Gwendolyn Macewen’s “The Nine Arcana of the Kings” as Creative Myth and Paradigm

Abstract

G W E N D O L Y N M A C E W E N ’ S “ T H E N I N E A R C A N A O F T H E K I N G S ” AS C R E A T I V E M Y T H A N D P A R A D I G M R. F. GILLIAN HARDING-RUSSELL Surrey, B.C. firp -Lhe Nine Arcana of the Kings” provides a synecdochic structure or para­ digm for the creative vision that develops throughout MacEwen’s poetry.1 Here I build on the insights of Margaret Atwood in “ MacEwen’s Muse,” in which that critic develops the idea of a muse-lover who inspires the poetspeaker with a vision of the truth. Also, I make use of the related theory of a poetic creation myth at the centre of MacEwen’s vision. This theory, of course, has recently been re-elaborated by Jan Bartley in Invocations,2 By discovering such a paradigm in “Nine Arcana,” we establish a poetic context for reading MacEwen’s other poetry, especially that written prior to The Shadow-Maker when the muse-lover is still a dominant figure in her poetry.3 As a preliminary step, I will briefly make note of the poem’s origin in Mac­ Ewen’s writing experience of King of Egypt, King of Dreams in order to distinguish generically “The Nine Arcana of the Kings” from the pseudo­ history and as a way of placing the poems in the category of the “creative” as opposed to the “borrowed” myth of history or legend. Finally, I will locate a basic mythological paradigm in “The Nine Arcana of the Kings,” since it contains the thematic core for other structures in MacEwen’s creative vision. MacEwen as a post-modern is essentially deconstructive in her reluctance to maintain a borrowed or fixed mythological apparatus and in her compulsion to disassemble and rearrange elements of several eastern mythologies. Never­ theless, the shifting kaleidoscope of mythologies in her poetry does assume a kinetic and very interesting structure of its own making that repays a close examination of her work. Accordingly, “The Nine Arcana of the Kings” with its Egyptian source finds structural parallels in her poems using Sumerian, Assyrian, or other mythological/historical material. Although the “borrowed myth” builds on traditional material by recon­ structing or deconstructing it, the “creative myth” (which inevitably borrows from mythic or story elements as the understructure of literature) typically reduces its material to archetypal essentials. The invented story of the “crea­ tive myth,” moreover, goes beyond realism, since it is distanced and a specu­ lative element is paradigmatically presented. Although the earlier part of the E n g l is h S t u d ie s in C a n a d a , x iv , 2, June 1988 novel King of Egypt, King of Dreams is primarily borrowed history or myth, the culminative section fictionalizes events in the interest of the spirit of truth rather than historical fact. The poems, which focus on the fictional extension of the pseudo-history, simplify and idealize the story by emphasizing certain underlying archetypal structures. Central to the poems is an incestuous love relationship between the sup­ posedly historical Smenkhare and Meritaton of the novel, which represents a natural drive towards integration. Destructive in its consequences, the royal relationship dramatizes MacEwen’s linguistically and poetically derived theory of the destructive synthesis. According to this theory, which is an extension of the creative word or Logos that shapes reality, an essentially self-referential language becomes inverted so that distinctions are eliminated and an absence remains. The perfect word which articulates reality’s quintessential quality would hypothetically replace that reality, since word or idea and reality would finally coincide. As almost algebraic figures in a poetic equation, therefore, the lovers are simply the prince and the princess in the poems and bear little resemblance to the realistic portraits of MacEwen’s projected history.4 In King of Egypt, King of Dreams, this destructive and incestuous love relationship between the half-brother and sister marks a symbolic outcome of their father’s, the influential pharaoh Wanre...