Notes Toward a New Theory of Enchantment

Montague Rhodes James (1862-1936), better known as M. R. James, was an English medievalist and scholar whose work, though primarily published in the early years of the twentieth century, remains highly regarded today. His distinction in the field secured him a position as provost at Eton and, later, at King’s College in Cambridge. In addition to his contributions to medieval studies, James is widely hailed as the progenitor of the “antiquarian ghost story”; a variation on the classic supernatural tale that updates traditional Gothic tropes and brings them into conversation with the trivial banalities of modern life, with predictably stange and horrific results.

The haunted object is a recurring motif in James’ fiction. Rather than tethering his vengeful spirits and tormented souls to specific locations, James often opted instead to attach his ghosts to manuscripts, paintings, and other such objets d’art. His protagonists are almost invariably academics of some description: the curator of a university art museum in “The Mezzotint,” a researcher for the British Museum in “Casting the Runes,” and so on.

In many respects, “Canon Alberic’s Scrap-book” is the prototypical James story. In it, a gentleman archeologist (called Dennistoun) comes into possession of the titular scrap-book while on a research trip in France. The sacristan from whom Dennistoun procures the book is all too keen to rid himself of it, asking a meager two hundred and fifty francs for it despite Dennistoun informing him that it is worth significantly more than what the sacristan is charging. Each page is priceless. On this page, “ten leaves from a copy of Genesis, illustrated with pictures, which could not be later than AD 700.” On the next, “a complete set of pictures from a Psalter, of English execution, of the very finest kind that the thirteenth century could produce.”

Wonder piles atop wonder until, upon reaching the final page, Dennistoun is confronted by a particularly ghastly drawing depicting King Solomon exorcising a demon. The demon is described, in characteristically exquisite detail, as something like “one of the awful bird-catching spiders of South America translated into human form, and endowed with intelligence just less than human…” Most troublingly, though, is the implication that this terrifying figure was “‘...drawn from the life.’”

Regardless, Dennistoun purchases the scrap-book and retires to his hotel for the night. That evening he realizes--too late--why the sacristan was so willing to part with the scrap-book when the creature from the final engraving manifests bodily in his room. Dennistoun, after regaining his wits, destroys the accursed etching and thus banishes the creature forever.

James’ work has had a clear impact on untold thousands of writers including H. P. Lovecraft, Robert Aickman, Thomas Ligotti, and, as will be made clear in the following paragraphs, Marina Warner.

Warner established herself as a leading figure in mythography--that is, the collation and analysis of myths and folklore--in the late 1970s and 80s with the publication of her Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and the Cult of the Virgin Mary and Joan of Arc: The Image of Female Heroism. Her work focuses primarily on the intersection between feminism and mythology, though in her 2012 lecture “The Tales Things Tell Us” at the University of Warwick, Warner departed from her usual preoccupations and focused instead on what she termed “enchanted goods, enchanted things.”

Warner argues that the centuries-long exchange that occurred between eastern and western cultures fundamentally changed the ways in which the west viewed itself, not only in relation to the east, but to physical reality. Objects were no longer merely fetishes standing in for something else but had rather become imbued with something, and in so doing had become talismans.

Here it becomes necessary to distinguish between an article of utility and a fetish. A fetish, as described by Karl Marx, is distinct from a mere article of utility in that it has been imbued with a symbological value beyond its immediate utilitarian function. Fetishes thus serve as social intermediaries between otherwise discrete producers, forcing these aforementioned producers to relate to one another through material exchange. The fetishized object is, to borrow directly from Marx’s phraseology, a hieroglyph.

What truly distinguishes a talisman from a fetish, then, is the talisman’s unique ability to interact with, and indeed change, reality as it is experienced. Put differently, the talisman inverts the fetish’s relationship to reality: where reality imprints itself on the fetish, the talisman imprints on reality itself.

A key figure in Warner’s conception of the talisman is that of the jinn. The jinn--variously referred to as djinn, djinni, or genies depending not only the tale but the translation--are possessed of myriad forms. Here, they might appear as simple humanoid giants. There, as a great red plume of scorching flame. But, despite their diversity as a race, the jinn of literature and folklore are united by a common thread: their imprisonment or, what Warner calls “their hiddenness,” in objects.

In the Quran, this imprisonment was sanctioned by none other than King Solomon for the jinn’s refusal to follow Allah, the one true god. Perhaps it is no coincidence, then, that the illustration which evidently contains the demonic creature in “Canon Alberic’s Scrap-book” depicts King Solomon in the process of banishing said fiend from his kingdom.

With this in mind, it becomes difficult to view Warner herself as anything other than a living, breathing M. R. James character; though instead of being enthralled by some obscure medieval Christian manuscript, she has become enamored of none other than A Thousand and One Nights.

Warner highlights the seeming banality of the objects used to contain and imprison jinn in A Thousand and One Nights, noting that the jinn in “Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp” is trapped in “a dirty old lamp like a million others,” and that the copper bottle in “The Fisherman and the Jinni” is little more than “barnacled jetsam.” But, through their proximity to the jinn, these objects become endowed with a uniqueness, a singularity. The jinn are, somewhat paradoxically, a symbological fetish for that ineffable something; the animating spirit of art, its aura.

The process Warner describes here is very nearly the opposite of the one laid out by Walter Benjamin in his “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” Benjamin claims that a work of art’s aura--the property composed of an object’s locality and singularity--is diluted through reproduction. In short, that each copy irrevocably diminishes the original. And while it may seem trite to summarize the thesis of an essay that, by now, is old hat to many, it is necessary to do so. For Warner’s analysis of objects generally, and A Thousand and One Nights specifically, provides a model whereby this process of material deindividuation may be reversed, and enchantment thus returned to the world.

A bold claim, to be sure, but one that has some historical precedent nonetheless. Indeed, all it took to elevate a urinal to a work of art was to title it Fountain and sign the glimmering white porcelain “R. Mutt.” A glove became more than a glove by virtue of it having been Michael Jackson’s. Enchantment is a choice. If only one internalizes the process whereby a personal meaning is conferred to an external reality, it soon becomes clear that every object is a singularity unto itself, that it is quite literally enchanted. The dryad has not yet quit the wood. The genie is still very much in the bottle. Specters still swirl ‘round and ‘round that worm-eaten manuscript. Just as the ghosts of M. R. James’ stories haunt their manuscripts and paintings; and just as the jinn’s of Scheherazade's tales inhabit their lamps and jars; so too do we people our world with meaning.