"Multiplicity" and the Epiphany of Briar Rose

The idea of multiplicity according to Calvino refers to the links that connect people to a work, and the way a particular work is inter-textually related to other literary creations. Multiplicity is the recognition of our relationship with the vast and intricate world around us; realizing we are simply only a piece of the puzzle. Multiplicity of characters in a literary work is one of the things Calvino believes should be in every story. A character should experience some sort of epiphany in the sense of knowing exactly who he or she in respect to those around him or her.

The princess in Coover’s Briar spends several spin offs begging the old crone to tell her why it she who was pick to prick her finger and sleep for a hundred years; she wonders what her role is, a mother, a wife, a mistress, a maid, a woman who is destined to be alone and asleep for the rest of her life? Beauty does not understand her relationship with the men who come to her bedside, or what she would even do with her happily ever after ending if it indeed came. All the princess dreams about is one day being awakened from her horrible slumber.

Ironically, Coover throws twists into several of the tales. Usually, the prince already has a wife and leaves Beauty to go back to his home, but returns occasionally for a good time; sometimes she has children waiting for her to care for them; other times she is awakened to an empty room and the crone telling her another “Once upon a time…” Throughout all of these disappointments, Rose still continues to believe in her “true love” prince that will rescue her from this sleep. However, in one of the final tales Rose experiences her epiphany that happily ever after does not exist for her. The crone tells a story, “Once upon a time, she says with a curling smile, her wicked side as usual taking over, there was a handsome prince and beautiful princess who lived happily ever after. But that’s terrible! Cries Rose…. I hate this story! Happily ever after… may not be worth a parched fig, my daughter, but it hides the warts, so don’t be too quick to throw it out!” (81).

Rose then continues to stab her hand with the spindle desperately trying to go back to sleep because she was devastated by her realization of her place in the world.
Coover illustrates that an epiphany is not always a positive experience. Often knowledge and truth show negativity and it changes us. Coover makes the princess and her story real for his readers in this tale. He alters the fairy tale into a realization of life.

Negative Emotions of a Written Image

In Calvino's discussion of visibility he explains the relationship between visual art and culture. Visual art being the way we express feeling, knowledge, convey values and beliefs, entertainment, representing ideas of controversy, and images that evoke an emotional sting; the abstract feeling that a concrete image gives us. Images surround us everywhere; we are constantly bombarded with visuals that stir up our emotions and thoughts. Each image effects people in different ways all because of the variety of images each individual has seen before. The image I have chosen for this post from Coover's Briar Rose, may bring different feelings and emotions to other readers than it did for me, and I think that's the beauty of images.

"...she wraps her naked shame in her own hug and drifts tearfully into the nursery or the kitchen, looking for consolation or perhaps some words of wisdom (maybe there are some babies around), but finding instead a door that is not a door. She opens it to the hidden corridor on the other side, which leads, she knows (it's all too familiar, perhaps she wandered here as a child), to a spiral stair case up to a secret tower.... At the top, behind a creaky old door, she finds a spinning room and an old humpbacked womanin in widow's garb, sitting there amid a tangle of unspooled flaxen threads like a spider in her web" (44).

Coover's words paint a solemn,yet haunted picture in my mind. I remember reading this section for the first time and getting goosebumps on my arms, grabbing a pen and underlining the passage. The images I created in my head were similar to images I had seen before. For example, "she wraps her naked sham in her own hug," I visualize a friend's painting of a lonely girl lying curled in a ball, bare and alone weeping. The spiral staircase in my mind takes me back to the steep short steps of a lighthouse at a lake near my hometown. The creaky old door leading to the spinning room actually makes me think of scene in Disney's Sleeping Beauty when Rose pricks her finger, dark, black, with red overtones. And the similie of the crone to a spider is a stunning depiction bring images of a black widow spider snickering at her pray trapped in her web.

It is amazing to think one passage can send so many different images flooding over us. Images that mold and shape the literary work into something meaningful and attractive even if the image it creates is a negative one. The attraction to images such as this one is unexplainable; perhaps it is relatable to everyone, or simply great writing that one cannot help but be drawn to.

"Exactitude": Poetic Prose

Calvino discusses exactitude by using a paradoxical approach. He defines exactitude through poetic examples; poetry being the vague way of expressing ideas and concepts through writing. He chooses poetry because poetry is “language as precise as possible both in choice of words and in expression of the subtleties of thought and imagination.”

Because of this idea of poetry being the best way to express exactly what the writer is trying to say, I tried to find a passage in Coover’s Briar Rose that flowed like poetry, consisted of elocution, and specific word choice. The passage I chose comes from a tale of the prince:

“…he seems to hear their bones whisper in wind-chimed echo of that ancient refrain, and for a moment the hostile castle turrets recede and his eyes, petal-stroked, close and something like pure delight spreads outward from his thorn-tickled loins and fills his body…” (9).
In this passage, Coover uses several poetic devices to get the most unique way of presenting this visual image to his readers. He uses alliteration at the beginning in “whisper” and “wind-chimed;” assonance in “stroked,” and “close.” The adjective he creates throughout these few lines is fantastic: “wind-chimed echo,” “ancient refrain,” “hostile castle turrets,” “eyes, petal-stroked,” “thorn-tickled loins.”

Several readers are under the impression that poetry must be written in lines, with rhyme schemes, and counted syllables. In all actuality, prose, novels, and short stories attempt to do the same thing form poetry does – express an idea in the most unique and best way possible. Coover does this throughout Briar Rose. Several of his poetic flowing sections come when describing the briar bush, transforming the deadly briars into a beautiful image of soft caressing petals embracing the prince. He also writes very sensually when describing the princess being awakened by her suitors.
Coover expresses imagery within his tales with specific word choice. Coover’s work is filled with literary tools and shows his broad writing skills through the multiple approaches his takes to telling the same story.

Coover Controls “Quickness” in Briar Rose: Forty-two Motionless Tales

In Calvino’s memo on “quickness,” he discusses at length about literature time. He explains the sense of time a literary work has falls to the desires of the author. The writer can end a story whenever he or she wishes. It seems worthy to note, literature is one of the only, if not the only medium where humans are able to control time. Really, time is not promised to you or me; in reality, we are controlled by the sense of time. A writer has the freedom to choose whether their work is delaying, cyclical, motionless, or follows Calvino’s fluid and flowing “quickness.”

Coover demonstrates his skill of motionless writing. Coover takes the age-old tale of Sleeping Beauty which does indeed have a sense of time within it. The original story follows a flowing story line, and like every good story, contains a digression with the princess pricking her finger on a spindle, delaying her happily ever after ending. Coover’s retelling twist on the story contains no sense of time at all. The only sense of time the reader has when reading Coover’s Briar Rose is the prior knowledge that the princess has been sleeping for one hundred years. Each spin off takes place within the princess’s dreams where she is conversing with an old crone. She finds herself returning back to the “door that is not a door” that leads to a hidden corridor; she frequently returns to the kitchen or parlor, the prince is usually always married, she has bared children, and she never remembers the stories the old crone has told her before. It is impossible for Coover’s retelling of the story to have a definite ending. Many of the 42 tales begin the same way, and it is difficult to think each one has an ending when the tales end with the crone saying “once upon a time…” and the next tale beginning with her once again asleep.

The alternate tales being told of the prince trapped in the briars illustrate Coover’s motionless sense of time. The prince is trapped in the snarling briar bush that multiplies and multiplies. He slashes and cuts through the briars and never seems to progress through the branches. If by chance, one of the spin offs does end in him escaping the briars, he is either back where he started, or unable to reach his princess easily; then the next tale of the prince begins with him trapped in the briars again.

It seems as if each story is written from the exact same moment in the 100 years of Beauty’s sleep, as if time is at a standstill while she is waiting for her prince. Perhaps this motionless time best reflects the state of mind in sleep and this is why Coover chose to tell the story this way. When we are sleeping, our minds and bodies have no sense of real time. Coover has skillfully used the feeling of no time as a literary tool.

Italo Calvino's "Lightness" Contrasted by Constriction: Illustrated by Robert Coover's Briar Rose

Calvino explains lightness in writing as being the contrast to the weight of reality. From the “dark catastrophe” of reality, an author has the opportunity to create a light, beautiful literary work. He explains weight in writing as the world’s influence. Written word is the miracle that comes from the negativity of the world. He uses the mythological Medusa and Perseus allegory to illustrate how easy it is for people, places, and events of the world to turn “lifeless” and into “stone.” From this, he stresses the risk writers are faced with – being turned to lifeless stone by the private and public events of every-day life.

Constriction reality places on the writing process is similar to an image Coover creates in one of the spin offs of Sleeping Beauty. Throughout the novel, the briar bush grows and multiplies as the prince slashes his sword through each branch, as if the bush has a competitive mind of its own ruthlessly trying to hold the prince back from his prize lady. He passes the remains of past princes who never escaped the briars, is scratched, bleeding, and clothing shredded by the thorns. In reality, it would be easy to expect the prince to give in to the weight and restriction of the briars; but much like the perspective of great writing, he embraces the murderous briars as simply a test resulting in better personal introspective understanding.

Calvino explains in order for us to write about the world, we must look at it from a different perspective. The prince looks at the briars before him in a different light on pages 58-59, “in struggling against the briars, he might in fact be struggling against himself, and that therefore, if he could understand and accept the real terms of this quest, the briars might simply fade away?” I can envision the prince as he stops slashing through the briars for careful contemplation about the deeper meaning of his adventure. Finally reaching the conclusion that he “no longer even wishes to reach her, to wake her,” and before his quest, the enjoyment he found in the “simple sensible joys” and freedom of life.

I think this illustrates the change in perspective a writer must take when dealing with the weight of reality. Like the prince, we must search for the real reasons why we are writing; what ideas and concepts we are attempting to convey; expecting the constraints of life to disappear once we have figured out the direction of the journey our pen will take us on. Also, that the final product will express the simplicity of life and liberate us as well as readers through its words.