Theory and Practice of Myth

Reading Camus’ story of the Myth of Sisyphus was very interesting to me. My initial reaction was similar to Dawn Eve’s, because surely a man doomed to forever fail at a simple task over and over again is not happy. However, when I got to the line, “His rock is his thing,” I stopped, and my whole impression of Camus’ story changed. It seems a component of the human condition to forever be searching for our thing. What am I good at, who am I to other people, what is my future, what is my thing? Sisyphus is in a unique position to know unquestioningly what his thing is. There’s a certain amount of comfort in that. He doesn’t have to worry about anything else. He doesn’t have to worry that tomorrow maybe he’ll get fired from his job and let down his family, or that he’ll accidentally trip and break his arm, or that he’ll fail a class and get kicked out of college. All he has to do is try to push a rock up a hill, and it doesn’t matter if he fails or succeeds, because that’s all he needs to do. It’s his thing. “His fate belongs to him.”

Alternatively, I’m currently reading Lucretius’ On the Nature of Things, and before he tells his reader that they shouldn’t fear death, he says it’s partly because there is no hell in afterlife, but rather, hell is a condition of living. He seems to hint that the truth of Sisyphus is not that there is a man in Tartarus forever rolling a rock up a hill, but that in hell in real life, there are people who forever attempt to attain something, but other people push down against them, preventing them from accomplishing their goals. Lucretius specifically refers to attempting to gain political power, but I think it could be applied more broadly.

The Myth of Sisyphus of Camus was ridiculous (partly because the French are always ridiculous). Camus says that Sisyphus is “happy” with his eternal punishment because he keeps “going back to his rock.” Firstly, nobody is happy with an eternal punishment, Sisyphus is damned to roll a rock up a hill and have it fall back down before it reaches the summit. Secondly, Camus says that happiness is doing something over and over again with no different result, and the lack of result makes you want to do it again because it makes you happy, and all of that seems to me like a fat crock of BS. I’m pretty sure that doing something over and over again with no different result is the definition of insanity, not happiness – or eternal punishment. And finally, where does Camus get the idea that Sisyphus is a good comparison for not committing suicide? Camus took the idea of making a philosophical argument out of something absurd and unrelated to a new level of stupid. Sometimes arguments like this, arguments that take something like the essence of the color green and compare it to the anatomy of a liver are acceptable, but I feel like Camus’ argument that if Sisyphus can be happy in his eternal damnation then a person should not commit suicide is entirely illogical. Even if one were to believe that “oh sure, he’s happy because he keeps pushing the rock up the hill,” the rational side of any half-brained human would be like “wait, that’s not happiness, that’s insanity, and wasn’t he damned? That’s a punishment. My life is insanity and it’s a punishment.” Camus is making a mess, he should have used a different story to demonstrate his nut-job “philosophy.” I’m not even sure if he is a philosopher, I’m just guessing.

And from this week, the last little bit we spoke about in class on Friday about how Proteus counts the seals off by 5 but when his daughter covers the men with the seal skins he counts the four of them and doesn’t bat an eye at the number but instead lays down next to them. I don’t think this was miscounting, or a weird Homeric joke, but rather a fact that Proteus is always the 5th seal (or whatever animal of the sea he is counting) that probably wasn’t translated properly or was lost in the oral tradition or in the myth of Proteus. He is, afterall, the Old Man of the sea AND a shapeshifter. He is everything, and he’s probably a little proud. It would make sense, more sense than the whole “counting is important” idea.

The reading on the categorization of these types of stories goes into great detail about the various characteristics that mark a story as a myth, legend or folktale. I think that these categories are fairly arbitrary and pointless however; more importantly, they add nothing to the stories or our understanding, in my opinion. Although he qualifies his charts, I found myself looking at them and finding counter examples and stories that didn’t fit into the categories. For example, to me the Odyssey is an epic and blends a bit of all of the genres. It mixes divine characters and human, potentially has some elements of truth to its origins ie the Trojan War, is set in a vague past time that seems neither completely remote or recent to me and has both sacred and secular elements to its narrative and morals. Even if the story did fit in perfectly to one category, I don’t really see how that is important or at all helpful to understanding the story. I think it is helpful to understand how the story fits into the categories like belief and setting that are used to define the genres, but I think that placing the story into a genre would over simplify it and support false presumptions since few stories will perfectly fit into the categories. I think they would only really be helpful if stories fit in perfectly or close to perfect because that would help to draw comparisons between  stories and would suggest that the various factors are interrelated. Additionally, I don’t feel like I have any deep associations with these genres that causes me to agree with the parameters given in the essay. Even if I did, not all of the parameters seem important, most notably if the genre is told after dark. I don’t see how that really changes the story and if the various forms are not specified, not specified and sometimes then it seems like an unimportant depiction. In my opinion, this is an example of an attempt at being overly scholarly for no purpose at all. I’m all for complicated scholarly debate and analysis as long as it has a purpose and helps improve our understanding of what is being studied, but in this instance, that does not seem to be the case.

The story from Herodotus I referenced in week 1 is chapter 107 of book 1.

“Astyages had a daughter, whom he called Mandane: he dreamed that she urinated so much that she filled his city and flooded all of Asia.  He communicated this vision to those of the Magi who interpreted dreams, and when he heard what they told him he was terrified; and presently, when Mandane was of marriageable age, he feared the vision too much to give her to any Mede worthy to marry into his family, but married her to a Persian called Cambyses…  But during the first year that Mandane was married to Cambyses, Astyages saw a second vision. He dreamed that a vine grew out of the genitals of this daughter, and that the vine covered the whole of Asia.  Having seen this vision, and communicated it to the interpreters of dreams, he sent to the Persians for his daughter, who was about to give birth, and when she arrived kept her guarded, meaning to kill whatever child she bore: for the interpreters declared that the meaning of his dream was that his daughter’s offspring would rule in his place.”

Christopher Pelling has some good commentary here.

“Both Greek and comparative material make it clear that urine, as a warm carrier of bodily life-juices, can suggest many things. It can have positive associations with healing and fertility, especially when, as here, a virgin’s urine is concerned; but urine can also have a magical, apotropaic function, and this can in its turn lead into a gesture of symbolic magic, casting ill fortune on an enemy or simply articulating contempt. This relates to a feature of pollution which several scholars have recently stressed, the way in which dirty, `polluting’ elements can in suitable circumstances cleanse as well as defile, can bring cures and benefits as well as disease and disaster. It is understandable that a whole art of folk-urinomancy could develop, requiring an expert to read the signs and suggestions of a person’s urine.”

Yes, he did say “folk-urinomancy”.

A lecture on the short story collection “Lost in the Funhouse”, from which the Menelaiad is taken (lecture 11 in the series if you don’t end up there):

Here’s Anais Mitchell and Jefferson Hamer performing their version of a traditional British ballad about a shape-shifter:

They aren’t the first modern folk artists to have a go at this:

These are both versions of Child Ballad #39.

See also Benjamin Zephaniah and Peter Gabriel’s version.

There are in fact hundreds of versions of the tale.  Feel free to share your favorite in the comments; perhaps you can explain to me why the story has such lasting appeal.