You're right, you shouldn't take it personally. But you should expect your
ideas to be challenged. I hope you get your doctorate and a first column,
or whatever the term is in Australia, even if I think that aspiring to
write an epic at the current nexus is pretty dumb, but really, do you think
that the epic, unique among genres, is devoid of political content?
Although it's been for a long time a political instrument?

Both Jung and Campbell were notoriously antisemitic. This is hardly news.
Jung volunteered to help the Third Reich set up its psychoanalytic network.
Their theme is that all stories are the same story, regardless of cultural
context. This is interesting and useful to the folks you mention because it
provides a sure-fire formula. But I think that in actuality we become
profoundly involved with the protagonists of whatever genre because their
peculiarities remind us of the universality of difference.

You might want to look at the first chapter of Victor Turner's _The Forest
of Symbols_. Contra Jung/Campbell, he carefully deconstructs the symbolism
of a particular tree in a particular African culture, demonstrating that a
given artifact is in fact experienced as a different artifact in different
cultures. An anthropological perspective. Required reading in most classes
I teach, regardless of subject.

Wide horizons don't generally flourish, but that aside, the Heaney
translation is pretty bad work. Try the original.

It's usually considered really bad manners to speak about people in their
presence as if they aren't there. I'd suggest if you wish to speak about
someone in the third person you do it backchannel.

Mark "this guy" Weiss

At 06:06 PM 2/22/2001 +1100, ALI ALIZADEH wrote:
>Dear Wystan
>
>It got to me that this guy is calling this topic (in his words)"really
dumb". I
>shouldn't take it personally, but I have already given three years to this
project,
>and there'll be more to come; in fact, if I succeed, I'll probably stick
to it
>forever. I find it very sad that he thinks the Jung/Campbell take on the
hero myth
>is only interesting " to those who get off on the fact that We're All the
Same (for
>Wagner the We was Germans) except for those pesky Jews". Why would he
inject anti-
>semetism into this? This is ugly AND incorrect. It won't take too much to
work out
>that the hero myth is/has always been present in many different culture
(Jewish
>included) and it is found interesting by a lot of people amongst them
Hollywood
>producers, prose-writers, organisers of the Olympics ceremony, poets like
me, and
>the billions of people who go to the movies, read novels and watch sports.
>
>As for advantages of the epic in this day and age, well, just reading
Heaney's
>translation of Beowolf, amongst other contemporary texts, provides an
answer. You
>can compare this with his other works, and see how the form and this
hero-myth has
>expanded and flourished this poet's already wide horizons. But let's see
what the
>group comes up with. I'm sure we'll have a hefty list in a few months time.
>
>Anyhow, as for the original 'cons' of this topic, I think, I can comfortably
>conclude that some people are simply scared of the 'e' word; they think
it's too
>long, too formal and they see it as ideologically flawed. I'm surprised
the charge
>of sexism hasn't come up yet; it was the first one at a uni seminar last
year. I
>also like what David said about epics dwelling on stereotypes and predictable
>endings.
>
>You see, I'd like to think that the epic can be reinvented. It's crazy and
loopy and
>I should be writing a thesis about Derrida or something else instead, (my
choice of
>topic has already harmed my career a few times) but that's all irrelevant
to the
>fact that without the epic there wouldn't be literature as we know it. To
me it's
>that simple.
>
>Ali
>
>
>
>
>Dear Ali,
>wasn't my impression Mark had it in for you, he has it in for epics.
>Indeed, his objections represent one way of fleshing out my own. You are
>happier with David's response, yet his pluses feed as readily into Mark's
>negatives as his minuses.
>
>maybe it would help to move this thread along if you said what it is about
>the genre that seems most useful, attractive at this juncture?
>Or have you already made this clear and I've forgotten?
> Wystan
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: ALI ALIZADEH [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
>Sent: Wednesday, 21 February 2001 2:07 p.m.
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: The epic: pros and cons
>
>
>Dear Mark
>
>I wish you had stayed at the bottom of your canyon. I really do. But then
>again you
>crack me up. Why didn't you stay there? Go on, go back...
>
>I promised myself after a week at the bottom of a canyon that I wouldn't
>enter into any really dumb topics,
>
>Like I said, some people deserve more time alone than others; that means
>YOU.
>Mark, what do you have against me? I've felt your hostility from the minute
>I joined
>the chat group. As it is, I am quite familiar with the rites of passage, and
>I have
>been mentionining it in previous posts. As for Wagner and Nitzche, it's YOUR
>assumption that Jung got his ideas from them, not anyone else's, including
>Jung
>himself. In his autobiography Jung cites Goethe as a significant figure when
>it came
>to developing the archetypes. His relationship with Nitzche was rather
>fleeting.
>
>
>Not in itself very nteresting except to those (like the above-mentioned) who
>get off
>on the fact that We're All the Same (for Wagner the We was Germans) except
>for
>those pesky Jews.
>
>I'm trying not to take any of this personally. The hero myth has inspired
>fascism as
>much as it's isnpired socialism, capitalism, femenism, religion and any
>other human
>phenomenon. Like everything else it's been used, abused, etc. Take the myth
>of Joan
>of Arc in France; she was depicted as a hero by both the Vichy government
>and the
>Resistance during WWII. As for accusing ME of anti-semetism, I'm finding it
>funny.
>I have to say, you're way off the line.
>
>So not a very good defining trait for a genre. It happens that the epic as
>understood in the West was conceived...
>
>the epic was concieved in the East a long time before your Greek
>heritage-makers.
>And that's the tradition that I grew up with. Frankly, I care very little
>for
>the 'origins' of the form because they are absolutely unattainable. I'm more
>interested in its various manifestations.
>
>
>What relevance does this sort of project have to the world as most of us
>know it? Why would any sane human being want to do this now?
>
>It obviously has no relevance to you, and I hate to break the news here; but
>you,
>Mark are NOT the world. I know you may think you are, but...And I didn't
>claim to
>be 'sane' either. And please stop trying to get a reaction out of me by
>offending
>me. It won't work. Now, if you have a serious question about my project,
>feel free
>to ask properly.
>
>Cheers
>Ali
>
>