Doorway to Myth
Book reviewers sometimes conclude by praising or condemning the publisher. In this case, so much praise is due that it must come first. Publishers vary immensely in their attention to detail, their capacity to give editorial advice, their scholarly standards, typographical imagination, business sense, and even in their basic morality. Princeton University Press has always set the standard for all the rest; but when Princeton joins with the Bollingen Foundation, the result is even better. The present volume is the 100th and (alas) final number of Bollingen Series, meant to reflect and celebrate what Joseph Campbell calls "the whole delightful adventure in exploratory scholarship" initiated with Bollingen Series no. 1 in 1943. All the elements of fine bookmaking are evident here, and the price — when we consider that the drabbest of scholarly monographs can now cost $20 — is entirely fair.
Professor Campbell hopes that our eyes will not rush along, but will rest a while and dwell with the pictures "in enjoyment of their revelation." The 440 plates illustrate mythic themes such as the dying and resurrected god, the miraculous child, the flower scepter, and the return to earth, while the accompanying text interprets the illustrations meticulously and brings forth other material of extraordinary diversity – Socratic dialogues, lovely enigmas from Finnegans Wake, African legends recorded by Frobenius, Captain Cook's account of human sacrifice in Tahiti, the Maitri Upanishad, Byron, Jung, The Book of the Master Tsou, lines by the Aztec poet Ayocuan Quetzpaltzin, etc., etc.—in order to explain the themes more fully. Implicit in the diversity of the texts (and equally of the illustrations: e.g. an Etruscan pietà of the 5th century B.C. paired with a Jacob Epstein; Quetzalcoatl as the Plumed Serpent flaring at Vishnu Seated on the Cosmic Serpent) is of course Campbell's assumption that mythic motifs are similar throughout the world. His sympathies lie with the psychological/ mystical view whereby mythic forms may be regarded "as pointing past themselves to mysteries of universal import." Thus, while always noting variety in forms, he wishes primarily "to let sound the one accord through all its ranges of historic transformation, not allowing local features to obscure the everlasting themes." This helps to explain why he starts and ends with dreams - for in dreams "things are not as single, simple, and separate as they seem." There is another reason, however. The ritualistic and representational forms of mythic consciousness are so atrophied in modern man that dreams are now our best (or only) doorway to myth.
Campbell opens this doorway in Chapter I. In Chapter II he considers non-literate folk traditions, followed by the literate traditions culminating in Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam. Chapter III concentrates on differences between the oriental and occidental applications of myth. Chapter IV dwells exclusively on the oriental, using yoga as a key to mythic symbolisms. Chapter V offers a comparative study of one motif: the sacrificed god. Chapter VI closes the doorway again, as we move from "the dream that is life" back again to the mystery of waking.
One dreams this book. Charmed or lulled into another consciousness, one feels a frightening yet seductive unity with Quetzalcoatl and Vishnu and Jacob Epstein and the Etruscans and Master Tsou and Byron and James Joyce's "symphysis of ... antipathies" and Ayocuan and sacrifices on Tahiti and Joseph Campbell and the Upanishads and ... and ...
THE MYTHIC IMAGE. ByJoseph Campbell '25. Princeton, theBollingeń Series, 1975. 552 pp. $45.
The Ted and Helen Geisel Third CenturyProfessor of the Humanities at Dartmouth, Mr.Bien has had two books published by thePrinceton University Press. His latest scholarlyinterest is Yannis Ritsos's treatment of thePhiloctetes myth.
