Tinbad the Tailor killed some fliesWhich in the telling grew in size.Jinbad the Jailer's job had glamour:He kept the inmates in the slammer.
As explained in "Tinbad is Sartre," I wrote the Tinbad couplet with "The Brave Little Tailor" in mind. The tailor kills some flies -- "seven at one blow" -- but then tells the story in such a way as to encourage the misunderstanding that he killed seven men at one blow. Then I thought of Jean-Paul Sartre, whose surname means "tailor" and discovered his play The Flies, which is discussed in the linked post.
The Jinbad couplet was phoned in, one of the least witty in the poem, and wasn't intended to allude to anyone in particular. The second line just spells out the literal meaning of the word jailer, and the second half of the first has no logic behind it but is just there because it rhymes with slammer. In other words, this is just a badly-written couplet. If the whole poem had been like that -- "Tinbad the Tailor's chief pursuits / Are sewing shirts and mending suits" -- it wouldn't have been worth writing. It's uninspired filler.
Or is it? The assumption underlying posts like this one, where I revisit something I myself wrote and try to mine it for unguessed-at meaning, is that the poem was in some sense inspired -- that it expresses thoughts and ideas that were not my own when I wrote it. And that goes for the filler, too -- perhaps especially for the filler. (The Jinbad couplet must have been channeled; there's no way I would write schlock like that!)
My reason for revisiting Tinbad now was originally because of the "tin" theme in recent syncs, but then I realized that killing flies has also taken on synchronistic importance. In the Liza Lou story in "The devil's best friend is a blue butterfly," a devil (originally very large) takes the form of a fly, is imprisoned in a jug of molasses, and is then swatted and killed by the Parson. Then two days later, I posted "Pigs and the grail," which unexpectedly ended up including the Samson Mystery Pig -- a toy which involves trapping a fly in a tiny celluloid pig with a bottle-shaped body. The implied death of the fly was emphasized in the image I included in the post -- an article condemning the Mystery Pig as a "cruel" toy that "teaches children to kill."
And this imagery of a a devil trapped in a bottle brings us to Jinbad. Jinn-bad. How did I not see that before? An ordinary jailer's job has no glamour at all, but it's hard to think of a more glamorous "job" than Aladdin's -- that of keeping a jinn, or genie, imprisoned in a lamp so that it can grant his every wish. Aladdin's genie was kept in a lamp, but similar stories abut a genie in a bottle are so familiar as to be a cliché. (If I had been thinking this way when I wrote the couplet, I would have made it inmate, singular.)
Tinbad and Jinbad are a contrasting pair, just like Finbad and Binbad, or Hinbad and Rinbad. Tinbad kills the demonic "flies"; Jinbad imprisons and exploits them.
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No sooner had I clicked “Publish” than I had second thoughts about that “chief pursuits” couplet. Even in something specifically intended as an example of boring verse, having the word suits rhyme with the syllable suits seemed a bit gauche. I began thinking up other ways of making a boring couplet saying that Tinbad the Tailor did tailor stuff. The first possibility to come to mind (better a near-rhyme than a repeated syllable) was:
Tinbad the Tailor took it in
But had to let it out again.
I was thinking only in terms with of tailoring — Tinbad took in a garment when its owner lost weight but had to let it out again when the weight was regained — but I soon realized it could also be read in terms of catching flies. Tinbad traps flies but, unlike Jinbad, doesn’t keep them.
Given Jinbad's connection with Jinn/ Genie, you could take another look at what it means to have a "glamorous" job.
You used it in the sense of something attractive, exciting, etc. But the word 'glamour' originally referred to 'magic, enchantment" and also specifically with casting a spell on someone or something. Further, per Etymonline, it has also been traced to the concept of "illusion".
Thus, Jinbad's slammer in which he keeps the inmates may have something to do with illusion, bewitchment, etc.
The reference to illusion being a prison gets to all sorts of tried-and-true analogies, ranging from the central premise of The Matrix (in which humans are unknowingly kept imprisoned in an illusion and something that isn't real) to older stories such as Plato's Cave (which the underlying philosophy of The Matrix must be partially based on).
In both of those examples, the people in the jail are so trapped by the illusion that they will actively wish to stay in it, and potentially harm or kill anyone who would want to bring them to reality. Which is a pretty effective jail. We see this play out with Cypher in The Matrix, who knowingly chooses imprisonment over freedom ("ignorance is bliss"). And in Plato's cave allegory, Socrates reasons that that no prisoner would wish to follow the one who had been out to the Sun, due to his blindness upon returning to the darkness to free his fellows, and thus would resist being dragged out of their jail.
The contrast you set between Tinbad and Jinbad, specifically that Tinbad will trap a fly but ultimately let it go, gives Tinbad very Eru-esque vibes, at least in Daymon's stories.
We already related the flies to the Numenoreans, and pointed out that it was Eru himself who brushed those Numenorean Flies into the pit, or their prison.
But, elsewhere, it is Zhera' who notes that Eru is the type of Being who will ensnare the living, and then ultimately let it go, but seemingly somehow changed perhaps to be in his service and no longer completely a "wild thing". Here is the quote from Faithful:
"When he [Zhera] awoke, all was recalled, and written, and despair fled form his heart, and he sat upon a sea-wain, and wept; for the comeliness of Eru Illuvatar, to ensnare the living, to keep not, but neither to set wholly free a wild thing, distrustful."
The dream that Zhera had woken up from when he had this thought about Eru ensnaring Beings and also letting them go, by the way, involved that Butterfly that emerged from the blue sky and landed on a Tree. It was said that on this tree were written "many hidden things".
Perhaps this Butterfly was one of the wild things Zhera' was referencing, and its landing on the Tree, where it was exposed to hidden and secret writings, was one way in which it was entrapped? And perhaps the reference to 'ensnare the living' in order to set them free was a reference to the Numenoreans (that event would happen shortly after this dream). Hard to say for sure. But landing on the Tree and catching a glimpse at some secret stuff does bring to mind my dream of you raiding that refrigerator, for some reason. That dream does also have a very specific Blue-Green reference as well ("... the dream concluded with that green light, a twinkle in the sky blue, now a blue without glimmer, flat as a curved arching wall over head...")
From Whitley Strieber's conversation with Tim in The Key:
Tim: At this moment, the little fish of Pisces is about to be spilled out onto the dry land by Aquarius. All you know how to do, little fish, is swim. How will you swim upon the dry land? . . . In the Hindu tradition there is this story: The God of the Universe became curious about how it felt to be a pig. So he entered the body of one. He found it delightful beyond compare -- how good the sty smelled, how sweet were the slops, how desirable were the female pigs. But the universe needed tending. There was work to be done. So the helpers and handmaidens went and said, "God, you must come out of there. The universe needs you." God said, "Who are you talking to? I am just a pig! Leave me alone!" So they killed the pig, and God came out, and refused to believe he had ever refused to leave.
WS: And we're the pig?
Tim: Earth is the pig. You are its inhabitant.
Shortly after reading your last comment, Bill, I picked up Words of the Faithful, which I have been rereading, and found that my bookmark was here:
"Yet here, in their descent upon the men of Isildur, a company kept by Elendil for speedy search and exploration, even as their prey was near to their grasp, the masters of slave-masters, themselves bound to one that does not release, were driven away, scattered amid their slaughter, by hosts of Manwe, that in former days appeared unto men as eagles of great expanse, whose pinions brought the winds."
That "one that does not release" fits with the Tinbad/Jinbad contrast. "Eagles of great expanse" is almost word-for-word how Marco Polo described rocs, suggesting that the first couplet of "With?" (about Sinbad and the rocs) is also relevant.
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