Muszę przyznać, że nie mam dziś siły i czasu na pisanie kolejnego rozdziału. Wkleję za to fragment artykułu Johna Grangera na temat alchemicznego wesela. Fragment oczywiście w oryginale, ale mam wrażenie, że większość ludzi, którym zdarza się czytać wynurzenia w tym temacie potrafi posługiwać się angielskim w stopniu zadowalającym.
The Chemical Wedding is CelebratedHarry Potter fandom is a spectrum of opinions, all, in my experience, opinions that are passionately defended or disparaged (as a rule, consequently, I run from fan web sites and engagement with fandom controversies). As you would expect, then, the idea of literary alchemy as a skeleton for these books has been met with derision and dismissive contempt and been praised as important for having a full appreciation of the artistry of the books.
Those who think it a lark or silly usually are unaware of the depth of the literary alchemy tradition in English fiction - poems, plays, and novels
http://www.touchstonemag.com/docs/issues/1...s/16-9pg34.html - or are ignorant of the specific images, outside of, perhaps, the Philosopher’s Stone. I cannot say I enjoy or appreciate their scorn - but that’s fandom!
I have to wonder, though, if even the alchemy nay-sayers will be able to ignore and neglect the Chemical Wedding announcements we were all sent in Half-Blood Prince. Remember the wedding mentioned above in connection with the rotation and resolution of the four elements?
The contrary qualities of the four elements are likened to quarreling foes who must be reconciled or united in order for harmony to reign (see peace). The circulation of elements is identical with the process the alchemists describe as the conversion of body into spirit, and spirit into body, until each is able to mingle together, or unite in the chemical wedding to form a new perfect being, the philosopher’s stone…
(Dictionary of Alchemical Imagery, Lyndy Abraham, Cambridge University Press, 2001, p.138)
The rubedo as the final stage of the Great Work features the wedding of the Red King and White Woman, their copulation and death, and the birth of the orphan (“the Philosophical Child”). Burckhardt calls the chemical marriage the “central symbol of alchemy” (Alchemy, p. 149) and it has been the subject of literature from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet (1595), John Donne’s Extasie (1607?) and The Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz (1616) to Blake’s Jerusalem (1804-1820), C. S. Lewis’ Perelandra (1944) and That Hideous Strength (1946) and Lindsay Clarke’s The Chemical Wedding (1990). You will forgive me, I hope, if I spell out how Bill Weasley and Fleur Delacour conform to the Red Man and White Woman of alchemy and what their wedding may mean in Alchemist’s Cell.
Let’s review the unfolding of the Bill-Fleur romance before tracing their likenesses as Sol and Luna, the betrothed couple for the alchemical wedding.
Fleur’s first sighting of Bill is before the third TriWizard task (the labyrinth, which image is, yes, used in alchemical texts as a symbol of the Great Work: Dictionary of Alchemical Imagery, p. 113) when Bill and Mrs. Weasley stand in for Harry’s family at ‘the morning greeting.’ Fleur the Beauxbaton’s champion, is immediately smitten with the handsome Bill.
Fleur Delacour, Harry noticed, was eyeing Bill with great interest over her mother’s shoulder. Harry could tell she had no objection whatsoever to long hair or earrings with fangs on them (Goblet of Fire, chapter 31, p. 616).
Her interest in the dashing Gringotts Curse Breaker grows in the next year when we learn that Bill, too, is smitten. When Harry arrives at 12 Grimmauld Place, the House of Black, he asks about Bill.
[I]“Is Bill here?” he asked. “I thought he was working in Egypt.”[/I]
[I]“He applied for a desk job so he could come home and work for the Order,” said Fred. “He says he misses the tombs, but,” he smirked, “there are compensations….”“What d’you mean?”
“Remember old Fleur Delacour?” said George. “She’s got a job at Gringotts to eemprove ‘er Eeenglish - “
“ - and Bill’s been giving her a lot of private lessons,” sniggered Fred.
(Phoenix, chapter 4, p 70)[/I]
These lessons have led to an engagement Fleur tells Harry at the Burrow in chapter 5 of Half-Blood Prince. Alas, it seems that Mrs. Weasley, Hermione, and Ginny all despise her and hope very much that the wedding, planned for the next summer, falls through.
At book’s end, however, Bill is mauled by Fenrir Greyback in the battle between the Order of the Phoenix and the Death Eaters at the stairs below the Astronomy Tower. Greyback was not a transformed Werewolf at the time, so, though the cursed wounds are incurable and largely untreatable, there was some question in the hospital wing about what would happen to him.
It turns out he will only be the long-haired man with fang earrings instead of the longhaired man with fangs. But in the moment of shock over the extent of his wounds, Mrs. Weasley suggests, not too delicately, that the wedding is off (she says he “was going to be married”) in front of Fleur. Fleur erupts in anger, Mrs. Weasley yields in respect and repentance, and both women collapse in each other’s arms in tears. The wedding is on. (Half-Blood Prince, chapter 29, p 623)
So what?
Well, the alchemy here is not unlike that of the Ron/Hermione couple acting as the alchemical reagents sulphur and quicksilver (mercury) on Harry throughout the books. This explains, I think, Ron’s fascination with Fleur and in watching Fleur and Bill to pick up “snogging” pointers (Half-Blood Prince, chapter 16, p 330). In terms of the four humors, the Weasleys are all choleric, which is to say, “hot and dry” like fire. Fleur, as you’d guess from Ginny’s nickname for her, is phlegmatic or “cold and moist” like water.
Both Bill and Fleur are cartoons or caricatures of the archetypal studly man and drop-dead beautiful woman. When Bill is bit by a werewolf, he risks becoming in fact only the macho image he has projected to the world for some time (I mean, fang earrings?). Fleur’s hypnotic beauty and her enchanting kisses both are signs that she is almost an allegorical figure for feminine allure and magic. Bill is a machismo kind of guy with a werewolf lurking below the surface (one step up from the already fiery weasel!) and Fleur is the fashion model, wild white woman whose talons, cruel beak, and scaly wings are just below the horizon.
Ginny is right on, too, I think, when she says that Bill is interested in Fleur because he “likes a bit of adventure” (Half-Blood Prince, chapter 5, p. 93). Fire and water are opposites that attract, if they are a combination that resolve the qualities of both. Fleur, the silver-haired super feminine and Gaullic beauty featured in Half-Blood Prince, is a cold and wet sign of the white work that features the water element and cogulation after the torching experience of Phoenix. When we see Fleur become angry and aggressive over the passive body of Bill who was bested by Greyback, however, at the end of Half-Blood Prince, we know that she has become sufficiently masculine or choleric to move the choleric Mrs. Weasley to a more feminine and passive state. The chemical wedding at the end of the rotation of the elements, when water becomes fiery and fire liquid or passive, is in full progress.
As any student of Romeo and Juliet (or West Side Story) will tell you, however, that, while the Chemical Wedding of opposites may mean great things for the citizens of Verona because the Capulets and Montague reconcile over the dead bodies of the honeymooners, it’s not a wedding or marriage that parents hope for their children. Why the new king and queen spouses or at least archetypes of masculine fire and feminine water die soon after their marriage reflects the end and goal of the alchemical work. Lyndy Abraham explains:
Alchemy is based on the Hermetic view that man had become divided within himself, separated into two sexes, at the fall in the Garden of Eden and could only regain his integral Adamic state when the opposing forces within him were reconciled. The union of these universal male and female forces produced that third substance or efect which could heal not only the diseases of the physical world but also the affliction of the separated soul.
Metaphysically, the chemical wedding is the perfect union of creative will or power (male) with wisdom (female) to produce pure love (the child, the Stone). The creation of this Stone always involves some kind of sacrifice or death. Thus emblems of the chemical wedding almost always include emblems of death which overshadow the conjunctio….
The death at the wedding symbolizes the extinction of the earlier differentiated state before union, and also powerfully conveys the alacrity with which the festive moment of the coagula or wedding is transformed into the lamentation of the solve or death. Many texts say that the solve and coagula are simultaneous.
Alchemical theory stated that generation could not take place unless there had first been a death. In Christian mysticism the same idea occurs with the parable of the grain of wheat which must first die in the earth before it can bring forth fruit (John 12:24-25), a parable which the alchemists often cite. The philosopher’s stone cannot be generated until the lovers have died and their bodies putrefied in the mercurial waters….
The bodies of the lovers (the red man and the white woman) lying dead in the grave symbolize the death which frees the soul to be released and rise to the top of the alembic. (Dictionary of Alchemical Imagery, p. 36-37, emphasis added)
I imagine this sounds perfectly dreadful to you, especially if you’re thinking it means Bill and Fleur’s wedding day will be a blood bath. It needn’t be (I’ll explain why in a minute), but, even if it is, these deaths - be they literal or figurative experiences - bring forth life.
Closely related to the symbolism of marriage is that of death, According to some representations of the ‘chemical marriage’ the king and queen, on marriage, are killed and buried together, only to rise again rejuvenated. That this connection between marriage and death is in the nature of things, is indicated by the fact that, according to ancient experience, a marriage in a dream means a death, and a death in a dream means a marriage.
This correspondence is explained by the fact that any given union presupposes an extinction of the earlier, still differentiated, state. In the marriage of man and woman, each gives up part of his or her independence, whereas the other way round, death (which is in the first instance a separation) is followed by the union of the body with the earth and of soul with its original essence.
On ‘chemical marriage’ Quicksilver takes unto itself Sulphur, and Sulphur, Quicksilver. Both forces ‘die,’ as foes and lovers. Then the changing and reflective moon of the soul unites with the immutable sun of the spirit so that it is extinguished, and yet illumined, at one and the same time. (Alchemy, pp 155-156)
The child born of the coition of this death to self and opening to the spirit is the “philosophical child” or “philosopher’s stone,” also known, for obvious reasons, I guess, as “the orphan.” Ms. Rowling, by making mom here a mercurial bird- woman, paints a detailed alchemical picture, because, as Abraham tells us, “the birth of the philosopher’s stone from the union of male and female substances at the chemical wedding is frequently compared to the birth of a bird,” specifically, the “Bird of Hermes” (Dictionary of Alchemical Imagery, p. 25).
The Philosopher’s Stone is ProducedI have to think the first question I’ll be asked after I post this is, “So, you’re saying Bill and Fleur will die at their wedding or soon after and that a child will be born miraculously from their brief marriage and that this bird-child will be the answer to Death or at least Lord Voldemort? What do you take me for?” That’s what I would be asking if I read this.
Let me say again that literary alchemy doesn’t force plot turns. The real master alchemist, Ms. Rowling, is obeying the rules of alchemical drama certainly but she does so in conformity to the tradition of telling the tale as it needs to be told.
What I mean by this is that Bill and Fleur don’t have to die physical deaths. The couples joined by chemical marriages in Lewis’ Ransom Trilogy, for instance, don’t die except in the Elizabethan usage of that term for congress. The death Bill and Fleur die is in the “extinction of their earlier, still differentiated state” of fire and water. This rotation of the elements can be a physical death, of course, but it is the death to self, in Fleur’s case phlegmatic excess and selfishness (seen in righteous anger with her mother-in-law to be) and in the Weasley’s case to choleric British pride and machismo (seen in Bill’s passivity in the hospital bed and Molly’s surrender to and embracing her daughter in law with the offer of a family heirloom to highlight her silver hair). This death has already happened and is the accomplishment of the alchemical wedding - which death and wedding promises a new life to celebrate at book’s end.
The production of the philosopher’s stone, then, is well under way by the end of Half-Blood Prince. We have seen the preface to the Chemical wedding and we have been shown the various quaternaries and contraries that need to be revealed and resolved in this finale to the seven stage alchemical work. The seven will become One, the various fours will become or unite behind the Quintessence, and the twos - especially the Gryffindor-Slytherin split between Harry and Draco, Harry and Severus, and Harry and Lord Voldemort but also all the doppelgangers, the contrary pairs, even the twins, if Fred and George die heroically as I suspect - will come into the light of day and find resolution and peace. Either Harry will become the Philosopher’s Stone he is destined to become by overcoming his prejudice and becoming a vehicle of love (destined from his beginnings as “the orphan” and “philosophical child” as much as by Prophecy) or the bad guys will triumph.