The Feather Mantle
a Japanese play
ANGEL Forgive me, but that mantle belongs to me. Why have you taken it?
HAKURYO It was hanging there and I found it. I am taking it home with me.
ANGEL But this is an angel's feather mantle. It is not something lightly given to a human. Please put it back where it was.
HAKURYO If I understand you correctly, this mantle belongs to an angel. Why, in that case, I must secure it as a wonder in this latter age and make it a treasure of the realm. No, I certainly cannot return it.
ANGEL Oh no! Without my feather mantle, the pathways of flight are closed to me. Never again will I return to Heaven! Please, please, give it back!
HAKURYO Rather than heed her desperate plea,
Hakuryo waxes stubborn.
When was I ever kind, I, a fisherman?
he cries, and hides the feather mantle.
No indeed, he says, and turns to go.
ANGEL In her desperate plight, the angel now,
like a wingless bird,
moving to rise, still lacks the mantle,
HAKURYO yet the earth to her is the nether world.
In the ATU Index, ATU 432 is “the Bird Lover.” In this archetypal story structure, a woman’s bird lover is a nobleman who has been transformed into a bird. The woman’s husband was the one responsible for injuring him, trapping him by means of sharp points outside of the woman’s window. She slowly heals the wounded bird, nurses him back to health, and eventually falls in love with him.
The concept of a human falling in love with a non-human being is the subject of many fairy tales and science fiction tales. In the latter genre, this comes in the form of a human falling in love with an android, a machine, or a software program, as seen in Philip K. Dick’s book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and Her (dir. Spike Jonze, 2013). But falling in love with an animal is akin to projection onto the sublime. Falling in love with a manmade creature is like falling in love with a warped, distorted mirror that allows one to evade accusations of narcissism with a new package.
What does it mean to fall in love with an animal, or a reflection?