Mythological Time Research Articles

Der Meistersinger

At the time David Krell refers to in the Grus Gott story lived in the small village of Trachslau in Switzerland. The - should say originan - story had to do, not with professional fame but with die spread of village news.' diought the Scott sound ofthe Swiss pronunciation of die greeting meant that everybody in die region knew had moved into Trachslau and were welcoming me by name. When got the facts straight about the greeting found that could respond properly and Swissly simply by saying back my name to the folks on the road. find my version much less worthy of repeating tiian David's. For die purposes of this conversation will say tiiat my version of the story is less mythological than his and very likely more factual. And it is also less interesting, less invested widi spirit, less satisfying in several ways. Mine, after all, only speaks of bad hearing, a silly mistake and die effectiveness of lines of village communication. David's addresses Hubris, Error, and Resentment against God. can say from the outset that bore no resentment against such a Creature2 and that although my interest in religion was waning during that period of my life sang in a Zurich church choir and participated fully in die congregation's life. Although more dull and prosaic, die more factual story allows me to recall an experience had that was amusing to me but considerably less than mythological in its meaning. As respond to David's generous observations and hard questions will move, as believe he moves, toward die question of sacrality by way of mythological time and quasitranscendence. The Good Pagan David is less positively moved by JudeoChristian belief than even Holderlin, Schelling, and Hegel. He goes to archaic Greek religion and sensibility, to blood sacrifices untranslated by either Jewish law or Christian redemption, to die pull, the draw, die gravity, and in his wonderful prose, die excitement of death, birth, continuous loss, creation, narration, and again, death. It's not God, it's Ananke, figured without sense or unity, figured vaguely by chora in some accounts, and perhaps (he doesn't say) by the continuous but always past mating of Ge and Uranos. am now talking with a good pagan, even if he does not say his prayers frequently during die day, or offer sweet smelling incense regularly to the gods, or offer his first-born for sacrifice. That is, David is a good pagan now who does not live in a sacred world tiiat would be possible probably only without modern science and me many lineages spawned so long ago by our pagan heritages. Or should say, pagan origins? will come back to the question of origins. The Importance of Being Earnest Scott's levity is always in earnest ___ Although believe that statement is not a criticism, hear in it a caution: be careful not to think of lightness of mind and absence of a spirit of seriousness as necessarily lacking fervor and constructive intention. It's not cynicism, and skepticism does not appropriately describe it any more than cynicism or skepticism adequately describes Silenic wisdom when it is woven into Greek drama. Lacking the spirit of seriousness and creatively appropriating the teaching of Silenus, rather, give an opening to a quality of affirmation that Nietzsche found unavailable in traditional JudeoChristian wisdom. In King Midas 's presence, captive and unfree, Silenus was certainly earnest. And we should be earnest too, given the stakes of Western spiritual bondage. There are many strands in die bond - moral, religious, political. The one will speak of is scientific, so that can respond to an issue tiiat believe hovers throughout David's paper: bondage to science (i.e. the death of the mythological). I Was Born OK the First Time. The importance of being earnest is limited. We are talking about basic sensibilities that constitute predispositions to some intentions, values, meanings, and practices and not to others. …

Iphigeneia in Philadelphia

Abstract A long-misinterpreted Roman provincial coin shows a mythological scene in order to make a remarkable claim: that Iphigeneia, Orestes, and Pylades fled from the land of the Taurians to Philadelphia in Lydia (modern Alaşehir in Turkey), and there set up their stolen image, identified by the Philadelphians as their patron Artemis Anaitis. This Persianized goddess was generally depicted as an Anatolian image almost identical to the Artemis of Ephesos; it is the bond between the two goddesses that may be the immediate basis of this coin's alliance with Ephesos, but the long-term intent may have been to form a voting bloc within the provincial association of cities. Philadelphia, though a relatively recent foundation, often allied itself with the oldest and greatest of Asia's cities and petitioned Roman emperors in order to raise its rank to rival that of its eminent neighbor Sardis. With this coin Philadelphia sought not only to gain allies, but, by grounding its history in the depth of mythological time, to advance itself among its rivals in Roman Asia.

Liver regeneration.

Liver regeneration after the loss of hepatic tissue is a fundamental parameter of liver response to injury. Recognized as a phenomenon from mythological times, it is now defined as an orchestrated response induced by specific external stimuli and involving sequential changes in gene expression, growth factor production, and morphologic structure. Many growth factors and cytokines, most notably hepatocyte growth factor, epidermal growth factor, transforming growth factor-alpha, interleukin-6, tumor necrosis factor-alpha, insulin, and norepinephrine, appear to play important roles in this process. This review attempts to integrate the findings of the last three decades and looks toward clues as to the nature of the causes that trigger this fascinating organ and cellular response.

Tanaina Tales from Alaska by Bill Vaudrin

Reviews 183 — are some “of the most eloquent tributes to woman that can be found in fiction” (p. 56). The myths surrounding Sacajawea are examined by David Remley; mis­ cegenation in popular western literature is the subject of an interesting study by Caren J. Deming, and Frances W. Kaye finds Hamlin Garland puzzling as an American male feminist writer, concluding he “was unable to come to terms with the question of woman’ssexuality” (p. 136). Several essays address the effect the distortion of truth has upon women: John Murphy, Wister’s Virginian and Cather’s My Antonia; Catherine D. Farmer, Rolvaag’s Giants in the Earth', Joseph J. Wydeven’s focus on Wright Morris’s Plains Song for Female Voices, and good essays on Jean Stafford, Mari Sandoz, Constance Rourke (on whom we have little good criticism), Eudora Welty, Mary Austin, and an almost unknown American Indian poet, Paula Gunn Allen. Here too is Frances M. Malpezzi’sview of Frank Waters’s The Woman at Otowi Crossing, a sympathetic portrait of Helen Chalmers based upon the life of a Baptist minister’s daughter at the beginning of the Atomic Age, and Kathleen L. Nichols’s assessment of Agnes Smedley’s autobiographical novel, Daughter of Earth. There are Sue Mathews’sinterviews with Dorothy Johnson and A. B. Guthrie, Jr., in which Guthrie poses the question, it seems to me, that is the central theme of this whole splendid volume: “I wonder how many men would have gone west had they been women?” (p. 124). It is inevitable that a collection as large as this should be somewhat uneven in quality, but there is enough real excellence to make it worth the attention of those interested in the subject. The format lends itself to easy use, and the book has good readable type. A marvelous photograph of Kitty Tatsh and friend doing the high kick on a rock over-hanging a great canyon is included, courtesy of the Yosemite National Park Collection. The photo was taken in the early 1890s or 1900s. Other good photos from the Nebraska State Historical Society add to the value of the volume. DORYS CROW GROVER East Texas StateUniversity Tanaina Tales from Alaska. By Bill Vaudrin. With an introduction by Joan B. Townsend. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1981. xxxii + 127 pages, $3.95). The stories and song-texts of Alaska’s Aleuts, Eskimos and Indians have not lacked for recorders. Beginning with the Russian, Father Veniaminov, and continuing through Edward Nelson, Franz Boas, Frank Golder, Diamond Jenness, and John R. Swanton — to name only a few — the list is impressive. Bill Vaudrin, whose Tainana Tales from Alaska has recently been re-issued by the University of Oklahoma Press, was in distinguished company. 184 Western American Literature Vaudrin, himself an American Indian (a Chippewa from Minnesota), came to Alaska in the 1960s to study creative writing at Alaska Methodist University (now Alaska Pacific). He went to live among the Tanaina, Atha­ bascan Indians who had migrated from the Kenai Peninsula, at Pedro Bay and Nondalton where he began to write down the stories that some of the older Indians still remembered. He also visited Eklutna and Tyonek, villages nearer to Anchorage where the university was located. Although Vaudrin was not trained as an anthropologist and did not learn the Tanaina language, he was a good listener and a trained writer and he “tried to say what I think they were trying to say— about life and how life was.” Had Vaudrin been better trained, he might well have included the words Dena’ina Sukdu’a as part of his title, the more correct version of Tanaina Tales, as used by Joan Broom Townsend in another collection. Townsend has supplied a brief, scholarly introduction to Vaudrin’sbook. According to Townsend, the Dena’ina tell basically two different kinds of stories: historical narratives, and tales (sukdu) of a mythological time when animals and humans changed forms at will, intermarrying and having chil­ dren, a time when strange and wonderful things happened. All of Vaudrin’s tales belong to the latter classification. Vaudrin’sbook makes for lively and entertaining reading. All of the tales are concerned with animals indigenous to...

The culture of race in middle‐class Kingston, Jamaica

This contribution to the understanding of race as a cultural phenomenon in the Caribbean analyzes the reality created by a racial terminology that has bewildered observers by its many terms and their uses. The analysis shows that race symbolizes mythological time and thereby anchors in the past a belief in the fragmented nature of society.