Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
meaning of this last supper is lost on his guests—even though certain out-
siders, a variety of Gentile characters introduced elsewhere in the Gospels,
seem to fully understand his identity. It is only in its aftermath that his dis-
ciples finally realize what the dinner had signified. It turns out to have been
more than just a meal; it was also a dramatic representation of Jesus' love for
them, a dramatic enactment of a greater sacrifice as yet unknown to them.
When we reflect back upon this New Testament narrative, it becomes
evident that it has “merged insensibly” into Dinesen's story. “Babette's Feast”
is an instance of what Mircea Eliade described when he wrote that “myth
never quite disappears from the present world of the psyche,” but “only
changes its aspect and disguises its operations.”
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But why would the creator
of this story do this? The answer that Frye proposes, and which I will adopt
here, is that such “indirect mythologizing” makes stories both credible and
morally acceptable.
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By borrowing its
mythos
from the Bible, the story also
achieves a thematic resonance with Scripture, surrounding in a holy aura
Dinesen's tale about the sacrificial significance of art. Those who enter into
her story experience the super-rational evocations of the sacred, even while
their minds are focused on its nonreligious subject. Similarly, and more
vital to our present purposes, the preordained logic of its plot enables the
moral significance of the original religious source to be carried over into the
author's world. A vision emerges of the artist (Dinesen's own vocation) as a
suffering servant who provides a covering for the sins of the people. Art, we
learn, is not only morally pure but also redemptive, the vehicle by which the
transformative power of love is poured out upon the earth.
In order to recognize the relationship between the
mythos
of the New
Testament and that of “Babette's Feast,” one must consciously employ an
exegesis by analogy, and so the similarity of plot shared by the two stories
might not be noticed by those who are not actively looking for such connec-
tions. Literary displacement, in other words, never draws attention to itself
as such, and this is precisely what makes it a subject of special rhetorical
interest. The fact that the mythical basis of a secular narrative's plot is not
instantly recognizable means that the derivative character of its thematic
meaning may go unrecognized as well. Thematic outcomes that are still
saturated with religious meaning can persist with impunity in a secular
story, leaving it substantially like its source in certain of its spiritual prin-
ciples. At this level, in other words, “Babette's Feast” declares the redemp-
tive power of sacrificial love no less than does the passion story of the New
Testament, but it also maintains a sense of separation that enables it to
substitute a merely human figure for a divine one. The rhetorical potency
