Fallen From Time Rip

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Fallen from Time: The Mythic Rip Van Winkle

Author(s): Philip YoungSource: The Kenyon Review, Vol. 22, No. 4 (Autumn, 1960), pp. 547-573Published by: Kenyon CollegeStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4334064

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Philip YoungF A L L E N F R O M T I M E :THE MYTHIC RIP VAN WINKLE

"Black wing, brown wing, hove}- over;twenty years and the spring is over;To-day grieves, to-morrow grieves,Cover me over, light-in-leaves . . ."

-T. S. ELIOTWASHINGTON IRVING IS REPORTEDTO HAVE SPENT A JUNE EVENING IN18i8 talking with his brother-in-lawabout the old days in SleepyHollov. Melancholy of late, the writer was pleased to find himselflaughing. Suddenly he got up and went to his room. By morninghe had the manuscript of the first and most famous Americanslhortstory, and his best single claim to a permanent reputation.Nearly a century and a half have elapsed, and the name ofRip Van Winkle, one of the oldest in our fiction, is as alive asever. The subject of innumerable representations-among themsome of the country's finest paintings-America's archetypalsleeper is almost equally well known abroad. Nor is his famesimply popular, or commercial. The most complex of poets, aswell as the least sophisticatedof children, are attractedto him.But there is something ironic here, for at its center Rip's storyis every bit as enigmatic as it is renowned, and the usual under-standing of Rip himself, spread so wide, is shallow. Very few ofthe millions of people who have enjoyed his tale would be com-fortable for long if pressed to say exactly what "happened"tohim, or if asked to explain what there is about the "poor, simplefellow" that has exertedso generaland deep a fascination.Thanksto Irving, the thunder Rip heard is still rolling out of the


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548 RIP VAN WINKLECatskills. And it is pregnant thunder, charged with meaning.Perhaps it is time someone tried to make out what it has to say.Irving's story may not be an easy one, but it can easily be toldin such a way as to refreshthe memories of those who have notencountered it of late. The hero of the tale was a good-natured,middle-aged fellow, and a hen-pecked husband, who lived withhis Dutch neighbors in a peaceful village in the Catskill moun-tains along the Hudson River in the period immediately preced-ing the American Revolution. The trouble with Rip was thatalthough he would hunt and fish all day, or even do odd jobs forthe neighborhood women, and entertain their children, he was'insuperably averse" to exerting himself for his own practicalbenefit. He had lost an inheritance, his farm was in the worstcondition of any in the vicinity and, worst of all, his termagantwife was always upbraidinghim about these things. He had onlyone "domestic adherent," his dog Wolf, and one comfortableretreat,a bench outside the local inn, where under the sign of HisMajestyGeorge the Third met a kind of "perpetualclub." But hewas driven eventually even from this refuge, and forced to thewoods for peace. On a fine fall day it happened.

Rip was shooting squirrelsin a high part of the mountains.


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PHILIP YOUNG 549Tiring in the late afternoon he rested on a green knoll beside adeep glen, with a sleepy view of miles of forest and the Hudsonmoving drowsily through it. Suddenly he heard the distant soundof lhis name. He saw a crow winging its way across the moun-tain, and Wolf bristling, and then lhe made out an odd figure, ashort old fellow in antique Dutch clothes, coming up from theravine with a heavy keg on his back. Rip quickly gave him ahand, and as they laboredhe heard distant thunder coming froma cleft in the rocks. They passed through this crevice, and cameinto a kind of amphitheatre,walled by precipices.Stunned withawe, Rip saw in the middle of the space a group of odd-lookingmen playing at nine-pins. They had peculiar, long-nosed faces; allwore beards; one man, stout and old, appearedto be their com-mander. "What seemed particularly odd," however, was that"although these folk were evidently amusing themselves, yetthey maintained the gravest faces, the most mysterious silence,and were, withal, the most melancholy party of pleasurehe hadever witnessed." The only sound was the thunder of the ballsas they rolled.When the men saw Rip they stopped their play and stared athim as if they were statues. His heart turned within him; trem-bling, lhe obeyed his guide and waited on the company. Tlheydrank from the keg in silence, and then went on with their game.Soon Rip was trying the liquor, but he drank more than he couldhold, and passedinto a profound sleep.When he woke he was back on the green knoll. It was morn-ing and an eagle wheeled aloft. His gun was rusted away, Wolfwas gone, and there was no sign of the opening in the cliffs. Hecalled his dog, but the cawing of crows high in the air was theonly answer, and he headed lamely for home. As he approachedhis village he saw no one he knew. People kept stroking theirchins when they looked at him, and when he picked up the ges-ture from them he discoveredthat his beard was now gray and afoot long. As he entered town he saw that the village itself hadgrown. But his own house was in ruins, and a half-starved dog


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550 RIP VAN WINKLEthatlooked ike Wolf skulkedabout he wreckageandsnarledathim. In town the inn was gone, replacedby an ugly buildingcalled JonathanDoolittle'sUnion Hotel, and on the old signKing George'sportraithad new clothes,and beneath t a newlegend: George Washington.Even the nature of the peopleseemedchanged: their drowsyways had becomedisputatious.Rudely challengedto state his affiliations,"Federalor Demo-crat,"Rip canonly protest hathe is loyalto his king,whereuponhe is takenby somefor a spy.No one knowshim, the friendsheasksfor are dead,and he comesto doubthis own identity,untilhis daughterJudith'srecognitionconfirmsit. Now he is wel-comedhome,learns hathis wife is dead ("ina fit of passionat aNew Englandpeddler"),and that he has unaccountably eengone for twentyyears.The oldestand most learnedmemberofthecommunitys able to throwa littlelighton the storyhe tells:it is every twenty yearsthat Hendrik Hudson, the river'sdis-coverer,keepsa sortof vigil in the Catskillswith the crewof theHalf-Moon,and playingat nine-pins hey make the mountainsringwith the distantpealsof thunder.And so Rip-idle, reveredand happy-retires o hisplaceon the benchat thedoorof theinn.To be surethis story,thougha fine one, is not perfect.Forone thing, althoughIrving'sFederalismenableshim to jab inmildlyamusing ashionat the shabbyandpretentiousepublican-ism of Rip'snew village,such pleasantriesome at the expenseof ourbeingwholly convincedof what he is tryingto tell us-thatRip at the end is in clover.But the villageis no longeren-tirelythe placefor him, and the fineold inn wherehe sits is justnot thereanymore.That this is, however, he raresortof storythatbothsatisfiesand stimulates s shown by the fact that it has been so oftenretold,chiefly or the stage.Therehavebeenat leastfive plays-beginningwith JohnKerr's,which firstappearedn Washingtonin i829-and three operas,and severalchildren'sversions.Butnonehas addedanything mportant o ourunderstandingf the


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PHILIP YOUNG 551story.JosephJefferson,who playedthe role of Rip for forty-fiveyears n his own extraordinarilyopularnterpretation,ad a fewsensible deas aboutthe material,but he also failed to throw outmuchof the nineteenth enturybaggagehandeddown from Kerr.Though Joyceand Dylan Thomas have punnedelaboratelyon Rip's name,most of the poetswho have invoked him havedonenothingmuch eitherto interpret hestoryor the character,and only Hart Cranehas given him seriousand extendedatten-tion. The Bridge 1930) has a sectioncalled "VanWinkle,"whomCrane houghtof as "the muse of memory"-or,as he putit to his sponsor,Otto Kahn,"theguardianangel of the trip tothe past."Here Rip is a figure evokedfrom recollectionof thepoet'schildhoodand the nation's;since this is to introduceRipin a thoughtfulandpromisingway, it is too badthatverylittle isreallydonewithhim in the poem.

This is unfortunatepartlyfor the reason hat Rip is, poten-tially, a truly mythic figure. He is conceivably ven more: ur-mythic.At any rate a primal,primevalmyth hasbeen postulated(by JosephCampbell n his Hero with a ThousandFaces),andhas beendescribed-as "a separationrom the world,a penetra-tion to some sourceof power,and a life-enhancing eturn."Andthis is a most excellentdescription f whathappens n "RipVanWinkle."But no one has elevated the story to this status.AsConstanceRourkewroteof it twenty-five earsago, the tale "hasnever been finished,and still awaits a final imaginative e-crea-tion." If then we are to be helped to understand he storymoredeeplyby consideringwhat hasbeendone with it, we had betterconsiderwhat had beendone with it beforeIrvingwrote it.

IIIn I912 an eminent Dutch historian,Tieman De Vries byname, publishedunder the title of Dutch History, Art and Litera-ture for Americansa seriesof lectureshe had deliveredat The

Universityof Chicago.A large partof this book is devotedto a


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552 RIP VAN WINKLEmonumentallyneptattackon Washington rvingfor having, n"RipVanWinkle," haracterizedhe Dutchpeopleas stupid, azyand credulous. orhis overwhelming lowthe author,protestinggreat reluctanceand sadness,brings forth the revelation hat"Rip" s not the "original" torythat Irving is "generally ivencreditfor,"anyway.The bittertruth,he discloses, s that the talehad been told before: its embryo is a myth about an ancientGreek namedEpimenides, nd this germ was "fully developed"by Erasmus a citizenof Rotterdam)n 1496. In the mythEpimenideswassentto lookfor a sheep, ay down in a cave,sleptfor fifty-seven earsand waked to find everything hangedandhimself unrecognizeduntil a brother identifiedhim. Erasmususedthis story,then, to attackthe Scotist heologians f his day(whom he thoughtasleep)as Irvingusedit on the Dutch.Thefact that Irving never admittedknowing Erasmus's tory, saysDe Vries,"touches oo much the character f ourbelovedyoungauthor o be decided n a few words,"and thus, havingwrittenthewords,he drops hesubject.Quite asidefrom the foolishnessaboutthe Dutch, who arefondlytreatedn the story, herearetwo realblundershere.First,Irving's ndebtednesswas so widely recognizedwhen the storyfirst appearedas to be a subjectfor newspaper ommentand,second,his sourcewas not Erasmus,whose tale is in no sense"fullydeveloped," ut an old Germantale publishedby Otmar,the Grimm of his period, n his Volke-Sagen f i8oo. ActuallyIrvingwas on thisoccasionvery noisilyaccused f plagiarism.Atthe end of his storyhe had appendeda note in which he hintedthatRip'soriginwas"a ittleGerman uperstitionboutFrederickder Rothbartand the Kypphausermountain,"but this has al-waysbeenregarded s a redherring-so freelyhad he borrowedfromanother, ndadjacent, tory n Otmar: he folk taleof PeterKlaus. About the only thing Irving could do when this waspointedouthe did: threwup his handsandsaidthatof courseheknew the taleof PeterKlaus;he had seen it in three collectionsof German egends.


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PHILIP YOUNG 553There were probablystill other sourcesfor "RipVan Winkle."We know for instance that in I817 Sir Walter Scott told Irvingthe story of Thomas of Erceldoune ("Thomas the Rhymer"),who was bewitched by the Queen of the Fairies for seven years."Doldrum"-a farce about a man's surprise at the changes hefound after waking from a seven-yearslumber-was played in

New York when Irving was fourteen. It is almost certain, more-over, that Irving knew at least a couple of the other versions ofthe old tradition.The idea of persons sleeping for long periods is of coursevery common in myth, legend and folk-lore. So sleep Arthurand Merlin and John the Divine, and Charlemagneand FrederickBarbarossa (or Rothbart,or Redbeard) and Wilhelm Tell, andOdin (or Woden), the Norse (or Teutonic) god, and Endymionthe shepherd, and Siegfried and Oisin and several dozen otherh-eroes f many lands, as well as Sleeping Beautyand Bruennhildeand other mythical ladies-and also the protagonists of manynovels, who wake to their author'svision of utopia, or hell. Andthere are several myths and legends about these sleepers whichcome prettyclose to the storyIrvingtold. Probablytlhebest knownof these concerns the Seven Sleepers.These men were natives ofEphesus,and early Christians persecutedby the Emperor Decius.They hid in a mountain and fell asleep.On waking they assumedthat a night had passed,and one of them slipped into town tobuy bread. When hiegot there he was stunned to see a cross overthe gate, and then to hear the Lord's name spoken freely. Whenlhepaid for the bread his coins, now archaic, gave him away, andlhediscovered he hiadslept for 360 years.This myth has spreadwidely, and found its way into booksso different as the Koran, where Molhammedadapted it and in-troduced a dog who sleepswith the seven men, and MarkTwain'sInnocents Abroad, where Twain tells the story at considerablelength (and says he knows it to be a true story, as he personallyhas visited the cave). Somewhat similar myths are also known inthe religious literatureof the Jews. In a section on fasting in the


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554 RIP VAN WINKLEBabylonianTalmud, to choose a single instance,appearsone ofseveralstoriesabout Honi the CircleDrawer, ately thrust intoprominence s a candidateor identificationwith the TeacherofRighteousnessf the Dead Sea Scrolls.One day Honi sat downto eat, thestorygoes, and sleepcame;a rocky ormation nclosedhim, and he slept for seventyyears.Whenhe went homenobodywould believehe was Honi; greatly hurt, he prayedfor deathanddied.The thing that is reallyvitalto "RipVan Winkle,"butmiss-ing from all these other stories, s a revelation-some kind ofmysterious ctivitywitnessedby the sleeper.But such tales alsoexist-for instance, he Chinesestoryof Wang Chih, who comesuponsomeagedmen playingchess n a mountaingrotto, s givena date-stone o put in his mouth,and sleepsfor centuries, inallywaking to return home to practiceTaoist rites and attainim-mortality.Moreakin to Rip's s the misadventuref Herla,King of theBritons.He isapproachedyanugly dwarf, omewhat esemblingPan, who tells him that he will graceHerla'swedding to thedaughterof the King of France,and that Herla will in turnattend the weddingof the dwarf-king.At the Briton'smarriageceremony, he dwarf-guestservefood and drink from preciousvessels.A year ater,at theweddingof thedwarf-kingn a moun-taincavern,Herlatakesa bloodhoundn hisarms,andhe andhismen areenjoinednot to dismountuntil the bloodhound umps.Somewho tryare turned o dust,but the houndnever umpsandHerla thus wandershopelessly nd "makethmadmarches"withhisarmy orthespaceof twohundredyears.At lasthereacheshesunlightand meets a shepherdwho can scarcelyunderstand helanguage he king speaks.'Closer till, in one way,is the storyof a blacksmith ecordedin theGrimms'TeutonicMythology.Whiletrying o find wood tomakea handle or hishammer,he getslost;therearethe familiarrift in themountains,omemysterious owlers, nd a magicgift-


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PHILIP YOUNG 555this time a bowling ball that turns to gold. (Others who haveentered this cliff have seen an old man with a long white beardholding a goblet.)The most detailed precedent for Irving, however, and beyonda doubt his principal source, is the tale of Peter Klaus, whichappeared in Otmar's collection.2This is a story of a goatherdfrom Sittendorf who used to pasturehis sheep on the Kyfhausermountain in Thuringia. One day he discovered that a goat haddisappeared nto a crackin a cliff, and following her he came to acave where he found her eating oats that fell from a ceiling whichshook with the stamping of horses. While Peter stood there inastonishment a groom appeared and beckoned him to follow;soon they came to a hollow, surroundedby high walls into which,through the thick overhanging branches, a dim light fell. Herethere was a rich, well-graded lawn, where twelve serious knightswere bowling. None of them said a word. Peter was put to worksetting pins.

At first his knees shook as he stole glimpses of the silent,long-beardedknights, but gradually his fear left him, and finallyhe took a drink from a tankard.This was rejuvenating, and asoften as he felt tired he drank from the vessel, which neveremptied. This gave him strength, but sleep overcame him none-theless, and when he woke he was back at the green spot wherehe grazed his goats. The goats, however, were gone, and so wash-isdog. There were trees and bushes he couldn't remember, andin bewilderment he went into Sittendorf, below him, to askabout his herd.Outside the village the people were unfamiliar, differentlydressedand strange-spoken.They stared at him and stroked theirchins as he asked for his sheep; when involuntarily he strokedhis own chin he found that his beard had grown a foot long. Hewent to his house, which was in decay, and there he saw anemaciated dog which snarled at him. He staggered off, callingvainly for his wife and children. The villagers crowded around


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556 RIP VAN WINKLEhim, demanding o know whathe was lookingfor, andwlhenheaskedaboutold friendshe learned hatthey were dead.Then hesaw a prettyyoung woman,who exactlyresembledhis wife, andwhen he asked her father'sname she answered,"PeterKlaus,God rest his soul. It is more than twentyyears ince . . his sheepcame backwithout him."Then he shouted,"I am Peter Klaus,and no other,"and was warmlywelcomedhome.Since thiselaborate arallelwith Irvingepitomizes he proc-ess wherebya national iterature dapted oreignmaterialsandbegan to function, t is somewhatappropriatehat our firstshortstoryshouldowe so largea debt to a European ource.But it isnot at all clearwhy thisparticulartoryshouldhave comedownto us acrossa span of some twenty-five enturies-fromthe time,say, of Epimenides.Some of its charm is obvious;the idea offalling clean out of time, for instance,must be universally as-cinating.But the veryheartof "RipVanWinkle,"and of "PeterKlaus"-the strange pageant in the mountain-is still, fromwhateverversionof it maybe the earlieston downto the presenttime, enigmatic.In the scene with the "dwarfs"-tofocus againon Irving-it is not even clearwhat is going on. When the silent men ofoutlandishappearancend their eadergo through heir motions,the feeling is very strong hattheiractionsareintended o conveysomething.Butwhat? They are bowling,of course,and produc-ing the sound of thunder,but why arethey doingthis?Why arethey so sad and silentas theydo it? Why so odd-looking?Andwhy does Rip'sparticipationost him a generationof his life?The action s fairlypulsingwith overtones:he men arespeakingin signs;their motionscry out for translation s vigorouslyas ifthiswere,as it seems,somestrangely olemncharade.The ques-tion,whichseemsneverevento havebeenasked, s whatareweto makeof this thunderingpantomime?Whathavethe gods toimpart

The notion that somewhere n the storylurks a secondary,


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PHILIP YOUNG 557or symbolic,meaning s by no means new. WalterMap,for in-stance, ntendedthe latter partof his storyaboutHerla to be asatireon the courtof King Henry IL,which he thoughtunstable.Erasmus, s alreadynoted, attacked he Scotists hroughhis; andthe Talmud draws a moral from Honi's lonely end: "Eithercompanionship r deathl."More interesting,however, s ArnoldToynbee's interpretation f "Rip Van Winkle" in the thirdvolume of his Study of History.There is likely to be, he feels,something"old-fashioned"bout any given colonial ethos, andhis theorycomesto a generalization: geographicalxpansion ofa civilization1produces ocialretardation." oynbee thinks Ripan expressionof his principle, he long sleep symbolizingtheslumber of social progress in a newly settled place. Irving "wasreallyexpressingn mythological magery heessenceof the over-seasexperience...

The troublewith the interpretationsf Map, Erasmusandthe Talmud is that they are forcedand arbitrary, nd the troublewith Toynbee'ss thatthe storydoesn't it the theory t is supposedto express. f we ever had a periodduringwhich socialprogresswasnot retardedhenit wasexactly he periodRip slept through.In that generationwe were transformedrom a group of looselyboundand often provincial olonies nto a cockyand independentrepublicwith a new kind of government nd-as the story itselfmakes clear enough-a whole new and new-fashioned pirit. Inorder o fit the thesisIrvingmust have had Rip return o a villagewhere nothing much had happenedor changed, and thus hemusthave writtena different tory.But he chose instead o writea storyon the ordler f the myth aboutHoni the CircleDrawerwho, according o one tradition, lept throughthe destruction fthe FirstTemple and the buildingof the second,or like the oneabout he SevenSleepers,who slept through he Christian evolu-tion.3 n all thesetales the startlingdevelopmentshat have takenplace during the sleep are a large part of the '"point." nd evenif to Toynbeenationalisms-and waseven in eighteenth entury


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558 RIP VAN WINKLEAmerica-a thoroughlydeplorable hing, it was not a sign ofsocial retardation.Since such explanations s these will not help much morethan the poets and playwrightshave done to show us what isgoing on in "Rip Van Winkle,"and since there is nowhereelseto look, we are forcedat long last to squint or ourselves hroughthatcrevice n the mountain.In the shadows here, urk figuresand images which take us back, along a chronologicaline, to atime before he beginningsof recordedhistory.And if we couldidentifyand understandhesefiguresand imageswe shouldhave,finally,the answers o most of our questions.Many editions of Irving'sstory carry as an epigraphsomelines he took from the seventeenth enturypoet William Cart-wright:

By Woden, God of Saxons,From whence comes Wensday, that is Wodensday,Truth is a thing that ever I will keepUntil thylke day in which I creep intoMy sepulchre- .

The most plausible eadingof these lines is: "By God it's a truestory I'm telling." But this makes Irving's two notes-in whichhe calls this a true tale-redundant.Less simplyread, t mightbethe story itself saying, "By God, I'll keep to myself the truthaboutthis thing as long as I live." At any rate, it is eithera curiouscoincidence r an obscure luethatin swearingby WodenIrvinghas pointed to the remotestorigins of his storythat can be un-covered.To baretheseoriginswouldbe to forcethe story,at last,to give up its secrets.Here is a grab-bag f traditional lements-folk, legendary,and mythic. The green knoll on which Rip sits when he hearshis namehas behindit the GreenMoundsof Irishfairytales-oftenprehistoric urialmounds.It is an appropriatepotfor hisbewitchingand approximateo the "buriedmen" he is aboutto visit.Magicpotionsandsacreddrinksareso standardn mythi-ology,folk-loreand religionas to suggestparallelsautomatically


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PHILIP YOUNG 559as Rip plays Ganymede, wine-pourerto the gods. A less familiarlittle tradition lies behind those dogs, which Rip and Peter findbarely and implausibly alive after so many years-this takes usall the way back to Odysseus, returning after a generation'sab-sence to find his dog Argos in Ithaca,still half-aliveand lying on aheap of dung.

But the most important recognition in Irving's story concernsthe identity of the men Rip meets in the mountain, and of theirleader. These are "Hendrik Hudson" and his crew.4 The black-smith and Peter Klaus never identitfy their strange mountainmen, and the unnamed leaders never appear. Nevertheless it isnot hard to guess with considerable assuranceof being right bothwho they are and by whom they are led. It was the Odensbergthat the blacksmith entered, and the Kyfhauser that Peterwormed his way into; it is in the Odensberg, accordingto legend,that Charlemagne and his knights are sleeping, and the Kyfhauserwhere sleep FrederickBarbarossaand his.5Hudson, then, is play-ing the role of the great kings of European countries, as Arthurplays it in England, and is a survival of this tradition. This recog-nition opens the door.Part of the Barbarossa egend, which is better known andmore detailed than the one of Charlemagne, concerns the condi-tions under which he can return to active life. Around theKyfhauser a flock of ravens is said to fly, and each time the kingwakes he asks if they are still there (they are, and this means thetime has not come). Another important detail of the story is hisbeard: it is extraordinarily ong already, and when it has grownthree times around the table where he sits his time will havecome. It is very likely, then, that the black wings hovering overRip just before he enters the mountain, and just after he emergesinto consciousness, are the ravens of Barbarossa-just as thebeards which are prominent in his story and Peter's (althoughthe natural-enough consequences of not shaving for twentyyears) come down to us from this legend.


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560 RIP VAN WINKLEBut the most importantdetail of all is a game, common to somany of these stories-the Chinese and Japanese versions, andPeter Klaus and the blacksmith and Rip. And the fact that thegame in the storiesthat primarilyconcern us here is always bowl-ing, which makes the sound of thunder, gives the whole showaway: we are dealing, ultimately, with the gods, and in thefarthest recessof this cave the figure with the red beard (to repre-sent lightning), that helped to identify him with Frederick theRedbeard,is the god of thunder-Thor, God of Saxons, whencecomes Thorsday, that is Thursday.More clearly the prototypeof all these sleeping heroes, how-ever, is the magnificentlywhite-beardedWoden, or Odin, the godof the dead whom Cartwright swore by. In the legend aboutCharlemagne the people who saw the king described him as aman with a white beard,and the name of the mountain Charle-

magne inhabits, the Odensberg,suggests all by itself his ancestor.But the fact that the blacksmithon the Odensbergis in searchofwood for a handle to an instrumentof power which was the veryemblem of the god of thunder, a hammer, suggests Thor just asstrongly. So thoroughly have the two gods been confused in thesemyths that the king who is buried in Odin's mountain hiasinsome stories the red coloring and the red horse that are reallyappropriate o Thor. On this horse the god issuesfrom the moun-tain with his men, every so-many years,and in this activity he isagain Odin, the leaderof the Wild Hunt.These confusions between Tlhorand Odin are not surprising,since the two figures are confused in Norse mythology itself.Although Thor was the son of Odin hie was also sometimes anolder god than Odin; often he was a god superiorto Odin, andsometimes they were thought of as exactly the same god. Thedirect ancestor of the Hudson Rip saw, then, was a Thor whiohas many of the attributesof Odin, and recognizing this takes usto the sourceof the traditionsout of which Irving'sscene is prin-cipally compounded. Recognizing these traditions, in turn, en-


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PHILIP YOUNG 561ables us to understand he subliminalrichnessof its materials,buriedunder hedetritus f centuries.The ravenswhich fly about the Kyfhauser,and the crowsand eagle of the Catskills,are lineal descendants f the ravensThought and Memorywho saton Odin'sshoulderandkepthiminformed,or of the eagle that hoveredover Odin'sown retreat,or of the flight of ravens,"Odin'smessengers"without whosemessageFrederick annotemerge)-or of all three.The dogs inthe stories,mixingGreekmythwith Teutonic,areprogenyof thewolvesGeri and Frekiwho sat at Odin'sfeet, or of the totemwolf which hungoverthe westdoorof hisresidence-in honorofwhichancestryRip'sdog gets his name,Wolf. The drink whichboth invigoratedand overpoweredRip is the same drink Bar-barossa'snights gave Peter; t belongsalsoin the gobletCharle-magne was seen holding, and, despiteall the magic drinks offolk-loreand myth, it is ultimately"Odin'smead," rom whichOdingot wisdom,and inspiredpoets; t was a magicdraftrelatedto the drinkalwaysavailable n the Abodeof the Blest,the drinkthatrejuvenates,nd obliterates ll sorrow.In a like manner, the odd appearance f Hudson's crew,thoseugly, drab,shortand curiouscreatures one fellow'sface iscomprised ntirelyof his nose) are echoes of the dwarfsHerlamet-although those dwarfsalsolooked like Pan, mixing Greekand Teutonic(and probablyWelsh) mythologyagain. But Hud-son's men get their appearancerom the Night-Elveswho madeThor'shammer-thoseugly littlelong-nosedpeople,dirty-brownin color, who lived in cavesand clefts. Beneath his effectivedis-guise the crew-menof the Half-Moonare really the knights ofBarbarossand Charlemagne,who are the brave dead warriorsbroughtbackfrom the battlefields y the Valkyries o Odin'shallof the dead: Rip has really been in Valhallaand seen the slaincollectedaround heirgod, whoby the old confusion s now Thor,whosementheyhlave ecome.The reason or the oddnessof theirbehavior-their melancholyand their lacklustre tares-has be-


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562 RIP VAN WINKLEcome completelyobvious, f indeedit was not before: they aredead.And one of Odin'schief characteristics,is extremealoof-ness, accounts or the fact that Rip got but a glimpseof theirleader,while neitherPeteror the blacksmith versaw him at all.Why suchpagangodsshould have been imag-

ined as sleeping n moun-A tains can be plausibly ex-'# plained.When convertedto Christianity,he peoplewhohad worshippedhesefigurescould not quicklyand completelyrejectthefaith of their fathers.Tothem the outmodedgodslingere(d n, wandering,sleeping,and appearing nfrequently.Later, vanishedbut actual heroeslike Charlemagne,Frederick,SirFrancisDrake,PrinceSebastian f Portugal, nd Arthur,weregiven attributes f the earliergods.It was most commonas wellto placethemin a mountain,wherethey were in earth, ike thedead, butnot under t-not under evelground, hat is-like thereallydead. Herethey are sequesteredn their slumbers,but thegods can be thoughtof as not entirelydeparted,and the heroesas in a position o return.

Occasionallymortalsget to visit the legendaryheroeswhohave takenoverthe attributes f vanishedgods.When this hap-pens,thevisitor uffers magicsleepand a long lacuna n his life:he has lapsedinto a paganworld, got himself bewitched,andtraffickedwith a forbidden od. The punishments severe.ThusHerla lost everythingand Peterlost his flock,wife, home, andtwenty yearsof life-though Rip, to be sure, in Irving'shalf-convincinghappyending,doesn't ufferso badly.The reason orthe punishment s neverthelesslear:it is Christianity'sire ob-jection o trafficwith such cults asattached o thesegods,as with


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PHILIP YOUNG 563any intercoursewith fairies.This centuries-old lement of thestory is an historical, ymbolic,and didacticexpressionof thechurch's ong strugglewith paganism-and has nothing to dowith any social retardation f progress n colonies. Look whathappenedto Herla and Peter,Christian nstruction ould say.They were kind and ingenuousmen. What then could happento you?And thenbecausehestory s compelling n its own rightit survivespast the need for it, even afterthe knowledgeof itspurpose s centuries orgotten.Is thereany other connectionbetween he visit and the greatchangesthat follow in the life of the man who made it? Andwhatare these visitorsdoing where they arenot supposed o be?The sleepinggods and heroescould be described, nd havebeen,withoutany mortalto intrudeon them, and it doesn'tlook asthoughthe mortalshad justhappened n: most of them appear ohavebeenapproachedndled.And Rip was calledbyname.Almost all of the protagonists f these stories, f they wit-nessedanythingwithin the mountain,saw some kind of game.The fact that the origins of many games fade into ritual andritual dancesuggests hat the gamesin theselegendsand mythsmight havetheir origin in some rite. And someauthorities JaneHarrisonand Lord Raglanare notableexamples)believethat allmyths have their origin in ritual-that a myth is never a folk-explanation f naturalphenomena, r anythingof the sort,but anarrativehat was once linked with a ritual-is the story, n otherwords,wlich hasoutlived he ritual, hat the ritualonce enacted.Frazerhad a more moderate iew, and felt that there s a classofmyths which have been dramatized n ritual, and that thesemyths were enactedas magical ceremonies n order to producethe naturaleffects which they describe n figurative anguage.This hypothesishas it furtlherhat the core of such a myth tracesback, finally, to the divinity who is imagined to have foundedthe rite.The actorsare simply impersonating n activityof theoriginatorand worshippinghim in this way, his acts being the


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564 RIP VAN WINKLEprototype f the rite. Gradually, hen, the rite may be performedmore out of piety than from any belief in its efficacy, nd finallymay be forgottenwhile the myth endures.Whatever he merits of this theory one thing seems fairlysure:if it explains he origins of any myths, Rip descends romone of them. The bowlersof the Catskillsare impersonatingdisguisedThor, in a figurativeor symbolicway, in his principlerole as God of Thunder,and the actionsof theseresurrectedmenarethemeansof their worship.The solemnityRip and Peter elt,in the presenceof a mystery, s entirelyappropriateo so sacredand secretan occasion."Rip Van Winkle,"then, is our versionof a myth that survivesas a descriptionof a nearly forgottenceremony n the worshipof Thor for the production f rain. Itproceedsby a symbolic mitationof how rainis made.The ritualis of the magicalsort,and is intended o influencenature hroughthe physical sympathy,or resemblance, etween the ceremonyand the effectit is supposed o produce.6ndeedthe storyis anexampleof whatRobertGraveshas called "truemyth": t is aninstanceof "thereduction o narrative horthand f ritualmime."Exactly why Rip was allowed to witnessthis mystery s asecretwhich,since he was ignorantof the reasonhimself,hiehasbeenableto keepfor many generations. o, in all likelihood,wasIrvingunawareof the originalreason or the outsider's resenceat the ceremony:even by Peter Klaus'stime the myth had sobadlydeterioratednto folk-lore hat only the fragmentswe aredecipheringremained.But the secret is out by now: Rip andPeterwere initiates.Rip goes right throughthe steps:while hesitsdreamilyand aloneon the greenknoll the periodof prelimi-naryisolationpasses; henhe is summonedby name.Helpingtocarry he heavykeg up the sideof the ravine,which he mayhavehad to volunteer o do, is a sort of test.Therefolloweda kindofprocession, nd something ike a vigil, and finallythe experienceof communicationwith the divinityandhis disciples.Ripis evengiven a magic drink,which as a novice he is first required o


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PHILIP YOUNG 565serve, and after this he is plunged into the magic sleep. When hewakes he is in a new phase of life, and on this level the greatchanges he finds about him are symbols of the changes in him,and of the differences in his situation,now he is initiate.Rip has also been reborn in another, reinforcing way, forthe imagery of his emergence into a new life inevitably and un-avoidablysuggests an issue "from the womb." This concept,whichis often thrown about gratuitously, really urges itself 1here, orIrving's description of the entrance to the mountain, taken from"Peter Klaus," is extremely arresting-almost as pointed, say, asaccountsanthropologists have given of pits dug in the ground byprimitive tribesmen, and trimmed about the edges with over-hanging shrubbery (which ditches the men dance about in thespring, while brandishing their spears and chanting that these areno ditches, but what they were built to represent). The imageryis the same when Rip is led eerily through the ravine till hecomes to the bottom of a hollow, surrounded by perpendicularprecipices, over the brinks of which hang the branches of trees.From this setting he is delivered into his old age. Ripe forescape before, he has experienced an escape only one step short ofdeath. Apparently well into middle age, and saddled withia wifewho had completely lost her desirability, he laid down hlis gunand entered the mountain. Here he witnessed some symbolicalactivity-which, in the severely censored form of the pins andbowling balls, hiasovertones of human, as well as vegetable, fer-tility-and he saw it all as joyless and melancholy. Magicallyconfirmed in his own feeling about the matter, hle drank, sleptlike a baby, and was released into the world he had longed for-into an all-male society, the perpetual men's club that used to meetat the inn, which his wife can no longer violate as, unforgivably,she had done before. His gun is ruined and useless, and his wifeis gone. But it makes no difference now; he has slept painlesslythrough his "change of life."

The trouble with this story as some kind of "male-menopause


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566 RIP VAN WINKLEmyth" is that the reading s partlybasedon a misinterpretationattributed, erhapsunfairly, o Rip. Lackingthe informationwehave, he made a mistake: he men were lifelessand unhappyattheir bowlingbecause hey weredead.Morethanthat, theywerestill the followersof Thor, whosesign was lightningand whoseemblemwas a hammer.Thor was god of power,and of humanfertilityas well as vegetable.He was god of the vital moisturesngeneral,an ithyphallic,not a detumescent, od. Even dead,hisworshippersmade a greatdeal of noise in his service. n short,the bowlingwhichsendsthunderacross he Catskillss violentlymasculine ymbolicactivity n a veryfemininemountain.And inthislastvaguebut massive ymbol s a final irony, or themysteryrevealedto Rip had thus two aspects,animal or human, andvegetable-one for eachof Thor'stwo fertilitypowers.Of what pertinencewere all theserevelations o Rip? Whatdoes t meantohim thatthestrangemen he saw havecomedownto us from the men of Thor, or that he was initiated nto anancient mysteryand shown the sacredsecretsof all life? Norelevance t all to him andno meaningwhatever.And thatis theironicalpoint. Befuddled,unwitting and likeable old Rip: noman in the valley,luxuriantlygreen already, houghtless or aslittle aboutthe crops,and no man he knew could have beenchosen to witnessthe secretsof humanfertilityand found themmoresleep-provoking.

IIIWhat would have interestedhim, and what did he want?Concentratingomewhatanthropologicallyn the story's entralscene n an attempt o get at the bottomof it we have not got tothe bottomof the character.But if for a momentwe will thinkmore aspsychologists,ndconsider he storyas a sortof dream-as a productof the unconscious,tself a kind of anthropologist-we opena whole newand remarkablereaof meaning.Suddenly

everythingseems illusive,unreal;time goes into abeyanceand


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PHILIP YOUNG 567the senseof history s lost; the very identityof the central igureis shaken,andreasondissolves.The easiestentry to the dream-level f "RipVan Winkle"passes hrough hat inn where Rip once sat with his friends-theinn which was "gone,"and replacedby a hotel straightout ofnightmare:"a large ricketywooden building . . . with greatgaping windows . . . mended with old hats and petticoats"-andin front a sign with a familiar ace all out of placein its set-ting. Soon, however,"idle with impunity"and "reverenced sone of the patriarchs f the village,"Rip "took his place oncemoreon thebenchat the inn door."A conflict n Irvingexplainsthe confusion.He wantedto show the greatchangesa revolutionhad brought,but wished moredeeplyto feel, and wanted us tofeel, that asidefrom the happy oss of his wife nothinghadreallyhappened o Rip. Toynbee,responding ully to this ab-senseoftime and change,made what amounts o the samemistake.Butit is a meaningful lip,and on one level theyare bothright.ForRip, time and historyhave ceasedoperation.Nothing has hap-pened,and the inn is thereto signal the fact.What, then, are we to think when we come to the start ofthe verynext paragraph nd are told (in a kind of preliminarypostscript t the end of the tale-proper)hat Rip is now tellinghis story"toeverystranger hat arrivedat Mr. Doolittle'shotel"?The inn isthere, sgoneandreplaced,s thereagain, s gone again.Reality s slitheringaway;and so it musteventuallydo, for thisis not ultimately ts world. Nor is this truly the world of fiction,unlessof Kafka's. t is the world of the unconscious,where timeand historyare not suspended, xactly,but do not exist-whereeverything xistsat once.It is theregionwherepeopleandthingsare alwaysappearing n unreasonable laces,and everything spassing strange:but distortedtoward some hard-to-recognizetruth.The recurring ransformationf Irving'shostelrybelongsin thisnight-world.t represents "willfulaccident," nd as suchmakes t own kind of sense.Irvingwas gropingvery darkly n a


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568 RIP VAN WINKLEworld of symbol, myth and dream for meanings beyondawareness.In this strangenew world Rip's dentity s harder o establishthan the identityof that shiftingmeetingplace.Removedas he isfrom time the confusionof generations s appalling,and he ishard-pressedo know in which of at leastthree generationshereally "belongs."t will be next to impossible o know for sure,for the truth s he hadalmostas littlepart n his own generationas the one he slept through.This was entirelyclear, had we thewit to see it, when we firstmet him. He wasnot an adult, but achiildplayingwith children,a kid with a dog. He lived with hiswife, to be sure,but only in a maninerf speaking, or he acceptedinsteadhis "onlyalternative": to take guni in hand and strollaway into the wood."Or,morestriking,he wouldescapeherbysittingon a wet rockwith a rodin his hand"aslong and heavyas a Tartar's aince, ndl ish all day . . . even thoughhe shouldnotbeencouraged ya singlenibble." Agreat avorite mongallthegoodwives of thevillage,"he rantheirerrandlsnddid "suchlittlejobsastheir essobliginghusbandswouldnotdofor them"-not, by pointed implication,what their hiusbandswould do: "as todoing familyduty . . . he foundit impossible."At the inn with the men-folk,Ripshowsthathe wantsto bea father.But at hiomehe is a son,and not up to it: he is the sonwlhowants to be the father but his mother won't let him. Herepresents,o be technical or a moment,the ego arrested t theinfantilelevel in an Oedipalsituation;underpressureherevertsall the waybackto the sleepof the womb.The scene n themountainnow takeson a newandldifferentsuggestiveness.t is at once the dream of a child and an adultdreamreflectingRip'sown predicament.The greatnosesof themountainmen give the next phallic clue, as they must likewisehiave onein theancientTeutonicmythology the psychoanalyticand theanthropological ix well: theyareboth-the firstperson-ally,the secondculturally-"regressive").romthisviewpointhe


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PHILIP YOUNG 569dwarfs are really disguised little boys with pins and balls prac-ticing, in highly activated silence, a forbidden rite; Rip is notinvited to play too and they make him work, so he sneaks theirdrink and goes off to sleep. On the other hand the dwarfs arealso so many mirrors to the "adult"Rip, held up as revelationswhich his consciousness is not likely to read: they are aged littlemen playing games, who have grown old but not up. Our pro-tagonist, then, is both gerontionand child-or is neither,precisely.He has nor youth nor age, but as it were an after-dinner'ssleep,dreaming on both.On his return to the village, the sense of the decompositionof his "self" becomes even more awesome. His wife-mother isgone, but he is still a child as much as he is anything, and as suchhiemust find his role in a relationshipto someone else. But now itis completely bewildering. He is soon confronted with the very"dittoof himself,"a negligent loafer named Rip-actually his son.Worse, he faces a woman who seems both strange and, as hispoor mind struggles into recollection, hauntingly familiar. Shehad, she says, a father named Rip, and she carriesin her arms achild of that name. Who, then, is our protagonist? His own un-acceptedand "impossible" elf, or the son of his wife that he usedto be and emotionally remains? Or his own son, the loafer leaningthere against the tree and, after the ravages of twenty years thatpassed as a night, looking more like the man Rip impersonatedthan he sudldenlydoes himself ? Or perhaps anotherRip, the childof his (laughter, now surrogatefor his departe(dwife, and the signof his true emotional state? Or even, conceivably,the husband ofthis replacement-wife-mother,and the father of this son-or ofthat one, or of himself? The sense of generation is shattered;his(laughter'shouse, in which he lives, is a whole house of mirrors,and everywherehe looks he sees a differentdistortion.He has onemoment of panicked insight: "God knows . . . I'm not myself-I'm somebody else-that's me yonder-no-that's somebody elsegot into my shoes. . . . " Small wonder he departs all the sons


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570 RIP VAN WINKLERipand the rejuvenatedmother or thesecurity f therole he canplay at Mr.Doolittle's.It is clearnow that Ripescapedno changeof life, but hisverymanhood-went from childhood o secondchildhoodwith nextto nothing n between. t is not justhis wifehe has dodged,either,butall theobligations f maturity: ccupation, omestic ndfinan-cial responsibility,a political position, duty to society in a time ofwar. His relation to history is so ambiguousthat-ridiculoussuspicion-he is thoughta spy. Charming ndinfantile,he narcis-sisticallyprefershimself;he will tell his taleof twentyyears' leepat Mr.Do-little's,whereIrving eaveshim for the lasttime. It hasbecomea symbol or the sleep that hasbeenhis life.Considering he universality f his fame,it is a wonderthatno European,ay, has pointedgleefullyto this figureas a symbolof America, or he presentsa near-perfectmage of the way alargepartof the world looksat us: likeableenough,up to a pointand at times,but essentiallymmature, elf-centered,areless ndaboveall-and perhapsdangerously-innocent.Evenmorepoint-edly Ripis a stereotype f theAmericanmaleas seenfromabroad,or in some jaundicedquartersat home: he is perfectly he jollyovergrownchild, abysmally gnorantof his own wife and thewholeworldof adultmen-perpetually"oneof theboys,"hangingaroundwhat they areplease(do think of as a "perpetualmen'sclub";a disguisedRotarianwho simplywill notandcannotgrowup.Inmomentsof candorwe will probably dmit hata stereotypewith no germ of truthin it could not exist: some such mythicAmerica, omesuchmythicAmerican, xistbothactuallyand inthe consciousness f the world. Rip will do very well as theirprototype."RipVan Winkle"is then, and finally,a wonderfully ichtale-the richest n our literature-andan astonishingly omplexexperience rising romastruggleamongmanykindsof meaning.On the "prehistoric"evel we are dimly awareof immemorialritualsignificance, n the psychological f an extraordinary ic-


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PHILIP YOUNG 571ture of the self arrestedn a timeless nfancy-rich appeals,both,to the child andprimitive n everyone hat nevergrow up andnever die in anyone.These awarenessesonflict n the story,astheydo in life,withthe adult andrationalperception hat we doindeed growold, thattime and historyneverstop. In much thesameway our affectionor Rip himself mustopposeour reluctantdiscovery hatas a man we cannot ully respecthim.But in additionto all his othersides,this remarkableVanWinkle also, of course,projectsand personifies ur senseof theflight-and more:theravages-of time.And this is whatwins usultimately o his side. We know perfectlywell that as an adultthis darlingof generationsof Americanswill not entirely do.But if he doesseem,finally,meek, blessed,purein heart,and ifwe mock him for what he has missedwe do it tenderly-partlybecause t is somethinghidden n ourselveswe mock.And this isnot just ourown hiddenchild-ishness.It is all our own lostlives and roles, the lives androlesthatonce seemedpossibleand are possibleno more. Intwenty years all springs areover; without mockeryit mightbetoosadtobear.To-daywouldgrieve, and to-morrowwouldgrieve; best cover it overlightly.And so here is Rip at theend: Lazaruscome from the adead,come back to tell us all. 2.He will tell us all, and, badger-ing anywhowill listen,he tries:.Well now!-have you heardwhat happened o me? But it ,won't do; he doesn't know. i'And that is a pity, truly.Hereis a man in whom rest com-


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572 RIP VAN WINKLEplexities and deficiencies a lifetime might contemplate, as theworld has done; a man who has peered toward the dawn ofcivilization,witnessed ancient mysteries,and stared at his essentialnature; a man who now in town is looking at the future andrealizing a dream of the ages. And he cannot communicate hisvisions.

But supposling that he could, that he could tell us all: wouldit have been worthwhile? Visions, revelationslike these are pri-vate. To translatewhat the thunder meant, to confront the mean-ing of life and the future of all our childish selves,we all have togo up into our own mountains.NOTES

i. This is the only story of its kind, except for "Rip," that can be attributedto anyone-in this case to Walter Map, author of the early thirteenth centuryDe Nugis Curialium ("Courtier's Trifles"), in which it appears. An intol-erant but witty feudal aristocrat, probably Welsh, Map is best known forhis "Dissuasion fromiiMatrimony," long attributed to a Latin writer of athousand years before hinm. In this essay he counsels young men thatwomen are monsters and vipers (do not look for exceptions, he says:"Friend, fear all the sex"). Thus Map provides a precedent both for Rip'sadventure anid for Irving's whimsical anti-feminism. It is very doubtful,however, if not impossible, that Irving knew of him; Herla's story has beencited as the true source of "Rip Van Winkle," but Map's book was not avail-able to Irving until some three decades after the Irving story had beenpublished.2. Otmar's book is very hard to come by, but Henry A. Pochmann's "Irv-ing's German Sources in The Sketch Book," Studies in Philology, XXVII(July, 1930), 489-94, prints the most relevant portions of it.3. Indeed Irving may have got some specific ideas from the SevenSleepers myth, for there the surprising changes in the speech of the people.and the prominent new sign over the gate of the town, are precedents fortwo of the very few important details to be found in "Rip" but not in"Peter Klaus." Elsewhere there is an exact precedent for the form Irving'schange of signs took: in the famous New England Primer, with its alpha-betical rimes ("In Adam's fall we sinned all"), a woodcut of King Georgethat appeared in early editions eventually became very smudged; when this


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PHILIP YOUNG 573happened the portrait began to carry the name of our first President ("ByWashington, great deeds were done").4. It should, of course, be "Henry": Hudson sailed from Holland but wasEnglish. Of all the people Irving could have put in the Catskills, however,Hudson was a fine choice, not only because the river below him wasnamed for him and discovered by him, but because he was (in I6iI onanother trip) the victim of a mutiny near Hudson Bay, was abandonedthere, and disappeared for good. Thus he is like the heroes of myth andlegend who sleep in mountains; no one knows where, or if, he was buried,and it is easier to think of him as not entirely dead.5. This is clear in the story that lies, in Otmar's collection, adjacent tothe one of Peter Klaus-the "little German Superstition about Frederickder Rothbart"that Irving claimed as the origin of "Rip." It is almost certain,then, that Irving knew who led the knights Peter saw, and who Hudson'smost immediate ancestor was. How much more he may have known aboutthe origins of the materials he was borrowing is very difficult to say.6. The thunder that Thor made came ordinarily from the roar of hischariot, of course, but the method described in the myth Irving drew on isby no means unknown. Grimm reportedthat on hearing thunder North Ger-mans were likely to remark, "the angels are playing at bowls"; and in ourown country there is a close parallel in the mythology of the Zuni Indiansof New Mexico, whose warriors when they die go off to make lightning inthe sky, where rainmakers cause thunder with great "gaming stones."

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Fallen From Time Rip