(c) Nin Harris 2001

One of the primary considerations in postcolonial literature is that of home, and culture. Much has been said about the search for (or negation thereof of) the self in existentialist literature; in post colonial writers this search goes to a whole new level, as different cultures often seem to vie for attention within the psyche of the character, or writer. For Homi Bhabha, this search is one that may perhaps be reconciled by finding a meeting place in between cultures. Taking due note of this, this paper examines the site for Bhabha’s theories of cultural location in relation to two works by postcolonial writers. The first is Sons for the Return Home by Albert Wendt, and the second is The Enigma of Arrival by V.S. Naipaul. Both these texts are illustrative of the condition of hybridity set out by Bhabha in his work The Location of Culture. In The Enigma of Arrival, Naipaul writes about the condition of “Arrival”, basing it around the surrealist painting by de Chirico, which is of the same title as his book. The image is both bleak and ambiguous:

A classical scene, Mediterranean, ancient-Roman – or so I saw it. A wharf; in the background, beyond walls and gateways (like cutouts), there is the top of the mast of an antique vessel; on an otherwise deserted street in the foreground there are two figures, both muffled, one perhaps the person who has arrived, the other perhaps a native of the port. The scene is of desolation and mystery; it speaks of the mystery of arrival. (Naipaul 98)

This mystery runs at the heart of the work. He contemplates the idea of arrival, and the question of whether one can ever truly arrive at any given destination. One of the most autobiographical of Naipaul’s oeuvre, at its heart is the question of self, of the pose worn by the writer and of the dichotomy between that and the self of history.

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In an interesting introduction to his excellent compilation of Classic French Fairy Tales Jack Zipes noted that Moliere and Corneille’s production of Psyche

“played a role in the development of the beauty-and-the-beast motif in the works of Mme. d’Aulnoy.”

The tale referred to is “Laidronette” written during the period of the French `salon’ faerie tales during the reign of the Sun King(Louis XIV) (which in its turn inspired a delightful movement in Ravel’s ‘Mother Goose Suite’). However, that isn’t the only tale that has been influenced by this legend. The beauty and the beast motif may in fact be found in various folktales. This tale type requires a quest, and an act of redemption via love and/or forgiveness. This includes the different variations of “The Beauty and the Beast” and the Norweigen folktale “East of the Sun, West of the Moon”. If we draw the connection even farther then indubitably, my favourite Scottish ballad “Tam Lin” also falls within this category of mysterious, magical lovers in beastly-or not so beastly garb. Coincidentally, all of them needed to be rescued, in some way. Which is probably what drew me in the first place, the very idea that fairytale damsels are not totally in distress. In fact, in an inordinate amount of tales they seem to be the hero!

One of the earliest, if not the first instance of the tale, or rather, allegory of Cupid and Psyche, appeared in Lucius Apuleius’s “The Golden Ass”. This is related in the manner of a tale within a tale. The allegory here is of the human soul being tormented and then led into the road to love. ‘Psyche’ is also the Greek word for ’soul’ while the Latins call love ‘Cupido’. I’ve always found it interesting that the embodiment of the human soul comes in the guise of a woman while love comes in the guise of a man (or an older woman, if you take into account the role Venus plays in these proceedings).

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