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  • Myth and Sexuality:A Mythopoeic Reading of Létum Aynegalliñ
  • Tewodros Gebre (bio)

Virtually all cosmogonies but ours are overtly sexual.

-Camille Paglia

What is it about? Prurience? Stupidity? And as Descartes didn't say, 'I fuck therefore I am.'?

-Jeanette Winterson

Sibhat Gebre-Igzï'abhiér is one of the modernist writers who are highly influential in the realm of Amharic literature. His works of art most often are the result of his literary experimentation. He applies different concepts and theories in his works despite the fact that it brings him in conflict with society and its values.1 Myth and sexuality among other things are common motifs that run through all his works, mainly in Létum Aynegalliñ, and subject him to different critics. He also raises modern issues that are highly mythological. In addition to using existing myths in literary organization, his works create their own myths. This in effect makes these works of art easier for mythopoeic reading.2

Létum Aynegalliñ (literally "the night never ends for me") represents the relation between myth and literature. This novel is highly mythic. Myth, mainly in this novel, has contributed a lot for textual organization. The novel is filled with sexually painted narratives, prayers, verses, or other texts taken from Ethiopian classical religious books, sacred homilies, and others. The novel and sacred homilies are to be read intertextually in different ways. The novel parodies the religious and mythical homilies, while on the other hand the chapters and sections tend to seem more of a pastiche. It is packed with many biblical allusions. The parody and pastiche are used as beginnings and endings for the story, at the same time maintaining the flow of the narration. The pastiche creates a poetic tempo, structural parallelism, and symmetry of form within the novel. The allusion helps in guiding the narration's journey, setting frames connecting time and space between chapters, and bringing different situations together. Among the eight chapters of the novel, the names given to the four are taken from names of religious books written in Ge'ez, Ethiopia's classical language: Chapter one: Lamentations of Menase, Chapter three: Adventure (Saint Life) of Tilahun, Chapter four: Miracles of Kinfe, and Chapter five: Secrets of Petros.

In Létum Aynegalliñ, the principal characters are men in their early ages and prostitutes. Most of these men have either finished their college education or got the chance to attend [End Page 136] college but preferred to join the world of work or dropped out of college. The women are different in almost every respect except for their prostitution. The place these men meet these women is called Wube Berha ("Wube Desert"), which is outside of the boundaries, outside the field provided by society. It is a red-light district for lost souls, a dark and troubled world of conflict, isolation, and anxiety. The whole story of this novel revolves around Wube Berha and what goes on in these people's life from dusk till midnight. Létum Aynegalliñ depicts the pleasures, longings, and desires of complicated characters in a world which is totally different from where they came.

There is nothing that the place and the characters miss out of the night life. They commit what they call "the worst sin of all" in their pursuit of their strange hedonistic activities (4). All these scenes are pieced together to form a broad picture of the chaotic experience in Wube Berha's life. In each and every move and action of these characters, we find sex as their center of gravity, which controls the circulation of their life-blood unceasingly. Eroticism, violence, and perversity are major scenes in making Wube Berha the chaotic world that it is. All these things are, however, pictured in Létum Aynegalliñ with no attempt to veil anything. Their dialogue flows as it is with no consideration to what the general public believes to be completely unethical and destructive of the society's values or standards. The language of the first person self-conscious character-narrator's narration moves along in tandem with the characters' behaviors and actions.

At this juncture, it would be useful to study one of...

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