Fantasy as Antifantasy: 8 Kiss and Riddle

8 Kiss and Riddle

In the process of examining the ignorance and mysterious wisdom that Peter embodies, it has been discovered that Peter’s existence hides more mystery than imagined. A mystery is not a superficial discrepancy that arises from a mere lack of information, nor is it a deliberate concealment of information or a cunning substitution of words that immediately establishes a mystery. A mystery continues to be one because it is an exceptionally peculiar discourse that is meticulously equipped with a fundamental incomprehensibility that can never be deciphered by any analysis method or by any system transformation, but if it manifests itself in the conceptual space in the form of a “mystery” that is called by the name “riddle”, it is also something that can be introduced into the thought system and incorporated into the procedure of discussion.
　However, while the riddle, like the concepts that form a particular framework such as “magic,” “prophecy” and “miracle,” plays a solid role as an element that forms a unit of the system of thought, it actually performs its subtle function as a destructive element that cleverly distorts the overall picture of the logic system and undermines the integrity of its structure as a whole. They are like the entrance to an eerie wormhole that joins the more common, incomprehensible, unknown space of ideas that lurk behind our conscious structures and linguistic systems. These concepts belonging to the category of the supernatural are like ominous talismans that will always erode the area of rational unifying interpretation for the overlap between our inner consciousness and the outer realm, and will forever imply the existence of an unmeasurable meta-structure principle outside the thought system. Sometimes, therefore, it is even possible to highlight the existence of a more fundamental mystery by temporarily pulling an example of a supernatural deviation back into a natural interpretation through the “riddle-solving” process.
The clue to starting the discussion of the mystery of Peter was found in “Mother”. Mrs. Darling was not the least surprised when she found Peter’s name in her routine of sorting out the minds of her children every night. She had already seen something like his face elsewhere.

He did not alarm her, for she thought she had seen him before in the faces of many women who have no children. Perhaps he is to be found in the faces of some mothers also.


Peter is something similar to the peculiar expression on the faces of unmarried women and young mothers. It is a strange description that seems to be a kind of metaphorical expression that has acquired substantiality and is embodied as a unique being with volition and physicality. It is the essential attribute of the boy who is the protagonist of this story that can be regarded as the product of an ideological game belonging to a theoretical play, or as the crystallization of a dangerous association of concepts that can barely assert its raison d’être only in the abstract space of ideas. This is the first clue to the proper understanding of the implications of the existence of a character in an idiosyncratic fantasy work endowed with mysterious symbolic traits. But perhaps the most noteworthy fact is that Peter is said to be very like Mrs. Darling’s kiss.

If you or I or Wendy had been there we should have seen that he was very like Mrs. Darling’s Kiss.


In contrast to the comical exchange that would later unfold between Wendy and Peter over an awkward confusion based on a misunderstanding of words between a kiss and a thimble, Mrs. Darling’s “kiss" is narrated with special care from the beginning. “The Kiss” is not only about the secret of Peter, the protagonist of this story, but also about the infinitely enigmatic mystery of Mrs. Darling, another supremely fascinating existence in this story.

She was a lovely lady, with a romantic mind and such a sweet mocking mouth. Her romantic mind was like the tiny boxes, one within the other, that come from the puzzling East, however many you discover there is always one more; and her sweet mocking mouth had one kiss on it that Wendy could never get, though there it was, perfectly conspicuous in the right-hand corner.


Mrs. Darling’s heart is as deep as a set of nesting boxes. There is something there that implies the concept of a “progressive infinity” that interrupted the process of continuous argument by means of coherent logic, which modern physics confronted in the 20th century, at the peak of its research on both maximum and minimum of the universe, and was forced the introduction of an unreasonably inexplicable leap procedure, by the unexpected appearance of a group of elementary particles that seem to show their peculiar nature in the guise of new unexpected aspect, even if one continues to divide them infinitely.
Could it be that the small box that makes up her mind is hiding a larger box on the outside? If so, there may be some mysterious connection between the fact that this enigmatic toy came from the mysterious East. The iconographic mystery of the Ouroboros, symbolized by the pattern of the serpents engulfing each other, as if transcending the topological spatial relationship between the large and the small, is the hallmark of Mrs. Darling’s romantic mind. (note)

note:
It is known that there are various other manifestations of the figure of Ouroboros, such as the appearance of a single serpent swallowing its own tail, as in the case of the Midgard Serpent (Jormungand) told in Norse mythology, which surrounds the human world and forms the whole of the earth. In this argument, which focuses on the principle of shadows in the philosophical nature of fantasy literature, the author will use this figure to grasp the nature of Ouroboros as a pair of identical forms, like as shown by the “Imp of the Perverse”, which serves as an ingenious representation of the principle of world construction.