Literature and myth

There are two sides to life, one real, the other imagined, with the former relying on its quality of being determined by the five senses and the latter only being a sphere of the mind many of us understand only to a little extent due to its heavy reliance on hope and wish. What is written about in literature is not necessarily reality at all times, for the imagination needs to be applied sometimes to define the real. This is due to the fact that reality sometimes fails to define itself well enough for the common man and woman to understand it. What we do not understand cannot be reduced to only the supernatural without face and form; it has to be given character, name, and role sometimes if it has to have some meaningful impact on the lives of the ordinary folk. This is the basis of what we term as literary myth, that land where fairies and chimeras share spaces, where gods and monsters are used to define the non-ending battle between good and bad that determines the individual’s choice to be either a virtuous being or an outright evil character. This is where the essence of the mythical literature we so enjoy to read is drawn and where the deeds of the characters are based on the supernatural to enhance the significance of their human roles in the real world. The usual behaviour finds human beings constructing fictional narratives and creating symbolic images within which to imagine the world and their own place in the world. This is the point that finds them creating legends and myths that try and explain the world. As Mc Adams states, “They fashion their own life stories and situate those stories within the legends and myths of their social groups.” This type of behaviour is kind of logical in nature, with the individual’s life and experience drawing essence and premise from the lives and experiences of the larger community within which the individual is raised and socialised. The reality and fact of the matter is that even fiction has to be hinged somehow on the real-life experience/s of the individuals and the community/ies he or she lives in. The relationship between the real and the imagined is constant, with the two spheres running parallel but converging at regular intervals in the course of the life of the individual and social group or society. This means that the story of the individual not only covers those elements salient to the existence of himself or herself but also the stories of others that live or have lived in the society that they live in. Sometimes, the relationship between the imaginary and the real can even become so real that even those worlds not seen but have only been heard about can come into the life-story of the individual. The life stories of human individuals are largely imaginary because they conduct their lives in large part through imagining their own behaviour in the light of the beliefs, values, images, and narrative structures provided by their cultures. This aspect of the human is supplemented by their own inventive powers, that is, creativity comes to the fore where the cultural aspect comes short in the definition of certain phenomena and what we term as ‘literary fiction’ is born. There is need where reality fails to foster knowledge and understanding to create fictional narratives that expand the scope of possible experiences by giving real-life simulations of imagined lives and generating imagined scenarios that are reminiscent to the human experience in real-life situations. These fictional and imaginary works of writing also serve to provide readers with templates to their own personal stories and foster the mental images necessary in the imagining of that which is being read on or heard in a reading of a given story or performance. This in short means that the story is organised in such a manner that the audience understand their own self-narratives from the story being read or said and they leave the episode of literary representation understanding life in new and varied ways that have different meanings for each individual engaged in the episode. Language in summary contains in all the problems and answers of representation and those of the individual-culture relationship. Language and its basic or prime unit, the word, are the most elementary forms of representation. As Eco puts it: In a pragmatic understanding, on several occasions, there is a permanent operation of growth and transformation of significances within a word, not only on a temporal axis, but also on a synchronic axis. The reality is that language is the chief means by which culture is established and which has ensured its dynamics; culture need not only be expressed in words, it comes in words through writings read, through the poetry recited, and through the lyrics of the music heard. The slogans chanted and the clothes worn are in line with the fashion of the moment in a given culture and though language does not actually occupy the entire space in culture, it however manages to touch upon all areas of a society’s being. In its basic function as the primary tool of communication, it is used to present ideas that help the individual relate to the systems in operation within their own niche in the social structure. As the primary tool of human communication, language serves the function of connecting the different spheres of society, that is, the social, the religious, and the economic establish their connections in the language spoken by the given society and help human society establish the links that lead to the harmonious use and utilisation of any of the components found in each of the spheres that make the entire entity termed as human society. Ideas are expressed through language, so are beliefs, concepts, rules and regulations, laws and acts, religious words and texts, and all the other tools used in communicating the core issues pertaining to these entities and phenomena. All forms of imagination that are transmitted in the literary and other arts evoke feelings and meanings in their expression. Their basic prowess lies in their ability to appeal to the senses and emotions, exposing the real power of human experience and in the process giving it real and perceived shape to the individual encountering them. Language enables human beings to traverse the reality of living on a more resilient tone than they would if they had no other means of interacting with each other. In its verses and verbs in the course of an imaginative or real episode of activity, people can relate their personal experience to the different realities in different spheres of human living. People can easily establish relationships between different ideas regardless of the field being explored, and in the process manage to connect the present with the past and the future when it comes to understanding human society. Language also establishes and defines the whole idea of individual or group identity, and constructs the narratives salient to the understanding thereof, that is, it is through language that we understand who we are in the light of the lives of the other individuals with whom we share the basic spaces within which we live. Through the multiplicity of its phases in the exploration of human communication, we are able to envision varied perspectives about events we come across on a daily or seasonal basis. Brown, Carroll, and Hogan state that: Verbal forms of imaginative activity are human universals. Literature is a written extension of an originally oral form of verbal imagination. Briefly speaking, there are two major cultural perspectives on literary representation. There is the usual Platonic representation, which has been related with mimesis, or in layman terms, imitation. This perspective assumes that the represented object or phenomenon is inferior to the represented reality, that is, whether it be it the case of an artistic or literary work and its background, any object the being in the representation itself could never actually be bigger than the reality it is being used to represent. In principle, reality is incorruptible in the sense that it maintains its true form no matter the amount of effort put in to ensure that created reality of the representation meant to express it imitates it word for word or movement for movement. Art and literature can easily be overestimated if they are divorced from the reality of Plato’s critique that the copy can never be better than the original. It does not matter how much meaning and respect the artistic work garners based on the degree of its rendering and encompassing reality, the fact of the matter is that it can never be bigger than the reality it is trying to express. In terms of its comprehension if one is to give a close look to its structures, representation does not preserve the object through which it has been generated, but rather, it gives another new form of expressing it, in short, it reveals a different perspective. The first interpretation of representation may be different to the second, and the third may be different as well from the second manner of interpretation. This shows that representation, both on the artistic tangible level, and on the imaginary level is in essence not a truthful copy of reality but just another new and different side to it. By developing distinct features and characteristics that instead of copying in exact measures what the artist’s cognition deems the original copy of reality, representation comes with the added features unique to the writer or the artist. This thus means representation does not mean the complete equivalence of the original element with its copy, but is the result or product of its creator’s imagination. The literary writings through the ages have tried to explain why humans are fascinated with depictions of death. Through the exploration of imaginative and real meaning, works in literature have sought to characterise the emotions evoked in depictions of death, and to reveal the attitudes toward death adopted by authors and characters. From Shakespeare to the Marlowe, Poe to Marechera, the works they writ are examples of literature that attempts to describe the whole span of not only individual human life. Their works are rather examples in which literature deals with death in relation to specific themes in human life history: threats to survival, childhood, bonding and other spheres that make up everyday human living. Through use of imagination and representation, literature goes back to its originator that modern society has denigrated to the blasé definition that hints at uselessness: myth. Mythology gives birth not only to the understanding of one’s individual or social identity. It paves the way to the mastery of the art of expression, and also serves to make one aware of the other spheres of human living such as history and imagination. It is only through the understanding of the functions that one begins to comprehend the relationship between language, myth and literature. In the words of Novato, CA quoting Joseph Campbell, there are four functions of mythology listed: …the first function of mythology is to evoke in the individual a sense of grateful, affirmative awe before the monstrous mystery that is existence. The second function of mythology is to present an image of the cosmos, an image of the universe round about, that will maintain and elicit this experience of awe. The third function of a mythological order is to validate and maintain a certain sociological system: a shared set of rights and wrongs, proprieties or improprieties, on which your particular social unit depends for its existence. …the fourth function of myth is psychological. That myth must carry the individual through the stages of his life, from birth through maturity through senility to death. The mythology must do so in accords with the social order of his group, the cosmos as understood by his group, and the monstrous mystery. The functions of literature follow a more than less similar vein to the abbreviated one of myth above, leading one to the conclusion that literature is born of myth, the usually considered imaginary retelling of the human story that may prove to be the more real side to who we are as human beings. Standing at a relative’s grave one afternoon, all the memories we shared and the stories came to the fore of my mind. In a large way, he had mentored the pen through which I came to write, in essence the reality I came to be after he was late and buried in the grave. Now a memory (a myth to certain individuals), he had fostered the reality I now use to express my thoughts and opinions through literature. I honour his memory in the mythical cultural ceremonies of our ancestors because I feel he is the reality that gave birth to the representation found in the words I write. Literature should honour the myth that gave birth to it through the folktales told around the fires those many evenings ago, those many evenings throughout the history of humankind. Tšepiso S. Mothibi