Myth construction &

Wed Feb 14 23:49:54 CST 2001

"Only Providnece Creates." --V. 

Mmimesis: 

basic theoretical principle in the creation of art. The word
is Greek and means "imitation" (though in the sense of
"re-presentation" rather   than of "copying"). Plato and
Aristotle spoke of mimesis as the re-presentation  of
nature. According to Plato, all artistic creation is a form
of imitation: that which really exists (in the "world of
ideas") is a type created by God; the concrete  things man
perceives in his existence are shadowy representations of
this ideal type. Therefore, the painter, the tragedian, and
the musician are imitators of an imitation, twice removed
from the truth. Aristotle, speaking of tragedy,  stressed
the point that it was an "imitation of an action"--that of a
man falling from   a higher to a lower estate. Shakespeare,
in Hamlet's speech   to the actors,   referred to the
purpose of playing as being " . . . to hold,   as 'twere,
the mirror up to nature." Thus, an artist, by skillfully
selecting and presenting his material, may purposefully seek
to "imitate" the action of life. 

An ideal type is a conceptual construct (Gedankenbild) which
is neither historical reality nor even the  "true" reality.
It is even less fitted to serve as a schema under which a
real situation or action is to be subsumed as one instance.
It has the significance of a purely ideal limiting concept
with which the real situation or action is compared and
surveyed for the explication of certain of its significant
components. 

Max Weber, "'Objectivity' in Social Science and Social
Policy," in Max Weber on the Methodology of the Social
Sciences, p.84.

The myth of the street, of tourists

Benny and Angel construct a myth. But that myth is not based
on anything   "very permanent" and is thus "rickety and
transient." 

In Chapter Six the boys "hammered together a myth." 
Though Benny and Angel have "fertile imaginations," 

Because it wasn't born of fear of thunder, dreams,
astonishment at how the crops kept dying after harvest and
coming up again every spring or anything else very
permanent, only a temporary interest, a spur-of-the-moment
tumescence, it was a myth rickety and transient as the
bandstands and the sausage-pepper booths of Mulbery Street. 
V.146

Herbert Stencil's concern with meaning in history is not
only a matter of his sensing some conspiracy, it is 
(Graves, Adams, Frazer...) a matter of constructing a myth.  

A myth about himself, his father, his mother, His-story. 

Eigenvalue says  that  Stencil is an interpreter, one "who
must go about grouping  the world's random caries into
cabals." Yet Eigenvalue's perception  of  randomness is
itself an interpretation. One that stresses the accidental
nature of events. We could say that accident vs. conspiracy
& cabal
can be viewed as opposite possibilities for interpreting
history.  

Eigenvalue's view of history is of a fabric that is gathered
in such a way as to obstruct the vision of those who might
be at the bottom of a fold. 

The inability to perceive continuity prevents the discovery
of  "any sense of continuous tradition." 

W/O a continuity, a tradition, the tourist  creates "a false
memory, a phony nostalgia."

The peculiar nature of an historical process
creates a dilemma for Herbert in his efforts to understand
his relationship to v.

His dilemma is influenced by his father's view of the
Situation. 

Sidney Stencil's musing after speaking with Carla Maijstral
suggest the overwhelming nature of The Situation, We get an
early look at P's "THEY" (so while we have Conrad, Melville,
Poe, indeed, we should add Hemmingway's "They."  

They-whoever "they" were-seemed to be calling the tune. The
Situation is always bigger than you, Sidney. It has like God
its own logic and its own justification for being, and the
best you can do is cope. I'm not a marriage counselor or a 
priest. Don't act as if it were a conscious plot against
you. Who knows how many thousand accidents--a variation in
the  weather, the availability of a ship, the failure of the
crop brought all these people, with their separate dreams
and worries, here to this island and arranged them in this
alignment? Any Situation takes shape from events much lower
than the merely
human. 

V combines powerful and violent extremes and opposites.

The Situation is political and historical, but not 
limited to an interpretation of just local events.
Sidney hints at possibly ominous interpretations of the
situation and V. in his writing but does not come to any
final conclusion. 

Herbert anxiously picks up the term "The Situation"  and all
the clues to carry on his search. Unlike his father he was
not involved in the historical and political events. So  his
approach to The Situation is mediated by his own lack of 
involvement, ignorance,  fantasy, fetish, i.e.,
impersonation, disguise.