Pelevin on myth
May 6, 2008 by elberry
From the introduction to Victor Pelevin’s The Helm of Horror. Sadly the rest of the book isn’t very good, but this is certainly of interest:
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According to one definition, a myth is a traditional story, usually explaining some natural or social phenomenon. According to another, it is a widely held but false belief or idea. This duality of meaning is revealing. It shows that we naturally consider stories and explanations that come from the past to be untrue - or at least we treat them with suspicion. This attitude, apart from creating new jobs in the field of intellectual journalism, gives some additional meaning to our life. The past is a quagmire of mistakes; we are here to find the truth. We know better.
The road away from myth is called ‘progress’. It is not just scientific, technical or political evolution. Progress has a spiritual constituent beautifully expressed by F. Scott Fitzgerald in The Great Gatsby:
[a belief] in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter - tomorrow we will run faster, stretch our arms further…And one fine morning -
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
In other words, progress is a propulsion technique where we have to constantly push ourselves away from the point we occupied a moment ago. However, this doesn’t mean that we live without myths now. It only means that we live with instant myths of soap-bubble content. They are so unreal you can’t even call them lies.
I’m rather impartial to the rest, but I tend to agree with the first definition: a myth is a traditional story, usually explaining some natural or social phenomenon.
It is possible, in my opinion, indeed very probable, that fairytales, Volksagen, legends and the like, are essentially metaphorical representations of psychological archetypes. Grimm’s fairytales are a mirror of the psyche - rarely benign, often terrible, sometimes genuinely spine-chilling. But nothing is more suggestive of the fairytale’s use of the wicked witch, the evil sorcerer, or the poisonous dwarf than the way we respond emotionally. They are the dark and forbidding within, often revealing a sinister depth of knowledge of an individual’s dilemmas and predicaments. The stuff of which our nightmares are composed. The bridge between the archetype and the psyche itself, and it is here in popular mythology that the connection is most tellingly displayed.
Myths are also a simple but intriguing explanation for how psychoanalysis works, even if there is no more proof for the existence of such archetypal concepts, as there is for Freudian concepts such as the id, ego and the super-ego.
Dreamy
Myths … Very true, and sad in the same time. The idea of myth is if not lost, then long forgotten. People are too concerned with improvement, with changing the old views of this world, because ‘we know better’. We lost our thirst for it. Few of us still know what myth really is.
I did ask a few acquaintances one day, out of curiosity, if they knew what myth was. And even though it did seem like a ‘weird question’ and a bit out of the blue, I was amazed to find out that many had no idea how to define it, or simply said ‘well…you know…stories and stuff’. Very deep … isn’t it?
Helmet of Horror & Omon Ra the two Pelevins to be avoided, most of all H of H.
The best thing about H of H is certainly the introduction. The structural dynamic of the book is far too restrictive. Pity Pelevin wasn’t tempted to write a series of essays instead on similar subjects, which would clearly be a natural area of strength for him.