Long Journeys (Part I)
Long journeys are the main course of a literary diet. In some cases, the journey is such an epic one that it takes on a life and significance of its own, eventually settling down as the cultural ballast for an entire civilisation.
This was the case with the Hebrews and Moses' sojourn in the wilderness (and to some extent his antecedent in Abraham, whose journey from Ur covered the entire Fertile Crescent and the Nile Delta), with the Greeks and Odysseus' eponymous voyage around the Aegean Sea and parts unknown, and with Aeneas and his flight from Troy (funny version here) which ends up with being the basis for both a legend of Rome and one particular dream of Ancient Britain (vide Geoffrey of Monmouth). It is even the case with Dante's phantasmagoric La Divina Commedia, and its resonances (or reverberations) on Italian culture.
In each case, the idea of the journey is that of a great and complex and divinely-inspired test of the protagonist. By the ordeal of the journey, he is made fit to assume legendary stature as the leader of a people and the founder of a nation. By contrast, modern nation-building myths are not so heroic, and have to be conflated, inflated and insufflated (by the adoring masses, of courses) before they reach the same effective stature (if ever).
The old-fashioned heroic story-telling, I think, was about excellence: the protagonists looked larger because their peers and accomplices and friends (like the Paladins of Roland, or the Fellowship of the Ring) were great in their own right or grew to greatness with them. Since the protagonists excelled even these, they were champions and heroes of even greater merit.
Nowadays, sadly, the norm is to make the protagonist look bigger by tearing down his rivals and diminishing his peers. It is all very depressing.
This was the case with the Hebrews and Moses' sojourn in the wilderness (and to some extent his antecedent in Abraham, whose journey from Ur covered the entire Fertile Crescent and the Nile Delta), with the Greeks and Odysseus' eponymous voyage around the Aegean Sea and parts unknown, and with Aeneas and his flight from Troy (funny version here) which ends up with being the basis for both a legend of Rome and one particular dream of Ancient Britain (vide Geoffrey of Monmouth). It is even the case with Dante's phantasmagoric La Divina Commedia, and its resonances (or reverberations) on Italian culture.
In each case, the idea of the journey is that of a great and complex and divinely-inspired test of the protagonist. By the ordeal of the journey, he is made fit to assume legendary stature as the leader of a people and the founder of a nation. By contrast, modern nation-building myths are not so heroic, and have to be conflated, inflated and insufflated (by the adoring masses, of courses) before they reach the same effective stature (if ever).
The old-fashioned heroic story-telling, I think, was about excellence: the protagonists looked larger because their peers and accomplices and friends (like the Paladins of Roland, or the Fellowship of the Ring) were great in their own right or grew to greatness with them. Since the protagonists excelled even these, they were champions and heroes of even greater merit.
Nowadays, sadly, the norm is to make the protagonist look bigger by tearing down his rivals and diminishing his peers. It is all very depressing.
Labels: Journey, Legends, Literature, Myth
etched with acid at 3:34:00 pm
4 Comments:
Three Kingdoms and Water Margin... no substantial journeys involved in the storyline, I think? Of course, Journey to the West is a different matter.
I think 'substantial' is a matter of relativity. You could drop the entire scope of the travels of Aeneas and Odysseus into a space the size of China and have plenty left over.
Should I say then that journeys are not the backbone of the plot? Come to think of it, neither does the Iliad.
Well, obviously long journeys are not necessarily the backbone of any plot. But the idea of a journey, whether in time or space, is the backbone of the heroic epic; and by extension, the backbone of most cultural epics.
The Iliad is actually a fragment that remains of the entire Homeric myth-cycle. Whether Homer actually existed or not is moot; we know that the story is about a fleet that sailed, that accumulated heroes, that journeyed (after some hiccups) across the Sea.
It is perhaps as Tolkien formulated it: 'There and Back Again'.
Post a Comment
<< Home