I’ve been discussing the role that story and the imagination plays in education. Does the imagination fuel delusional, idolatrous phantasy, or does it cultivate the fertile ground of meaning for the reception of truth? If you haven’t done so already please read the first part of this series here so you’re up to speed.
Since we are people who went through modernity, our capacity for story-telling us been somewhat tarnished. There has been a resurgence in the power of story, we see this in the content Hollywood is pumping out, the rise of the graphic novel industry, and cultural phenomena like the Harry Potter craze and the Marvel cinematic universe. For all that, there remains a disconnect between the power of story and the cultivation of the human person. Martin Heidegger uses the word “thrown” to describe Man (Dasein): man is thrown into life with no understanding of what’s going on. As we grow up we are told stories. These stories–for better or for worse–provide the context and metanarrative that connect all the seemingly disparate aspects of life.
Language and Culture
Language is formational; unfortunately, we believe that language is primarily information. At the impersonal level, information is about a product or event, and it is understood as a subject-object dichotomy. At the personal (or interpersonal) level, an example of this is the emotional state of a friend or spouse understood as information about that person. Martin Buber’s important work I and Thou lays out the difference between how one speaks about objects and persons, and we often speak of the latter as the former. This is accomplished through the subjection of a person to objective language, or we can say that the person is reduced to information. The Thou becomes an It, an object among objects. Is the complex interiority of one’s spouse or friend so easily reduced to information? Is talking to them congruent with a Google search? The problem with information is that it can be manipulated and mass produced and, therefore, cheapened. We have an unfathomable amount of information at our fingertips, yet we discard it like detritus, it has very little value for us. Just search the internet for a topic and you’ll be overwhelmed with the amount of information that you can access. And for all of that, it has become cheap. The quality of what we read and listen to matters just as much as the quantity. Goodness, truth and beauty one must slowly work at. So as we observe, as we read, or watch or listen to something we are being engaged, we’re being formed–or informed–by everything. We don’t live in a vacuum–this is the “myth” of pure objectivity. As human persons we live in a culture. We can’t have culture without language because culture embodies language. We speak and live and act within a network of relations. So the quality of our words matter. Our stories matter because they’re the stories of ourselves. These stories must have good form, good patterns. Wallace Stegner says that we live by forms and patterns, and if the patterns are wrong, we live badly. Good stories provide us with good patterns. We interiorize them; we assimilate them. And these shape the Christian imagination in a way that allows one to receive truth and gaze on beauty in a way that modernity does not allow. They will cultivate in us the imaginative framework and cultural-linguistic to live in the cosmos imbued with God’s glory. And this will save us from seeking information about God, and instead acquire the knowledge of God.
This is why we need to take responsibility in shaping the imagination, not only of children but catechumens and ourselves.
The Imaginative Faculty
Now I would like to approach the imaginative faculty in two ways. The first from the mythic, the second from realist fiction. I don’t wish to enter into the fantasy-realist fiction argument. First of all, one has to paint with wide bush strokes to speak about either of these. I’ve come across stories that have an element of both, and often great stories defy categorization. So for a more edifying pursuit I will leave this contentious point behind.
For the purposes of this post, I will limit mythic literature to ancient mythology. The fantasy literature of the past century (give or take a few decades) are often a retelling or reshaping of the great stories from humanities distant pass. Tropes and patterns are repeated, and sometimes large portions of stories and fables are retold–this is found in Father Deacon Nicholas Kotar’s work (I highly recommend checking out his Raven Son series), which is heavily influenced by Slavic and Russian folklore, and Andrzej Sapkowski’s The Witcher books which are based on Polish folklore. To go without saying, Tolkien and Lewis were incalculably indebted to mythology. At some point I may get more into Tolkien’s Legendarium, if the need arises. For now the mythic will be solely the primordial and ancient stories that have been told and retold, reshaped and transmitted for millennia.
For those coming into the Orthodox tradition, there is a need to understand myth. Not myth as something false but in the ancient understanding. Mythology (or just simply myth as ritual participation) is a body of stories that grew out of and simultaneously aided in the creation of cultures. They provided meaning and coherence to the cosmos, cultures, and the individual person. They were often seen as a connection to the eternal or divine. The obsession with historical veracity of the modern age rendered these ancient stories as false, and science was elevated to supreme knowledge. Yet we are still drawn to listening to and telling stories. Humanity has an innate capacity for weaving a tale, we are homo narrans after all. As I previously mentioned, the stories we tell are stories about ourselves, our place in the cosmos, and our relationship with each other and the Divine. Mythology reaches all the way back to primitive culture, to ancient man, that’s why these stories resonant with us and are retold ad infinitum.
Mythic Literature
My approach to mythic literature will be through St. Basil the Great. In one of his lesser known works titled Address to Young Men on the Right Use of Greek Literature, the saint responds to any concerns that one may have with reading non-Christian literature.
Into the life eternal the Holy Scriptures lead us, which teach us through divine words. But so long as our immaturity forbids our understanding their deep thought, we exercise our spiritual perceptions upon profane writings, which are not altogether different, and in which we perceive the truth as it were in shadows and in mirrors. Thus we imitate those who perform the exercises of military practice, for they acquire skill in gymnastics and in dancing, and then in battle reap the reward of their training. We must needs believe that the greatest of all battles lies before us, in preparation for which we must do and suffer all things to gain power. Consequently we must be conversant with poets, with historians, with orators, indeed with all men who may further our soul’s salvation. Just as dyers prepare the cloth before they apply the dye, be it purple or any other color, so indeed must we also, if we would preserve indelible the idea of the true virtue, become first initiated in the pagan lore, then at length give special heed to the sacred and divine teachings, even as we first accustom ourselves to the sun’s reflection in the water, and then become able to turn our eyes upon the very sun itself.
As God is a consuming fire, so too was early Christianity a conflagration of ancient culture. The Gospel sparked this fire that spread throughout the Greco-Roman world and burned away anything that was anti-Christ, and what remained was transformed for the glory of God. Reading the Fathers of the first few centuries, one notices that many of them engaged with pagan philosophy and literature, while some rejected it wholesale (like Tertullian). Over time the Church assimilated and Christianized the pagan world. Since Christianity grew out of this culture, naturally it would be the language that the Church used to convey the Gospel. Typology became a tool not only to interpret the Hebrew scriptures to see Christ but also to find foreshadowings of Christ in pagan myths. The works of Homer, Virgil and others–along with the mysteriological religious context–provided the fertile ground where the Logos could take root, grow and bear fruit.
In the West one reads in the works of Boethius, Monmouth, Dante and Chaucer the assimilation of the cultural inheritance of the ancient world. Especially in the latter two writers, it’s remarkably evident that they took up what was given and reworked the mythic into their own stories. The geography of Hell as described by the Italian poet is influenced by Virgil and Homer. The characters that populate the scenes are culled from the pages of old. Their stories woven into Dante’s epic resemble that of Ovid’s telling. Even the cosmic order reflects an assimilation of the ancient world with the use of astrological signs. St. Basil wrote that in order to not be blinded by the Sun of Christian truth one must first adjust to the lesser light of pagan literature. By the Middle Ages the assimilation was more or less completed when a passage from Virgil was reinterpreted to be a Messianic prophecy:
Now is come the last age of Cumaean song; the great line of the centuries begins anew. Now the Virgin returns, the reign of Saturn returns; now a new generation descends from heaven on high. Only do you, pure Lucina, smile on the birth of the child, under whom the iron brood shall at last cease and a golden race spring up throughout the world! Your own Apollo now is king!
Virgil, ECLOGUE IV
Commenting on this, Louis Markos in his book From Achilles to Christ says:
…with Virgil, whose Aeneid was so Christian in its themes and virtues that Virgil was considered by many medieval theologians and laymen to be a proto-Christian. Even more, his Fourth Eclogue, with its Isaiah-like celebration of the coming of a divine child who would bring peace and order to the earth, was interpreted by most as a pagan prophecy of Christ.
Furthermore, after the historical figure Alexander the Great died legend began growing up around him. The body of myth and legend enveloping the warrior-king is believed to have helped pave the way for the rise of Christendom, and provided a model for Medieval knighthood.
This is our cultural inheritance. And we have been entrusted to safeguard it. Unfortunately, it is being slowly deconstructed beyond recognition in universities. As (post)modern Christians are beginning to recover this nearly lost heritage, the Church must rise to the occasion–like the Irish monks of old who copied and preserved many ancient texts that would have been lost to the corruption of time–to ensure this inheritance is safe for future generations, and to help cultivate the imaginative framework necessary for the reception of truth. Reading good books and truly immersing oneself in their contents will hone your language and widen your gaze. Good stories provide good patterns by which to live, and they protect from the devaluing of words to information. In an age when information is power and noise permeates everything, perhaps simple, quiet adventures through the lens of a good book will prove immeasurably more beneficial for the Orthodox Christian seeking to live the ascetic life than anything that the contemporary mono-culture has to offer, and this just may be the ultimate rejection of the world.
The third part of this series will focus on realist fiction and the importance of reading both old and new books.
