A Short History of Myth (10 page)
Read A Short History of Myth Online
Authors: Karen Armstrong
Tags: #Social Science, #Folklore & Mythology, #Juvenile Nonfiction, #History, #General
Malcolm Lowry’s
Under the Volcano
(1947) is set in Mexico on the brink of the Second World War. It traces the last day in the life of the Consul, an alcoholic, who is not only the
alter ego
of Lowry himself, but – it is made clear – also Everyman. The book opens in the Cantina del Bosque, which recalls the ‘dark wood’ of Dante’s Inferno, on the Day of the Dead, when the deceased are believed to commune with the living. Throughout the novel, Lowry explores the ancient mythical insight that life and death are inseparable. The novel constantly juxtaposes the teeming life and beauty of the Mexican landscape – a Garden of Eden – with the infernal imagery of death and darkness. Apparently trivial details acquire universal meaning. People shelter from a storm like the war victims who are hiding in air-raid shelters all over the world; the lights of the
cinema go out, just as Europe is plunging into darkness. The advertisement for the film
Las Manos de
Orlac
, with its bloodstained hands, reminds us of the collective guilt of humanity; a Ferris wheel symbolises the passing of time; a dying peasant by the roadside reminds us that people all over the globe are dying unheeded. As the Consul becomes chronically intoxicated, his surroundings acquire hallucinatory intensity in which incidents and objects transcend their particularity. In ancient mythology, everything had sacred significance and not a single object or activity was profane. As the Day of the Dead proceeds in Lowry’s novel, nothing is neutral: everything is loaded with fateful significance.
The novel depicts the drunkenness of the world before 1939. Every drink that the Consul takes brings him one step closer to his inevitable death. Like the Consul, humanity is out of control and lurching towards disaster. Caught up in a death wish, it is losing its capacity for life and clear vision. The Kabbalah compares a mystic who abuses his powers with a drunkard. This image is central to the novel: like a magician who has lost his way, human beings
have unleashed powers that they cannot control, which will ultimately destroy their world. Lowry has told us that he was thinking here of the atomic bomb. And yet the novel is not itself nihilistic, there is deep compassion in its evocation of the pathos, beauty and loveable absurdity of humanity.
We have seen that a myth could never be approached in a purely profane setting. It was only comprehensible in a liturgical context that set it apart from everyday life; it must be experienced as part of a process of personal transformation. None of this, surely, applies to the novel, which can be read anywhere at all without ritual trappings, and must, if it is any good, eschew the overtly didactic. Yet the experience of reading a novel has certain qualities that remind us of the traditional apprehension of mythology. It can be seen as a form of meditation. Readers have to live with a novel for days or even weeks. It projects them into another world, parallel to but apart from their ordinary lives. They know perfectly well that this fictional realm is not ‘real’ and yet while they are reading it becomes compelling. A powerful novel becomes part of the backdrop of
our lives, long after we have laid the book aside. It is an exercise of make-believe that, like yoga or a religious festival, breaks down barriers of space and time and extends our sympathies, so that we are able to empathise with other lives and sorrows. It teaches compassion, the ability to ‘feel with’ others. And, like mythology, an important novel is transformative. If we allow it to do so, it can change us forever.
Mythology, we have seen, is an art form. Any powerful work of art invades our being and changes it forever. The British critic George Steiner claims that art, like certain kinds of religious and metaphysical experience, is the most ‘“ingressive”, transformative summons available to human experiencing’. It is an intrusive, invasive indiscretion that ‘queries the last privacies of our existence’; an Annunciation that ‘breaks into the small house of our cautionary being’, so that ‘it is no longer habitable in quite the same way as it was before’. It is a transcendent encounter that tells us, in effect: ‘change your life’.
108
If it is written and read with serious attention, a novel, like a myth or any great work of art, can become an initiation that helps us to make a painful
rite of passage from one phase of life, one state of mind, to another. A novel, like a myth, teaches us to see the world differently; it shows us how to look into our own hearts and to see our world from a perspective that goes beyond our own self-interest. If professional religious leaders cannot instruct us in mythical lore, our artists and creative writers can perhaps step into this priestly role and bring fresh insight to our lost and damaged world.
1
Mircea Eliade,
The Myth of the Eternal Return or
Cosmos and History
(trans. Willard R. Trask, Princeton, 1994),
passim
.
2
J. Huizinga,
Homo Ludens
(trans. R.F.C. Hall, London), 1949, 5–25.
3
Huston Smith,
The Illustrated World Religions, A
Guide to our Wisdom Traditions
(San Francisco, 1991), 235.
4
Mircea Eliade,
Myths, Dreams and Mysteries, The
Encounter between Contemporary Faiths and Archaic
Realities
(trans. Philip Mairet, London, 1960), 59–60.
5
Ibid., 74.
6
Mircea Eliade,
Patterns in Comparative Religion
(trans. Rosemary Sheed, London, 1958), 216–19; 267–72.
7
Ibid., 156–85.
8
Eliade,
Patterns in Comparative Religion
, 38–58.
9
Rudolf Otto,
The Idea of the Holy, An Inquiry
into the non-rational factor in the idea of the divine
and its relation to the rational
(trans. John Harvey, Oxford, 1923), 5–41.
10
Eliade,
Myths, Dreams and Mysteries
, 172–8; Wilhelm Schmidt,
The Origin of the Idea of God
(New York, 1912),
passim
.
11
Eliade,
Patterns in Comparative Religion
, 99–108.
12
Eliade,
Myths, Dreams and Mysteries
, 54–86.
13
Joseph Campbell with Bill Moyers,
The Power of
Myth
(New York, 1988), 87.
14
Ibid.
15
Eliade,
Myths, Dreams and Mysteries
, 63.
16
Walter Burkert,
Homo Necans, The Anthropology
of Ancient Greek Sacrificial Ritual and Myth
(trans. Peter Bing, Los Angeles, Berkeley and London, 1983), 88–93.
17
Ibid., 15–22.
18
Campbell,
The Power of Myth
, 72–74; Burkert,
Homo Necans
, 16–22.
19
Joannes Sloek,
Devotional Language
(trans. Henrik Mossin, Berlin and New York, 1996), 50–52, 68–76, 135.
20
Walter Burkert,
Structure and History in Greek
Mythology and Ritual
(Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 1980), 90–94; Joseph Campbell,
Historical Atlas of World Mythology; Volume 2:
The Way of the Animal Powers; Part 1:
Mythologies of the Primitive Hunters and Gatherers
(New York, 1988), 58–80;
The Power of Myth
, 79–81.
21
Eliade,
Myths, Dreams and Mysteries
, 194–226; Campbell,
The Power of Myth
, 81–85.
22
Eliade,
Myths, Dreams and Mysteries
, 225.
23
Campbell,
The Power of Myth
, 124–25.
24
Burkert,
Homo Necans
, 94–5.
25
Homer,
The Iliad
21:470.
26
Burkert,
Greek Religion
, 149–152.
27
Burkert,
Homo Necans
, 78–82.
28
Eliade,
Patterns of Comparative Religion
, 331–343.
29
Eliade,
Myths, Dreams and Mysteries
, 138–40;
Patterns in Comparative Religion
, 256–261.
30
Hosea 4:11-19; Ezekiel 8:2-18; 2 Kings 23:4-7.
31
Eliade,
Myths, Dreams and Mysteries
161–171;
Patterns in Comparative Religion
, 242–253.
32
Eliade,
Myths, Dreams and Mysteries
, 162–65.
33
Ibid., 168–171.
34
Ibid., 188–89.
35
Genesis 3:16–19.
36
Anat–Baal Texts 49:11:5; quoted in E. O. James,
The Ancient Gods
(London, 1960), 88.
37
‘Inanna’s Journey to Hell’ in
Poems of Heaven
and Hell from Ancient Mesopotamia
(trans. and ed. N. K. Sandars, London, 1971), 165.
38
Ibid., 163.
39
Campbell,
The Power of Myth
, 107–11.
40
Ezekiel 8:14; Jeremiah 32:29, 44:15; Isaiah 17:10.
41
Burkert,
Structure and History
, 109–110.
42
Burkert,
Structure and History
, 123–28;
Homo
Necans
, 255–297;
Greek Religion
, 159–161.
43
Eliade,
Myths, Dreams and Mysteries
, 227–8;
Patterns in Comparative Religion
, 331.
44
Karl Jaspers,
The Origin and Goal of History
(trans. Michael Bullock, London, 1953), 47.
45
Gwendolyn Leick,
Mesopotamia, The Invention of
the City
(London, 2001), 268.
46
Genesis 4:17.
47
Genesis 4:21–22.
48
Genesis 11:9.
49
Leick,
Mesopotamia
, 22–23.
50
In other epics, Atrahasis is called Ziusudra and Utnapishtim (‘he who found life’).
51
Thokhild Jacobsen, ‘The Cosmos as State’ in H. and H. A. Frankfort (eds),
The Intellectual
Adventure of Ancient Man, An Essay on Speculative
Thought in the Ancient Near East
(Chicago, 1946), 186-197.
52
Ibid., 169.
53
Enuma Elish
, I:8–11, in Sandars,
Poems of Heaven
and Hell
, 73.
54
Enuma Elish
, VI:19, in Sanders,
Poems of Heaven
and Hell
, 99.
55
Isaiah 27:1; Job 3:12, 26:13; Psalms 74:14.
56
Eliade,
Myths, Dreams and Mysteries
, 80–81;
The
Myth of the Eternal Return
, 17.
57
The Epic of Gilgamesh
, I: iv:6, 13, 19,
Myths from
Mesopotamia, Creation, the Flood, Gilgamesh, and
Others
(trans. Stephanie Dalley, Oxford, 1989), 55.
58
Ibid., I: iv:30–36, p.56.
59
Ibid., VI: ii:1–6, p.78.
60
Ibid., VI: ii:11–12, p.78-9.
61
Ibid., XI: vi:4, p.118.
62
David Damrosch,
The Narrative Covenant.
Transformations of Genre in the Growth of Biblical
Literature
(San Francisco, 1987), 88–118.
63
Epic of Gilgamesh
, XI: ii:6–7 in Dalley, 113.
64
Ibid., I:9–12, 25–29, p.50.
65
Ibid., 1:4–7, p.50.
66
Robert A. Segal, ‘Adonis: A Greek Eternal Child’ in Dora C. Pozzi and John M. Wickersham (eds),
Myth and the Polis
(Ithaca, New York and London, 1991), 64–86.
67
Karl Jaspers,
The Origin and Goal of History
(trans. Michael Bullock, London 1953), 1–78.
68
The author of the
Dao De Jing
, which did not become known until the mid-third century, was using the name of the fictitious sage Laozi, who was often thought to have lived in the late seventh or sixth century, as a pseudonym.
69
Genesis 18.
70
Isaiah 6:5; Jeremiah 1:6–10; Ezekiel 2:15.
71
Confucius,
Analects
5:6; 16:2.
72
Sadly, inclusive language is not appropriate
here. Like most of the Axial sages, Confucius had little time for women.
73
Confucius,
Analects
12:22; 17:6.
74
Ibid., 12:2.
75
Ibid., 4;15.
76
Ibid., 8:8.
77
Ibid., 3:26; 17:12.
78
Anguttara
Nikaya 6:63.
79
Dao De Jing
80.
80
Ibid., 25.
81
Ibid., 6, 16, 40, 67.
82
Jataka
1:54–63;
Vinaya: Mahavagga
1:4.
83
Psalm 82.
84
2 Chronicles 34:5–7.
85
Hosea 13:2; Jeremiah 10; Psalms 31:6; 115:4–8; 135:15.
86
Exodus 14.
87
Isaiah 43:11–12.
88
Plato,
The Republic
, 10:603D-607A.
89
Ibid., 522a8; Plato
Timaeus
26E5.
90
Metaphysics
III, 1000a11–20.
91
Plato,
The Republic
6:509ff.
92
Plato,
Timaeus
41e.
93
Aristotle,
Metaphysics
, 1074 Bf.
94
2 Corinthians 5:16.
95
Philippians 2:9.
96
Philippians 2:9–11.
97
Philippians 2:7–9.
98
Luke 24:13–22.
99
Kabbalists stressed that En Sof was neither male nor female. It was an ‘It’ that became a ‘Thou’ to the mystic at the end of the process of emanation.
100
Gregory of Nyssa, ‘Not Three Gods’.
101
Richard S. Westfall, ‘The Rise of Science and the Decline of Orthodox Christianity: A Study of Kepler, Descartes and Newton’ in David C. Lindberg and Ronald L. Numbers (eds),
God
and Nature: Historical Essays on the Encounter
Between Christianity and Science
(Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 1986), 231.
102
Gregory of Nazianzos,
Oration
, 29:6–10
103
Blaise Pascal,
Pensées
(trans. A. J. Krasilsheimer, London, 1966), 209.
104
R.C. Lovelace, ‘Puritan Spirituality: The Search for a Rightly Reformed Church’ in
Louis Dupre and Don E. Saliers (eds),
Christian
Spirituality: Post Reformation and Modern
(London and New York, 1989), 313–15.
105
T. H. Huxley,
Science and Christian Tradition
(New York, 1896), 125.
106
Friedrich Nietzsche,
The Gay Science
(New York, 1974), 181.
107
Thomas Mann, ‘The Making of
The Magic
Mountain
’, in
The Magic Mountain
. (trans. H.I. Lowe Porter, London, 1999), 719-29.
108
George Steiner,
Real Presences: Is there anything in
what we say?
(London, 1989), 142–43.