melodious arrangement of words” (Bowra, 1962:13). Bowra concludes that such
primitive song is the basis for poetry and that:
...the primitive song-man feels within himself an eruptive,
domineering force which he must release upon others. He wishes
to exert an influence, to impose a special vision, to create in
others a state of mind which is more than understanding or
sympathy and implies some subordination to his will ... he wishes
to dominate his hearers mentally and emotionally and force them
to identify themselves with him and his subject (Bowra, 1962:254-
255).
The ideas expressed by Eliade in his seminal study Shamanism: Archaic Techniques
of Ecstasy (1964), agree with those of Bowra and, further, suggest that in all
probability the pre-ecstatic experience of the shaman constituted one of the
universal sources of lyric poetry and mythopoeic literature (Eliade, 1964:510-511).
Chapters 7, 8 and 9 in Bowra’s work: The Human Cycle, Primitive
I magination and Myth and Symbol, respectively, essentially describe the human
confrontation with birth, growth, maturity, decay and death against a sense of
omnipresent gods and spirits that contextualizes human life to the unseen world
(Bowra, 1962:166). Bowra moves on to describe the quest of the “poetical
imagination” to seek transcendent realities (Bowra, 1962:191-192), and to the
acceptance of certain elements as being time-limited [ mundane] while others are
outside of time [ paradisaical] (Bowra, 1962:218-219). This is a reflection in archaic
humans of what Lewis-Williams termed the Great Transition (2002:40), the
transition from participation mystique to egoic knowing, of the polarization of the
divine and the mundane, and that has been developed, metaphorically, through the
major spiritual and religious narratives of humanity, the great archetypal theme of
separation and of a longing to return to a more perfect state and abode. That
archetypal structuring element of polarization, of schism can be found in the works
of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung and is reflected in the great philosophical traditions
such as Gnosticism and Kabbalah, in fact, it seems to influence most human
thought. However, it also acts as a marker for the beginning of egoic or self-
reflective fantasy and reverie as a component of the human mind, and the
beginning of the storytelling imperative and mythopoeic consciousness.
The great mythopoeic writers can be seen to hold this theme or motif as
central to their thinking, take as an example this meditation by the writer D. H.
Lawrence: