3) Campbell: Mountain Immortals

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IV. Mountain Immortals

 

"I have undertaken a labor," wrote the poet Gottfried von Strassburg,

whose _Tristan_, composed about the year 1210, became the source and model

of Wagner's mighty work, "a labor out of love for the world and to comfort

noble hearts: those that I hold dear, and the world to which my heart goes

out. Not the common world do I mean of those who (as I have heard) cannot

bear grief, and desire but to bathe in bliss. (May God then let them dwell

in bliss!) Their world and manner of life my tale does not regard: its life

and mine lie apart. Another world do I hold in mind, which bears together

in one heart its bitter sweet, its dear grief, its heart's delight and its

pain of longing, dear life and sorrowful death, its dear death and

sorrowful life. In this world let me have my world, to be damned with it,

or to be saved."55

James Joyce, in _A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man_, sounded the

same bold theme in the words of his twentieth-century Irish Catholic hero,

Stephen Dedalus: "I do not fear to be alone. And I am not afraid to make a

mistake, even a great mistake, a lifelong mistake, and perhaps as long as

eternity too."56

It is amazing, really, to think that in our present world with all

its sciences and machines, megalopolitan populations, penetrations of space

and time, night life and revolutions, so different (it would seem) from the

God-filled world of the Middle Ages, young people should still exist among

us who are facing in their minds, seriously, the same adventure as

thirteenth-century Gottfried: challenging hell. If one could think of the

Western World for a moment in terms not of time but of space; not as

changing in time, but as remaining in space, with the men of its various

eras, each in his own environment, still there as contemporaries

discoursing, one could perhaps pass from one to another in a trackless

magical forest, or as in a garden of winding ways and little bridges. The

utilization by Wagner of both the _Tristan_ of Gottfried and the majestic

_Parzival_ of Gottfried's leading contemporary, Wolfram von Eschenbach,

would suggest perhaps a trail; so also the line, very strong indeed, from

Gottfried to James Joyce. Then again there is the coincidence (this time in

two contemporaries) of James Joyce (1882-1941) and Thomas Mann (1875-1955),

proceeding each along his own path, ignoring the other's work, yet marking,

in measured pace, the same stages, date by date; as follows:

First, in the _Buddenbrooks_ (1902) and "Tonio Kroger" (1903) of

Thomas Mann, _Stephen Hero_ (1903) and _Portrait of the Artist as a Young

Man_ (1916) of James Joyce: accounts of the separation of a youth from the

social nexus of his birth to strive to realize a personal destiny, the one

moving from the Protestant side, the other from the Roman Catholic, yet

each resolving his issue through a moment of inspired insight (the

inspiring object, in each case, being the figure of a girl), and the

definition, then, of an aesthetic theory and decision.

Next, in _Ulysses_ (1922) and _The Magic Mountain_ (1924), two

accounts of quests through all the mixed conditions of a modern

civilization for an informing principle substantial to existence, the

episodes being rendered in the manner of the naturalistic novel, yet in

both works opening backward to reveal mythological analogies: in Joyce's

case, largely by way of Homer, Yeats, Blake, Vico, Dante, and the Roman

Catholic Mass, with many echoes more; and in Mann's, by way of Goethe's

_Faust_, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, the Venus Mountain of Wagner, and

hermetic alchemical lore.

Then, in Finnegans Wake (1939) and the tetralogy of _Joseph and His

Brothers_ (1933-1943), both novelists dropped completely into the well and

seas of myth, so that, whereas in the earlier great novels the mythological

themes had resounded as memories and echoes, here mythology itself became

the text, rendering visions of the mystery of life as different from each

other as the brawl at an Irish wake and a conducted visit to a museum, yet,

for all that, of essentially the same stuff. And, as in the Domitilla

Catacomb the composed syncretic imagery broke the hold upon the mind of the

ethnic orders, opening back, beyond, and within, to their source in

elementary ideas, so in these really mighty mythic novels (the greatest,

without question, yet produced in our twentieth century), the learnedly

structured syncrasies conjure, as it were from the infinite resources of

the source abyss of all history itself, intimations in unending abundance

of the wonder of one's own life as Man.

In the earlier volumes of this survey the mythologies treated are

largely of the common world of those who, in the poet Gottfried's words,

"can bear no grief and desire but to bathe in bliss": the mythologies, that

is to say, of the received religions, great and small. In the present work,

on the other hand, I accept the idea proposed by Schopenhauer and confirmed

by Sir Arthur Keith, the intention being to regard each of the creative

masters of this dawning day and civilization of the individual as

absolutely singular, each a species unique in himself. He will have arrived

in this world in one place or another, at one time or another, to unfold,

in the conditions of his time and place, the autonomy of his nature. And in

youth, though early imprinted with one authorized brand or another of the

Western religious heritage, in one or another of its known historic states

of disintegration, he will have conceived the idea of thinking for himself,

peering through his own eyes, heeding the compass of his own heart. Hence

the works of the really great of this new age do not and cannot combine in

a unified tradition to which followers then can adhere, but are individual

and various. They are the works of individuals and, as such, will stand as

models for other individuals: not coercive, but evocative. Wagner following

Gottfried, Wagner following Wolfram, Wagner following Schopenhauer,

follows, finally, no one but himself. Scholars, of course, have

nevertheless traced, described, and taught school around traditions; and

for scholars as a race such work affords a career. However, it has nothing

to do with creative life and less than nothing with what I am here calling

creative myth, which springs from the unpredictable, unprecedented

experience-in-illumination of an object by a subject, and the labor, then,

of achieving communication of the effect. It is in this second, altogether

secondary, technical phase of creative art, communication, that the general

treasury, the dictionary so to say, of the world's infinitely rich heritage

of symbols, images, myth motives, and hero deeds, may be called upon -

either consciously, as by Joyce and Mann, or unconsciously, as in dream -

to render the message. Or on the other hand, local, current, utterly novel

themes and images may be used - as again in Joyce and Mann.

But I shall not anticipate here the adventures in these pages beyond

pointing out that we shall dwell first upon the mystery of that moment of

aesthetic arrest when the possibility of a life in adventure is opened to

the mind; review, next, a catalogue of the vehicles of communication

available to the Western artist for the celebration of his rapture; and

follow, finally, the courses of fulfillment of a certain number of masters,

dealing all with that same rich continuum of themes from our deepest,

darkest past that has come to boil most recently in the vessel of

_Finnegans Wake_. Further, for the giving of heart to those who have

entered into other works with hope, only to find in the end dust and ashes,

the assurance can also be given that, according to the evidence of these

pages, it appears that the soul's release from the matrix of inherited

social bondages can actually be attained and, in fact, has already been

attained many times: specifically, by those giants of creative thought who,

though few in the world on any given day, are in the long course of the

centuries of mankind as numerous as mountains on the whole earth, and are,

in fact, the great company from whose grace the rest of men derive whatever

spiritual strength or virtue we may claim.

Societies throughout history have mistrusted and suppressed these

towering spirits. Even the noble city of Athens condemned Socrates to

death, and Aristotle, in the end, had to flee its indignation. As Nietzsche

could say from experience: "The aim of institutions - whether scientific,

artistic, political, or religious - never is to produce and foster

exceptional examples; institutions are concerned, rather, for the usual,

the normal, the mediocre." And yet, as Nietzsche goes on to affirm, "The

goal of mankind is not to be seen in the realization of sorne terminal

state of perfection, but is present in its noblest exemplars."

 

That the Great Man should be able to appear and dwell

among you again, again, and again [he wrote], _that_ is the sense

of all your efforts here on earth. That there should ever and

again be men among you able to elevate you to _your_ heights:

that is the prize for which you strive. For it is only through the

occasional coming to light of such human beings that your own

existence can be justified.... And if you are not yourself a

great exception, well then be a small one at least! and so you

will foster on earth that holy fire from which genius may

arise.57