Odnośniki
|
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
the meaning of what was said was of much, much lesser import than the
efficacy of uttering the words. And Eliot valued Lévy-Bruhl precisely be-
cause he did not try to explain rituals away but concentrated on the study
of mentality and the efficacious processes of ritual performance instead.
85
Jeremy MacClancy
As Manganaro argues, Eliot s poet was modeled on Lévy-Bruhl s medi-
cine-man: a figure who unites social power and transcendence . . . be-
cause his channelling of mystical participations is instrumental to the social
formations and maintenance of the tribe (1986: 415). On this vision po-
ets used primitive means for civilized, but conservative ends. As influen-
tial upholders of orthodoxy, they acted as powerful participants in society.
As self-elected spokespersons, one might say they pretended to constitute
a government of the tongue.
It was The Waste Land and its notes which first brought The Golden Bough
to the attention of so many lovers of literature. But it seems it was Yeats
who first realized the literary potential of Frazer s vade-mecum to myth.
Yeats s reading and use of Frazer became a key stimulus both to much of
his poetry and to his evolving vision of humans place in the world. In his
own words, The Golden Bough has made Christianity look modern and
fragmentary. To replace the creed in which he had been reared, Yeats
drew on comparative mythology, theosophy, occult mysticism, and as-
trology. He wanted to reconstruct (more accurately, invent) the suppos-
edly common, age-old matrix of cosmological experiences which preceded
Christianity. This matrix included visions, spiritual experiences, the pres-
ence of the miraculous (i.e., the interruption of supernatural forces into
ordinary life), and the evocation of collective memory through the power
of symbolism. Within this scheme spirits still inhabited sacred places within
the landscape, while the modern performance of ritual magic or the stag-
ing of séances held the promise of reviving and reintegrating sections of
his matrical world, a world where everything, ultimately, was stitched
together in a grand, cosmic unity.
Frazer s compendia provided Yeats s poetry and projects with greater
comparative scope and historical depth, and helped enable his more
universalist generalizations. The profusion of examples he supplied
strengthened Yeats s conviction in the maintenance of continuity amidst
constant change over the course of eons. The Golden Bough also gave him a
storehouse of compelling images (e.g., the scapegoat, the king, the prophet,
the priest, the magician) and actions (e.g., sacrifice, initiation, incarna-
tion) as well as narratives capable of arousing powerful emotion. Further-
more, since Yeats believed in the power of the word or the symbol to
evoke an otherwise almost inaccessible reality then, according to John
Vickery, The Golden Bough offered him another perspective on the magi-
cal power of language to create a world of concrete immediacy. Follow-
ing this line of thought, poetry had the enchanting potency to revive the
forgotten, make the past present, and the unconscious conscious.
86
Anthropology
For Yeats, however, Frazer was more a facilitator than an innovator.
The poet was already well-versed in folklore before he encountered The
Golden Bough and, unlike Frazer, actually conducted fieldwork, whether
collecting folk beliefs in the west of Ireland or participating in Soho séances.
Moreover, Yeats s approach was syncretic rather than comparative and he
cleaved to a cyclical, not a linear, theory of history. Denying the myth of
progress, he strove for the revival of magic, whose validity would be
scientifically confirmed, he believed, by spiritualism.
An integral part of many of Yeats s projects were their potentially na-
tionalist dimension and an integral part of that dimension was its exploi-
tation of folklore. For Yeats, transcribing folk tales from locals was not just
a rare remaining opportunity to record the traces, among a European peo-
ple, of primitive beliefs in spirits and the efficacy of magic. It was also of
national cultural significance, as this material, appropriately deployed, could
feed a nationalist myth. Through the hidden power of such a myth, a
cultural renewal could be brought about, so invigorating a spiritual ren-
aissance. On this reading, anthropology and cognate disciplines had es-
sential roles to play in one s encounter with oneself, one s nation, and
even the cosmos.
Perhaps the wildest of all the modernist interpreters of the anthropologi-
cal message was Robert Graves, whose deeply idiosyncratic approach can be
seen to be as magical in style as the material he discusses. A man so learned
in the subject he can justly be called an amateur anthropologist, Graves had
read deeply in the work of the Cambridge ritualists and of W. H. R. Rivers,
an anthropologist and doctor who helped introduce Freud to the English
public and was a personal friend of the poet. Indeed the central tenets of
Graves s conception of poetry are essentially quasi-anthropological, though
of a rather peculiar bent. In The White Goddess he explicitly stated his belief
in a universal primordial matriarchy which was overturned by the agents of
a patriarchal system. The goddess of passion and fertility was ousted by a
god of reason. This change led humans to ignore the world of nature and its
seasonal rituals, and to emerge from prehistory and myth into historical
time. To Graves, this loss is the predicament poets must overcome, by striv-
ing to reconnect with the goddess, the true Muse, and with the original
idiom of poetry, myth. Though the White Goddess is as dangerous as she
is attractive, as able to kill as to vivify, it is the duty of a poet to worship
her.
Graves thought the poetic impulse arose from conflict, whether caused
by psychic factors or external ones impinging on the self. He claimed that
when a poet was unable to resolve a conflict logically, he hypnotized him-
87
Jeremy MacClancy
self as witch doctors, his ancestors in poetry, had done. In this trancelike
state, similar to that of a waking dream, all inhibitions were lost, all
defenses lowered, and words were able to exercise their full magical power.
Committed poets had to cultivate this state of self-hypnotism if they wished
to produce true poems. By means such as these Graves wished to redis-
cover and expose the magical principles underlying poetry, otherwise lost
since the fall of the goddess. For him magic, like love, was an essential
component of the imaginative life, disbelief in either diminishing the quality
of one s life experience.
Graves made an exceptionally detailed study of The Golden Bough be-
cause it chimed so well with beliefs he already held: for instance in seeing
the world of magic and fairies as identical with those of children and of
poets. Frazer s works both bolstered Graves s ideas and helped him extend
them much further: for instance, the mythic resonances of individuals
actions; the use of comparative mythology to create metamyths; the futil-
ity of religious dogmatism, since Christianity was but a transformation of
Judaism which was but a transformation of paganism, whose ghosts con-
tinued to harass and terrify Jews and Christians. Yet Graves s theories were
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
zanotowane.pldoc.pisz.plpdf.pisz.plblacksoulman.xlx.pl
|
