the real world convey an image of utter detachment, as if she and Julie, and
Alexander and Bagoas, are all that remained of any significance (Sweetman,
1994 :264-5). It could be contended that Mary Renault might more correctly be
understood as having experienced an elsewhere-time rather than an elsewhere-
place. In her Alexander trilogy, of course Mary Renault experienced an ‘elsewhere-
time’ but the detail of her descriptions of the places in that literature, the exactness
strongly indicate the perception of an elsewhere-place, as indeed I have noted with
her experiences at Knossos on page 164.
Another example of mythopoeic perception and narration of life by a
mythopoeic writer can be seen in the work of Jean Genet, whose ostensibly
shamanic predisposition is equalled perhaps only by that of David Malouf. Genet
was also an introverted child who experienced a rich and vibrant imagination and
who had two distinctly different lives, one on the outside and another on the inside.
His consciousness was primitive in the sense that he responded instinctively and
directly to the forces of nature and he was a loner and Genet says of himself that he
“ ... was outside the social order” and wished to transcend the merely human
experience (Knapp, 1968:16). I n the words of Knapp we may discern a form of
traumatic, shamanic initiation through isolation, one that leads to a confrontation
with the I magio Dei, the Jungian Self:
Genet wrote that he had God in his guts. I t became possible for
him to know the numinous, the supernatural, the sacred aspects
of life. Cut off from human companionship, living in utter
isolation, a pariah, he entered into communion with his inner God,
his Self. Thus, each important experience at this point in his life -
his homosexuality, his thieving, his descent to the lowest and most
scorned in the social order, took on a sacred aspect and became a
ceremony (Knapp, 1968:19).
I n prison during the dismal and lonely hours, Genet began to write. Prison,
as place, had a profound experience on Genet and each of the novels that emerged
from the experience should be seen as a psychodrama and the writing of them
equivalent to the psychoanalytic process.
Our Lady of the Flowers, Genet’s first work in poetic prose, was written in
1942 while he was serving his sentence in Fresnes prison, on the brown paper that
the prison authorities provided for the purpose of making bags. Knapp tells us that
one day, when Genet had been taken from his cell to the Paris Law Court, he
returned to find his manuscript gone. He was then called down to the warden’s
office and punished: three days in solitary confinement, and bread and water for