Books as Mirror of Erised

[Dan Feeney]

No: HPFGUIDX 71569

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Regina" <ulliregina at j...> 
wrote:
> I would just like to add to my post (#71335) a thought that 
occurred 
> afterward, that the Harry Potter books themselves are to the reader 
> what the mirrod of Erised was to the characters in the book. They 
are 
> so powerfully popular because they stir in the reader his or her 
> deepest longings and desires that are wanting expression, yet the 
> happiest ones see only themselves reflected. (This is all just a 
> suspicion, absolutely NOT said to imply anything about myself.)
> 
> Regina

Actually Regina, the sense that the books are playing with we readers 
is the first opening to seeing the possibility of any symbolism at 
all in them, in any elaborated sense. Myself, I think the books 
operate in a slightly more subtle way than just placing erised as 
our "suspension of belief" ("suspension of disbelief"), not 
necessarily programmatically, but certainly more profoundly. We do 
agree on the idea of "a place where desires are" - but I see that 
place not as erised, but as the WW, where, for instance, we can do 
things merely by saying the right words! Wow, that would be cool. 
Remember when you read book 1, the start of it, and thought, wow, 
this 
is kind of an abusive home... I have never dropped that response, but 
let it sit as a constant reminder, and so, as a result -

The books operate for us the way the idea of a parallel witch wizard 
world operates for the boy in the closet under the stairs. That 
doesn't mean JKR doesn't use themes and imagery from alchemical or 
other sources - on the contrary, alchemical writing was the attempt 
to describe the whole of living in symbolic terms, wasn't it (and to 
a degree this is what JKR is doing) - it just means that before we 
can even glimpse erised, we have to get to where erised is. That is 
the difference also between the naive reading and the adult one. The 
naive reading is already gazing into erised. The adult one just 
really really wants to.

dan