school bell at the end of morning break. I fear there may also be something of me in the character of this spider. I shall leave you to wonder what exactly that might be.
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