By Bernard Rowan
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In my looking around, I discovered that the song and famous MTV video took inspiration from the poignant novel by Khalil Gibran, titled "Broken Wings." It tells the story of fated love shining past tragedy. It praises women and motherhood as universal paths of improvement for civilization.
A young man, one lacking love in youth, befriends his father's friend. The friend is elderly and well-off. He treats the young man like a son and pours out his life stories to him. The young man meets the elderly man's daughter, a woman of complete beauty, and they fall in love. Unfortunately, fate conspires against them. The daughter, Selma, must marry a powerful man, a cleric's son, a bad son of a bad leader. The daughter eventually marries as arranged, though for some time, she meets the young man in a temple known to the lovers. The lovers' lives fall between the temple's symbols of Ishtar and the crucified Christ. Finally, Selma dies in childbirth. The young man's love never fades.
Similarly, I also found the Korean folktale of "The Mud-Snail Fairy" ― more commonly known as "The Snail Bride" ― in Zong In-Sob's collection of Folk Tales from Korea. A man, a poor farmer with no wife, prays for love and hears a voice in the fields he tills. It's the voice of a snail telling him that she will marry him. The farmer takes the snail to his humble home and later finds that wonderful dishes of food are on his table when he awakens or returns from his labors. He waits in hiding one morning to find the snail turn into a beautiful woman who prepares his meals. They live in love happily for some time, until the man turns ill. The woman tills the man's fields, and the town magistrate's men discover her. They tell the powerful but bad magistrate of her beauty, and he begins a humiliating campaign to take control of her. The poor farmer and the woman beg the magistrate, but to no end. In anger, the farmer deals himself a mortal blow and turns into a bluebird that sings daily to his love. The fairy eventually dies of self-starvation. She does not give herself to the magistrate.
Like Gibran's hero and heroine, the Korean story's couple give and receive unconditional love. The loves in each case don't reach typical fulfillment. They do transcend the limits of patriarchy, power, and of traditional bonds that define gender roles and hierarchies. Tellingly, the cleric's son and the magistrate lose their prizes and conquests ― their mockeries of love.
While in some sense, all four protagonists have broken wings, it's their unshakable bond and common self-sacrifice that tell us love conquers all. But it's a victory that doesn't reckon with the abacus of power as victory. Both stories memorialize purity, chastity, and steadfastness of spirit and body.
I also interpret both stories as paeans to women, especially mothers. The unselfish giving of Selma and the snail bride represent what Gibran puts in his text as praise of mothers and motherhood:
"Every thing in nature bespeaks the mother. The sun is the mother of earth . . . this earth is the mother of trees and flowers. . . The trees and flowers become kind mothers of their great fruits and seeds. And the mother, the prototype of all existence, is the eternal spirit, full of beauty and love."
Selma and the Mud-Snail Fairy reveal the neglect of motherhood in our societies. Just as when these tales occurred, we don't respect women fully. Caring for women should exist in all men, or men can't respect and love women properly. It is to the living of this unbroken reality that we ever must turn to mend our broken wings. Let us in!
Bernard Rowan (browan10@yahoo.com) is associate provost for contract administration and professor of political science at Chicago State University. He is a past fellow of the Korea Foundation and former visiting professor at Hanyang University.
