The Return of Myth
by Boris Nad
Forthcoming 2016
“The myth is not fiction, but timeless reality”, wrote Mircea Eliade. “The initial time is a template for all times. What happened once, continues to repeat infinitely many times. It suffices to know the myth to understand the life.” (Gerardus van der Leeuw)
The Return of Myth by Boris Nad evokes a whole series of mythical contents, that hide “dangerous intuitions”: from the Hyperborean myths and the Hellenic myth of Ultima Thule to Nordic myths about Asgard – the City of the Gods and Odin, and that of Atlantis, the ancient East and “barbaric Scythia”, to America, understood also as a mythical place (mythical topos).
It is a unique journey through space and time, through history and “the other side of history”, from prehistory to eternity, a journey marked by the return to the mythical homeland, Ithaca, and marked by the return to the ideal Center.
“Myth, namely – except in special cases of extreme degradation and secularization of tradition and culture – for us, is not a fiction of primitive people, a superstition or a misunderstanding, but a very concise expression of the highest sacred truths and principles, which are “translated” to a specific language of earthly reality, to such an extent that is practically possible. The myth is sacral truth described by popular language.” (Boris Nad)
The Return of Myth is a book of diverse genres, which includes fiction and non-fiction, prose, poems, short stories, and essays related to one thematic backbone: the presence of the Holy in a seemingly desacralized world.
According to the ideas expressed in The Return of Myth, myth confronts history, which puts an end to posthistory. This is a new threat to totalitarianism, whose ambition is to “complete history”.
In a nutshell: its deep roots should be sought in schism, in the western version of Christianity, and then in the Reformation, which, in the end, produced Protestant fundamentalism. Its natural and logical completion is the “consumer civilization”, embodied in today’s USA or EU, which is apparently forming on the American model, and this is a technocracy where man is only the “consumer” or customer, an addition to large technological systems. In this sense, it really is possible to speak of the “end of history” (of course, in a way different from that of Marx or Fukuyama).
“Posthistory” differs from history in the fact that man here really is not a sovereign or lord; he becomes a toy in the hands of unknown forces. In a mature historical period man ruled himself and history was a consequence of his acts, thoughts, passions or will. Now something completely different is looming on the horizon: it is a technocratic utopia, totalitarianism in its final form, and what it actually is and how it will evolve in the future we can discern through the contemporary United States of America or the European Union. Its political expression occurs through Liberalism.
It should be underlined that neither the US nor the EU has been created on the basis of an idea, but instead as a mere market – not out of courage and strength, but out of selfishness, cowardice and weakness. That is, in the last instance, solely the result of the internal capitulation of modern man.
All this implies deep changes in art, and in culture in general, which is gradually turning into a “subculture”, a kind of commercial activity or social engineering which will have the effect of anesthesia on its consumers, or drugs that relieve the utopian fantasies of the masses.
KOMENTARI