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The Salutary Myth of the Otherworld Journey |
| Section: MODERN THOUGHT / ESSAYS |
| Author: Russell Kirk |
| Publication: The world & I online |
| Issue Date: 10/1/1994 |
| Size: 5,244 Words, 31,337 Characters |
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Journalists, and other folk who ought to know better, frequently employ the word myth as if it were synonymous with falsehood or illusion. That is a vulgar misuse of an important word. Accurately employed, myth signifies a symbolic expression of an important truth--and ordinarily an ancient truth.
Words are tools that break in the hand. The myth, as an instrument to transcend the boundary of mere dry formulas of words, makes its appeal to what we call the moral imagination. As G.K. Chesterton instructs us, all life is an allegory, and we can understand it only in parable. A myth is a tale calculated to rouse the moral imagination. Whether or not founded upon historical events, a myth is meant to convey some enduring perception of the human condition.
In Spain, I am told, certai...
. . .
...ist, scoffed at those images and soon paid a fatal price for their literal-mindedness. Many Americans, in the twenty-first century after Christ, may have to be taught by hard adversity the consequences of rejecting the lessons that lie implicit in these admonitory tales of wonder--tales so very old that we cannot even guess how their unknown original promulgators came by such undying wisdom.
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