More on Frog and Fish & Ymar

Stanislaus B. · 12 Jun 2011, 16:01 · from 2011-June.txt.gz

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From: sbocian at poczta.fm (Stanislaus B.)
Date: Sun, 12 Jun 2011 18:01:04 +0200
Subject: (urth) More on Frog and Fish & Ymar
In-Reply-To: <SNT123-W47E182B76BB46A41560A94CF7A0 at phx.gbl>
References: <SNT123-W47E182B76BB46A41560A94CF7A0 at phx.gbl>
Message-ID: <4DF4E2C0.7000305 at poczta.fm>

Campbell's Monomyth is a distorted version of the mythical world-view. 
He tries to reduce all myths to one myth - and this is his own invention.

The mythical worldview is that there is one superior world of gods - the 
True World, and the Secondary World in which we live. The true patterns 
from the True World are repeated many times in the Secondary World - but 
each time they are distorted by the matter and accidents, so the 
repetitions are never exact. For that reason Poetry is more true than 
History.

Aristotle, Poetics:

http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/poetics.1.1.html

"Part IX

It is, moreover, evident from what has been said, that it is not the
function of the poet to relate what has happened, but what may happen-
what is possible according to the law of probability or necessity.
The poet and the historian differ not by writing in verse or in prose.
The work of Herodotus might be put into verse, and it would still
be a species of history, with meter no less than without it. The true
difference is that one relates what has happened, the other what may
happen. Poetry, therefore, is a more philosophical and a higher thing
than history: for poetry tends to express the universal, history the
particular. By the universal I mean how a person of a certain type
on occasion speak or act, according to the law of probability or necessity;
and it is this universality at which poetry aims in the names she
attaches to the personages. The particular is- for example- what Alcibiades
did or suffered."

Or to quote the Fragment of Saga
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%B6gubrot_af_Nokkrum
http://www.oe.eclipse.co.uk/nom/Fragment.htm
"It happened that one night, as the king was sleeping on the poop-deck 
of his ship, that he dreamt that a great dragon flew out of the sea, 
sparks from it soaring into the sky like sparks from a forge, lighting 
up all the lands around it. And after it flew all the birds he thought 
there were in the Northlands. Next he saw a great cloud come up from the 
north, and he sees that it brings with it such great rain and gales that 
he thought all woods and all land would be washed away in the water that 
rained down. There was thunder and lightning with it. And when that 
great dragon flew from the sea onto the land, there came at him the rain 
and the storm and such great darkness that in a moment he could see 
neither the dragon nor the birds, though he heard a great din of the 
thunder and the storm, and it all went south and west over the land, and 
engulfed the whole of his realm. And he thought he looked towards the 
ships then, and they were nothing but whales now, all of them, and they 
swim out to sea.

And then he awoke and called to him his foster father Hord and tells him 
his dream and asks him to interpret it. Hord declares himself too old to 
know how to understand dreams. He was stood on a rock under the head of 
the pier while the king lay on the poop-deck, lifting the edges of the 
tent, as they spoke.

The king was in a foul mood and said, ?Come aboard, Hord, and interpret 
my dream.?

Hord said he couldn?t come aboard, ?but your dream needs no 
interpreting. You can see for yourself what it means, and most likely it 
won?t be long before there?s a change of rulers in Sweden and Denmark. 
And now the greed of the grave is on you, the hunger that betokens a 
man?s end, with this thought of yours to subjugate all the realms, but 
what you don?t know is that the outcome will be your death, and your 
enemies will have your kingdom.?

The king said, ?Come here and speak your prophesies of doom!?

Hord said, ?Here will I stand and from here speak them.?

The king said, ?Who was Halfdan the Brave among the Aesir??

Hord replies, ?He was Baldr among the Aesir, and all the gods wept, not 
like you.?

?You speak well,? said the king. ?Come here and tell me your tidings.?

Hord replies, ?Here will I stand and from here tell them.?

The king asks, ?Who was Hroerek among the Aesir??

Hord replies, ?He was Hoenir who was the most scared of the Aesir, 
though he was bad to you.?

?Who was Helgi the Bold among the Aesir,? says he king.

Hord replies, ?He was Hermod who had the best of courage, and no good to 
you.?

The king asked, ?Who was Gudrod among the Aesir??

Hord replies, ?He was Heimdall, who was the most foolish of the Aesir, 
though he was bad to you.?

The king said, ?Who am I among the Aesir??

Hord replies, ?You must be the serpent that?s worst in the world, the 
one they call the Midgard Serpent.?

The king answers, very angry, ?If you pronounce my doom, then let me 
tell you you?ll live no longer, for I know you where you stand, you big 
boggart. [1] So get you to the Midgard Serpent, and let?s see which of 
us is best when push comes to shove.?

Then the king sprang from the poop-deck, and he was so angry that he 
sprang out through the bottom edge of the tent. Hord dropped from the 
rock and plunged into the sea, and that was the last the watchmen aboard 
the king?s ship saw of either of them."

2011-05-31 16:46, Lee Berman wrote:
>
>> James Wynn:  Wolfe believes that the myths come to us from an eternal pattern and,
>> presumably, he believes Jesus is the fulfillment of that pattern. That
>> we are hard-wired to detect that eternal pattern because it is
>> "real".
>
>> David Stockhoff: This is am excellent summary of Wolfe's attitude toward myth. Literally,
>> to Wolfe, the story of Jesus/Christ is The Greatest Story Ever Told.
> I agree. I think this is a great way to look at Wolfe's work. My own leaning is to
> attribute the Campbellian monomyth as a function of human psychology, culture and society.
> While clearly wolfe recognizes that, as a religious man, he is also likely to see a higher,
> spiritual basis for the monomyth pattern that goes beyond humanity. 		 	   		
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