A loving companion ( What do you like best about the HP books?)

[iris_ft]

No: HPFGUIDX 72884

Hi all,


   When I opened Harry Potter à l'École des Sorciers (that's the 
French title) the day before I went to the movie, I only wanted to 
entertain myself, and to do as everybody was doing at the time. I 
thought it was only "a story for children", one more Christmas candy 
(we were in December), something you read quickly and forget the 
same. I had even some prejudice towards the book, for there was so 
much publicity that I thought it was only a commercial affair.
And then it happened. I couldn't keep myself from feeling love for 
his little boy that didn't even exit, and though I was trying to 
defend myself against him, he was there, standing on the threshold 
of his cupboard, asking for a place in my world.
At the same time, I had opened again my old Dictionary of Symbols. 
Unicorn, Philosopher's Stone, Centaur, Sirius, Albus, Black, 
Potter
                                                              
Now the story didn't seem that childish; actually, it had nothing to 
do with the "Famous Five+ Mallory Towers+Pokemons" formula I had 
thought I would find in the book. It was unusually serious, 
amazingly written. Gripping. Fascinating. It was like reading
 I 
didn't dare add: "Don Quijote", "Hamlet", "La vida es 
sueño", "Porporino ou les mystères de Naples"; all those books I 
loved so much because they combined a wonderful story and a 
magisterial writing 
technique.                                                          
I had then the uncomfortable feeling that my interest for the books 
was exaggerated.                                                 
Moreover, I tried to talk about them with a friend of mine, who is 
Mason. I said that it was amazing how many symbols you could find in 
the HP series, and that it was probably as interesting as LOTR. She 
answered condescendingly that symbols in HP were "simple and 
superficial", and said briskly "You won't compare HP and LOTR!"
As I'm not yet very wise, and rather spiteful, I thought to 
myself: "Well, woman, I won't join your group as you ask me to, if 
you talk to me like this." And I stopped speaking of Harry Potter in 
front of her, except to say that it was entertaining.
I don't know if she read the books, especially in their original 
version, or if she only saw the movies with her children. I didn't 
understand her reaction; she had told me once that her husband, who 
is Mason too, was writing a work about "Sky symbolism in Star Wars". 
Why was she despising Harry Potter? It seemed to be much more 
interesting than Star Wars. Was there in those books something she 
didn't want me to discover, because I was profane?
Or was I only a childish nutter? Well, reading those books didn't 
give me however the impression that I was ready to buy a witch 
disguises or the complete collection of playing cards. On the 
contrary, I was feeling that I would have to read again some of my 
studies books and to take a closer look at esoteric theories if I 
wanted to understand what was in Harry's closet. 

Why Harry? Why not Frodo, or Paul Atreides? After all, they were 
kinds of cousins

Well, in spite of all the publicity around it, Harry Potter had 
something more, something precious: it presented much elaborated 
concepts in a very accessible way.
I'm not saying that JK Rowling's style is poor; not being a native 
English speaker I know that my perception of what she writes is 
poor. I'm not trying either to say that she should have invented 
poems, ballads, a language, as Tolkien did. I'm just trying to 
explain that her main preoccupations, when she wrote Harry Potter, 
were structure and meaning. She forced herself to use an "essential 
style", banning out of her books the temptation of complication.
This doesn't mean that Harry Potter's style is dull, easy, or that 
she doesn't care what she writes. On the very contrary, I'm sure she 
chooses her words and structures with a lot of care.
Simply, she doesn't want to lose touch with the essence of the 
story, with the signification of what happens to her young hero. She 
doesn't want to close the door she's trying to open to all of 
us.                                                                  
                                                                     
That's what we call "vulgarisation". I love vulgarisation. I love it 
since I studied the French philosophers of 18th century when I was a 
teenager in the same lyceum where I now teach Spanish. I love the 
idea of giving to everyone who wants to use them the keys to 
understand the world better, to have a better life. That was the 
ideal of Diderot, D'Alembert, the fathers of the Encyclopédie. I 
love the idea of explaining something very complicated with a 
vocabulary that everyone can understand.
That's what I saw when I started reading Harry Potter.
That's what JK Rowling was doing all along her books. She was 
telling us about spirituality, about psychoanalyse, about myths, 
about us, in accessible terms. I loved those books because they were 
like an open door. A child could read them, a person who hadn't 
studied for a long time could read them, and they would have taken 
something from what they were told.
But an erudite could read them, and would have found so many 
treasures in their pages

My Mason friend was wrong, or she wasn't sincere towards me.

That's why I joined HPfGU; I wanted to know if other people read the 
books the way I did, from a symbolic point of view. 
I wrote a few messages on the subject. Maybe it's because my English 
is uneasy (I'm French, and I teach Spanish, so I haven't got many 
occasions to practice in my daily life), or I didn't manage to 
express my ideas correctly (I'm rather ignorant concerning what I 
call "esotericism" because I don't know how to name it properly); to 
cut a long story short, I didn't have many results, many answers to 
my questions.
No matter at all; lurking through all the messages, I found very 
interesting things, particularly Hans's postings about the Path of 
Liberation, and their theory about love.
And now I understand better my friend's reaction, especially after 
reading a post titled "More insight into Snape/ Snape's 
challenge".Hans 
wrote:                                                               
"The things Rowling tells in HP have in the past always belonged to 
secret occult societies and Mystery Schools of Liberation going back 
many millennia. Now they are being made public in a symbolic form 
for the first time in world history. Truly an apocalypse."
Yes, yes, yes!!! And that's why I love those books so much. That's 
also probably why my Mason friend seems to despise them: they open 
too many doors, to too many people.
       
I love Hans's theory, I agree with it. It helped me to understand 
better why I love Harry Potter so much.
Universal books. Easy to read, gripping, full of invention. 
Resisting a sharp analyze.
A total work of art. A total micro cosmos. And, yes, a companion for 
our own journey.
When I realized, after my very first reading, what this book really 
was, I cried (if you think that I was stupid, well, I won't 
disagree). It was the first time I did it because of a book. It was 
the same emotion as the one I had felt while listening to Haendel's 
Messiah for the first time, or discovering Giovanni Bellini's 
paintings in Venice. Book, oratorio, paintings. Loving companions. 
I received the Harry Potter books as I received Haendel's oratorio 
and Bellini's paintings; as a gift I had been waiting for for a long 
time. When I was a student, I had studied Spanish baroque 
literature; I had enjoyed the stylistic and conceptual games between 
the authors and their readers. I had thought it would be wonderful 
if a book could combine those intellectual games and the power of 
pure emotion. And it was there, it was called Harry Potter. And we 
had the incredible luck to see it happen.
I have to add some remarks about psychology in the books. Hans 
thinks JK Rowling was inspired by what he calls "the original 
Spirit". I would add that she also understood perfectly well what it 
is to be a human being. I know that some of you consider that what 
she wrote about the characters' reactions or behaviours happens to 
be unrealistic, particularly in OotP; personally I find her painting 
of human psyche sharp and sensitive. She writes with her heart and 
soul, as someone told me one day, responding to one of my 
posts.                                                           
Hans wrote a funny post about Harry Potter becoming a religion. 
Well, I don't know whether one day there will be St Ron's Basilica 
or an "Apocalypse according to Colin Creevey", but I'm sure Harry 
Potter will join the Encyclopédie, Don Quijote, Hamlet, etc. in the 
history of human kind. And publicity has nothing to do with it.
I don't know either whether the books were inspired to JKR by "the 
original Spirit", though I enjoy this idea and I think there are 
many funny coincidences in all that happens around them ("Ah, they 
couldn't have found a better actor than little Radcliffe to play 
Harry!" another friend of mine said, and she added: "He was born to 
play the part. Oh, by the way, did you know he was born at the end 
of July too?").
What I firmly believe, however, is that Rowling, combining an 
amazing narrative structure, a sharp psychological analyze and, I 
hope, a spiritual purpose, achieved to present us with something 
wonderful: a loving companion, an open door. 

Well, I won't finish this post writing "here are my two knuts", 
because it's rather long. Sorry if I bored you,

Amicalement

Iris