Suzette Prime - Philosophy and Folklore

A Beautiful World (1948), by Anna Mary Robertson Moses (1860 – 1961), a.k.a. Grandma Moses. An example of American Folk art.

Prime numbers (a basic requirement of Suzette Prime) are considered by some to be lucky numbers – perhaps only a superstition … The second requirement of Suzette Prime is the inclusion of a philosophical statement.  But under Types of Poems here at PoetrySoup, you will notice that I clarified this point by stating that it is a ‘personal philosophical statement’, i.e. it’s not a dry thesis on the meaning of life. Folklore is philosophy!

‘Folklore is openly historical, and openly in flux. Tales evolve with the contributions of successive tellers, and yet, in what persists, we are able to witness thought processes that approach timeless resonance. This method offers advantages over the European philosophical model, which can obscure the wider history of ideas in its insistence on abstracted and individual pursuit of the universal. Storytelling is unafraid to engage with the contextual, the messy and the specificity of the real in a way that the pristine structures of philosophy struggle to do.’ ~ Abigail Tulenko

Folktales with its often moralistic turn inevitably leave us pensive and as we mature, might take on new personal significant meanings. Philosophy is more than the Eurocentric dry postulating by a select few academics. I aim to include philosophies from around the world and attempt to highlight the influence of Africana on ancient philosophy disciplines, e.g. The Lion. Background: It is not uncommon for lions to escape the confines of the park and would be hunted and put down. People would also risk life and limb to escape inhumane strictures. 

THE LION

at Kruger National Park

too weak to hunt anymore

the lion escaped his confines

choosing his freedom

through the barrel of a gun

Socrates told tales to bring often contentious topics within the reach of the populace, angering the scholarly leaders of the day. Both folklore and philosophy aim to get to the truth of the matter; converging at the point of an intellectual inquiry and folkloric wisdom imparted through oral traditions. In the search for truth (an elusive entity at best) to lend structure to our reality, we inevitably stumble upon the fact that our perceived world is more than mere scenery. Both folktales and formal philosophy unsettle us into thinking anew about our cherished values and views of the world.

Folklore

A legend is presumed to have some basis in historical fact and tends to mention real people or events. In contrast, a myth is a type of symbolic storytelling that was never based on fact.

Myths, legends, and folklore are all part of the broader category of folklore:

• Folklore is the lore of the people, including culture, oral history, and tradition.
• Myths have at their core the origins of a people and are often sacred.
• Folklore is a collection of fictional tales about people or animals, and includes superstitions and unfounded beliefs.
• Both myths and folklore were originally circulated orally.

Modern folklore could benefit by re-visiting the wellspring. It certainly would be a reminder of the common root of inquiry, namely, wisdom. In my poem, Be it on His Head, I employed symbolism which has its roots in African mythology and I shift the ‘blame’ for my beloved’s death (the analogy ‘eternal sleep’) onto the chameleon. Kinyonga’ means chameleon in Swahili. Shebeen means an illicit bar or club.  In South Africa, beer brewing is traditionally woman’s work, and the shebeens are run by women, known as shebeen queens.

According to an African myth, the Old, Old [sic] One instructed the chameleon to go and tell Man that he would be immortal, but en route he fell asleep. Later, the Old, Old One changed his mind and called on the lizard to go and tell Man that he would die. The lizard overtook the chameleon and delivered his message first. From that day forward it was Man’s destiny to die. Both the lizard and the chameleon are despised by the African people: the first for bringing the bad tidings, and the second for being tardy in delivering his message.

BE IT ON HIS HEAD

a fount of wisdom

passed on to the next sceptic generation

a culture that cannot be burned like some tattered book

eyes flicker like the last call at a shebeen

kinyonga

may your slumbers forever

be haunted

as my beloved rest in eternal sleep

if only the lizard had waited with his message

Reference

Folktales like philosophy startle us into rethinking our values | Aeon Essays

Dated: 26 February 2024

Abigail Tulenko is a PhD student in philosophy at Harvard University, and a research assistant for the Anansi Story Project at Harvard’s Culture, Cognition, and Co-evolution Lab.