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(A Jewish Interpretation of Charles Perrault’s Puss in Boots)
Bauschan is my daughter’s dog. I’ve been friends with him for six years now. He is of noble literary origin: named after the dog from Thomas Mann’s story A Man and His Dog. He is of the German mini-schnauzer breed. Thomas Mann called his Bauschan with a whistling melody from Franz Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony. I call my Bauschan with a whistle from Felix Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E minor. Bauschan knows that Mendelssohn is a German composer, and he, like a German dog, likes German music a lot, and I like Mendelssohn’s German music also because in some ways it is also Jewish, since this composer is Jewish. However, Bauschan is not interested in such Jewish subtleties. He is a cosmopolitan, a dog of broad views. He is a member of the International Schnauzer Club from 31 countries on four continents. Bauschan is not only a literary and musically educated dog, barking in several languages, but also a very advanced dog. He probably doesn’t like cats, but he is a very progressive dog, advocating equality, respect and tolerance. He is a true internationalist. He respects all living creatures, even cats, though I’m not sure that this respect is mutual.
Bauschan and I often sit and think, each about his own things: he about his ancestors in Germany, and I about my ancestors in Israel, about their expulsion from the land where Bauschan and I have lived – he for six years and I for 45. I tell him stories I’ve made up about his ancestors and I wonder how much truth and how many legends I know about my ancestors. Perhaps this is a debatable issue. It’s a good thing there’s no need to argue with Bauschan. He’s not Jewish. Jews love to dispute. I have a neighbor of whom his wife says: his opinion depends on his interlocutor’s opinion – it is always the opposite of his. And what a debater my late grandmother Rosa was! I don’t remember her agreeing with anyone. She didn’t have a consent organ in her body. Most of all, my grandmother loved to dispute with her daughter, my mother. And my mother loved to argue with me. It was mostly about how children should relate to their parents. Bauschan is not interested in these topics. He knows for a fact that my daughter is his mother, and he knows very well how to treat her. There is no point in arguing with him on this subject.
Bauschan once presented me with an amazing cat story. The reader may think it is a fairy tale, as it is told on the basis of a fairy tale, but that is a mistake: the story is true and provides rich material for reflection. So, one day Bauschan came up to me and, in his original and friendly manner, made it clear that I was obliged to listen to the story of his new acquaintance and neighbor, the owner of the cat. The following is the story of this cat owner that Bauschan and I heard. But first, I will briefly remind the reader of the contents of one of Europe’s most popular fairy tales, “Puss in Boots” (the first title was “Master Cat or Puss in Boots”), by Charles Perrault, published 327 years ago, in 1697:
“Once upon a time, there was a miller who left his three sons everything he had, and it was a cat, a mill, and a donkey. It didn’t take long for them to split the inheritance. The oldest one got the mill, and the middle one got the donkey, and the youngest one got the cat. But it wasn’t just a regular cat. This one could talk. He told his master to give him a pair of boots, a bag and lets him go into the boscage for what he won’t be sorry. Soon he caught a rabbit and brought him to the king. When he brought the rabbit to the king, he said that it was sent to him by his master, better known as the Marquis of Carabas. The king loved the gift, gave Cat a tip and told him to say hello to his master. Almost three months passed by, and the Cat brought the King some gifts saying they were from Marquis of Carabas.
One day the king decided to take a walk down the shore with his daughter, the lovely princess. When the Cat found out about that, he told his master to go and take a bath in the river and that he’ll take care of the rest. The master listened to him and when he found himself in the river Cat started shouting: “Marquis of Carabas is drowning.” The king looked out of his carriage and when he recognized the Cat he sent his men to help them. While they were pulling the Marquis of Carabas out of the river, Cat told the king that his masters’ clothes were stolen while he was bathing. The king gave an order that his men bring the finest clothes for Marquis of Carabas. The king was kind towards the young master, and when the princess saw him, she immediately fell in love and invited him to the carriage. While they were driving in the carriage, Cat moved forward and told the reapers that they should say that the land belongs to the Marquis of Carabas and if they won’t obey him he threatened to grind them like pate. They got scared and told the king what Cat ordered. The same thing was done by many people, and the king could not believe that the Marquis of Carabas owned such a fortune. Cat went to a castle where the wealthiest ogre sorcerer lived who owned all of the fields that the king believed were in possession of Marquis of Carabas. The wise cat already knew everything about the ogre sorcerer, and that’s why he paid him a visit. The ogre sorcerer was kind enough to let him in and Cat, pretending to admire his art, convinced the sorcerer to show him some skills he was known for. First, he convinced him to turn into a lion but when he did Cat got so scared that he jumped to the ceiling and almost lost him boots. Then he asked him to turn into a mouse, and when he did it, Cat ate him. The carriage got near the castle and Cat got out saying hello to the guest and telling them that they are in front of Marquis of Carabas’ castle. The king was thrilled that in his kingdom lived such a rich Marquis and the princess was even more in love when she saw how rich he was. The same day the king gave permission for the two of them to get married after what Cat became a real gentleman who chased mice for fun.”
So, I give the word to our neighbor, the owner of the cat: “I’m all for humanism. I am a humane person, and I treat animals humanely, not beastly. Dehumanization makes me sad. It is described in Charles Perrault’s fairy tale Puss in Boots. “Dehumanized” are the humanoid assertive Cat and his passive master. Necessity forces Cat to become a liar, a cunning, a thief, a slayer of cute rabbits, a pretender, a blackmailer, an intimidator of peasants, a calculating type who has secured a fine life by making a career for his smarmy master. Cat’s master, a poor peasant boy, becomes an accomplice in the cat’s adventures. Perrault’s tale reflects the class struggle between rich and poor, the socially strong and the socially weak. The Cat and his master are poor. The King and the Ogre are the rich. The poor beat the rich with their wits. Part of Cat’s success is the triumph of socialism, the success in redistributing the loot, but Cat himself becomes a rich man and exploiter, as does his master. Consequently, the victory of socialism is not complete and not final, leading to not true socialism, for in the end feudalism wins: Cat’s master becomes a marquis and Cat becomes an “important person,” so important that he stops working as a mouse hunter. At that time, only catching mice and rats justified their existence. In Town Musicians of Bremen by the Brothers Grimm, an old cat, whose teeth had dulled and he could no longer catch mice, was threatened with death: his mistress wanted to drown him.
The Cat in the boots is a trickster who deceives people. He is a charming rogue. He is a kind of picaro (Spanish for trickster), analogous to the adventurous swindler, a well-known type in literature, deftly playing off his opponents with all sorts of cunning tricks. Pierre Beaumarchais invented for his hero Figaro a name similar to picaro. True, the Puss in Boots is closer to François Rabelais’ hero Panurge, for he is more dodgy, cunning, rude, and cynical than Figaro. The Puss in Boots is a large and brutal strategist, possessing the qualities of a modern Russian oligarch.
The operation to infiltrate Cat’s master into the royal palace is the pinnacle of genius strategist thought. First the gifts of rabbits and partridges to the king, then the story of bathing his master, hiding his clothes, “saving” the master by the king’s servants, Cat’s intimidation of the Ogre’s mowers and reapers, and finally the operation to fool the Ogre, defeat him and seize his castle and possessions. These are all major strategic achievements of the poor little Cat, inherited by the miller to his youngest son. The useless Cat seemed an unfortunate acquisition of that son in comparison with the gifts to his older brothers, the mill and the donkey. The mill and the donkey were practical gifts, the cat was a burden: he had to be fed and was of no use. But it turned out that spirit overcame matter, in contradiction to Marxist doctrine. The Cat turned out to be intelligent and more valuable than such simple, clear and useful gifts as the mill and the donkey. Intelligence triumphed over force. Against the background of the victory of feudalism, Cat’s entrepreneurial streak is pronounced. The nouveau riche-turned-entrepreneur Cat has the traits necessary for a businessman striving to succeed in his business. Readers applaud Cat. They sympathize with him for several reasons: 1) they dislike the rich, 2) they themselves want to become rich, 3) they want the rich man to remain a fool, for by so doing they have hope of contriving and getting rid of poverty, 4) they like the fact that the battered, previously passive little man becomes the initiator of the original business of intercepting wealth from the unjust possessor: plunder the loot! (the reader is thus an instinctive, spontaneous socialist), 5) readers seek justice and think they find it. The Cat is undoubtedly a successful businessman, cunning, tough, quick-witted, and ruthless. I look at my cat and think: what a pity he can’t wear boots.”
The cat’s owner was silent. Bauschan and I listened to this interpretation of the tale of Puss in Boots with our mouths hanging open. So, thanks to Bauschan’s inquisitiveness, I heard a surprisingly true story on a fairy-tale theme. Bauschan was probably struck by Cat’s outstanding exploits as a representative of the animal kingdom. Since Bauschan has always fought for the protection of animal rights and their equalization with humans, he probably thought about using this material for his work. Other thoughts visited me, not philosophical, legal or economic. Suddenly, as a response to my thoughts, I heard the narrator’s voice. The cat owner interrupted the pause and said, turning to me, “You know, it’s a good thing that all these deeds were committed by a cat and not a man. If it had been a human who did all these horrible and devious things, they would have said, “It’s the Jews’ fault again.” I thought a little bit about what was said and agreed. Bauschan listened to him calmly. His thoughts were far removed from human, much less Jewish, concerns. As a fighter for animal rights, he was an internationalist in the highest sense of the word. He stood high above our Jewish inferiority complexes.
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Alex Gordon is a native of Kiev and graduate of the Kiev State University and Haifa Technion (Doctor of Philosophy and Doctor of Science). He is a Full Professor (Emeritus) of Physics in the Faculty of Natural Sciences at the University of Haifa and at Oranim, the Academic College of Education, Israel. He is the author of 10 books and about 900 articles, and has been published in 92 journals in 17 countries in Ukrainian, Russian, Hebrew, English, French, and German.