Mythic literature--I've always loved it, from the translations of the Greek, Roman, and Germanic classics to the retellings and adaptations by contemporary writers. And, by mythic literature, I don't just mean the sorts of things Robert Graves or Mary Renault have done with Classical figures and beliefs, but also the sorts of things Charles de Lint or Robert Holdstock have done with Celtic, Indo-European, Amerindian, and other figures and beliefs.
Poetry is rife with mythic borrowings and mythic intonations from the earliest days. I almost wrote "from the days of belief," but who says belief doesn't exist now, exist in ways that matter most, figuratively, metamorphically (and that's not a misspelling for "metaphorically"). Right now, I'm thinking of Gluck's "Gretel in Darkness" (folklore counting as mythic, to me); Yeats' "Leda and the Swan"; Kizer's "Hera, Hung From the Sky"; Graves' "Ulysses"; and H.D.'s Helen in Egypt.
I could--and will--quote half a hundred good poems that use mythic material, but here's the first, the one that held me fast today when I was just reading around, open-eyed, not a care in the world, for that half hour I try to devote to the practice each day. Dangerous habit, that reading around, that openness; I recommend it.
Here's Eavan Boland and her poignant contemporary take on the myth of Daphne, a mortal woman transformed into a tree to escape the lust of the pursuing god Apollo.
DAPHNE WITH HER THIGHS IN BARK
I have written this
so that,
in the next myth,
my sister will be wiser.
Let her learn from me:
the opposite of passion
is not virtue
but routine.
Look at me.
I can be cooking,
making coffee,
scrubbing wood, perhaps,
and back it comes:
the crystalline, the otherwhere,
the wood
where I was
when he began the chase.
And how I ran from him!
Pan-thighed,
satyr-faced he was.
The trees reached out to me.
I silvered and
I quivered. I shook out
my foil of quick leaves.
He snouted past.
What a fool I was!
I shall be here forever,
setting out the tea,
among the coppers and the branching alloys and
the tin shine of this kitchen;
laying saucers on the pine table.
Save face, sister.
Fall. Stumble.
Rut with him.
His rough heat will keep you warm and
you will be better off than me,
with your memories
down the garden,
at the start of March,
unable to keep your eyes
off the chestnut tree—
just the way
it thrusts and hardens.
--Eavan Boland
An Origin Like Water: Collected Poems 1967-1987. W. W. Norton @ Co. New York & London: 1996.
