SubscribeWe have come from God, and inevitably the myths woven by us, though they contain error, will also reflect a splintered fragment of the true light, the eternal truth that is with God. Indeed only by myth-making, only by becoming a "sub-creator" and inventing stories, can Man aspire to the state of perfection that he knew before the Fall. Our myths may be misguided, but they steer however shakily towards the true harbor, while materialistic "progress" leads only to a yawning abyss and the Iron Crown of the power of evil.although sentimentally luddite, i think it contains an important admission that it may be misguided. cs lewis seems to embrace it!
[t]he heart of Christianity is a myth which is also a fact. The old myth of the Dying God, without ceasing to be myth, comes down from the heaven of legend and imagination to the earth of history. It happens—at a particular date, in a particular place, followed by definable historical consequences. We pass from a Balder or an Osiris, dying nobody knows when or where, to a historical Person crucified (it is all in order) under Pontius Pilate. By becoming fact it does not cease to be myth: that is the miracle.... God is more than god, not less: Christ is more than Balder, not less. We must not be ashamed of the mythical radiance resting on our theology. We must not be nervous about "parallels" and "pagan Christs": they ought to be there—it would be a stumbling block if they weren't. We must not, in false spirituality, withhold our imaginative welcome. If God chooses to be mythopoeic—and is not the sky itself a myth—shall we refuse to be mythopathic?while in the same vein, richard powers generalizes even further -- from religion, to myth and then fiction:
At the end it's as if a digital Byzantium has somehow crossed over into the real world. That is my metaphor for reading; that's what reading does. In the end, the book becomes an apology for the virtuality of fiction, fiction not as a replacement for the real world, but as a hybrid place where the real world is suspended and reconstituted into something more survivable.or like jeffrey niesel:
Reading is perhaps cannibalism par excellence. Through reading, one dissects and consumes with the intent of making the object one's own. As Kilgour writes, "Reading is therefore eating, an act of consumption. For homo sapiens, to think is to taste, as in the act of knowledge we imagine that we draw the outer world into our minds and possess it." Again, this is the way we relate to each other in consumer culture, coveting and being coveted, reading and being read.in other words, harold bloom puts it simply, "We read, frequently if unknowingly, in quest of a mind more original than our own." and if you don't know, now you know! warren buffett is a democrat :D
posted by hackly_fracture at 12:35 PM on October 29, 2002