The Cry for Myth (42 page)

†
Mary T. Reynolds,
Joyce and Dante: The Shaping of the Imagination
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987).

**
Ibid., I,1–3.

*
Ibid., I, 47–51.

*
Dante,
Divine Comedy
, I, 105–109, 123–126.

*
Ibid., II, 10–12.

*
Ibid., II, 31–35.

†
Ibid., 11, 51–52.

*
Ibid., 11, 4–55.

*
Ibid., VIII, 94–105.

*
Dante,
The Divine Comedy
, Ciardi’s introduction to canto III.

†
Ibsen,
Peer Gynt
(New York: Doubleday Anchor Book, 1963), p. 139.

*
Dante,
The Divine Comedy
, Ciardi’s introduction to canto xxvii.

†
Ibid., XXX, 43–51.

*
From “I Don’t Understand,” in
The Poetry of Yevgeny Yevtushenko, 1953– 1965
, trans. George Reavey (New York: October House, 1065).

†
This is another illustration of how the images and vision of life presented in art tend not only to give the quintessence of the psychological problems but to
predict
them. Ibsen’s drama was written in 1867, thirty-three years before Freud’s book on dreams, and a half century before
The Great Gatsby
, but this pattern of the breakdown of self has come into our overt consciousness only in our twentieth century.

*
Peer Gynt
, trans. Michael Meyer (New York: Doubleday Anchor Book, 1963), p. 29.

*
Ibid., p. xxiii.

*
Ibid., pp.16–17.

*
Ibid., p. 26.

*
”I Don’t Understand.”

†
Ibsen,
Peer Gynt
, pp. 36, 37.

*
Ibid., pp. 40–41.

*
Ibid., p. 37.

*
The whole poem of Perls follows:

I do my thing and you do your thing.

I am not in this world to live up to your expectations,

And you are not in this world to live up to mine.

You are you and I am I;

If by chance we find each other, it’s beautiful.

If not, it can’t be helped.

*
Ibsen,
Peer Gynt
, p. xxviii.

*
Ibid., p. 57.

*
Ibid., p. 74.

*
Ibid., pp. 72–73.

†
Ibid., p. 99.

*
Ibid., p.101.

†
Ibid., pp. 106–107.

*
“I don’t understand.”

†
Ibid., pp. 111–112.

*
Ibid., p. 116.

*
The translator suggests that this last part of the play, starting with the wrecked ship, can be seen as occurring after death, Peer Gynt as it were seeing his whole life in a series of quick flashes. But regardless of whether that is the dramatic meaning, we can see the myth as Ibsen’s description of the development and the meaning of this pattern of life.

†
Ibsen,
Peer Gynt
, p. 117.

*
Ibid.

†
Ibid., p. 119. Recall that this drama was written in 1867, three decades before Freud’s book on dreams.

*
Ibid., p. 133.

†
Ibid., p. 134.

*
Ibid., p. 139.

†
Ibid., pp. 139, 141, 148.

**
Ibid, p. 153.

*
Ibid., pp. 154, 155.

*
Ibid., p.156.

†
Ibid., pp. 157–158.

*
A feminist group with whom I discussed this fairy tale proposed that the queen, in her trip to the bath-house, had been impregnated by another man. This is certainly a possible interpretation; It reflects what we said earlier, that modern women take steps on their own, cuckolding the men if necessary as a way of getting back at them.

*
The relation of this level of water and slime to levels of the unconscious, by way of both Freud’s and Jung’s theories, is obvious.

*
Time is of great importance to the existential writers. Heidegger wrote
Being and Time
. Eugene Minkowski wrote
Le temps vécu
. I have a section on “Of Time and History” in my book
The Discovery of Being
.

*
Rollo May,
Man’s Search for Himself
(New York: Norton, 1953), p. 88.

*
T. S. Eliot, “The Waste Land,” in
Collected Poems, 1909–1962
(New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1970).

†
Beckett,
Waiting for Godot
, p. 43.

*
Rene Dubos,
The God Within
(New York: Scribners, 1973), p. 264.

*
Weinberg, “Our Faustian Bargain: Social Institution and Nuclear Energy,”
Science
(Dec. 27,1971), p. 27.

*
Marlowe,
The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus
, in
The Norton Anthology of English Literature
, vol. 1 (New York: Norton, 1974), p. 769.

†
Ibid., p. 770.

*
Ibid., p. 771.

†
Ibid., p. 778.

*
Ibid. It is interesting that Marlowe predicts what has actually happened; we do now make bridges to pass through the air in our airplanes.

†
Ibid., p.781.

*
The contemporary admission of fundamentalist preachers that they are guilty of sexual misconduct—Jimmy Swaggart and Jim Bakker—are present-day examples.

*
Marlowe,
Doctor Faustus
, p. 782.

*
Ibid., p. 784.

*
Ibid.

†
Helen in the Greek sense is “the form of forms,” as Dr. Richard Wiseman has put it in personal conversation. Form is beauty in the profound and infinite sense.

*
Marlowe,
Dr. Faustus
. p. 813.

†
Ibid.

*
Ibid., p. 816.

*
Ibid. p. 806.

*
We note that, according to Matthew Arnold, Europe is in its “iron age.” This points again to the industrial age in the early nineteenth century.

*
The Norton Anthology of English Literature
, vol. 2 (New York: Norton, 1976), p. 1343.

†
Goethe,
Faust
, trans. Walter Arndt (New York: Norton, 1976), 1.

*
Ibid., 1. 337.

†
Ibid., 1. 1224.

*
Ibid., 11.1554–15.

‡
Ibid., 11. 1570–1571. In this very psychoanalytic portion, Faust throws aside with contempt our modem ways in which many people deal with such depression, namely, giving oneself over to money, drugs, and sex.

Accursed be Mammon, when his treasure

to deeds of daring eggs us on,…

Cursed be the balsam of the grape!

Cursed, highest prize of lovers thrall!

**
Ibid., I.1635.

‡
Ibid., II. 1698,1702

*
Ibid., 11. 1756–1759.

*
Goethe,
Faust
, 11. 4398 ff.

†
Faust’s first name.

**
Goethe,
Faust
, 11. 4543–4544.

‡
Ibid., 11. 4564, 4598.

***
Ibid., 1.4604.

*
Ibid., I. 4611.

†
Ibid.,11.1607–1610.

*
This relationship presents one of the most profound problems of human life. The connection of form with sex is shown in feminine beauty. This serves the evolutionary survival of the race mythologically and is bound up with the arts and with the relation between the sexes, as we shall see below.

†
Goethe,
Faust
, 1. 6203.

*
Ibid., ll. 6224–6225.

†
Ibid., l. 6221.

*
Ibid., l. 88
₇
8.

†
We mentioned in
Chapter 12
on Marlowe’s
Fault
our radical separation of the symbol of Helen from modem Westerners’ view of beauty and sex. Chiron, a centaur who had a special knowledge of medicine in Creek mythology, supports this when he says, in Goethe’s
Faust
(ll.7400, 7405),

Bahl Beauty’s often lifeless; not in feature

True loveliness is found expressed….

But irresistible is grace

Like Helen’s.

*
Ibid., l. 6265.

†
Ibid., l. 6282.

**
Ibid., 1. 6275.

*
Ibid.,1.6302.

†
Ibid., 1.6367.

*
See
Chapter 16
.

*
Goethe,
Faust
, ll. 10190–10195.

†
Ibid., 1.11225.

**
Ibid., ll. 10182–10184.

*
Ibid., ll 11238,11342.

†
Ibid., l.11362.

**
Ibid., l.11373.

*
Ibid., l.11552.

†
We found “care” coming up in other myths, like
The Great Cabby, Peer Gynt
, and so on. I have described the meaning of care in
Love and Will
under the caption “Myth of Care.”

**
Goethe,
Fautt
, 1. 11498.

*
Ibid., l. 11573.

†
Ibid., l.11613.

*
Ibid., l. 11700.

†
Ibid.,l. 11724.

**
Ibid.,ll. 11748,11759.

‡
Ibid.,11. 11809-11810

*
Ibid., l.11936.

†
Ibid., 1. 11989–11993.

*
Ibid., l.11552.

*
This twelve-tone scale is important because it is one of the experiments in “new art” which the devil will castigate later on in the novel.

*
Thomas Mann,
Dr. Faustus
(New York: Knopf, 1948), chap. 12. For those who do not wish to read the whole novel, 1 recommend this one chapter as the heart of the book.

†
Ibid., p. 249.

*
Ibid., p. 229. The fact that Mann has Satan level these attacks on psychology tells us again that there is a curious connection between the spread of psychology and the decline of Western culture. Is it the prevalence of emotional sicknesses, the special need for help on adjustment, etc., that occurs in a declining or, as Mann would say, a sick culture? Whatever the reason for these attacks on psychology, we know that Mann was very sympathetic toward Freud and modern depth-psychology.

†
Published the same year as
The Magic Mountain
. At that time Mann was opposed to Spengler’s pessimism, but Hitler was yet to show how ruthless human beings can be.

*
Ibid., p. 235. This reminds one of Rilke, who found his devil necessary for his creativity, and William Blake, who in his drawings of Cod always put hoofs on the feet of the Almighty, and all the other artists and musicians who secretly believe their creativity requires the presence of the devil. Mann is saying that if we cure all disease we will have wiped out our creativity.

*
Ibid., p. 238. We are in the decade when paintings that were done by poverty-stricken artists, e.g., Van Gogh, a hundred yean ago, are now sold at auction for $53 million. This shows not the valuation of Van Gogh but rather what one does to avoid income tax.

†
Ibid.

**
Ibid., p. 241.

‡
Ibid., p. 243.

*
Ibid., p. 249.

*
Ibid., p. 504.

†
Ibid., p. 501.

**
Ibid., p. 504.

*
Ibid., p. 249.

*
Ibid., p. 233.

†
Ibid., p. 236.

**
What is anathema in these days of self-expressionism is what Goethe’s Faust said when he was making up his mind to sell his soul to Mephistopheles,

What does the world hold out by way of gain?
Abstain! it calls. You shall abstain!
Thus goes the sempiternal song
That every mortal creature hears,
Each hour comes rasping to our ears,
Each morning I awake in desperation.

Instead of “abstain” we would use the word “repress.” It is easy to see why Faust finds this process unsatisfying.

*
This shift is connected in the last half of the twentieth century with the growing fundamentalism all over the world.
Life
magazine devoted a special edition during the summer of 1089 to the increase in our present time of this belief in the devil. The journal reported that over 70 percent of the people in this country now believe there is some evil spirit in the universe they call the devil, while there are less than 40 percent who believe in a God.

*
In
Endeavors in Psychology: Selections from the Personology of Henry A. Murray
, ed. Edwin S. Shneidman (New York: Harper
&
Row, 1981).

*
Ibid., pp. 520–521.

*
Marlowe,
Dr. Faustus
, p. 34.

*
”The Raven,” by Edgar Allan Poe, in
One Hundred and One Famous Poems
(Chicago: Cable, 1924).

†
New York Times Book Review
, April 9, 1989.

*
This section will often quote the late Dr. Henry Murray, to whom I am deeply grateful for his many insights about
Moby Dic
. I recommend those interested to read Dr. Murray’s essay on
Moby Dick
in his collection of works,
Endeavors in Psychology
.

The quotations from the novel itself are from Melville,
Moby Dick
(Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1956).
Moby Dick
was first published in 1851.

*
Murray,
Endeavors in Psychology
, p. 85.

*
Melville,
Moby Dick
, p. 411.

†
Ibid., p. 430 (italics mine).

*
Ibid., p. 431.

*
Ibid., p. 431.

*
Murray,
Endeavors in Psychology
, p. 90.

*
Otto Rank,
Beyond Psychology
(New York: Dover, 1941), p. 267.

*
Ibid., p. 257. For those who wish to understand more of Rank’s actual therapy, the diaries of Anais Nin are available in which she tells of her analysis with Rank in Paris.

†
Bruce Lincoln,
Emerging from the Chrysalis
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981), p. 107.