Mind Picker: The Rebel Angels

Subtle wits like to refresh themselves with a whiff of mild indecency.

Call mine, then, a subtle wit for I enjoyed this book full of indecencies. I first read The Rebel Angels probably 25 years ago and what impressed me most about it was how Robertson Davies can describe situations totally outside my frame of reference (here, the inner workings of a graduate school and the lofty topics of professorial research) without making me feel ignorant or undereducated -- as Davies' characters speak knowledgably (yet without condescension), I could grasp most concepts through context, and the ideas that most interested me led to further study. I remember closing this book and then reading further on Paracelsus and alchemy, the cabbala, and after many nagging years, I finally delved into Rabelais' Gargantua and Pantagruel just last summer. What a pleasure it is to reread this book and actually understand the references.

The Rebel Angels is a book of dichotomies: it is told in the alternating voices of Maria Theotoky (the half-Gypsy research assistant that everyone falls in love with) and Simon Darcourt (an Anglican priest and New Testament scholar); it opposes science with mysticism; research with intuition; knowledge with wisdom; and balances the root and the crown. The fallen monk who has found his one true God is the embodiment of evil and the two finest teachers serve as the rebel angels (Azazel and Samahazai) of the title. There is intrigue and academic politics, purloined manuscripts, a love philtre, and the Bebby Jesus. There is Filth Therapy, forty feet of Literary Gut, a controversial researcher who might be either a Turd-Skinner or a Paracelsian Magus, and a male nurse (Well, I'm sure as hell not a FEMALE nurse).

It is understood that many of the professors in The Rebel Angels are barely-veiled caricatures of people that Davies knew and the setting is undoubtedly the University of Toronto where he himself taught (Ploughwright College is an obvious substitute for Massey Hall, of which Davies was the first Master). After reading Robertson Davies: A Portrait In Mosaic, his obsession with bowels and faeces becomes clearer, as do his professional jealousies -- this was a personal project for Davies and debts were definitely collected.

Civilization rests on two things...the discovery that fermentation produces alcohol, and the voluntary ability to inhibit defecation. And I put it to you, where would this splendidly civilized occasion be without both?

It was a decidedly different experience rereading The Rebel Angels, what with the scraps of knowledge I have picked up over the intervening years, but here is my one complaint: how could those cranky, old (yet venerated) professors that I first met 25 years ago be younger than I am now? How the hell did THAT happen? In my mind I'm still Maria, the Gypsy girl.

What really shapes and conditions and makes us is somebody only a few of us ever have the courage to face: and that is the child you once were, long before formal education ever got its claws into you — that impatient, all-demanding child who wants love and power and can't get enough of either and who goes on raging and weeping in your spirit till at last your eyes are closed and all the fools say, "Doesn't he look peaceful?" It is those pent-up, craving children who make all the wars and all the horrors and all the art and all the beauty and discovery in life, because they are trying to achieve what lay beyond their grasp before they were five years old.

Extension means teaching at night, and most of the people in the classes are middle-aged and opinionated; it won't be the thrill of moulding the young, which is what he likes.

Probably the only thing worse than an Extension class is one provided free at a public library. This is obviously part of my Lit Course and what the Professor told us to look for were the dichotomies (as alluded to above) and also the Jungian Shadow that Robertson Davies was trying to confront with this trilogy. As she puts it, his goal was to atone for not speaking up for the Jews during the Holocaust -- despite his position as a popular newspaper editor at the time -- and she told us in particular to get to know Maria and the Gypsies.

Here is what Davies has to say:

The Jews so cruelly used by the National Socialists in Germany, so bullied, tortured and tormented, starved and done to death in every way from the most sophisticated to the most brutal, have the small comfort of knowing that the civilized world feels for them; they have themselves declared that the world will never be allowed to forget their sufferings. But the Jews, for all their pride of ancestry, are a modern people in command of all the modern world holds, and so they know how to make their voices heard. The Gypsies have no such arts, and the Gypsies too were victims of the Nazi madness.

What happened to them has that strange tinge of reasonableness that deceived so much of the world when it heard what the Nazis were doing. At first the Fuehrer himself professed an interest in the Gypsies; they were fascinating relics of the Indo-Germanic race, and to preserve their way of life in its purity was a scientifically desirable end. They must be gathered together, and they must be numbered and their names recorded. Scholars must study them, and there is a terrible humour in the fact that they were declared to be, living creatures as they were, under the protection of the Department of Historical Monuments. So they were herded together, and then it was discovered by the same scientists who had acclaimed them that they were an impure ethnic group, and a threat to the purity of the Master Race; the obvious solution to their problem was to sterilize them, bringing an end to their tainted heritage, and the inveterate criminality it fostered. But as Germany gained power over much of Europe it was found simpler to kill them.

Being skilled in escape and evasion, great numbers of Gypsies ran away, and took refuge in the countryside that had always been so kind to them. That was when the greatest horror began; troops hunted them through the woods like animals, and shot on sight. Those who could not escape were in the hands of the Einsatzgruppen, the exterminators, and they were gassed. The Gypsies are not a numerous people, and so the statistics concerning their extermination are unimpressive, if you are impressed chiefly by numbers: there were just a few less than half a million who died thus, but when one human creature dies a whole world of hope and memory and feeling dies with him. To be robbed of the dignity of a natural death is a terrible deprivation...

Half a million Gypsies dead, at the command of this gadjo world; who weeps for them? I do, sometimes.

I do.

One of the most interesting things about this course is that we have a Roma (Gypsy) woman in the course, and although she hasn't brought it up since the first meeting, I am looking forward to what she might have to say about The Rebel Angels.

Here's my only brush with Gypsies: When I went to Europe in 1986, my friend and I were staying in a seaside town in Italy called Tirrenia, not far from Pisa. It was kind of out of the way and we were the only foreign tourists on the beach, but when we took the bus, there were always Gypsies who would get on with us, and while we would pay a fare, they would not. They were bangled and multi-skirted, barefoot, and more than anything, dirty. There was at least one woman who would whip out a brown breast and start feeding a largish toddler, and small children who would tug at our sleeves and beg for lira. This was totally foreign to me -- Imagine! Real Live Gypsies! -- and I would be relieved when they would get off at a stop other than our own.

On the first day of the Literature course, the Prof was talking about refugees, and sneering about the Canadian (Conservative) Government's new, tougher stance on admissions, and one of the things she pointed out was their paranoia that Gypsies were trying to sneak into Canada -- and I do remember that the Roma were coming as tourists and then claiming refugee status once they got here, and as that starts a years-long vetting process (at the taxpayers' expense), the Government decided to require Hungarian visitors to obtain visas. The Prof found this despicable -- she believes that anyone who claims refugee status should be taken at their word -- and I was left wondering if the Gypsies were really still being persecuted in Europe. As this hasn't been raised again, I still don't know -- and even though I was only 18 and naive as a babe the only time I ever met Real Live Gypsies, I don't know how I would feel about a community of them behaving here the way I saw them there. (But, of course, don't believe they should hunted down and shot. What interesting questions this course is raising about compassion and responsibility.)

*****

Edit added after the class talked about this book:

The Prof didn't add much more to my understanding than what I had written here; she even read us that same long passage about Gypsies that I have included. Her biggest insight was that this passage is placed more or less dead center in the book and we should take that as meaning that the Holocaust it mentions should be seen as the central point from which all of the plots and ideas radiate. Again she spoke about how, stated as a percentage of their populations, the Nazis came closer to implementing their Final Solution against the Gypsies than against the Jews. When someone asked if the numbers of Gypsies ever recovered, she replied, "No, I don't believe so. Not in the numbers there used to be." And yet...before the class I had read this article which says that there are 12 million people in Europe who self-identify as Gypsies/Roma/Travellers. It describes the level of persecution they face, and even though the Prof once again sneered at the Canadian Government's refusal to regard this group as refugees, it seems to me that it would be like another country giving refugee status to groups of our Native peoples: their standard of living is lower than the general population, but that's mostly because they decline to participate in the larger economy -- no one is actually hunting down either Natives or Gypsies.

The woman in our class who calls herself a Gypsy said she was impressed with the inside information that Davies had been able to gain (like knowing that they all use Royal Crown Derby china settings) and wanted to know if Maria's mother was described as dirty and a shoplifter just to satisfy an ignorant reading public's mental image of what a Gypsy is. The Prof agreed that it was a bit outrageous for the well-off woman to be a common thief (which I would disagree with -- the book makes it clear that she shoplifts as an act of defiance against the gadjo) and she was happy to talk about whether Mamusia was actually called "dirty": sure, she doesn't shower, but she does oil up her body and her hair in the Gypsy fashion. So who's to say that means "dirty"? From whose perspective? And while we're at it, we could talk about whether it's even desirable for human animals to cover and suppress all of their natural smells -- is that healthy or just Capitalism?

The talk, overall, was pretty dull for this book, and before the evening was over, the Prof introduced one of the old guys from the class who wanted to share some German WWI medals with the class (presumably because this week marks the 100th anniversary of the start of the War To End All Wars?). I looked at the Iron Crosses, not terribly interested but trying to be polite, yet was amused by the final story that the medals' owner, Roger, shared: When his grandparents were farmers in Poland many years ago, a group of Gypsies arrived and attempted to set up a camp in one of their fields. They had wagons and goats and dogs and many, many people, and not wanting the hassle, the grandfather went and chased them off. As the Gypsies moved on, an old woman turned to the farmer and said, "You'll pay for this." The next morning, the farmer's cows refused to give milk and he knew that he had been cursed. As everyone in the class marvelled at this story, Roger added, "But my grandmother says that the barn had been painted the day before -- inside and out -- and that the cows were probably just reacting to that."

I wonder what the thoroughly modern gypsy woman in our class thought of that?

Further Edit:

And, in the way that my crazy, synchronicitous life works, there was a Jeopardy question a few days after this that was based on the Louvre being closed in the summer of 2013 because of pick-pocketing Gypsy children. And, interestingly, most articles about it just mentioned "gangs of pickpockets", with only this one identifying it as a Gypsy or Roma problem:

Many of the thieves are said to be the children of Romanian immigrants who get into the museum for free and then start asking tourists for money

"The children are tough and very well organised. They stop at nothing to get what they want, and work in gangs. We can only do so much, but arrests are usually impossible because of their young age. If they are kicked out, they return the next day. They are very aggressive towards staff, putting people in danger of attack."

Members of museum staff trade unions visited the Ministry of Culture following today's walk-out to demand action.

Two years ago, France's then Interior Minister said that the vast majority of street robberies in Paris were being carried out by the children of Romanian immigrants.

Claude Gueant said the notoriously poor and corrupt eastern European state was responsible for exporting some of the most notorious sneak thieves in the world.

Many operated in gangs around the Gare du Nord Eurostar station, preying on British travellers as they arrived by high-speed train from London.

France has shut down illegal Roma camps full of Romanian immigrants which have sprung up around the French capital, but Romanian crime remains a huge problem.

And, again, I have to wonder why a Literature Professor believes that this is the type of persecution that should open Canada's door to Gypsy refugees.