After World War I the Western world began to disengage from its own past. This unhappy process was accelerated after World War II, which was, historically, Act Two of World War I. Was life before the Great Wars a momentous caesura or was it a Golden Age, within memory but forever out of reach? Perhaps if one were wealthy, the ninety-nine years from 1815 (Waterloo) to 1914 were as close as humans can come to frolicking in the Elysian Fields.
Fifty-five million people died during World War II, and that’s a rough estimate. Add the forty-two to forty-five million casualties from World War I, and the murdered ghosts call to us as plaintively as Banquo at Macbeth’s banquet.
Not only was the Western world shaken to its foundation but the Eastern world also lurched in a new direction. China became a communist nation; India, a free one; and Japan shocked everyone. Africa, neither East nor West, pursued her own destiny with no help from the West or the East, and, as with the rest of us, her pursuit involved killing. If ever there was a century drenched in blood it is our own.
Small wonder that the Western world wanted to forget its past, submerge its heritage and, like a foolish child, focus on the present.
People are like pieces of a puzzle. They have a past (ignored or expressed), a present, and a future. If we could figure out how to fit ourselves together we’d have the answers we need for peace, prosperity, and maybe, just maybe, happiness as a community. So here’s my little piece of the puzzle in literary/cultural terms.
Casting aside three thousand years of cultural integrity is a form of intellectual mass suicide. Our literature begins at 1184 B.C. if you will take the fall of Troy as a beginning. Classical scholars can argue about the date, but in literary terms this date is fixed at 1184 B.C. Homer wrote about the war in the ninth century B.C., although, again, one can argue about dates. For a writer, for an artist, the exact moment is not as important as the sense of a beginning. This is where we begin.
Both concurrent with this beginning and predating it is the literature of the Jews. These two strains of cultural experience weave together some thousand years after Troy in the catacombs of Rome. Every Western writer—Russian, French, English, Czech, Hungarian, etc.—every single one of us everywhere on the globe rides bareback with a foot each on two mighty, conflicting horses: Greco-Roman culture and Hebrew-Christian culture. As Greece was mother to Rome, so Judaism was mother to Christianity, which in turn was mother to Islam. (However, Islam is not part of the Western world culturally, except through Spain.) How does one marry the clear, hard thinking of the Greeks to the mysticism of the Hebrews? How does one recognize the contributions of the Twelve Olympians when one is taught there is only one God and knowledge of any other God is the road to death? Saint Augustine struggled to bring together these two opposing cultural forces. He’s worth reading for that reason alone. (When you read him you’ll find many other reasons to relish this remarkable man.) You and I, in a variety of ways, will continue this struggle, although by now the balance has tipped way over to the Hebraic-Christian side of the cultural equation.
One of the reasons our culture has become lopsided is we’ve tossed out Latin as a requirement for college. Through Latin came the sense of our original heritage. We were Greeks/Romans before we were Christians. Latin taught us how to think, how to read critically, and how to learn our own history. We’ve jettisoned much of that history and with it three thousand years of shared, universal symbols.
The Olympians were universal even when they were no longer invested with the power of human faith. They retained the power of myth. Any writer of the Western world could use these myths for his/her own purposes. In a sense, it was cultural shorthand. For example, Byron could write, “Rome that Niobe of cities,” and any literate person would know he was representing Rome as a city of repeated anguish, sorrow, and humiliation. Niobe’s story was familiar to everyone.
Briefly, so you can realize the impact of Byron’s imagery, here’s the story of Niobe: Niobe was the daughter of Tantalus. (A bad character if ever there was one. He served his son’s flesh to the gods. This was not appetizing to the Immortals so they sent him directly to Hell. He did not pass Go and he did not collect $200. In fact, he’s probably still down there being “tantalized.”) Niobe was a much better soul than her father but she did have one vice. She burst with pride over her fecundity. Seven sons and seven daughters she brought to life; fourteen healthy, beautiful, glorious children—perhaps Niobe can be forgiven her pride. However, she made the mistake of rubbing in her maternal achievements to Leto.
Now Leto was the daughter of Titans, which means she was older than the Olympians. The Titans came first and like the Titanic, their namesake, they sank. But that’s another fabulous story. Leto had only two children, twins, conceived by Zeus. Zeus’s wife, Hera, seethed with rage. Poor Leto crept into hiding when she gave birth to Apollo and Artemis. Zeus, usually a gentleman where ladies were concerned, brought his babies up on Olympus. Hera’s idea of fun was not in being a stepmother but she survived.
Leto suffered enough, thanks to Hera’s blasts. She never bore more children. Her son and daughter loved her. Niobe’s taunt so enraged them that Apollo and Artemis put arrows to their bows and slew all fourteen children. Yes, it was excessive, but from Apollo and Artemis’s point of view, how dare a mortal (read: slug) insult an immortal, their mother? She must be made to pay for her insolence; otherwise more humans would get saucy.
Niobe, crushed, never regained her composure. She wept continually and turned into a column of stone on Mount Sipylus in Lydia. Water ran continually from the stone column.
If you knew mythology you’d know all this. With one word, one loaded proper noun, Byron could pull your heart out.
It’s possible to reclaim what is ours, but only if we return Latin to the secondary-school curriculum. I don’t mean as an elective; I mean as a requirement for collegial studies. We consign our children to ignorance and then wonder why they behave as they do. Not only can the young not understand history, they can’t understand Christianity. Christianity grew on the soil where Niobe weeps, and its center, to this day, is Rome.
Let’s take the worst scenario: Americans remain ignorant. They throw the baby out with the bath water, and only the faintest trace of mythology remains. Where does that leave you and me as writers?
You can continue to use mythology but it had better be one of the baby myths—by which I mean one that is known by everyone. For example, almost everyone visually knows Medusa. They may not know why she has snakes for hair or how she turned into such a viper (couldn’t resist) but they know she is a symbol for evil and for turning mortals to stone. Think about turning to stone for a minute. Isn’t it a sensational image for evil? One becomes immobilized by hate. Didn’t Dante do this in The Inferno? Satan is encased in ice. Symbolically, Satan and Medusa are connected.
Okay, you can use an easy myth. You can use more “learned” ones only if you explain them as I have just explained Niobe.
What can you use? What symbols are shared? You can always use the Bible. Moses, Ruth, Mary Magdalen are vibrant symbols/people. The catch is that many of your readers may not be Christians and therefore not familiar with the Old and New Testaments. In America, Christians are the great majority but there’s a healthy minority of people who are not Christians. And what about the Christians who don’t read the Bible? Baptism was the extent of their religion. They scooted out of the church. Again, even if one is not religious, why cast aside nearly two thousand years of history, of symbol?
Given the violent fluctuations within Christianity itself, one can unwittingly arouse fanatical hostility by using Christian stories and symbols. It’s worth the risk. Go ahead and use them.
One can descend from myth and symbol and utilize current shared images, such as those in advertising. This is restricted by nation. The ads of Germany are not the ads of America, but if you narrow your audience to only your nation, you can use this. The problem here is that advertising is trivial and short-lived. You’ll gain quick applause and then your book will be dead as a doornail in five to seven years’ time.
You can also use psychology for your metaphors but you’re on trembling ground. First off, psychology is a set of beliefs shared by the affluent. Secondly, it does not represent human emotion/behavior but, rather, attempts to explain them quite literally. Thirdly, the originators of this system of thought robbed Greek mythology for nomenclature—e.g., Oedipus complex. If you wish your books to be understood only by middle-class people with limited references (the bulk of book buyers in the United States), you’re fine. The poor don’t go to therapists, any more than they go to lawyers. Then, too, psychology suffers fads just like fashion. Your brilliant delineation of a midlife crisis might be upturned by the next “in” form of self-understanding. If psychology were a science it would be easier to use, but it isn’t. Experiments with rats do not necessarily apply to humans. We’d be better off if they took the humans that acted like rats and put them in a maze.
One might even agree that popularized psychology has hurt the American novel. What American man today would have the guts to write an honest novel about his relationship with his mother? They’ll write far more about their fathers than their mothers, possibly for fear of being labeled Oedipal. (Oedipus kills his father and marries his mother. He does not know his parents, so this is not as horrible as it might be.) If a man is going to write about his mother, he can play “safe” and make fun of her or in some way belittle her. By the same token how many novels can you recall written after World War II by a woman about her relationship with her father? (The female version of the alleged Oedipal complex is the Electra complex.)
The other danger about popularized psychology is, it tempts a writer to tell instead of show. Characters must never be explained. They must be revealed.
Look, I am not discussing an individual’s need for therapy. I am discussing literature. If you substitute psychology for a developed belief system (mythology, Christianity, etc.) what you do is encourage gross narcissism. Psychology is about one person traveling through the labyrinth of his life to the dreaded Minotaur. If he can conquer/understand his Minotaur (if you don’t know mythology, then substitute for Minotaur “the origins of his unhappiness”), he emerges victorious. How many such journeys are really interesting? Even if you can conquer your own monsters, what about the world around you? Psychology as metaphor is very limiting—and to my way of thinking it’s hopelessly boring.
It’s extremely difficult to use science for metaphor. Science is so fragmented and specialized that anything beyond high school science will lose your reader. People can write books about science and make it popular, but that’s nonfiction. Fiction and nonfiction have nothing in common. You need shared symbols. Science will not give it to you except for a science event like walking on the moon. As to science fiction, that is a genre and therefore inhabits the suburbs of literature. Also much of the “science” is invented and therefore not a true symbol accepted over the centuries. In a way, it’s close to advertising. To the best of my knowledge, only H. G. Wells and Jules Verne have transcended the category of science fiction.
What about astrology? Yes, it is a shared symbol but it’s become so debased that you can’t use it with pride. You can use it for comic intent. Keep in mind that astrology is really the remnants of pagan philosophical and astronomical knowledge and was attacked and continues to be attacked by fundamentalist Christians. It has withstood almost two thousand years of spite, but it is not a legitimate belief system for literary application. You could write some great mysteries based on it though.
Lastly, sex. Is this a universal symbol? No. Absolutely not. Sex is a biological function and an emotional joy (if you’re lucky). It is not tied to the mysteries of the universe, it does not connect with intellectual belief systems—in fact, it is usually suppressed by them—and finally, it gets old fast. The joining of plumbing parts between the opposite sexes or the same sexes can’t hold the weight that a developed belief system can. By “developed system” I mean a set of symbols, stories, characters that represent every human emotion, every human circumstance, and every human fear and hope. There must be retribution and redemption (even if only by chance) for a system to have power over the minds of humans. The Greek myths have that power. The stories of the Old and New Testaments have that power.
Sex does not enter into the compromise of history. Mythology and Christianity do. I’m not saying you can’t use sex in your fiction. I’m saying you can’t expect it to carry the load of shared meaning.
Assuming you know your Bible and need no instruction, let’s turn to the Olympians, those twelve gods, each with jurisdiction over aspects of the universe and human life. They lived together on Mount Olympus in Greece. This mountain forms the boundary between Greece proper and Thessaly and overlooks the Vale of Tempe. (Vale as in big valley, make a great name for a TV show.) You can read about the gods somewhere else. I’m examining them for literary use. I do suggest Edith Hamilton’s Mythology and her The Greek Way for beginners, as well as God and Heroes by Gustav Schwab, and H.D.F. Kitto’s The Greeks. They will get you started.
The gods form the first family in literature. I define a family as a gathering of people related by blood (or adopted) with conflicting interests. Six women and six men, with extraordinary powers, squabbled with one another, loved one another, and dallied in human affairs for comic relief. The women had equal power with the men. One man ruled this brood because he had a bit more power than anyone else. This is Zeus. He also had a wandering eye and his offspring were often half-human, half-god. You might want to think of them as the first angels, for in a way, they were. Other offspring of the gods were half-human, half-beast, which is another sharp insight into human behavior. Nothing escaped the Greeks. They knew us better than we know ourselves. They weren’t afraid. Modern man is not nearly as emotionally hardy as his ancestors.
What’s so important about these twelve gods is their legacy. They left a body of symbol that is relevant to the human condition. They also left a form of worship in which there is no guilt. One might fear a god or goddess but one did not go down on one’s knees. Kneeling was for slaves. You could talk with your god, man to Man, woman to Man, woman to Woman or man to Woman. You could also bribe them (at your peril). You, the human, had some dignity and even some power. You could hurt a god but usually you paid with your life. And you could write about them—endlessly. The Olympians were vain. They wanted humans to know about their deeds. The writer performs an important function for the gods.
The other interesting aspect of the gods is that they represent a recognition of left brain and right brain functions. To take it at its most watered down form: the left brain is the logical side, the right brain is the creative side; the left brain is analytical, the right brain is a synthesizer. (Read Julian Jayne’s The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind.) As far as I know, no one has ever perceived the gods in this light but let me categorize them in this fashion.
| Left Brain | Right Brain | |
| Apollo | Dionysius | |
| Athena | Aphrodite | |
| Hades | Poseidon | |
| Hermes | —Zeus— | Artemis |
| Hephaestus | Hera |
Zeus combines both functions. All these Olympians can behave irrationally but their primary functions and personality type, for me, fall into right brain or left brain. Once again the Greeks are ahead of us, or else I’m reading too much into their stories.
Think of the fun you could have using this information symbolically. Wouldn’t Dionysius be the god that drove Janis Joplin over the brink? Wouldn’t Apollo be the hidden force behind Buckminster Fuller, while Artemis was behind Martina Navratilova? Imagine a novel wherein the main character not only uses mythological symbol but interacts with that deity closest to his/her state. Just an idea.
If you never plan to use the gods, you still need to know them. As a writer you need contact with other prewar writers. Ignore mythology, and the force of writers before World War I will be lost upon you.