Myths in our Life
Шрифт:
In a brief definition of a dictionary of aesthetics myth, as special form of social conscience, is ascribed to the early phases of the human development. Myth is defined here as "specific for primitive conscience syncretic reflection of the reality in the form of perceptibly concrete personifications and animated beings, which think quite materially…, the product of verbal folk arts, collective folk imagination" [Aesthetics 1989: 206].
Analyzing extant approaches to the myth handling A.V. Vaschenko underlines its profound root-taking in human culture, from its appearance till the present: "Culture is expressed by myth more often than we think. Therefore it is almost impossible to designate territory of culture (and even of everyday life) existing out of myth"s influence. The comprehension of myth"s nature – in all sides of its notion – helps to understand modern conflict of culture and civilization to comprehend the communion of cultures, the place of language word"s artistry in the human society, to seize the role of a woman in culture and civilization, nature of many customs, etc." [Vaschenko 2000: 148]. Plurality of myth"s definitions in scientific literature ensues out of multiplicity, many sides and polyfunctionality of this phenomenon unique because of its complexity: "Myth appears as narration, ceremony, magic, chronotop (the basic national conception about time and space), rhythm, "archetyp", etc." [Ibid.].
If in a previous opinion about myth the accent was put on its generally cultural functions, in the proceedings of the remarkable Russian philosopher A.F. Losev actuality and personal substance of myth are underlined. Losev supposed that myth was "the reality that is utmost by its concrete nature, intense to the maximum and intensive in the supreme degree. This is utterly essential category of thought and life, distant of any contingency and outrage… It is not a fiction but it maintains the stringent and the most fixed structure and is logically, i.e. first of all dialectically, essential category of consciousness and being in general" [Losev 2001: 36 – 37]. This point of view is the most similar with the comprehension of myth that is considered in the given research where myth is regarded as the reality of special kind, i.e. close to the Losev"s definition: "Myth is life as itself. This is life for mythical subject, with all its expectancies and dreads, anticipations and hopes, with all its real workdays and fair personal interest. Myth is not an ideal being but it is vitally felt and created material reality, and physical till animation, validity" [Ibid., 40 – 41]. For a person with mythological thinking myth is "objectively, materially and sensually created reality being at the same time laid-back from the common process of facts and thus maintaining different levels of hierarchy, different levels of detachment" [Ibid., 61]. Losev considered that "myth is a personal being, or to be more exact, it is an image of personal being, individual form, face of personality" [Ibid., 97].
To understand mythological nature and its essence it is also important to regard the thought of the famous French ethnographer and thinker Claude Levi-Strauss, who wrote: "To understand the character of mythological thinking we should concede that myth is simultaneously endolinguistic and extralinguistic fact… Myth always belongs to the events of the past: "before creation of the world" or "in the old days" – at any rate, "ages and ages ago". But myth"s function consists in the fact that all these events, having existed in the certain period of time, are in existence out of time. Myth explains equally the past, the present and the future" [Levi-Strauss 2001: 216 – 217].
The study of myth as "conformation of culture and mensuration of human soul" plays an important role in culture. Such scientists and philosophers as G.F. Hegel, Z. Freud, C.G. Jung, J.G. Frazer, L. Levy-Bruhl, C. Levi-Strauss, A.F. Losev, E.M. Meletinsky, O.M. Freidenberg and others made an important contribution to myth"s understanding.
The concept of "myth" traces to the ancient Greek mythos that means story, narration, tale, legend. Its Latin analogue is fabula (narration, fable), and "elementary, or primitive mythology is the figurative poetical language that has been used by ancient tribes for clarification of natural phenomena" [Myths 1993: 5].
Many scientists and philosophers devoting themselves to mythology science elaborated their own classifications of myth"s explanation and development. Among modern scientists we can distinguish V.E. Halizev. His opinion about myth, like Losev"s conception, is similar to the author of the given research.
Mythology itself is treated by V.E. Halizev as "overepochal, transhistorical form of social consciousness existing in nation"s life during its history, which is connected with the peculiar way of thought" [Halizev 2002: 128; italics are of the author – N. Sh.].
Complicated by its nature, varied in manifestations mythology is also valuably polysemantic. This feature causes debates about its role in society. There exist two opposite opinions on value of mythology and possibility of its presence in human culture. Such scientists as R. Barthes, Y.M. Lotman notice in myth similar phenomena. In the book "Mythologies" (1957) Barthes characterized myth as "pseudoevidances" hiding "ideological fraud" under the power of which people get evoluntarily, as soon as they begin to discuss and summarize. The author considered that myths" aim was the world"s immobilization, its mortification: myth imposes the society an imagination about reality as primarily harmonious, thereby overturning and draining it [Barthes 1989: 46, 118, 126, 11 – 112].
In the same way mythologized consciousness is interpreted in semiotically cultural researches of Y.M. Lotman, orientated, according to him, at the scientific tradition of Aristotle and Deckard. Here myth is deduced out of culture"s framework: cultural area (rationally logical field) and mythological (irrational) area are opposed to each other [Lotman 1992: 15, 32].
G.G. Gadamer and D.S. Lihachev judge about mythology in totally different way. These scientists regard mythology as unique cultural value. In Gadamer"s article "Myth and Intellect" (1954) is said that scientifical and mythological world views are not antagonists, that "myth and intellect have common, movable by the same rules history" and that they are at the bottom of fact friendly and complementary. "Myth should not be derided as preachers" fraud or old wives" tales but the voice of the wise past". The philosopher mentions that "mythical charms" are unrational but myths are by no means voluntary imagination but bearers of proper, unscientific truth which "form great mental and moral strength of life" [Gadamer 1991: 97, 94, 98 – 99]. In the same way is produced Lihachev"s opinion about myth as "being packing", which serves as blessing and value "since it simplifies the world and our behaviour in it". It is even said that without "the mythologization of the being" the last "cannot be perceived" [Lihachev 1995: 341 – 344].
In the twentieth century the scientists began to learn such phenomenon as mythical (mythological) thinking. Some of them considered that "mythical thinking on the certain phase of development is the only possible, necessary, rational; it is peculiar not to any special time but people of all the times who are on the certain degree of thought evolution; it is formal, i.e. it does not exclude any content: either religious, philosophical or scientific" [Potebnya 1976: 260]. If to uphold this point of view it is possible to allege that in the modern twenty-first century myth-making did not lose its significance and actively develops nowadays. After all, as Potebnya asserted, thinking is called mythological only then when "an image is called objective and therefore is entirely transferred as reason for the subsequent conclusions about characteristics of the signified" [Potebnya 1976: 243].
It means that "the difference between mythical and non-mythical thinking consists in the statement that the more non-mythical thinking the more clearly is perception that the previous content of our thought is only the subjective method of perception; the more mythical thinking the more it is represented as sourse of perception" [Ibid.: 240; the italics belongs to the author. – N. Sh.].
The mythological thinking is described also by E. Levkievskaya in her book "Myths of the Russian nation". She considers that "for the person having mythological thinking myth is particularly practical knowledge with which he follows in real life like we in daily life follow the knowledge of highway regulations or personal hygiene" [Levkievskaya 2003: 4]. The author illustrates her thought with the following example: while losing his way in the forest a man, if he lives under the laws of myth, knows that it is wood-goblin who did him much harm. The wood-goblin could manage doing it because the man entered the forest without blessing. To unload the power of the creature of the other world and find the way home the one should lay the clothes off, to turn it inside out and put it on again – everything is upturned he other world [Ibid.]
It is really difficult to escape the influence of myth. It is eternal and omnipresent. The French scientist Roland Barthes affirmed that "myths overtake a person always and everywhere, they dispatch him to that immovable prototype which does not let him to live by his own live. Myths do not allow to breath easily (like a bloodsucker lodged inside the organism) and outline the narrow radius for the human activity where a person is allowed to fret not trying even somehow to change… the world. Myths represent the constant and tiresome exaction, insidious and uncompromising demand, for all people to recognize themselves in that eternal and nevertheless dated image that was once created, alledgedly once and for all" [Barthes 1989: 126].