Fairy Tales | IMDB v2.1

Fairy Tales Feb 25, 2019 19:04:06 GMT

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Post by Salzmank on Feb 25, 2019 19:04:06 GMT

Feb 25, 2019 18:55:02 GMT alfromni said:

Salzmank

Just received your "like this" notification. I'd forgotten all about this interesting thread.

As I look through it again another idea has sprung forth re #2 "A word is forgotten, and cities perish". i.e. Sodom and Gomorrah.
"Sodom and Gomorrah have become synonymous with impenitent sin, and their fall with a proverbial manifestation of divine retribution." (Wiki)
"A word is forgotten " could relate to the forgotten word of God (or the gods)

Alternatively, but a little more obscure, #2 could relate to the Flood which again was supposedly retribution of God.

Comments?

Thanks, Al! Sodom and Gomorrah came to mind for me as well (I think I mentioned them in the OP), but, just as with Babel, I can’t help but thinking that GKC is being more literal here. His point is that the condition in fairy tales is incomprehensible—whereas, if we say “word” is “the word of God,” punishment for disobeying the word of God logically follows in these stories. Even with “a lamp is lit, and love flies away,” Chesterton is being literal: Eros/Cupid is literally the personification of love.

Something else that came to mind is C.S. Lewis’s story of Charn in The Magician’s Nephew. In it, everyone in the city of Charn perishes because Queen Jadis learns and then utters a secret word. Now, of course, Lewis was inspired by Chesterton and wrote his story a half-century afterwards, but I was wondering if Lewis could have been inspired by the same source.