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the MYTH series & ME
by Margaret Atwood
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Strong myths never die. Sometimes they
die down, but they don't die out. They double back in
the dark, they re-embody themselves, they change costumes,
they change key, they speak in new languages, they take
on other meanings.
Just for example: the Sibyl of Cumae, desired by Apollo,
was granted a life as long in years as the grains in
a handful of sand, but she forgot to ask for endless
youth. Before ending up as a whispering voice in a heap
of dust, she acted as the wise, powerful, oracle-uttering,
cave-dwelling, and sometimes manic guide to the Underworld,
notably in Virgil's Aeneid. But that
wasn't the end of her. Back she came again in a different
and somewhat snazzier outfit in George MacDonald's Curdie
books, and then in Walter Pater's interpretation of
the Mona Lisa, and in H. Rider Haggard's
late-nineteenth-century romance, She;
and then again in Lost Horizons; and
then, in a more benevolent form, as Galadriel in The
Lord of the Rings. She casts her shadow over
the vampire queens of Anne Rice and, most recently,
over Stephen King's 1995 Cupid-and-psycho shocker, Rose
Madder, in which the beautiful but sinister
oldster totes the full bag of tricks, and more —
Water of Death, lots of waving hair, nasty tree with
suspicious pomegranates, oracular pronouncements, maze
with monster, spidery eating habits, and incipient decomposition
— all going to show that young Stephen's time
in the school library was not wasted. In each of her
incarnations, this extremely long-lived and much-experienced
lady must eventually fade away or fall apart: otherwise
she'd be a goddess. Meanwhile she can be quite scary;
but then, so was the original Sibyl.
Constellations such as this — clusters of motifs
and personae and stories — have circled the globe.
Cinderella and her little fur or glass slipper and her
handsome prince and those who mistreat her have been
around for a long time. The beloved girl who in her
animal form is a swan (or a goose, or a snail); the
hero of obscure origin who overcomes monsters, and even
death itself; the journey to the land of the dead —
how old are they really? How many times have their tales
been told and retold, and how many times will they be
told again?
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Myth precedes literature: the oldest stories were passed
from mouth to ear to mouth long before they travelled
from hand to page. As Robert Bringhurst has pointed
out in his commentary on Haida poetry, A Story
as Sharp as a Knife, oral poetry is local,
and although myths may resemble other stories like them
around the world, each embodiment of such a story is
particular, and takes its meaning and flavour from its
own specific context. The story of Medea was spun one
way in Athens, another way in Corinth. Who's doing the
telling and who's doing the listening have a lot to
do with the slant the story's given: this is true even
of our own history. Was Richard III really an evil child-murdering
hunchback? Probably not, but it suited Shakespeare's
royal audience to have it so.
Myths cannot really be translated with any accuracy
from their native soil — from their own place
and time. We will never know exactly what emotional
resonances they had for their ancient audiences because
we are not those people and can't fully share their
assumptions. But myths can be used — as they have
been, so frequently — as the foundation stones
for new versions, new renderings — renderings
that have, in turn, their own contexts, that find their
meanings within their own historical moments.
This, or something like it, seems to have been the concept
behind The Myths series, which —
rumour has it — was cooked up during one of those
legendary, superheated Frankfurt Book Fair evenings
by Jamie Byng of Canongate in the U.K., with Louise
Dennys of Knopf Canada, Morgan Entrekin of Grove Atlantic
in the United States, and Arnulf Conradi, then of BerlinVerlag
in Germany.
The idea was to ask a number of writers from around
the world to retell a myth, any myth, each in his or
her own way and in his or her own language, at a length
of roughly a hundred pages. The results would be translated
by all participating publishers — as many as the
original Fearless Four could entice into their Myths
series corral. What were their expectations? New lamps
for old, as it were. Perhaps a few shining lights. Increased
knowledge of myths that might otherwise have languished
in the shadows. Some interesting additions to the worldwide
story hoard. And, at the very least, a curious batch
of manuscripts produced by a bunch of writers who usually
did quite other sorts of things. I'm guessing here,
but at least some of these desiderata must have been
tucked in among the other items in their hope chests.
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It would be fun to ascribe a mythological character
to each of the original four publishers. Louise Dennys
could be grey-eyed Athene, perhaps — sage goddess
of intricate weaving, and of knots and their untying,
and thus well equipped to be the editress of my book,
once I had managed to produce it. Morgan Entrekin could
be a suitably North American Coyote, inventor of novelties,
gadgets, and schemes, and patron of unusual neckties;
Arnulf Conradi might serve as Poseidon, earthshaker,
tamer of horses, and encourager of watery flow, that
flow we all need when we write; and Jamie Byng is surely
Hermes, player of tricks, master of the crossroads,
bearer of messages, and shameless devisor of entanglements.
It was in this guise that Mr. Byng waylaid me one morning
in Edinburgh, several years ago, at breakfast. Breakfast
is my weakest time of day — I have no willpower
then — but, as a god, Byng would already have
divined that. He picked his moment well.
I knew this designer-stubbled, well-worn-cashmered person
by reputation — he was then a rising small publisher
who'd had some very bright ideas, The Assassin's
Cloak among them. He made his pitch in an artfully
ingenuous manner befitting the stealer of Apollo's cattle
and the inventor of the lyre and the first practical
joke. Needless to say, I was ensnared: in a help- a-young-publisher,
unfamiliar-cornflaked, pre-coffeed moment, I promised
to give The Myths caper a try.
I did give it a try. I tried it this way and that, with no results. I
couldn't seem to get the kite to fly. As every writer knows, a plot is
only a plot, and a plot as such is two-dimensional unless it can be
made to come alive, and it can only come alive through the characters
in it; and in order to make the characters live, there must be some
blood in the mix. I won't sadden myself by detailing my failed
attempts. Let's just say there were so many of them that I was at the
point of giving the thing up altogether. The task was a great deal
more difficult than I'd thought, and not being a mythological being
myself, I couldn't call on the ants or fishes to come and help me sort
out the words.
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"Do you think Jamie Byng would mind very much if I just gave back the
advance and cancelled the contract?" I asked my British agent,
Vivienne Schuster of Curtis Brown. By this time I was embarrassingly
behind deadline, and the first page was just as blank as it had always
been. True, I had quite a few thirtieth pages, but they were crumpled
up in the waste bin.
Vivienne's upper lip is nothing if not stiff —
she has climbed Mount Kilimanjaro — but I detected
a quavering over the telephone as she said actually
she expected that he might in fact mind quite a lot.
But that I shouldn't let that influence me one way or
the other. And if I couldn't I couldn't, she added staunchly.
But Jamie would probably be gutted.
I am susceptible to British slang. I did not want to
be responsible for gutting anyone. "Give me a couple
of weeks, then," I said. Desperation being the mother
of invention, I started writing The Penelopiad.
Don't ask me why, because I don't know. A door opens
and you go through, or else you don't; sometimes it's
the right door. Let's just say that the hanging of the
twelve "maids" — slaves, really — at the
end of The Odyssey seemed to me unfair
at first reading, back when I was in my teens, and it
seems so still; and that my brain was addled early in
life by Robert Graves' The Greek Myths.
The result of my rather feverish period of writing is
the book that has now appeared before you.
I wonder if my fellow participants in The Myths
series found the recreation of their own chosen myth
as hard to do as I initially found mine? I hope not.
But I do hope they found it as rewarding. Writing The
Penelopiad allowed me not only to revisit an
ancient and powerful tale, but also to explore a few
dark alleyways in the story that have always intrigued
me. I look forward to the other books in the series,
and to seeing how the members of what by now has become
a large group of writers have handled their chosen material.
And I'll offer up an egg at the crossroads to Hermes, god of
articulation and patron of pathways both neural and other. He or
somebody like him opened a door for me when all doors seemed closed;
and, as protector of travellers, mental travellers included, he helped
me make the necessary connections. In addition to that, he has been
very good company along the way.
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Publishing simultaneously with Atwood's The
Penelopiad are A Short History of Myth,
an introduction to the series by Karen Armstrong; and
Weight, a retelling of the myth of
Atlas and Heracles, by Jeanette Winterson. The series
has a home online at www.TheMyths.ca
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