https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=10xpRQKkNuA
right? Because, because if we’re honest about what we have to do as storytellers, we have these, we have our listeners souls in our, in our hands, right? Cup in our hands. They, if you’re a good writer, as soon as you’ve plunged the, the, uh, the reader into your world, you’re responsible for what happens to that person in that world. It’s, it’s scary. Yeah. But it’s, it’s true. So you have to unsettle them. You have to go to dark places. You have to mess up their, their very comfortable precept positions about what the world is. But you also have to do it in a way that reinforces the pattern, the pattern of reality, as you talk about all the time. That’s an incredibly hard thing to do technically as storytellers. And that’s the challenge that’s ahead of us. And that’s what Martin Shaw is doing, uh, in talking about his, that quote specifically, he writes really bizarre, weird stuff. That’s very French and very like kind of prose poetry kind of stuff. That’s, that’s very on the verge of, of paganism, Christianity inspired by, um, you know, the ancient myths, but also speaking them in a language that’s understandable. And if you allow yourself to enter into it, it can be really very interesting and very transformative in a lot of ways. Hmm. And so who do you see as being, do you see Loris as being an example of that? For Right. Yeah. Loris is funny because, uh, on the one hand, it’s, it’s very, it’s a very conventional narrative. It’s, it’s, it follows all the beats of the saints, the saint life of a particular kind of saint life. But if you’re paying attention, um, there’s a, and if you’re reading it carefully, especially if you’re reading it in Russian, the translation is good, but it doesn’t, it doesn’t do absolute justice as no translation of course can. I can say that I’m a translator. Uh, um, there are some profoundly shocking moments in Loris. There’s some really awful things that happen in Loris. Um, the, the death of, of his, of his wife and child, uh, and the, you know, the inciting incident that leads to his becoming a saint. They’re described in details that nobody should ever describe when talking about women and children. Um, really horrifying stuff. So that’s one thing. Then there’s also like, he pushes the limits of what, of what we consider to be saintly. When you have the pugnacious, uh, fools for Christ, you know, duking it out while walking on water, walking on water. Yeah, man, that stuff is crazy. I mean, a lot of people are like this, you can’t have this. This isn’t, this isn’t right. But if you’ve heard also the verge on masochism, which he brings his character to your, sometimes you’re wondering like, is this just a kind of strange, uh, masochism, like a kind of nihilistic masochism, or is this an actual negation of self? Like when he lets himself get stung by all the mosquitoes and stuff and you’re like, what, you know, really? Yes. And well, actually that, I think you may have taken that from an actual life of one of the Russian saints. Yeah. Um, so that, that has, that has happened. But even like, that’s the thing about the lives of the saints too, is that when you read them, there’s, is some of that in there, right? We, we tend to iron out the lives of the saints or the medieval legends. We’ve kind of made them nice and clean. Even the fairy tales, we made them nice and clean. A lot of the virgins of the fairy tales that we have now have, have taken out all the strangeness that was there just a few centuries ago. And that’s been one of my ideas is to, how can we bring back the strangeness or some of the things that are, that seem off color to, to contemporary morality or sensibilities, but use it in a way that is revelatory rather than just a kind of scandal or shocking, shocking. Like I’ve been thinking about like the Rapunzel, for example, but in the original Rapunzel stories, Rapunzel gets pregnant in the tower. We’ve expunged that completely from all the virgins that we tell our kids. But I kept thinking without that, it actually is weakening what the story is about. And the idea of the man who forgets the mother of his children, you know, in this, in his fall, and then has to hear her voice again, in order to recognize her. I’m like, no, we need to put that back in. Like is, is there a way to put it back in, even in a story for kids, especially in a moment where kids are no longer naive, innocent, and innocent the way that we wish they were? Because they’re way to put it back in. You say no longer, but I’m not sure if they ever were. If they ever were, exactly. Yeah. So is there a way to put that back in? To put it back in? To put it back in, which would reveal a higher aspect of the story rather than just be for sure. But that’s edgy. Like for kids, it’s not that hard because you won’t go as far. But for adults, it’s a, how can I say this? Like it’s a, it can be really tricky because there, well, so much of the modern fiction is like, is shock. A lot of it has a lot of shock for shock valley, for sure. All right. So CC Serreta asks, so, hi, Jonathan, I read Loris. Good book. Thanks for the recommendation. In an unwinding, confusing world characterized by multiplicity, Arseny falls in love with a stranger. He fails to properly connect his earthly relationship to unity spirit. And it ends in catastrophe driven by the unifying power of his love for the stranger. Arseny rises to spiritual unity where linear times become cyclical and in doing so at the end of his life circles back to his great failure and is able to correct it. Obviously more nuance in the book, but am I getting the gist of the medieval symbolism? I mean, I think that that’s a pretty good, it’s a pretty, it’s a, it’s a pretty nice summary of what happens. You know, it’s a very complex book. It’s really hard. It’s something that really makes you think it really is close to the level of Dostoevsky in terms of the complexity of the, of the actions that the character is taking and the complexity of the, of the reasons why he’s doing things. And you, you know, the action he’s doing. So it’s, I mean, it’s definitely worth reading. All right. So Lord Marduk. Wow. Lord Marduk is asking me questions. So a question about the ending of the novel Loris and any more thoughts you have on the novel and how it compares to our current situation. Spoiler alert. Okay. At the end of the novel, they dragged his body through the field after his tribute services. I imagine it was a way to heal the land and the outsider observing it was a stranger, was a strange thing to do. Observing it was a strange thing to do. Is there a particular ritual in Russian folk tales or religion that points to dragging his body through the field? There is a plague during the time of the novel. It has to, in the, in the Loris story, it really does have to do with the problem of the Holy Fool. It has to do with the problem of the, the person who wants to kind of evacuate himself into the world. And so the, you can understand that scene as it’s a desecration of his body. He wants his body to be desecrated. And you would say, why would he want his body to be desecrated? And this is where the extremes meet. This is where this is, at least I think this is the desire to be shown in the book. This is where the extremes meet. This is where the Christian martyr who is desecrated, the Christian martyrs are always desecrated, right? Their bodies, their bodies are always, are always, are always desecrated. And that desecration ends up to their glory. It doesn’t mean that desecration is good. Most people should not have their body desecrated. Most people should be, should be properly buried. And in the novel, he talks about that problem too, because he, he, he cries because his, the lover he has at the beginning of the book, that she is, is not, because she’s not going to be properly buried. And so he had this kind of anguish about that at the beginning. But that’s the idea that in his case, at least that’s the way I understand it, he is going to the end of his, to his Holy Fool persona and he is asking for his body to be desecrated. And that is to his, to his highest glory. But it’s, it’s, like I said, it’s dangerous stuff, man. It’s dangerous stuff because you, you have to be able to tell the difference between what the Holy Fool does and a masochist. Those two things are not the same, right? A masochist who, who, who wants to be humiliated for his own pleasure is not the same as a saint who is desecrated to his glory. And, and I know that it’s, it’s tricky because we, we see confusion about that in popular culture. There is some confusion about that. But those two things are in a way, they’re opposites. They’re not, they’re just not the same at all. So.