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The theme for the MythBlast Series this month is “Death and Renewal,” but we should not take for granted that these two are a happily wedded pair, that one follows the other axiomatically, nor should we think that renewal necessarily means rebirth. It might be more useful, more practical, to think of renewal as renovation, revival, or restoration—much what one would do with an old house fallen into disrepair. Renewal is derived from the Latin word renovare (to restore, to flourish once more), and we can likewise remodel our thinking, restore our reinvigorated metaphors to their proper soulful place at the heart of life, and revive our sometimes flagging energy and rediscover enthusiasm for life.
Often things—including the metaphors of myth—are beautiful, not because they’re true, but because they are not. W.H. Auden’s poem “September 1, 1939” contains the oft-quoted, cherished-by-many line”: “We must love one another or die.” Auden was not at all happy with this line, primarily because it simply isn’t true and moreover, as Auden later reflected, not one word of poetry—regardless of its beauty or consolation—could have prevented the Second World War, or any other cataclysm for that matter. What’s more, love doesn’t ameliorate nor, even for a moment, forstall death. To believe otherwise is a comforting illusion of the kind without which, Nietzsche would say, we might die of the truth.
Great Deceptions
Great poetry is often a great deception, and often the greatest poetry considers the coldest truths deceptively, as if mythopoesis had a mind of its own with an intention to comfort or steel the reader just enough to be able to finally face what is inescapably, dreadfully, perhaps even humiliatingly true. Auden later changed the famous line to “We must love one another and die.” More true, I suppose, but less poetically powerful, so he got rid of it entirely. Much later, friends convinced him to reinsert the line in a late book of selected poems. Ultimately, restoring the line proved irresistible because—if I have learned any single thing having been a student of unadulterated human nature throughout the course of my life—we are utterly besotted with the beautiful lie.
Facing the unalterable facts of life is difficult, especially facts like death, which seem to offer no consolation of understanding, no comprehension of what death is or what, exactly, happens to us when we die. In their inevitability, however, in their stubborn resistance to inquiry, those unalterable facts can reconcile us however surprisingly, probably always uneasily, to their inscrutable reality.
Auden’s wrestling with seven words in one of his most famous poems reflects how much he, like all of us, would like to avoid certain inescapable mortal realities, regardless of their inevitability. Nevertheless, through a clever bit of metaphorical or artistic jujitsu, the beautiful lie, Picasso says, “...makes us realize the truth. At least the truth that is given us to understand,” and by deploying it, Auden gives us the possibility of entering into a profound truth in such a way that all our resistances to it fall away.
If we live long enough with the idea that we must love one another or die, we will inexorably be led to the conclusion that we cannot avoid death; not even love can nullify its cold, all-consuming, mortal embrace. The cracks in the foundation of the beautiful lie quickly become apparent: people often love deeply, fully, sometimes with abandon, yet still have to face death—their own, or worse, that of their beloved. Death’s reality, its pervasively singular presence, cannot be denied. The bliss of love may obscure the inconvenient truths of mortality, but sadly it will not alter them; nor will a beautiful metaphor repeal the force of natural law.
Immortal Longing
“Give me my robe, put on my crown; I have immortal longings in me” (My emphasis). In Shakespeare's play Antony and Cleopatra (5.2.280-81), Cleopatra utters these lines just a few moments before she places a poisonous snake to her breast, releasing its venom into her body, and dying. Most of us, I suspect, would be in agreement with the semblance of her sentiment; when thoughts of death occupy our minds, most of us long for immortality, too. One may understandably understand her as literally longing for immortality; she’s expressing a self-conscious wish not to die.
One may also read something else in her statement and conclude that she’s telling us that it’s longing itself that is immortal. Longing is much more than mere desire. Desires can be fulfilled, sometimes even achieved, but longing is never completely satisfied. Even when we’ve achieved long-cherished goals, when we’ve acquired what we’ve only dared dream of, what remains is a nagging sense of incompleteness or emptiness as though we expected to feel something more, find some sort of all-encompassing satisfaction, to finally feel complete.
Longing is fundamental to our all-too-human constitution: we long for that which cannot be humanly attained, for that which cannot be humanly grasped. We long for something that reaches beyond our human existence—some transformative force that impels us beyond human limitations. Ultimately, I think that we long for a fundamentally aesthetic experience, the experience of beauty and transcendence to which mortal flesh can hold to but for a moment. In order to have the illuminating experience, however, we must follow the beautiful lie to its ultimate conclusion. Beauty is the product of an alchemy of impermanence: our own on the one hand and on the other, the rarity, the strangeness, the fragility of the beautiful. The aesthetic impulses within ourselves bind, for a transcendent moment, to the same qualities in the regarded beauty and for a split-second, we are transported outside of ourselves. We experience a longed-for moment of awakening that simultaneously obliges us to understand that the beautiful is also ephemeral, and the longing we must perpetually live with returns to us with the formidable realization that deep beauty is a regenerative fugitive from conscious intention or will, even from death.
Ultimately, I think that we long for a fundamentally aesthetic experience, the experience of beauty and transcendence to which mortal flesh can hold to but for a moment.
Its transience in no way diminishes the renewing, revitalizing impact of beauty—in fact it defines it. The 14th century Zen poet Yoshida Kenko in his wonderfully charming book called Essays in Idleness wrote: “If we lived forever, never to vanish like the dews of Adashino, never to fade like the crematory smoke on Toribeyama, men would hardly feel the beauty of things.” So if it is, in fact, our longing that is immortal, it is still possible to experience the eternal, to realize immortality in a significant, life-changing, evanescent moment of aesthetic rapture. From such a transcendent experience, mere seconds in terms of ordinary time, we “...see a world in a grain of sand And heaven in a wildflower, Hold infinity in the palm of your hand And eternity in an hour...” (William Blake, Songs of Innocence).
Death Opens to Life
Mortality and death are the primary organizing principle of human life. Material possessions, success, fame, and embodied power are all subordinate to the knowledge that we will one day die. In Myths to Live By, Joseph Campbell writes, “This recognition of mortality and the requirement to transcend it is the first great impulse to mythology” (17). Apparently the long contemplation of eternal nothingness, or worse, eternal suffering, tends to focus the mind on discovering ways to deny such an eventuality. But more specifically, and from my perspective a more salutary thought, is that the recognition of mortality is the first great mythopoetic impulse, whose aim it is to find beauty, poetry, and narrative epistemologies that make the project of living a human life under the shadow of death not just bearable, but irresistibly appealing just as it is, on its—life’s—own terms. (As an aside, Professor Campbell touches on this idea in his lecture called “Man and His Gods,” which is featured on the most recent Pathways With Joseph Campbell podcast episode https://pathways-with-joseph-campbell.simplecast.com).
It is death itself that makes life beautiful, and perhaps surprisingly, it is death that makes life bearable. Living consciously with the fact of death renews our spirit, our compassion, our feeling for life. In that affirming feeling for life there is peace, a sense of order, propriety, and a heroically steadfast tenderness towards life itself.
Finding beauty in the living and dying of life remains, after all, the first duty of the living.
Thanks for reading,
MythBlast authored by:
Bradley Olson, Ph.D. is an author, speaker, and a psychotherapist. He serves as the Publications Director for the Joseph Campbell Foundation and the host of JCF's flagship podcast, Pathways With Joseph Campbell. Dr. Olson holds a Ph.D. in Mythological Studies from Pacifica Graduate Institute. Dr. OIson is also a depth psychologist in private practice in Flagstaff, Arizona, where he has lived since 1995. Dr. Olson has graduate degrees in psychology from the University of Oklahoma. Dr. Olson offers mythic life coaching at What's Mything in Your Life (bradleyolsonphd.com)
This MythBlast was inspired by The Power of Myth Episode 6, and The Hero's Journey
Latest Podcast
In this episode, we’re pleased to welcome Phil Cousineau—a modern mythologist, storyteller, and inspirational speaker whose life and work are deeply rooted in the world of myth and the wisdom of Joseph Campbell. Cousineau’s journey through mythology is woven into every aspect of his career, from his prolific writing and filmmaking to his role as a teacher and speaker. His fascination with mythology began at an early age and has led him around the globe, exploring the intersections of culture, art, and the human spirit. Over his decades-long career, Cousineau has become an influential voice in translating ancient myths into relevant insights for the modern world, emphasizing what he calls “the omnipresent influence of myth in modern life.” In this episode, he and JCF’s John Bucher delve into Cousineau’s wide-ranging work as an author, filmmaker, and consultant, and explore his relationship with Joseph Campbell. So get comfortable and enjoy this conversation with John Bucher and Phil Cousineau.
This Week's Highlights
"Hearing the song that is beyond that of your own individual life cycle is the thing that opens you to wisdom. You can hear it in your life, interpreting it, reading it, not in terms of the calamities or boons of your individual existence, but as a message of what life is."
-- Joseph Campbell
Myth and Meaning, 16