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Thoreau’s Work on Myth: The Modern and the Primitive
- University of Georgia Press
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137 This essay is not a systematic study of mythological references in Thoreau’s works, though I will discuss quite a number of them; instead, the point I wish to make is that, in handling the thorny question of the relevance of ancient myths and mythology for modern times, Thoreau was taking his cue from a number of prior texts at a time when the notion of myth as vehicle of access to transcendence was becoming increasingly reified in middle-class culture and literary circles. The first and longest of these texts is likely to have been the discussion of the origins of Greek myths in the latter sections of book 4 of Wordsworth’s The Excursion. These sections of Wordsworth’s most philosophical poem are known to have contributed to the popularity of Greek mythology in England and America later in the century along with a much shorter text, Wordsworth’s sonnet of 1806, “The world is too much with us”: The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers: Little we see in Nature that is ours; We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! The Sea that bares her bosom to the moon; The winds that will be howling at all hours, And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers; For this, for everything, we are out of tune; It moves us not.—Great God! I’d rather be A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn; So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; Bruno Monfort Thoreau’s Work on Myth The Modern and the Primitive 138 Bruno Monfort Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea; Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn. Wordsworth’s poem is exemplary; it echoes German thought in its celebration of the Greek mode of mythopoeia, positively asserting the visionary power that still lies in the matrix from which all mythologies emerge, the interaction between the mind and its natural environment. Wordsworth was indebted to the Schlegel brothers, Friedrich Schlegel in particular in his “Talk on Mythology ” (“Rede über die Mythologie”). The “talk” is section 2 of his Dialogue on Poetry (1800): distressed by the materialism, philosophic and economic, that followed the loss of religious faith and the rise of empiricism, Schlegel called for the making of new mythologies that could speak for transcendent truth, tracing the steps of the ancient mysteries, showing their relevance to modern life and their function in modern literature. Modern poets must create “magic,” but in doing so they all have to start from scratch, for they lack the shared mythology that all the ancients had. The ancient mythology came from the imagination , but it also “imitated” what was “most immediate and vital in the sensuous world.” Modern mythology, on the other hand, was the conscious re-creation of the world-weary poet. Mythology appealed to the poetic mind, promising to effect not perhaps a breakthrough into transcendent truth but at least a move away from the world that “is too much with us.” The poet’s latter-day wish for a reemergence of mythology is thus tainted with ambiguity: instead of empowering the poet to base his claim for authority on an effective visionary power that was up to the task, the poet’s aspiration or desire for new myths might fail to provide a new mythology, except of the reflexive, self-conscious sort that consists in celebrating the power of the imagination to produce a new mythology . Wordsworth’s programmatic sonnet may not be so much a blueprint for moments of unqualified visionary power enacted as poems as an anticipation of poems that thematize and examine their capacity, or incapacity, to do so. At a time when, as Margot K. Louis explains, emphasis shifted from myths (increasingly regarded as inessential even for the Greeks) to mysteries (considered as the true mystic core of ancient religion), the notion of myth as vehicle of access to transcendence is thus hardly challenged in Wordsworth’s sonnet; it is virtually left alone and untouched. Wordsworth’s sonnet contains seeds of the notion of myth, which, as we move into the Victorian period, becomes increasingly reified in middle-class culture and literary circles. Strange to say, the [44.200.196.114] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 02:55 GMT) Thoreau’s Work on Myth 139 word “mythology” was not to be found in the Oxford English Dictionary before the 1831...