Stephen Gerringer
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Thank you Doug Harris, and Isabelle (love your cybername of centersoul, Isabelle), for your kind words, and your passion – and especially for returning the focus to Breath.
Normally, my heart beats on its own —“I” don’t exert direct conscious control over the frequency or intensity of my pulse. All other bodily processes — circulation, perspiration, metabolism, etc. — are similarly autonomic, or “unconscious.” Obviously, I am beating my heart, monitoring my internal body temperature, secreting the necessary hormones — but not the conscious, waking me.
Breathing also occurs without conscious direction or intervention — yet it is different from other involuntary processes in that we can consciously control our breath. Hence breathing is that bodily process where consciousness and the unconscious most clearly intersect, and so has long served as a launching pad for subjective explorations of the mystery of Being.
Joseph Campbell charts this development as starting roughly 5,000 years ago, once someone in India noticed that we breathe differently when being chased by a tiger than when lounging on the lush green banks of river skipping stones across the water.
In the first circumstance, one is in an agitated state of mind; in the second, one is peaceful, calm and serene. Naturally it’s the circumstances that trigger the breathing and the state of mind (who isn’t agitated when chased by a tiger?), but what if we turn it around and put the breathing first?
You begin by breath control, by breathing to certain paces, and the breath is very curious … The notion is that emotion and feeling and state of mind are related to breath. When you are at rest, the breathing is in a nice, even order. When you are stirred with shock, the breathing changes. With passion the breathing changes. Change the breathing, and you change the state.
Joseph Campbell, Mythos II
Sure enough, hyperventilating can leave one anxious and agitated, even if there are no tigers in the immediate vicinity, while focusing on steadying the breath induces tranquility and equanimity, leaving one open to Stillness — the Silence beneath the rush of reality.
So while Breath is a core archetypal image reverberating through multiple collective crises that have overtaken us today, it also offers a means of maintaining balance and grounding amid the turbulence and turmoil. This doesn’t mean retreat to a mountaintop and withdraw from the world – but amid wearing masks and practicing social distancing, protesting racism, and working to decrease reliance on fossil fuels, a little conscious breathing helps us be mindful about what we do.
Hi Mars,
Though I’m sticking more closely with the overarching theme of “who is the next Joseph Campbell?”, especially for anyone new to the conversation, no worries about the side-channel you and Mary have taken (which is an enriching read). Naturally there are ebbs and flows to most conversations, along with tangents galore. Readers should be able to figure it out.
But very much on topic is that compelling paragraph of yours that Mary picked up on:
Times now are muddy. How to wade to the shore from phatomless pristine depths? Follow the currents to where they bring the next promise afloat or ashore? Lifted by roaring thundergods into its heaven temporarily, to smashed to the ground again next hailstorm? All born innocent, all faithfull, all on internet, all temptations, all true yet only personal trues. All diminishing horizons. “I’m hungry now. Feed me!” But there is no fast food for the mind. Gut their body with saturating holy sugars until filled, but it does not feed. Funny cat movies are cute, but there is only one. Hollow people. Hollow world.
Yes yes yes! In a hollow world full of hollow people, no wonder so many crave the substance Joseph Campbell offers. He may be gone, but people still want to be fed – hence the hunger for the next Campbell. Of course, at least in Joe’s mind, his work involved not so much feeding the multitudes as offering observations, insights, and tools that allow those who are drawn to this mythic perspective to not just read about it, but experience that substance themselves.
Your exchange with Mary illustrates how you both do just that, cutting through all the intellectualizing with poignant and profound imagery grounded in personal experience . . . a marvel indeed.
It is fascinating, Robert, to track Campbell’s influences, which are legion. Many, such as William Robertson Smith or Arnold van Gennep, are little known, while others (Goethe, Nietzsche, Freud) had a similar galvanizing effect on their world as Campbell has had on ours.
Sticking with the theme of “who is the next Joseph Campbell,” I certainly appreciate and, to a degree, agree with your characterization of the Foundation as a supraorganism “composed of all the individuals that enter through the portal of his teachings and find lodging and shelter as they feed on and devour his work” – sort of a womblike setting. But for JCF the question then becomes “then what?” An essential piece of the mission of the Joseph Campbell Foundation is to “further his pioneering work in mythology and comparative religion” – but hard to further that work if those most inspired to do so remain in the womb.
Part of what we wrestle with here is the tension between providing a safe space for people to explore (” . . . lodging and shelter as they feed on and devour his work”), and providing support and encouragement for people to take that mythic perspective and make it their own, stepping out into the street and applying it in the real world.
The Foundation isn’t here to be the new Joseph Campbell; I think of JCF more as Tom Sawyer – we’re not here to whitewash that mythic fence ourselves, but to trigger your imagination and hand that brush over to you and others, so you can do the work that excites you.
That may offer a little bit of insight into the pullback from Facebook. As heady, entertaining, informative, thought-provoking and fast-moving as the Mythic Salon could be, ultimately the focus was on consumption. Nothing wrong with that – in fact, I generally immensely enjoyed myself – but those protean exchanges moved so quickly, one post (with attached comments) fading into the next, scrolling below the fold and off the screen, slipping out of awareness and into the collective cyber stew.
In way of contrast, Conversations of a Higher Order serves, at least ideally, as an alchemical retort, a container where those insights, inspirations, and concepts have the space and time to simmer and bubble and brew. You’ll notice conversations here don’t happen at the frenzied pace of social media, but unfold leisurely, over time. What matters isn’t how many emoji reactions a post gets, but actually connecting – putting your thought and reflections out there to feed another soul swimming in the same waters, who then feeds you in turn through the exchange of ideas.
(Ideally, it would be nice to have both – but given how much energy and effort and time I found myself putting into moderating the Facebook group, that ultimately proved somewhat ephemeral. I’m at that age where time is feeling more finite than ever; far better to apply what hours and energy I have in this direction.)
I was thinking about this while reading your entries the last day or so in The Air We Breathe thread. They are the same stream-of-consciousness nuggets you’d post in the Salon, but they feel different here. Could just be me, but they come across as more substantial than on Facebook. One has the time and attention to come back to them, sample them, see how they fit into the conversation, and follow a tangent or two or three you raise off in its own direction . . . or use them as a riff into a brand new topic they inspire. And they will keep doing so: two years from now someone new to COHO will stumble across that thread, read your words, catch that spark, and add their own verse, metaphorically speaking.
And I think I’ll do something of the same, taking my reflection on your observation above to launch a new topic in the next few days, maybe in The Conversation with a Thousand Faces forum, inquiring how those who come to this space imagine themselves furthering the work of Joseph Campbell.
Thanks for that . . .
Hi Mary,
I tend to think of this 5th editorial function of mythology as limiting in focus, which may or may not have something to do with why it didn’t make Campbell’s final cut, so to speak – which is why I appreciate your pivot to the sense of participation mystique. Even though the means of accessing the numinous may vary from one culture to another (e.g. meditation, dreamwork, prayer, the ingestion of teacher plants, etc.), the experience of that state is remarkably consistent across cultures.
The most common doorway into that realm is through ritual. Joseph Campbell speaks of how
A ritual is the enactment of a myth; by participating in the rite one is participating in the myth, opening oneself to the mythic dimension of experience, and consequently activating the accordant structures and principles within one’s own psyche.
(from a yet-to-be-published manuscript)
Stepping into a myth, ego drops away – absolutely essential to experience that participation mystique. Joe continues, expanding on how rituals effect this change:
Rituals of themselves are actually very boring. They go on and on, beyond your secular tolerance. In this way, they break open something in you, and the participation then is with the rite in its proper sense, and not as an entertainment. You are experiencing it as a ritual. And when experienced in this way, something is happening to you in the way of a transformation of your level of consciousness. Without some kind of ritual enactment the whole thing fails to get inside the active aspect of one’s system, unless one happens to be working through actual life problems in terms suggested by mythological considerations.
(ibid)
Participation is key.
When I was 8 years old I attended a performance of a pueblo dance at the Koshare Indian Museum in La Junta, Colorado. The Koshare Indian Dancers are not necessarily indigenous peoples, but are drawn from the ranks of Boy Scout Troop 232 in the Rocky Mountain Council of the Boy Scouts of America.
Of course, this was a performance, relatively brief, to accommodate the attention span of the mostly white spectators (this was back in 1965), compared to the length of actual dances. Though the colorful spectacle remains etched in my memory, there was nothing numinous about it – just a re-enactment of what seemed a quaint and slightly bizarre custom (I could not imagine actually joining in those dances myself – struck the eight-year-old me as rather boring and repetitive). This sense was confirmed for the grown-up me when Philip J. Deloria (author of Custer Died for Your Sins) referred to the Indian Koshare Dancers as hobbyists “playing Indian.”
Real rituals are not spectator sports (imagine non-Catholics buying tickets to watch Mass: world of difference between that, and the profound experience of the true believer who actually partakes of the body and blood of Jesus Christ).
But where do rituals come from?
Campbell offers a prescription reminiscent of Mircea Eliade’s description of the archaic world, where every meaningful act participates in the sacred:
The way mythology is integrated into life is by way of ritual. What has to be ritualized is essential to the life of the day. If one is to try to bring a mythological perspective into action in the modern world one has to understand the relationship of what is being done to the essentials of life, not to the superficialities of life. The essentials of life remain the same; they’ve been the same since the Paleolithic caves. Eating, reproduction, being a child, being mature, growing old. To realize that these things one is doing are not personally initiated acts but are functions of a biologically present world within yourself is to live in a very different way from the way one lives if one feels that one is the volitional initiator of everything going on.
(Joseph Campbell, The Hero’s Journey, p. 205)
I have had the opportunity to participate in a number of collective rituals, old and new, and have accessed that numinous state, which can be ego-shattering (or, in its more gentle aspects, ego-transcending). Ritual provides a sacred space in which to confront these energies, and myth presents archetypal images we can safely engage in that sacred space
. . . and suddenly here we are, sailing into the mystic.
Johanna,
German is my second language. I am out of practice speaking it, but read fairly well and regularly consult works in German. (I even have the German translation of all four volumes of Joseph Campbell’s The Masks of God, and wow – reading Campbell in German actually enhances my understanding!)
You write
In German the word for breath is Atem, it is a word that I understand in a much different way than in English [German is my mother tongue], it is a word related to the god Wotan – the root of the verb wehen, Wotan and Odin, the wafting breath of the universe. This is important because Stephen’s remark about the mythical breath and our collective journey are rooted in this word, Atem.
Thank you for sharing this – I had no idea of the connection between Atem and Wotan/Odin, but marvel at one more example of the association between Breath/Wind and deity across so many mythologies.
Joseph Campbell adds another layer to such associations, citing Professor T.J. Meek’s discussion of the origin of Yahweh (the “unpronounceable” name of God, spelled in Hebrew with just the consonants YHWH):
“The name [states Professor Meek] … was foreign to the Hebrews, and in their attempted explanation of it they connected it with the word hayah, ‘to be,’ just as the Greeks, who did not know the origin and exact meaning of ‘Zeus‘ connected the name with ‘to live,’ whereas it is derived from the Indo-European dyu, ‘to shine.’ The contention that Yahweh was of Arabian origin is clearly in accord with the Old Testament records, which connect him with the Negeb and with southern sanctuaries like Sinai-Horeb and Kadesh … The most probable [origin of the name] in our opinion is from the Arabic root hwy, ‘to blow.’”
T.J. Meek, Hebrew Origins, pp. 108-109, in Joseph Campbell’s The Masks of God: Occidental Mythology, p. 132-133
David Abram, who explores the origin of language in the animate natural world in The Spell of the Sensuous (an elegant work I cannot recommend highly enough), points out that some scribes, to compensate for Hebrew’s lack of written vowels, adopted the Aramaean practice of using the consonants H, W, and Y to note vowel sounds. Abram then offers a brilliant insight as to why vowels are missing in Hebrew texts, shedding further light on the relationship of Yahweh (YHWH) to Breath:
While consonants are those shapes, made by the lips, teeth, tongue, palate, or throat, that momentarily obstruct the flow of breath and so give form to our words and phrases, the vowels are those sounds that are made by the unimpeded breath itself. The vowels, that is to say, are nothing other than sounded breath. And the breath, for the ancient Semites, was the very mystery of life and awareness, a mystery inseparable from the invisible ruach—the holy wind or spirit. The breath, as we have noted, was the vital substance blown into Adam’s nostrils by God himself, who thereby granted life and consciousness to humankind. It is possible, then, that the Hebrew scribes refrained from creating distinct letters for the vowel-sounds in order to avoid making a visible representation of the invisible. To fashion a visible representation of the vowels, of the sounded breath, would have been to concretize the ineffable, to make a visible likeness of the divine. It would have been to make a visible representation of a mystery whose very essence was to be invisible and hence unknowable—the sacred breath, the holy wind. And thus it was not done.
Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous, p. 241-242
Different language groups, different geographical regions, vastly different cultures—yet whether Brahman, YHWH, Atem, or n’ilch’i of the Dine’, the Name of God is written in the Wind.
Happy Day, Mark137,
Thanks for coming to play with us in Conversations of a Higher Order. Serendipity does seem a guiding theme – your origin story certainly rings bells for me!
I spent many a year on the road with no fixed address, sofa surfing my way across the USA. At one point, no matter where I’d go, from Portland to Madison to Taos and such, there would be brochures addressed to me waiting when I arrived, announcing a brand new Mythological Studies graduate program at the Pacifica Graduate Institute. I had been aware of Pacifica for some time, and knew Joseph Campbell’s personal library lived there – but a Depth Psychology degree, even with a focus on myth, didn’t hold much appeal. An actual graduate degree in myth, on the other hand, did pique me interest (not to mention the mystery of who was sending these brochures, and how did they know the address of friends I’d likely be visiting over the course of a year?), so I eventually decided to take that serendipity as a sign and follow-up.
When I received word Pacifica had scheduled an orientation day for prospective students to learn more about the Mythological Studies degree, I thumbed my way to Isla Vista (for any who might be reading this that aren’t familiar with the area, Isla Vista, on the edge of the UC Santa Barbara campus, contains the most densely populated square mile west of the Mississippi – some 18,000 students living there at the time). I crashed over a few days with a young friend, a film major at UC Santa Barbara who was sharing part of a house with several other students.
The orientation consisted of myself and two others asking questions of Jonathan Young, who was serving as curator of Campbell”s archives and chair of the new program. I also spent a long, leisurely period among Campbell’s books, similarly fascinated by the marginalia. Unfortunately, much as I would have loved to attend, Pacifica had a daunting gatekeeper blocking matriculation – a scary, bloated beast called Tuition (at the time, quite impassable for a full time hippie hitchhiker Deadhead with no visible means of support).
The actual highlight of the journey for me was a hike with my friend and his roommates, taking a trail behind Thomas Aquinas Seminary, meeting the river and following it up through the punchbowls to Ojai springs. Several episodes occurred on that hike (which I’m likely to recount in greater detail elsewhere) that turned out to have been foreshadowed in uncanny detail in a dream I had recorded exactly forty days earlier! Blew my companions away on our return to Isla Vista when I pulled out my dream journal and let them read the relevant passages.
Ironically, even though I did not attend, some two decades later I was co-chair (with Toni D’Anca of Pacifica and Dr. Safron Rossi of OPUS Archives) of the Study of Myth symposium, attended by over 200 people, consisting of 80 different presentations over Labor Day weekend on one of the Pacifica Graduate Institute campuses. I was given a spacious secret suite for visiting faculty tucked away in a corner of the dorm (with its own kitchen and dining area, living room, office area, and bedroom). As I dined in the Boardroom the night before the symposium began with a number of Pacifica faculty and other mythic luminaries, who embraced me as a peer, I realized I had managed to sidestep that portal guardian and accrue many of the benefits of a Pacifica education without actually jumping through all the traditional hoops.
Serendipity indeed!
I’m glad you are here, Mark, and look forward to your participation in other conversations in these forums.
Metaphorically Yours,
Mary writes
Where I live, I do not think it was just my imagination or wishful thinking that the air looked and smelled cleaner with barely any traffic on the road.
If you read just the part of The Air We Breathe excerpted in the MythBlast email from JCF yesterday and didn’t click through to the rest of the article, you may have missed this part:
But there is another unanticipated consequence to this pandemic: the economies of China, India, Europe, the United States and, indeed, the whole industrial world, have been offline for months. Factories, automobiles, jet planes, cruise ships and more have taken a break from spewing hydrocarbons into the atmosphere––and the whole world has noticed. Skies have cleared, long murky waters now sparkle, and, whether they want to or not, every nation has been meeting its carbon reduction targets. By the beginning of April, Los Angeles, legendary for its pollution, ranked number two on the World Air Quality Index, enjoying its longest stretch of clean air in a quarter of a century. And residents of Jalandhar, in India, have discovered the snow-capped Himalayas, over 200 kilometers away, visible for the first time in decades (many have lived their whole lives without ever before catching sight of the mountain range from their own homes).
Epiphany!
Is there a resonance between what Covid-19 does to our lungs and what human activity is doing to the atmosphere? Metaphorically, the answer would seem to be yes––and now the entire population of Earth has together witnessed that impact with their own eyes.
There are several takeaways here related to that other global existential crisis, climate change. One is that it really is possible to reverse course. Already we are learning that society can change; as we power back up, we have the opportunity, and the means, to consciously and intentionally embrace new approaches to the ways we travel, work, and live.
Though there is traffic again and more jet trails above, we are not yet fully back up to speed. Skies are still much clearer in this part of California, though not the vibrant deep blues they were late March through May (back when the mileage I was getting was three weeks to the gallon, aided by the collapse of oil prices).
Are we going to let this opportunity pass? Possibly. But now that we have seen what is possible, and are aware of how fragile the petroleum market really is, I do believe as we get back up to speed that many will make their voices heard, pushing for a more measured approach that includes a wider embrace of renewable energy resources. In the United States the degree to which that happens may depend on the results of the upcoming election – and on how serious each of us is about it – but I do see it happening.
Mary, Nandu, and Pilgrim1,
My mind is blown by the substance and depth of your observations!
Those of us who contribute to the MythBlast series have often wondered, in the absence of feedback, how our words are received. Ideally, we’d like to think readers don’t take our contributions as the final word from on high (we are all just students and seekers), but as a launching pad for further thought and reflections of their own. Thank you for confirming that healthy suspicion and furthering the conversation. I trust that those who visit this thread but are reluctant to actively participate will still benefit from your contributions to the discussion!
Thank you Pilgrim1 for amplifying and expanding on this metaphor. I especially appreciate how your scientific observations actually strengthen the power and poignancy of the metaphorical significance of breath: “Every breath is an affirmation of our connection with all other living things, a renewal of our link with our ancestors and a contribution to generations yet to come.”
Your final paragraph really brings that home!
And Mary, thank you for the reminder that Breath is not only a common thread in the global crises we face today, but an effective tool for finding balance (sitting in meditation and following your breath) amid the turbulence and turmoil. I’ll address that further in a subsequent post, but I’m bumping up against my annual optometrist’s appointment (we will both be masked).
Nandu – I have such tremendous empathy for what you and your country are experiencing. It certainly strikes a chord: if you have followed what’s been happening in the United States, you may have noticed some of our leaders, too, “still make bombastic statements, but they have started to sound hollow of late.” I am impressed with how you are implementing your changing understanding within your profession – and I am tantalized by this tidbit you dropped:
BTW, this has forced me to reevaluate my understanding of Indian myth. So far, I was seeing it from the viewpoint of an upper-caste Hindu. But the moment the POV is changed, the myth also changes. But that is another topic altogether!
I do hope you’ll open a discussion in the not-too-distant future on this intriguing subject.
Given MythBlast publishing deadlines, I delivered this essay at the end of the first week of May, roughly three weeks before George Floyd’s tragic death. His last words, “I can’t breathe!” – also the last words of Eric Garner in 2014, and half a dozen other Black men who died of asphyxiation between 2018 and 2020 while under arrest – have become the rallying cry of nationwide protests that have triggered a huge, unanticipated cultural shift in the conversation on race in the United States.
Though we’ve heard those words before, it seems this time most of the nation was actually paying attention (fewer distractions, given the pause in work and travel and leisure-time activities for so many of us). Breath is such a potent archetypal image because it is ubiquitous and NOT determined by race – no one survives outside the womb without it – which may be why Floyd’s death has lifted the veil for so many.
Have to confess I can’t help but marvel at how the archetypal imagery of Breath resonates through three of the major collective crises facing us in this moment.
More to come . . .
Welcome Home, Phillip!
This new iteration of Conversations of a Higher Order has been active barely two months now – so you’re getting in on the ground floor!
Glad to see you here!
Philspar – good to see you gracing the forums of COHO once more!
Astute observation about that reluctant Call. In the U.S., I honestly don’t believe we would be having the powerful national conversation on race that’s taking place if it had not been for the coronavirus. All the other violent deaths of black men and women at the hand of police have been just as horrific – but they occurred when everyone was otherwise occupied with full time jobs and travel and leisure activities galore; now though, after a couple of months of life on hold and everyone staying home, for the first time we all seemed to be really paying attention – and so millions experienced a moment of unexpected epiphany!
As a result, American culture is undergoing a huge shift all at once. Who knows what other currents are stirring below the surface, here and elsewhere, about to break free?
The pandemic really has presented us with a powerful and profound mythogenetic moment – or, as your friend George Miller might say, “Plot twist!”
Thanks, Michael, for initiating this conversation and providing an opportunity to explore in greater depth the mythological ramifications of the present moment.
What is happening on a global scale is so huge and beyond any one of us that events tend to swamp the individual psyche – or, at least, that’s what happened for me. I like to think of myself as calm, cool, collected, flexible enough to “go with the flow” – but in this instance I felt overwhelmed and adrift, unable to find my footing.
When that happens, I have learned to turn to myth for guidance:
If you live with the myths in your mind, you will find yourself always in mythological situations. They cover everything that can happen to you. And that enables you to interpret the myth in relation to life, as well as life in relation to myth.
(“Elders and Guides: An Interview with Joseph Campbell,” Parabola, Vol. V No. 1, February 1980, p.59)
Joe knows whereof he speaks. There are many ways to do that. For me, that takes the form of latching on to one key archetypal image – in this instance, the mythology of Breath. Given space considerations, there is only so much ground one can cover in a MythBlast; I hope to expand on this motif over the course of this discussion.
Another invaluable mythological approach is to view what is happening, on both the individual and the collective scale, through the lens of the Hero’s Journey. On a personal level, even just venturing out to buy groceries without exposing oneself to the coronavirus requires slaying a number of dragons. But I am fascinated by the point you make: everyone on the planet is going through this together (whether we want to or not). The pandemic is happening to us all – a collective Hero’s Journey on a global scale.
In his MythBlast entry some two months back, David Kudler reminded us that there are really only three stages to the Hero’s Journey: Separation (or Departure), Initiation, and Return. In that first stage, Separation/Departure, one leaves the Ordinary World behind. Not hard to see how that has played out: the world-that-was, whether in terms of work or travel, education, family dynamics, leisure activity, that world is no more.
Initiation, which generally involves some sort of death-and-rebirth scenario, is where we find ourselves now. We are traversing the abyss, punctuated by the actual deaths of nearly half a million people so far. When we will emerge on the other side and what boon we bring back on our Return is far from clear at the moment – but emerge we will – and the emphasis, in this moment, is on the “we.”
We – the whole planet – are the collective hero of this story – “the hero with seven billion faces,” if you will. No single savior-hero will rescue us; the only way we get through this is with cooperation, collaboration, and compassion. We are learning that going it alone, whether as an individual, or a single nation, does not work. What does work is pooling resources, knowledge, information, and talent.
I find that intriguing, especially in light of the re-emergence of nationalism in many countries in recent years.
We’re in a period, in terms of history, of the end of national and tribal consciousness. The only consciousness that is proper to contemporary life is global. Nevertheless, all popular thinking is in terms of loyalties to the local communities to which all are members. Such thinking is now out of date. What we face is a challenge to recognize one community on this earth, and what we find in the face of this challenge is everybody pulling back into his own in-group. I don’t want to name the in-groups, but we all know pretty well what they are. In our country we call them pressure groups. They are racial groups, class groups, religious groups, economic groups, and they are all tangling with each other. . . .
The new thing that is very difficult for people to realize is our society is the human race. And our little suburb is the globe. Spaceship Earth.
(Joseph Campbell, in a yet-to-be published manuscript I’ve been editing)
The coronavirus does not recognize borders – there’s just no way to build a wall tall enough to contain it. What’s more, we’re also recognizing that this really is a global economy as well – when China’s economy goes down, it reverberates around the world. The pandemic is teaching us that this really is one world – Spaceship Earth – and we’re all a part of it, together.
That, ultimately, is the challenge in this moment.
Happy Bloomsday, Mary! Glad to see you gracing the forums here at the new Conversations of a Higher Order ! And thanks for the collection of links on your Bloomsday post in The Works of Joseph Campbell forum.
Glad to see JCF Mythological RoundTable® group in Ireland continues to thrive! I have yet to visit the Emerald Isle, but once the pandemic is past and travel is safe once more, it’s on my list.
What a wonderful greeting, Mary, which I’m reading in California not long after dawn here on Bloomsday (sorry for the delay in your post appearing; for a first post it was auto-flagged as potential spam due to the multiple links – such wonderful links – and needed to be manually approved).
All roads lead back to Joyce – or at least through, Joyce – for Joseph Campbell. Here, in a yet to be published work, Joe explains what happened when he arrived in Paris to work on his doctorate:
Well, it opened up first in Paris. Everybody was there—Picasso, Joyce, Matisse; I’ll never forget the exhibit of the Intransigents out in the Bois de Boulogne. I knew nothing about art; New York knew nothing. I learned about modern art and its relationship to all these myths.
And I discovered Joyce. The whole thing opened up like crazy when I found Ulysses, which was forbidden in the States. I had to smuggle my volume in. You went to a bookstore feeling you were doing something pretty far out and said, “Avez-vous Ulysses?”
That third chapter of Ulysses—“Ineluctable modality of the visible: at least that if no more, thought through my eyes. Signatures of all things I am here to read, seaspawn and seawrack, the nearing tide, that rusty boot.” I couldn’t understand what I was reading! What the hell’s going on here? I went to Sylvia Beach at the Shakespeare and Company Book Shop in indignation: “How do you read this?” And she said, “As follows.” And gave me a start.
Joyce assumed scholarship. He wrote things only a person with a bit of literacy would know. And he’d been a Catholic who had found a way out without losing his symbols.
The first drafts of Finnegans Wake were being published in the avant-garde magazine transition, edited by Eugene Jolas. I must say I was totally baffled as everybody was, but I bought the whole year of transition as it came out and studied it closely, realizing there was something there that was meaning a lot to me, and I didn’t quite know what it was (so, by the time Finnegans Wake was published in 1938, I was ready for it).
I was pulled in. And with that I began to lose touch with my Ph.D. direction. Suddenly the whole modern world opened up. With a bang!
No surprise, he never did finish that Ph.D.
