MAGIC WORDS
cal phrase 'Abra-Cadabra!' or 'Hocus Pocus!' so all good story-magic begins
with the magical phrase 'Once upon a time.'"17 "The audience has come to
the theatre to believe, to respond to the magical words, 'Once upon a time.'"18
That's because magical words can give us "symbolic wings" with which to
move from one world to the next with the speed of light.19 The storyteller, as
Marilyn Twintreess writes, "bring[s] words to magic and then magic comes
to life." 0 "The spell of a story . . . the power of words . . . Now, let the magic
begin!"21
Author Jane Yolen points out that for adults, "the world of fantasy
books returns to us the great words of power which, in order to be tamed,
have been excised from our adult vocabularies. These words are the pornography
of innocence, words which adults no longer dare to use with other
adults, and so we laugh at them and consign them to the nursery, fear masking
as cynicism. These are the words that were forged in the earth, air, fire
and water of human existence. And the words are: Good -- Evil -- Courage
-- Honor -- Truth -- Hate -- Love."
Facts: "The magical words 'once upon a time' in English set in motion a
machine of considerable momentum which can hardly be turned off without
the equally magical 'they lived happily ever after' or some near equivalent."
In Literature:
• "[W]ords can not only take you to other worlds, they can create worlds of
their own. You don't need abracadabra; once upon a time will do." -- Alison
Gopnik, The Scientist in the Crib: What Early Learning Tells Us About the Mind
(2000)
• "[T]he fairy tale begins, 'Once upon a time . . .' and we know from these
words that we are about to enter a world whose reality is strangely differ
ent from our rational, everyday reality. In the fairy tale, the insignificant
frog may be a prince, people might sleep for hundreds of years, wishes can
magically be granted, animals can talk and wear aprons, hats and other
pieces of clothing, and things generally are not always just what they seem
to be. I suspect that children enter the world of the fairy tale primarily for
the nonrational wonder and enchantment of it. I did." -- Eugene Burger,
Magic and Meaning (1995)
17 Mychael Wordsmythe, Tales Told Vyctorious (1997)
18 Frank Hauser, Notes on Directing (200 )
19 Eva Judy Jansen, The Book of Hindu Imagery: Gods, Manifestations and Their Meaning
(199 )
0 Stones Alive (1999)
21 Barbara Mariconda, The Most Wonderful Writing Lessons Ever (1999)
22 Quoted in Magic and Meaning by Eugene Burger (1995)
2 Robert Scholes, "Decoding Papa: 'A Very Short Story' as Work and Text," New
Critical Approaches to the Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway (1990)
