being in the presence of another, respectively the reader, the writer or a character
from the mythic novel, as was the case, for example, with John Fowles in The
French Lieutenant’s Woman. Here again, some insight is provided from the readers’
responses; Reader 3 said that the narrative he might be reading becomes the
backdrop of my own mind. Reader 2 said that reading ... occupies a separate
dimension from whatever else might be happening in my life, or the world in
general. Sometimes I read in a distanced, detached, outsider sort of way; at other
times I 'm fully absorbed and transported into another state of being.
The writers experienced a similar altered state, David Malouf calling it open;
Thomas Keneally a state of un-self reflecting grace, and Colleen McCullough
describes it as similar to that state of absorption required in solving a problem.
However, the experience, and thus the literature produced by it, essentially bears
the characteristics of myth and is mythological in its effect in the sense of
presenting a known but hitherto obscured truth. The way that MLC, like certain
forms of religious consciousness, manifests itself in writing is always focused in two
directions, towards the unseen and towards the contemporary social (and personal)
situation. Through imagination and language certain non-obvious entities and
places with special characteristics are introduced, recognized and attend to.
Another characteristic is the claim of those elements to priority and seriousness.
The implication is that a centre of personality that is transcendent to them
activates the characters and places that populate the soul. A central importance of
the act of reading in a state of MLC is its revitalizing effect on the ego identity. All
of the reader respondents in Chapter 4 attested to this; the ‘I ’ that is present in the
literary place does not usually coincide with our usual ego. I ndeed, our usual ego is
only but one character in the imaginal situation, and seems to expand to encompass
the egos of others. As mythopoeic readers, and in the case of writers too, we
interact with characters and experience the milieu and minutiae generated by places
drawn from the most diverse regions of the globe and from all periods of history.
Since the categories of time and space are relative for the psyche, no span of time
or distance in space divides us from our metaphorical kin and so long as they are
recognizable to us along some dimension of our specific socio-cultural or religious
experience, as was the case with myself, and also Mary Renault, in an intense,
inexplicable, unbidden curiosity in Alexander the Great, they may share with us our
here and now.
ron
(Ron)
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