Note: numbers in brackets refer to page numbers in the paperback edition.
The name Bolger makes me think of Ray Bolger, the actor who played the Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz. There is an urban legend that one of the Munchkins hanged himself over some sordid affair and he can be seen hanging in the woods during the movie, but this story has no basis in fact. What people take for a hanging Munchkin is actually some exotic bird.
The name Edgar could point to a number of things - Edgar Allen Poe, Edgar Bergen, Edgar Rice Burroughs (a friend of L. Frank Baum). Who knows?
Interestingly, R. Budd Dwyer was born in St. Charles, MO, home of Francis Dolarhyde.
Full fathom five thy father lies; Of his bones are coral made; Those are pearls that were his eyes: Nothing of him that doth fade But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange. Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell
T.S. Eliot makes allusions to this passage in The Waste Land.
John Merritt wrote to correct my misreading of Hannibal's letter to Mason. Lecter was only saying that Mason had eaten his own nose, not his whole face. So, the comparison to Jezebel is correct. John also suggests that perhaps Margot, with her hormone taking and body building, may actually be a transsexual. A reverse eunuch?
St. Francis -> Francis Dolarhyde
Thus Clarice's address is:
Note that the zip code, 22308, is not valid for Arlington VA.
[Contributed by GoldCat]
An even more striking similarity is with the childhood of Russian serial killer, Andrei Chikatilo.
As for the name, Mischa...
It has been correctly pointed out elsewhere that Mischa/Misha is typically a boy's name, a diminutive of Mikhail - Michael. This makes me wonder if there isn't some significance in the name. Michael means "Who is as God." The Archangel Michael is the Prince of Light, God's Champion, the Angel of the Lord, protector of the Christian Church, the guardian angel of Israel, the patron saint of the police. He leads souls toward Eternal Light.
Hannibal is looking for a place for Mischa and he chooses Clarice. Clarice means "light" and in his letter to her he called her a "warrior".
[Contributed by lrr3]
Here's Blake's vision of the battle between Michael and Satan.
There are many problems with the story of Mischa which leads me to believe that it never happened. I am always skeptical of stories of gangs of people rounding up and eating children. These are usually myths designed to demonize some group. On page 310 we're told that there aren't that many cannibals. And that's true. Yet the Mischa story has a whole gang of them, who speak different languages no less, banding together to eat children that they somehow collected in a barn at a high remote hunting lodge. We're supposed to believe they were starving, but they had eaten the deer just two days before and we're led to believe that they'd eaten several children already. I've put myself on sparser diets than that. And what were the children eating all this time? Wouldn't the children die of starvation first? And how did the deserters get all these children to the remote hunting lodge? And why children? If there isn't enough food to go around, why not kill somebody big who has a big appetite and speaks a different language? Mischa was pretty small. Or better yet, why not move on to where there is food? What are they waiting for? And how does Hannibal escape being eaten after he gets his arm broken? And why wouldn't a member of the aristocracy have at least an outhouse at his hunting lodge? And was there even any nobility left in Lithuania in 1944? Hadn't the Communists distributed the estate lands to the people earlier in the century?
Therefore, Hannibal's dream of Mischa would seem to be something else - a premonition of sorts. When Hannibal has this dream he has already surmised what Mason has planned for him. You could say, he is on his way "to being eaten". At the point where Mischa is between the barn and the fall of the ax is when Hannibal awakes with a scream. After his capture, Hannibal is held in a barn. It's winter. Those plotting his demise curse in different languages just as the WWII deserters do. And the baby teeth in the stool pit point to Barney with his baby teeth. The barn, the stool pit, the lodge - the barn, the pigs, the house at Muskrat Farm. The plowline - the Tack Room. The broken arm points to Hannibal's X-rays. The scrawny deer, the stinking breath, the teeth in the stool pit - Carlo with his stag's tooth.
The deer is Starling. Hannibal makes the connection when he sees her running in the park, her ponytail "bouncing like the flag of a white-tailed deer". The deer in the dream had an arrow in it. Starling was shot with a tranquilizer dart. The deer had its legs knocked out from under it. Starling's legs collapsed under her. The deer was dragged to the axe so "they" wouldn't have to carry it. "Noonan took a deep breath and swung the axe." (Page 357 [404]) Hannibal carried her.
Followers of Dionysos wore fawn skins.
The other children in the barn are the children Mason has over to "play".
In the dream Hannibal gets his arm broken trying to save Mischa. On page 397, [488] Starling makes the commitment to save Hannibal and says to herself, The world will not be this way within the reach of my arm. [Thanks to JSutter]
I just stumbled on a number of reports by Lithuanian Jews who survived WW II. They paint an interesting picture of Lithuania during that time. Many Jews escaped the labor camps and became members of Partisan groups that lived in the forests. They were armed with Russian weapons and they fought the Germans whenever they encountered them. They had no trouble getting supplies in 1944. The accounts I read described how they would buy supplies in shops or confiscate them from the people who lived in the country. They describe a number of atrocities, including a report that Jewish mothers bashed their children's heads against tree stumps to save the children from being shot (a report I tend to doubt), but as yet I have come across no accounts of starvation or cannibalism.
From Blake's Europe, A Prophecy we have images that are similar to Hannibal's dream. The eating of children and praying in vain.
In Chapter 35, Hannibal has his first dream of Mischa. "Danger then, danger now." Like a guardian angel, she warns him of trouble.
In Italian, the verb mischiare means to jumble or to mix up.
In Germany during WW II, the "Mischlinge" were people who were part Jewish.
From La Vita Nuova, "and thinking of her, sweep sleep overcame me." Dante then receives a disturbing vision of his beloved Beatrice. Here, Hannibal was thinking of Clarice and then receives a disturbing vision of Mischa.
A couple of weeks ago my husband came to me and said he had run across something that might help explain Mischa's teeth. He told me to read Edgar Allan Poe's Berenice but refused to explain further. Well, I had a billion other things to do at the time so I didn't get to it until yesterday. What a great story! I don't know if it has anything to do with Hannibal but the notion of teeth being ideas really captured my imagination. Teeth are a frequent theme in Harris' books, from Dolarhyde's to Mischa's. And Harris may be pointing us toward Poe by setting parts of his stories in Baltimore. Very interesting idea. [Thanks Mike.]
Another possibility is the character Galeazzo Ciano portrayed by Anthony Hopkins in Mussolini and I. [Thanks Diana] Ciani was Mussolini's son-in-law and he was executed in the all-important year of 1944.
which translates as, "I'm not Russian at all. I come from Lithuania, a true German."
Shakespeare often described blood as being purple. [Thanks to lrr3]
In Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal remembers Benjamin Raspail telling him that Jame had the most atrocious room imaginable in this San Francisco flophouse, sort of aubergine walls ... [Page 157]
In Vernon J Geberth's Practical Homicide Investigation there's a section on homosexual lifestyle and in it he includes the kerchief color codes which signal the various sexual activities the wearer is interested in. Purple signifies genital torture.
A reader tells me that Geberth is inaccurate here. Purple actually signifies piercing. Hanky codes. [Thanks to Jon Reid]
Tragedy, comes from the Greek word for "goat song", and originated during the festival of Dionysos. The book, Hannibal, takes the form of a Greek tragedy. More on that later.
Did Hannibal eat his sister? Did he even have a sister at all?
Recall from Section I, Urizen's purple cloak of prophecy.
Mischa's copper tub - Blake's copperplate. [Thanks to Mike.]
Daniel Murph suggests that the copper tub might allude to Lecter's choice of cookware (the copper fais-tout) for the dinner with Krendler.
Timothy Mason sent this in:
Lecteresque sent this in:
Balthus is an artist famed for having little known about him. This is partly because he is prone to fabricating elaborate pasts and high lineages for himself. These efforts are strange given that his verifiable background is one of interest even without embellishments. Again the shadow and the blood converge.
It has been noted elsewhere that Balthus is described as Lecter's "cousin in Paris" in the book of Hannibal but in reality lived in Switzerland. The key to this may only be that Harris wants to speak the word 'Paris'. We can note here that it was prophecy that he would cause ruin. He was exposed to the elements but found by a shepherd! It is not too bad an economy that the Ovine link be suggested here. We will pass over it in 'silence' perhaps. Paris was caretaking sheep himself when approached to make his judgement. He had to choose the most beautiful between Hera, Aphrodite and Athena. He was promised a prize by each; by Hera, Power; by Athena, Wisdom and success in war; and by Aphrodite, the love of Helen, the most beautiful woman in the world. He chose love of course and terrible conflict followed. Both the prize and the cause for this imbroglio was the thing thrown amongst the guests at a wedding of the gods, 'the apple of discord.' [Thanks Lecteresque]
Another possible play on damask relates to masks.
Green grows the holly. So does the ivy. Though winter's blasts blow never so high, Green grows the holly. As the holly grows green And never changes hue, So I am -- ever have been -- unto my lady true. As the holly grows green With ivy all alone, When flowers can not be seen And greenwood leaves be gone. Now unto my lady Promise to her I make: From all other, only to her, I me betake. Adieu, my own lady. Adieu, my special Who hath my heart truly, Be sure, and ever shall.
Timothy Derifield informed me that the source of the phrase "imperially slim" is the poem "Richard Cory" by Edwin Arlington Robinson. Here it is:
Whenever Richard Cory went down town, We people on the pavement looked at him: He was a gentleman from sole to crown, Clean favored, and imperially slim.And he was always quietly arrayed, And he was always human when he talked; But still he fluttered pulses when he said, "Good-morning," and he glittered when he walked.
And he was rich - yes, richer than a king - And admirably schooled in every grace; In fine we thought that he was everything To make us wish that we were in his place.
So on we worked, and waited for the light, And went without the meat, and cursed the bread; And Richard Cory, one calm summer night, Went home and put a bullet through his head.
Also, St. Catherine of Siena was 33 when she died. (Page 174)
Starling's birthday occurs right around the winter solstice, the traditional birth time for most pagan savior (sun) gods. The winter solstice is the shortest day of the year. Darkness is defeating the light. But come the vernal equinox, light is once again triumphing which is why resurrections occur in spring. Between death and resurrection, the gods typically descend into hell for 3 days. Three days because that was the amount of time when the sun was neither ascending or descending at the winter solstice. The name Clarice means "light".
Dionysos was the god of wine.
I acquired a bottle in 1999.
Speaking of Noble Rot, remember the man from the Smithsonian, who wasn't a doctor yet, and who helped identify the bug for Starling? The man with the "witchy eyes"? His name was Noble Pilcher. Additionally, a pilch is a garment made of skins. At the end of SOTL, Starling is at Pilcher's big old house on the Chesapeake with lots of rooms, Pilcher's sister is there and there are enough dogs for everyone.
