Idiomatic: Harry Potter's Journey to the West

I wrote most of this earlier in the year not long after Deathly Hallows was released.

Translation has always been a literary topic of interest to me. In high school I decided that I would only read literary works that were originally written in English because I was afraid that significant linguistic nuances would be lost in translation. I felt that I would be wasting my time reading translations because I would never be able to get the full weight of the symbolism if I couldn't read the work in the original language. The idomatic German expression, "Gemuetlichkeit" (I am subbing "ue" for the uemlatted "u"), was the word that prompted this decision. I was told in German class that this expression had no exact translation in English but that it meant a feeling or atmosphere of having a really good time. The idea that a word could be untranslate-able totally blew my teen-aged mind and I decided to stick to English lit only at that point.

I continued in this vein for the most part, until, post-college, I happened to read Madame Bovary with its lovely up and down perspectives and I fell back into reading translations of world classics. The lost-in-translation excuse caused me to avoid reading Russian novels and so I have never read War and Peace or Dostoievsky. I have never read Faulkner either (except for the short story, "The Bear"). I like to think that I am "saving" myself for Faulkner. Ok, yeah right. *wink wink*

One of the things about the Harry Potter series that astonishes me is the wonderful way that it has been assimilated, translated, and embraced by non-English speaking/non-English cultures. It really speaks to the truth of Jung's collective unconscious and it would be interesting to know how much world myth J.K. Rowling knowingly drew upon and how much just entered the text serendipitously/synchronistically.

One use of myth, which appears to be conscious, was the linking of Salazar Slytherin with the eastern Monkey King myth cycle. I first happened on this when I noticed that the statue of Slytherin in the Chamber of Secrets was described as "ancient and monkeyish". The Gaunts, his decendants, were also described as simian in appearance. I was intrigued by the description in COS but I really took notice when this monkey business reared its head again in Half Blood Prince so I investigated and learned about the mythical Monkey King.

The core of the Legend of the Monkey King, which relates to Harry Potter, is that the Monkey King fears death above all things and goes to all sorts of lengths to cheat it including various unconscionable nastinesses, somewhat like Voldie. The Monkey King is overcome when a mountain is dropped on him. This image of the nasty monkey Loki trickster/overlord is reflected in lots of anime and cartoon characters like Mojo Jojo in Power Puff girls. He is a classic Jungian shadow figure.

Perhaps the Monkey King's greatest literary appearance is in a 400 year old Chinese novel, titled Monkey: Journey to the West, where he is resurrected and goes on a journey with an actual historical figure, a Buddhist monk, Hsuan Tang, who traveled from Xian, China, to India and back in search of precious Buddhist texts and learning. This story has recently been made into a Chinese opera with help from the British pop group, Gorillaz.

J.K. Rowlings' allusion to the Monkey King, who is an unknown literary figure to most westerners, in the Harry Potter series, makes the translation of the series into languages where he is a familiar stock character, an enhancement rather than a dilution of the subliminal richness of the storytelling art.