Поэтика мифа

The literary mythology of the 20th century is indebted to modern theories of myth and in the first place to those of Frazer and Jung. The «sacred marriage» and «scapegoat» models were borrowed by Lawrence mainly from «The Golden Bough». In T. Mann's «Magic Mountain» the amorous attachments of Hans Kastorp and later of Pepercorn with madame Chochat, the suicide of Pepercorn, numerous hints at initiation rituals and many other items correspond to Frazer's ritualemes of agrarian festivities with the «sacred marriage», ritual death of the kingpriest, etc. Of the same stock are frequent allusions to the myths of dying and resurrecting gods in T. Mann's «Joseph and his Brothers». T. Mann's and Joyce's symbols of eternal resurrection and rejuvenation. In «Finnegan's Wake» Joyce also makes use of the Buddhist and anthroposophic variants of metempsychosis and reincarnation and of Vice's and Quinet's cyclic ideas. The organizing principle in «Finnegan's Wake» and «Joseph and his Brothers» is, along with the cyclic factor, the view of myth as a collective unconscious in an individual's mind which is close to Jung theories.

Not all 20th century literary neomythologicai theories went as far as creating its own poetics of mythologizing. The necromantic apology of myth on the contents level (Nietzschean in Lawrence's works and national revolutionary in many of the «third world» writers' books) should be differentiated from the proper mythologizing poetics employed for genre formation (Joyce, T. Mann, Marquez, Updike and many others) and this latter one from spontaneous mythicizing, that is constructing a symbolic universal model by myth-like fiction using no traditional mythological images (Kafka). It is the comparison of Kafka and Joyce that gives one a clear idea of the contemporary basis of modernistic mythologizing poetics.

The poetics of mythologizing features some permanent traits – such as the well-known contraposition of history and universal psychology (based on analytical psychology), mythological syncretism and pluralism, elements of irony and travesty, the use of cyclic ritualistic mythological reiteration (supported by ritualism) to express universal archetypes, «fluidity» of dramatis personae and easily changeable social roles and masks, elements of absurd aesthetics (the Levy-Bruhl idea of the prelogic contributes to that), etc. Comparison of dramatis personae in «Ulysses» and «Odyssey», transformation of the Irvicker family into Celtic legend heroes, identification'of several generatipns of Biblical heroes in «Joseph», all this lays emphasis on universal reiteration of archetypes and the feeling of insoluble nature of some basic collisions characteristic of a 20th century western man. Contrary to inevitable travesty, everything merges on the mythological level (eg. promiscuous singer Molly and devoted Penelope merge in a single image of the fertility and love goddess; compare: madame Chochat and Venus; fidgety running of wretched Bloom and the wanders of Odyssey the epic hero, etc.). This is stressed by piling up parallels from different mythologies, often resulting in comparison to incompatible personages (Bloom, for example, is not only Odyssey, but at the same time Adam, Moses, Wandering Jew and even Christ) which once more emphasizes the vagueness of boundaries between themes and dramatis personae, the single unaltering essense under various masks, for Joyce it was inanity of history.

These quite modem ideas, in no way adequate to ancient myths, of personalities being levelled off and situations eternally repeated and individual's social isolation in the 20th century community are expressed by spontaneous mythologists like Kafka in other ways as compared to Joyce. There are no mythical parallels, endless reiterations and cyclic death-resurrection myths, Kafka focusses on inability of the hero to change the situation, escape the Process or reach the Castle; Levelling is expressed through clothes and not mythological masks. Contrary to Joyce, Kafka's plot looks like anti-myth; Hunter Grakh dies but is not able to reach the Kingdom of the Dead, the hero of «The Castle» never passes initiation, the hero of «Metamorphosis» unlike totemic myth heroes is hopelessly dissociated from his kin, etc. Alienation phantasies are translated by Kafka as an absurd disruption of communications (information, understanding) between the object and the subject on a metaphysical level (which psychologically takes the form of hero's guilt and socially of his underserved persecutions). But, as it has already been said, the comparison of Joyce and Kafka helps to reveal a purely modernistic aspect in the mythologizing poetics which comes into conflict with the true meaning; of traditional myths.

Mythologizing appears to be internally 'tied with the aesthetics of modernism. However, the poetics of mythcjiogizing has become a definite artistic method (mythological «grid» for riiodem themes at first, then «myth-novels» like «Finnegan's Wake» or «Josieph and his Brothers») and may be employed differently by writers of different outlook and even different creative method. This poetics is first of all the expression of the «horror of history» for Joyce and for T. Mann, who cannot be squeezed into the framework of modernism, and never arts his ties with realism, myth serves for symbolic consolidation of the historical experience of mankind on its way of progress. In «Joseph and/his Brothers» a cyclic moment may be combined with a linear one, identification of heroes with ancestors and gods is additionally viewed from aside as an archaic naive consciousness, as mythical «moon grammar».

Modem Latin American (Marquez and others) and Afro-Asian writers (Kateb Jasin and others) employ the myth poetics supported unlike in western literature by living folklore traditions to express stability of their national models.