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PARTISAN REVIEW
that it is this very cultism which enables them to evade· the hard
choice between belief and unbelief. Mter all, now that the idea of
myth has been invested in literary discourse with
all
sorts of intriguing
suggestions of holiness and sacramental significance, one can talk
about
it
as if it were almost the same thing as religion, thus circum–
venting the all-too-definite and perhaps embarraS'!ing demands of
orthodoxy even while enjoying an emotional rapport with it. At the
same time, myth having been somehow equated with the essence of
poetry, it becomes possible to enlist its prestige along with that of
re–
ligion. The mythomaniac puts himself in the position of speaking
freely in the name both of poetry and religion without, however, mak–
ing himself responsible to either. But it should be evident that
in
the
long run neither benefits from so forced a conjunction. It deprives
them equally of specific definition and commitment; and this, I take
it, is the implicit point of M. Maritain's critical remarks.
The discussion of myth has led some literary men
to
undertake
interpretations of
it
in terms of its origins and fundamental import
in the history of culture. Such interpretations are in the main more
wishful than accurate, running counter to the findings at once of
such noted philosophical students of myth as Ernst Cassirer and an–
thropologists and ethnologists like Malinowski, Jane Harrison, Lord
Raglan,
A.
M. Hocart, S. M. Hooke, et al. The fact is that the cur–
rent literary inflation of myth is not in the least supported by the
authoritative texts in this field of study. Typical is the approach of
a distinguished literary critic, who on the subject of myth proceeds
entirely without discretion. Myth is for him "the cartograph of the
perennial human situation," and he contends that in myth alone can
we hope to encounter "a beckoning image of the successful alliance
of love and justice, the great problems of the race from its dark
beginnings." In other words: Back to myth
if
you want to be saved!
It leaves one wondering how that sort of thing can possibly be squared
with anything to be found, for instance, in the late Professor Cassirer's
numerous, painstaking, and truly imaginative inquiries into myth.
What we do realize in reading CaS'!irer, however, is that contempor–
ary mythomania makes for the renewal ·in our time of the symbolic–
allegorical treatment of myth favored by the romantics, who saw in
myth a source of higher teachings and ultra-spiritual insights, convert–
ing
it
into a magic mirror that reflected their heart's desire.
As
Cas-
