PARTISAN REVIEW
tains "its purely representative, specifically 'aesthetic' function only as
the magic circle with which mythical consciousness surrounds it
is
broken, and it is recognized not as a mythico-magical form, but as a
particular sort of
formulation.»
Then what is meant by saying that
not only the great epic and dramatic poets but even the best lyric
poets seem to be possessed by a kind of mythic power? Cassirer's reply
is that in those poets "the magic power of insight breaks forth again
in its full intensity and objectifying power. But this objectivity has
discarded all material constraints. The spirit lives in the world of
language -and
in
the mythical image without falling under the control
of either." Word and image, which once affected the mind as awe–
some external forces, have now cast off effectual reality, becoming
for the literary artist "a light, bright ether in which the spirit can
move without let or hindrance. This liberation is achieved not because
the mind throws aside the sensuous forms of word and image, but be–
cause it uses them both as organs of its own, and thereby recognizes
them for what they really are: forms of its own self-revelation."8
This type of historical analysis of the relation between art and
myth is unlikely to interest the cultists. For what is the mind's recog–
nition of its own creations if not an advance toward freedom? But it
is freedom which is refused by those who wish to re-mystify the
world through myth or dogma. This new-fashioned freedom is still
largely untried by the generality of men. Why not keep it so, thus
saving them from its perils? In literature this has prompted the en–
deavor to establish what might well be called a poetics of restitution–
restitution for the disenchantment of reality carried through by science,
rationality, and the historical consciousness.
It
is only natural that
in such a poetics, ruled by schematic notions of tradition, the libera–
tion of art from the
socio-religiou~
compulsions of the past should
be taken as a calamity-a veritable expulsion from Eden. And how
is Eden to be regained? Inevitably some of the practitioners of this
poetics discovered that myth answered their purpose much better than
tradition. Mter
all,
the supra-temporality of myth provides the ideal
refuge from history. To them, as to Stephen Dedalus in
Ulysses,
his–
tory is a nightmare from which they are trying to awake. But to awake
from history into myth is like escaping from a nightmare into a
state of permanent insomnia.
But if the road back to genuine mythic consciousness is closed,
