[MD] The Hero's journey

[david buchanan]

Ron quoted some Campbell:

"The hero adventures out of the land we know into darkness; there he accomplishes his adventure, or again is simply lost to us, imprisoned or in danger; and his return is described as a coming back out of that yonder zone. Never the less-and here is a great key to understanding  of myth and symbol- the two kingdoms are actually one. The realm of the gods is a forgotton dimension of the world we know. And the exploration of that dimension , either willingly or unwillingly, is the whole sense of the deed of the hero."

"There must always remain, however, from the standpoint of normal waking consciousness, a  certain baffling inconsistancy between wisdom brought forth from the deep and the prudence usually found to be effective in the light world. Hence the common divorce of opportunism from virtue and the resultant degeneration of human existence."



Matt said:
You'll have to forgive me, but I don't prefer to use Campbell's formulations.  (He seems a tad too reductionistic to me, though in a different way, I think, than in my avoidance of Jung.  Though, I'm not terribly well-versed in either.)  I rather Harold Bloom and Northrop Frye's, but all four have very similar ways of talking about this phenomena-set.   [Bloom's] ...way of stating the the hero's journey, as one into oneself, I think more effectively let's us see the real problem with seeing a divorce from the heroic quest for Dynamic Quality in the Spirit Realm and "the standpoint of normal waking consciousness": it's the problem of cigarettes burning down into your knuckles. ...


dmb says:
Campbell is talking in symbolic language and he is talking about about psychological events, of course. The other "dimension" that the hero (you) is supposed to explore is the realm beyond static patterns, a real beyond the conceptually known. And I don't understand how Pirsig deflates the hero's journey. I think he embodies it. His biography is a fresh, non-legendary case of what a hero looks like. He doesn't tell us in the book but now we know that he specifically identified with the quest of Orpheus during this "crazy" part of his life. And then there is a rather conspicuous similarity between Pirsig's description of crossing that lonesome valley and Campbell's description of the hero as crossing into a yonder zone of darkness.

"A fragment comes and lingers from an old Christian hymn, "You've got to cross that lonesome valley." It carries him forward. "You've got to cross it by yourself." It seems a Western hymn that belongs out in Montana."No one else can cross it for you," it says. It seems to suggest something beyond. "You've got to cross it by yourself."He crosses a lonesome valley, out of the mythos, and emerges as if from a dream, seeing that his whole consciousness, the mythos, has been a dream and no one's dream but his own, a dream he must now sustain of his own efforts. Then even "he" disappears and only the dream of himself remains with himself in it.

Those who set out on a quest for the holy grail were told that they each much choose their own entry point into the dark forrest. But, but, but as Dorothy learns at the end (spoiler alert!) of her journey, "the two kingdoms (Kansas and Oz) are actually one".