340
PARTISAN REVIEW
proof of this
is
Freud's reassertion of the natural validity of myth.*
The definition of myth as art will be disappointing only to those
who refuse to grant art a primary function and efficacy in human
thought but must always make it dependent on something else-theo–
logical dogma, religion, the State, economics, science. Myth is not
the "indispensable substructure" of poetry. Poetry is the indispensable
substructure of myth. Myth is a less inclusive category than poetry.
Poetry
becomes
myth when it performs a certain function, an idea
which Vico entertained and one which, as I shall at least hint, is
abundantly affirmed by modem anthropology.
The
Relevance of Primitive
Myth.
We often confuse myth with
those hypostatized versions of myth which have come down to us
in European literature, "mummified
in
priestly wisdom," says Mali–
nowski, and "enshrined in the indestructible but lifeless repository
of dead religions." We have thus gained the impression that myth is
more systematic, less naive .and functional than it is. Those writers
who tell us that myth is a system of recondite symbols, that it is a
pseudo-scientific explanation of nature or that it describes the sun
and the moon, reaffirm this impression. We must study myth as it
works in primitive society, before it is overlaid with interpretation.
In primitive culture myth is a relatively clearly definable activity
instead of being diffused and obscured by other activities as it is in
our culture. Nevertheless we usually overestimate the difference be–
tween primitive culture and our own. It is perhaps trite to observe
that we are more like primitive men than we once thought, but not
so trite to observe that primitive men are more like
us
than we once
thought. Only one specific point can be made here: The idea of a
primitive "mythopoeic age" in which all thought was mystic or sym–
bolic and in which all literature was equally and completely mythical
must be abandoned. All the primitive peoples who have been studied
by anthropologists have treated a part of their experience matter-of-
*
Nothing could more palpably suggest the complementary functions myth
and science may assume than the fact that Freud became a myth-maker and
a profound student of myth
reluctantly.
His scientific temperament rebelled at
every step; yet it forced him into the realm of myth. Jung, for whom mythology
is a welcome escape from the rigors of science, is, compared with Freud, a vapor–
ous and fruitless mythologist. (When I speak of Freud as a mythologist, I do
not refer to the arbitrary collection of symbols which he erroneously supposed
to be common to myths and dreams; I refer rather to his treatment of psychic
forces and his reconstructions of the tensions, displacements, and conceptualiza–
tions which make images in both myths and dreams).
