BWBC 27: A Little Wisdom, A Little Too Late

“The Fisherman and His Soul” by Oscar Wilde 

This is one of Wilde’s not-for-children fairy tales that touch upon hiss interest in doppelgangers, morality, and redemption. All while never being dogmatic in the morality it presents, and allowing instead for an argument that’s a bit more nuanced. It’s the kind of story that invites you in to work over and decipher what it might mean.

Here’s how it goes.

It’s obviously about a fisherman. He falls in love with a mermaid, but can’t live with her under the sea because he has a soul. So he decides to get rid of his soul and sees the priest. The priest tells him his soul is precious and not to be traded away for the pleasures of the body. But the fisherman doesn’t care and tries to sell his soul, but all the merchants tell him it’s worthless. So he sees the sexy witch, and she wants him to worship Satan, but the fisherman’s too focused on his mermaid love and doesn’t fall for no witch’s Sabbath. He forces the soul-severing rite from the witch, does the deed, and goes under the sea to live with his mermaid. His soul however goes off and wanders finding itself in Arabian Night’s adventures. Before long through guile and ruthlessness, the soul’s amassed fabulous treasures. However the soul has no heart and each year it visits the fisherman trying to lure him away from the mermaid, but the fisherman’s too much in love, until the soul tells him about a nearby dancing girl, and since mermaids can’t dance, and the dancer’s nearby, the fisherman agrees to go with the soul. Of course along the way the soul makes the fisherman commit a number of crimes, and when the dancing girl doesn’t materialize, the fisherman returns to the ocean, but can’t be reunited with the mermaid because he has a soul now and is no longer innocent. 

But, wait, there’s more!

The fisherman becomes a hermit and time passes. The mermaid dies and her body washes up on the beach. The fisherman finds the body and dies alongside it, and then the priest shows up. 

Remember him? 

He didn’t condone this whole mermaid business, so he refuses to bury the dead lovers in church grounds. Instead they get dumped in an unmarked grave in the Fuller’s Field. More time passes. The priest’s going to give a big sermon on hellfire and brimstone, but the altar is decorated with such beautiful flowers that he decides to preach on god’s mercy and love for all creatures. After mass he asks where the flowers came from and learns they came from the lovers’ unmarked grave. This prompts a change of heart in the priest and he goes out to bless the waters of the bay. But by then all the merfolk had moved away, and the flowers never again grew on the lovers’ grave. 

Seriously, this is good stuff. It’s that style of story that is less straightforwardly allegorical and more fraught with meaning and implications. You want to dig in and puzzle over it. Things happen in threes and there’s magic and mermaids, but a sadness too that comes from society, social conventions, and the knowledge we have of right and wrong.

I suspect there’s at least one Penguin Classics style collection of Oscar Wilde’s fairy tales out there, and I suspect I’ll have to buy it at some point, because after reading “The Fisherman and His Soul” I want to read more. 

And if you dug this, here’s a longish essay on Wilde’s fairy tales you might also enjoy.  

Next week, Lord Dunsany and Le Guin!