Myths at Work

    First Oedipus, which was creatively adapted by Aeschylus into the great tragedies. It takes some imagination. You have to get out of our world and imagine yourself back in an archaic Greek world. 

But it’s possible. A self-confident, assertive man in all innocence kills his father and marries his mother – unimaginably terrible taboos, the violation of which means pollution, not only of the one who does it but his family and in this case his city through time. And then, at the height of his self-confidence as king, seeking the answer to why there has come a plague, must discover to his horror that it was his murder and incest that caused it. He curses life and blinds himself. Again, with some effort of imagination, his story moved me to pity. And through pity the story moved me. Through my being moved, the myth did its work. The my pity the an image of the human predicament entered my heart. our radical insecurity, epitomized by a sudden fall into catastrophe; our blindness to our real situation; the curse of virtue, over-confidence; the inevitability of tragedy; and the injustice that seems woven into the very fabric of life. I might have known these things intellectually if I had thought about it. But through the myth-become-tragedy, I became much more intimately acquainted with them: I knew these truths, not merely know about them. This image of life became real through Aeschylus’ treatment of the myth in a way that reached my heart, which allowed my mind to reach out to reality itself. (Compare knowing about someone not really important to you or some public figure, and someone you love and know intimately: that points toward the distinction I am trying to make.)    

  Beowulf and Ragnarök.  Ragnarök is a Norse myth about the end of the world, an end even for the gods, the end of everything. I have read that it probably originated in the 6^th century during a time of famine and war caused by the darkening of the sky (due to the eruption of more than one super volcano presumedly). It was a time during which half the population of northern Europe was thought to have perished (Neil Price, The Children of Ash & Elm: A History of the Vikings, Penguin, 2020).  

    The thought that the world is finite and a future in which the Nothing awaits is not new to us. But to believe in gods and other forces of nature that were immune to natural death, and then to believe that they, too, will perish, well, that seems a bit depressing. (The gods and a host of other mythical creatures from trolls to ice giants to elves and fairies to goblins were all part of nature for peoples of the North in those days – not supernatural beings.)

    This is the background – never made explicit – to the Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf, a kind of creative myth, or a poetic treatment of myth and legend. What moved me as an 18 year-old reading Beowulf for the first time was the hero’s noble attitude facing death, even in the knowledge that everything that mattered to him and that he loved was doomed to perish. Still, the hero faced danger and death nobly. That mattered even with Ragnarök in the background. That mattered even with Ragnarök in the background. It doesn’t matter that the warrior culture of Beowulf doesn’t appeal to me in the least. That is but a variation of a theme – nobility, goodness involves sacrifice without the hope of reward.

   So let me translate my feeling – the primary data, the gift of the poem –  here into conceptual language, the light of common day, so to speak [“Whither is fled the visionary gleam? Where is it now, the glory and the dream?” (Ode of Wordsworth) That’s what it feels like to put the experience of myth – or creative myth i.e. literature, also painting or music – into conceptual language.] Being moved by Beowulf’s comportment to death is the feeling of being in the presence of goodness: you do what you have to do because it is good – noble for the heroic ethos; not for any reward; not so that your name will live forever or so that you can go to Valhalla and live a great afterlife feasting with the gods. That doing something for its own sake connects true nobility to true goodness. That thought, furthermore, exposes just how far apart those who call themselves nobles are from true nobility, just as it does those who call themselves Christians who are a universe apart from goodness. Again, the image imparted by the myth goes to the heart and then the head has something it can translate into conceptual understanding – all the time realizing that the translation pales in comparison to the original.

     But the new conceptual understanding signifies a heightened consciousness. This is the sense in which a myth (including creative myth – art) can express a truth that cannot be expressed any other way. “It’s the edge, the interface, between what can be known [scientifically, intellectually] and what is never to be discovered because it is a mystery transcendent of all human research,” as Joseph Campbell puts it. Our hearts and imaginations connect us more directly with metaphysical realities, with our understanding (Verstand) trying to make sense of truths our hearts give us through our imagination. That is our epistemological relation with transcendence, mystery – that which our finite senses and intellects cannot reach.    GL