Mythical Trickster Figures: Contours, Contexts, and Criticisms

FOUR: A LIFETIME OF TROUBLE-MAKING: HERMES AS TRICKSTER

FOUR A LIFETIME OF TROUBLE-MAI(ING: HERMES AS TRICI(STER William G. Doty In exploring here some of the many ways the ancient Greek figure of Hermes was represented we sight some of the recurring characteristics of tricksters from a number of cultures. Although the Hermes figure is so complex that a whole catalog of his characteristics could be presented,1 the sections of this account include just six: (1) his marginality and paradoxical qualities; (2) his erotic and relational aspects; (3) his functions as a creator and restorer; (4) his deceitful thievery; (5) his comedy and wit; and (6) the role ascribed to him in hermeneutics, the art of interpretation whose name is said to be derived from his. The sixth element listed names one of the most significant ways this trickster comes to us-as interpreter, messenger-but the other characteristics we will explore provide important contexts for what is conveyed, and how. This is not just any Western Union or Federal Express worker, but a marginal figure whose connective tasks shade over into creativity itself. A hilarious cheat, he sits nonetheless at the golden tables of the deities. We now recognize that even apparently irreverent stories show that some mythical models could be conceived in a wide range of significances , even satirized, without thereby abandoning the meaningcomplex in which the models originated. For example an extract from a satire by Lucian demonstrates that Hermes could be recalled with respect , as well as an ironic chuckle: HERMES AS TRICKSTER 47 HEPHAISTOS. Apollon, have you seen the new baby? Maia's little tot, Hermes? He's beautiful. And he smiles so sweetly at everybody. It looks as if he'll grow up to be a fine young god. ApOLLON. That tot a fine young god? When it comes to making trouble, he acts as if he's been at it a lifetime (Casson 1962: 99, translation of Lucian, Dialogues of the Gods, 7). In the subsequent course of Lucian's staged dialogue between Hephaistos and Apollon, it is noble Apollon who, characteristically, knows everything-a theme that sounds like an omniscient echo from a 1940s radio drama. Hephaistos loses some of his enthusiasm for Hermes' charm when he discovers that "Maia's little tot" has swiped the tongs he uses in his smithy! The pompous Hephaistos and Apollon need deflating , and Hermes-Trickster happily obliges. Such figures were active in the imaginings of antiquity, and recently the psychotherapist June Singer has indicated how trickster images have a similar balancing function in contemporary materials: In dreams the trickster is the one who sets obstacles in our path for his own reasons; he is the one who keeps changing shape and reappearing and disappearing at the oddest moments. He symbolizes that aspect of our own nature which is always nearby, ready to bring us down when we get inflated, or to humanize us when we become pompous. He is the satirist par excellence, whose trenchant wit points out the flaws in our haughty ambitions, and makes us laugh though we feel like crying.... The major psychological function of the trickster figure is to make it possible for us to gain a sense of proportion about ourselves. (1972: 289-90) Surely a figure who is so near to hand and so useful for restoring a more modest view of ourselves deserves our concentrated attention, even if in a manifestation (Hermes) whose stories stretch backward several centuries Before the Common Era. While Hermes is not necessarily the master model for figures such as the Native North American tricksters, a look at this oldest Western trickster will show us many of the typological elements that tricksters demonstrate in other cultural settings ' and modern trickster categories help us identify modes of appearance of the ancient Hermes.2 48 DOTY MULTIPLEX MARGINALITY AND PARADOXICALITY The great range of characteristics of the Hermes figure suggests that the narrow approach that seeks the essence of a figure, its lowest common denominator, may not be most appropriate. Multiplicity and paradoxicality, not singularity and the status quo, are central to Hermes throughout his stories. Hermes is marginal: his peculiar icons-ithyphallic herms (square-cut blocks of stone with an erect phallos on the front, topped with a portrait head of Hermes)~werelocated at entrances to homes, public buildings, and sleeping chambers, and at crossroads. As the patron of roads and travelers, Hermes guided transitions from one place...