All We Know of Heaven

The Yearning for Paradise Lost

as Expressed in Western Culture

"Then the searchlight which had been turned on the world was turned off again and never for one moment since has there been any light that's stronger than this--kitchen-candle..."

"Sometimes--there's God--so quickly!"
- A Streetcar Named Desire

Belle Reve, the childhood home of Stella and Blanche DuBois, symbolizes the background theme to Tennessee Williams's play. The stately mansion counterpoints to the back-streets of New Orleans, a city Stella has given herself over to and Blanche is destroyed by. Belle Reve symbolizes the former paradaisical state the DuBois's were cast from and can no longer return to; forced to make their way without its nurturing presence, they symbolize the modem race that has become separated from its heritage, forgetting its former greatness as it degenerates into animalism.

But Belle Reve is a modem invocation of the paradise archetype; it is preceded by millenia of such images, each suggesting a state that is a part of our psyches but not our present lives, a world we recall but cannot return to. A short catalogue of such images reads like a listing of cultural history: Atlantis, the Elysian fields of the Greeks, Plato's Republic, Ovid's Golden Age, Valhalla of the Norse gods, the Inca's city of gold, Cortez's Eldorado, the Dream Age of the Australian Aborigines, Dante's paradise, Thomas More's Utopia, and into our own time where such images pop up in the Wizard of Oz's Emerald City, Shangrila, or Peter Pan's Never-Never Land. Such a list does not account for the paradise images found in the hundreds of cultural myths, the many manmade concoctions (like More's or Plato's), or the thousands of folktales with such beginnings as one Russian tale typifies: "In the olden times when God's world was still full of wood spirits, witches, and nymphs, when rivers of milk flowed, when the banks of the stream flowed with porridge and baked partridges flew over the fields..." (Thompson 458). In their cultural history, past and present, no group of people is devoid of such images.

And just as consistently, each tale of paradise is accompanied by an account of paradise lost, an instance when through error, hubris, caprice, or evil, man was cast east of Eden into the world of death and labor. Though a listing of such stories here would be exhaustive, mythologist K. Numazawa and others have catalogued hundreds in their work, particularly noting the recurrent image of a time, according to numerous cultures, when sky and earth (or water) were one until a single act separated them, cutting man off from the heavens. Though mythologists and storytellers acknowledge the recurrence of these stories worldwide, little attention has been paid to the state this sense of dislocation has played in each culture. Specifically, man has not forgotten his former state, he has repeatedly sought it, and worldwide cultures abound with themes that reflect our desire to return to, recreate, or in an afterlife reunite with paradise.

Culturally, this is apparent in our repeated images of rebirth, images that suggest the possibility of cleansing ourselves of a fallen state so that we can become pure again. Though in our Christian-dominated society such a theme is most heavily emphasized in the image of Christ, whose death enabled man to return to God's presence, other images suggest the idea in miniature (sacrifice itself comes from the Latin sacrum, meaning "to make whole, or return to a state of wholeness"). The sacrament/communion is a weekly attempt at such renewal, as is the act of confession. The Catholic Lent is a more elaborated version of this action wherein the excesses of Fat Tuesday are followed by the ascetic lifestyle that begins with Ash Wednesday, culminating in the symbolic resurrection of Easter. Our seven-day week (a Jewish instigation) is a manmade attempt (both the month and the year have astrological counterparts; the week does not) to establish a chance for renewal, and each of us is aware of the psychological need to rest from the labors of the week in preparation for the next week's repeating of our schedule. Annually, New Years enables us to close off a portion of our lives in an attempt to let go of one phase so we may begin another; such a condition applies to birthdays as well. On a larger scale, decades, centuries and millenia are times for people to review and renew, symbolizing an imposed state of death and rebirth.

Mythologically, death and rebirth images are found in each culture, whether they be in the person of Tiamat from Babylon, Isis from Egypt, or Persephone/Detneter from Greece. Most cultures contain flood myths wherein the world is cleansed of sin so that the earth may renew itself, and stories of cities so steeped in sin they must be destroyed by a god (Sodom and Gomorrah) are worldwide. The phoenix has popularly symbolized this renewal idea, itself originating from Mespotamia where the first thoughts on reincarnation, central to Indian philosophy, originated. As a last, although certainly not final, example, it is interesting to note that the Aztecs saw life as revolving in 52-year cycles, at which time it could cleanse and renew itself.

That mankind has felt a need to establish a connection with the world from which it has been separated is likewise shown through particular images found in myths, scriptures and folk tales. The mountain, for instance, seen as the object with its base on earth and its apex in heaven that connects the material world with the sacred, has come to symbolize places on the earth where man might commune with god. In our own culture, such an image has come to dominate the Bible: an original, Hebrew name for God in the Old Testament is El Shaddai (God of the Mount); Noah begins the human race again on Mount Ararat; Moses receives the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai; Jesus offers his most famous sermon on a mount and is later crucified at Golgotha (hill of skulls). Such an image is paralleled in Greek culture where the gods reside on Mount Olympus and the muses on Mount Parnassus. Historically, the image comes to us from the Babylonian ziggurat, a manmade construction that aimed at reaching toward and thus bringing man into contact with heaven (the Tower of Babel suggests such a background). Mircea Eliade notes further parallels: "We may recall the Mount Meru of Indian tradition, Haraberezaiti of the Iranians, the Norse Himingbj or, 'the Mount of the Lands' in Mesopotamian traditions, Mount Tabor in Palestine, Mount Gerizim, again in Palestine" (8). The list, again, continues on.

The first millenium was the age of gold: Then living creatures trusted one another: People did well without the thought of ill: Nothing forbidden in a book of laws, No fears,no prohibitions read in bronze Or in the sculpted face of judge and master ...and seasons travelled Through the years of peace The Metamorphoses by Ovid

Nor is the mountain the only image of man's attempt to scale the sky and regain his birthright. As Eliade and others have pointed out, all cultures abound vith images of ropes, ladders, trees, stairs and pillars that serve the same ends as the mountain. Though a listing again would be exhaustive, briefly note the image of Jacob's ladder from the Old Testament, the Universal Tree in the Vedic scriptures from India, the rope that Coyote uses in Native American stories, etc. This does not begin to note the recurrent images of sacred spots where God leaves the heavens and descends to meet man on earth, spots where the world of the sacred is manifest on our soil. The Ark of the Covenant situated in the Holy of Holies is such a place, as, depending on the religion, are various temples, churches, and sacred groves.

Clearly, man has not forgotten his former state but is constantly striving to regain it. Weighed down by the realization of his finitude, he seeks contact with a world, a time, a state that will release him from the bondage of his material existence. Whether that desire is for a return (suggesting the return-to-the-womb archetype), contact in this life, or preparation for a reunion in the afterlife, at some moment man becomes aware of his distance from paradise and begins in earnest to reestablish contact. In short, he undergoes a series of initiations that constitute a journey toward his goal.

Ceremonies of initiation are most readily recognized in established rites of passage that arc socially instituted: birth, baptism, confirmation, marriage, funerals. But in understanding the psychological component of these rites, we recognize their parallels in hundreds of acts throughout our lives. At the root of the word initiation is theLatin initium, "a new beginning" (hence the application to a new' member: initiate). An initiation ceremony is seen as a death and rebirth process wherein the initiate loses a part of his life so that he may be born into a new lifestyle. Thus, the single man or woman gives up the freedoms of single life for the responsibilities and blessings of marriage.

Seen this way, it is apparent that any number of actions can be intiatory. In addition to the previous examples of social occasions that provide chances for rebirth, any instance that gives us a sense of greater understanding, or a realization that we have lost a part of ourselves irrevocably and replaced it with a greater wisdom or understanding, is an initiation. Literature abounds with such tales: the narrator who finds his ideals of love crushed in James Joyce's "Araby," the similar experience of the teen in John Updike's "A&P," the soldier of Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage, the experiences of Huck Finn or Holden Caulfield, the sailor and wedding guest in Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, numerous works by Conrad, etc.; the list is extensive. Such epiphanic moments, albeit watered down, are also the heart of most television dramas and many films wherein the protagonist comes to an understanding of himself or his place in society he did not begin the tale with.

[In the First Age] there was but one religion, and all men were saintly...There were no gods...and there were no demons. The First Age was without disease; there was no lessening with the years; there was no hatred, or vanity, or evil thought whatsoever; no sorrow, no fear. In those times, men lived as long as they chose to live and were without any fear of death. -The Mahabharata

But it is important to note that each initiation is an attempt to bring the initiate into a higher awareness of himself, so that he is continually progressing toward a greater knowledge of his world and his place in it (Eaton 9). Thus, the final ceremony of death allows the disciple to make his ultimate reunion with thesacred. And it is the aggregate collection of these initiations that constitutes a journey, a metaphor that can be applied to our entire existence or an important portion of it. In other words, it is a collection of such experiences that suggests motion or movement; hence, the theme of che journey is the context for these moments of change and insight. Without the gleaned knowledge of these moments, the journey loses meaning.

The journey, then, represents our concrete attempts to attain the paradise state. Even when the journey begins and ends on earthly soil, it is often at some point connected with the divine. The greatest challenge to King Arthur's knights is the quest for the Holy Grail, an object so sanctified that only two knights attain access to it, and only one accompanies it, significantly, in its final ascent into heaven. Also significantly, it is following this failure to keep the Grail on earth that the Round Table is disbanded and Arthur's kingdom destroyed. Similarly, the quest of Jason's Argonauts is for a golden fleece (gold is repeatedly a symbol for the divine) that is found at the end of the world. Related to the journey is the action of the pilgrimage, itself a journey to a holy place or city, such as Mecca, Canterbury or the Ganges River in India. In journeying toward something divine, man attempts to bring the secular and sacred worlds into contact, reunifying the now separate states of earth and sky. Many classical journeys that do not have the divine as their goal nevertheless have divine guidance, as does Odysseus in his return to Ithaca, Aeneas in his founding of Rome, or Dante in his journey through the underworld and up the mountain to God.

After understanding the place the journey plays in connecting man with his former state, it becomes clear the part particular characters play in various cultures. Innocents, tricksters, warriors, shamans, teachers and prophets are different aspects of the hero. Each of these has a twofold quality: first, in some measure they maintain contact with the paradaisical state; secondly, their behavior is meant to initiate travelers into a greater awareness of themselves, thereby providing them with the means whereby they might, like thehero, establish contact with the divine. These heroes differ from other character archetypes in that they directly relate ro our desire to approach a higher level, a level associated with a world not bound by lime and space as ours is. Our attraction is based on our belief that these archetypes can show us something we cannot learn by ourselves.

Jungian pyschologist Joseph L. Henderson has noted how various heroes parallel states of growth (Jung 110-28), but I would modify his structure along the following lines:

THE INNOCENT: In the figure of the innocent is the character who possesses an under-standing granted him by the grace of God. Histoncally, such characters were also known as simpletons, or silly people, words that have different connotations in our time. In the medieval world, both words connoted divine guidance, silly meaning "blessed." As opposed to the traveler who comes to understanding as a result of experience, suffering, and hence, knowledge, the innocent understands intuitively. Thus, he is often a child or childlike, whether that be a figure like Pollyanna or a simpleton like Walt Disney's Goofy, who seems to do the right things in all the wrong ways. In the folktale he is typified by Jack, who stupidly exchanges a cow for a few beans. But Jack's trade produces a beanstalk (which connects heaven and earth) at the top of which he Finds the treasures that enrich his earthly life. A typical tale of an innocent is that of "Our Lady's Tumbler," a 12th-century French legend. This story tells of a tumbler who decides to dedicate his life to the Virgin Mary. Though he is efficient as a tumbler, he is deficient in all the skills of the tnonasterv and unable to worship the Virgin as his brothers are. Thus, while the other monks worship according to monastic precepts, the tumbler can only perform tumbling nicks before a statue of the Virgin. When his comrades hear of his performances, they angrily hurry to catch him in the act. But as they come upon him, ready to seize him, the statue comes to life, and the Virgin gently reaches down and tenderly wipes the face of the tumbler. Thus are we all instructed.

When the Ten Thousand Things are seen in their Oneness, then we return to the Origin Where we have always been -Sengstan

 

THE TRICKSTER: The trickster dominates culture, the character who teaches through deception, tomfoolery, and playfulness. Because of his irreverence and often disrespectful attitude, he is associated with the young teen, the character who challenges the status quo indirectly and subversively. Indeed, the trickster abounds in current teen films (numerous John Hughes films contain trickster characters, from Pretty in Pink to The Breakfast Club) as well as sitcoms wherein teenage children continually attempt to outwit their parents ("Who's the Boss," "Growing Pains," "The Simpsons," etc.). But the true trickster conveys a truth beyond the act of de-ception, showing by his antics a truth that lies behind his actions. Thus Professor Harold Hill of The Music Man gives the citizens of River City, Iowa, a self-respect they had not previously held. Ferns Bueller (another Hughes creation) would teach us that life is to be lived (carpe diem); Pee Wee Herman that the common and the mundane hold special surprises if we apply our imagination to them; Bugs Bunny that the race does not go to the strongest or the meanest, but to the cleverest. The trickster dominates Max Sennett comedies in the form of Chaplin and Keaton (though Harold Lloyd would qualify as an innocent) or in the antics of the Marx Brothers. And on television, he shows up as Lucy, Sgt. Bilko, or Hawkeye Pierce, among others. In classical literature, he is found in Odysseus's deception of Polyphemus, Chaucer's "The Miller's Tale," and Shakespeare's fools. Each of these characters charms us, but each of them also teaches us.

THE WARRIOR: This classic archetype represents a maturation beyond the trickster, the character who does not subvert the system but faces it straight on. While the trickster would ignore the rules (or turn them wittingly against those who make them), the warrior is willingly bound by them, matching his strength against the established boundaries, showing us that it is possible to be good, wise, pure and decent, and still win. Socially, this is recognized as an advance over adolescence as the character is working within established limits but overcoming them through defeat on their own terms rather than subversion. As Joseph Campbell has shown in The Hero with a Thousand Faces, each society needs warriors to show it how to challenge its limitations and defeat them, and our line of warriors stretches from Achilles and Odysseus through Beowuif, Arthur and Lancelot, until we approach the modern warrior, who is more burdened by restrictions but nevertheless heroically fights them. This type is signalled at the birth of the modern age in Hamlet and echoed today in R. P. McMurphy in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (interestingly, because of the nature of his creation, McMurphy also works as a trickster). The twentieth century's sense of despair and hopelessness has expressed itself through warriors more supernatural than their prede-cessors, hence the development of fantastic types like Captain Midnight, Superman, Batman, the Lone Ranger, and so forth.

The wise have one wish left: to know the Whole, the Absolute -Angelus Silesius

THE TEACHER/PROPHET: Teachers are often heroes who have returned from their adventures to instruct other initiates. Now fully integrated into society, they represent the adult type who becomes other-directed, consciously going beyond example setting to instruction, using experience and wisdom to guide others. In modern culture, such a type is represented in George Lucas's Star Wars trilogy in the figures of Obi Wan Kenobe and Yoda. More recently, he shows up as the wise, Asian instructor in the Karate Kid films. In folk literature we see this type in the wise old man who guides the younger child through dangerous straits. In medieval literature, Merlin fulfills this role. Interestingly, it is not unusual for this type to use elements of the trickster to unconsciously teach by indirection (at which time he bears a similarity to the shaman of primitive cul-tures). For instance, in the Sufi religion, the character of Mullah Nassr Eddin teaches his disciples through antics meant to shock them out of their complacency and unquestioning attitude (a favored device of Zen Buddhism as well). In a representative Nasreddin episode, the famed teacher addresses a group of listeners, asking them, "Do you know what I have to tell you?" When they answer no, he responds that because they are ignorant of such an important truth, he'd best hold his tongue. When he returns the next week and asks the same question, this time they answer yes. He responds with pleasure, telling them that there is no point in wasting their time, and he leaves. When he returns a third time and asks the same question, half the crowd answers yes while the other half answers no, to which Nasreddin responds, "Well, then, those who know can tell those who do not know" and leaves the mosque. Such an exchange would fit neatly into any Marx Brothers movie.

Into my heart an air that kills From yon far country blows, What blue-remembered hills are these? What spires, what farms are those? That is the land of lost content I see it shining plain The happy highways where I went And cannot come again. -A.E. Housman

 

WISE FOOL/SAINT: At the end of the spectrum is the character who has returned to a state of innocence, but his condition is the result of a lifetime of experience that has taught him a simplicity that compels childlike behavior. In modern literature, Herman Hesse wrote of such a character in his short story, "The Poet," wherein the protagonist is attracted to a teacher who leads a simple, austere life. Taking instruction from the teacher, the poet eventually moves away from his complex world until, at story's end, he has taken the place of the teacher. Such a plot structure parallels Hesse's Siddhartha, based on the life of Gautama Buddha. The wise fool is apparent in James Stewart's portrayal of Elwood P. Dowd in Harvey, where the protagonist, after years of clawing his way through the business world, becomes so simplistic as to become a teacher to his family and would-be psychiatrist. This character type is also the basis for Martin Vanderhoff in Kauffman and Hart's You Can't Take It with You. In this play, Grandpa heads a family of eccentrics and social dropouts whose combination of innocence and wise foolishness complement each other and wean Tony Kirby and his stuffy father away from the destruction of their souls by Wall street.

Each of these types is distinct from protagonists who only entertain, terrify or amuse us. The point of the innocent, trickster, warrior, prophet and wise fool is to guide us to an understanding of a truth that eludes us, to make us aware of our entrapment in an existence that, for all its realistic appearance, is not reality. By making us aware of, or showing us the way to, a higher reality, these archetypes appeal to our need to find some means by which we might recapture some sense of paradise that we can no longer apprehend in our state of ignorance, or prepare us for a future paradise.

We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time. --Four Quartets T.S. Eliot

At this point, it becomes important to determine the source of this yearning. Psychological study has a great deal to state about the relation between such yearnings in the adult world and the perceptions of our world as children. In the adult state we often attempt to recreate the comforting wholeness of the child state. Both Freudian and Jungian studies have illustrated through case examples the connection between childhood development and images that crop up in dreams and fantasies in the adult world. In his own work, mythologist Alan Dundes has applied this similarity to the creation of myths. He has noted the connections between the earth-diver motif of numerous creation myths and childhood states outlined by Freud, finding in the structure of particular patients' tales similarities to the structures of these myths. In her Creation Myths psychologist/writer Marie-Louise Von Franz has noted this parallel in creations myths worldwide. The point of such study is that our myths, the parents of our cultural rites and beliefs, are a refashioning of childhood memo-ries and impulses.

Parting is all we know of heaven. -Emily Dickinson

In The Art of Loving, psychologist Erich Fromm invokes this concept when he notes the sense of loss that accompanies our movement from childhood to adolescence: "In the infant I-ness has developed but little yet; he still feels one with mother, has no feeling of separateness as long as mother is present" (10). Psychoanalyst Margaret Mahler sees a clear parallel between the Fall of man and the infant's separation from the mother: "From a psychoanalytic point of view the Fall is less puzzling if we assume that it was not God that was disappointed in man but man who was disappointed in God when his infantile wishes failed to materialize...Nearly every child experiences paradise in infancy, a state referred to in psychoanalysis as the symbi-otic phase which precedes the separation from the mother" (Bergmann 86). The pain of adolescence then is the dawning awareness that we are not the center of the universe, that we have to share, that sometimes other's needs are more important than our own, that our parents are not always there. That we are divided from the world: "But the more the human race emerges from these primary bonds, the more it separates itself from the natural world, the more intense becomes the need to find new ways of escaping separateness" (Fromm 10). From this point on, our growth is a continuing awareness of our place in society and the universe, an enlightenment that does not affirm our position as the most important individual, but only one of billions, often with little or no rights despite our desires and needs. As Sartre put it, man defines himself out of the universe. With such a growing understanding, we cast backwards to a time when things seemed simpler, when we were the ceilter of the universe, when there was no division between what we and the world wanted, when there was no separation of earth and sky. And so begins the search for paradise.

The two worlds represented by two river banks are heaven and earth, which in the beginning were united, but were separated by the very fact of manifestation, whose entire domain is then assimilated to a river or a sea which stretches between them. One of the two banks is the realm of death, where all is subject to change, and the other is the realm of immortality. -Rene Guenon

In her book describing the way folktales put us in touch with our infantile state, Von Franz similarly noted the way these tales recall our loss: "But in childhood there is the tragedy of separation; there is for instance, the typical event of being thrown out of Paradise, of having one's first shock of incompleteness and discovering that something perfect has been forever lost. Such tragedies mirror the moment when the ego begins to become an entity apart from the Self. Then the ego is established as a self-existing factor, and the intuitive connection with the centre is partly lost" (43).

Fromm describes this psychological state in at attempt to explain his own theory of the importance of love in our lives. Love, he notes, recreates our primal state, its euphoria making us feel less the limitation of our present lives. In The Anatomy of Loving, Martin Bergmann similarly explains the act of falling in love: "Love pushes toward adulthood, toward taking care of others, toward founding a family, but is also in the service of refinding lost childhood bliss, in favor of undoing the boundary that separates the self from the other" (142). As Bergmann explains, love is a way of recreating (or "refinding," as he uses Freud's term) the symbiotic relationship between mother and child, the perfect union of infancy. Thus, love gives us the sense that all things are possible. In love we sense our possibilities more than our limitations.

This is commensurate with the medieval view of love, known academically as courtly love, where the emotion was elevated from a common feeling to an ennobling state that enabled man to commune with God. This concept developed in the 12th century with the Virgin Mary cult, wherein the mother of God was viewed as the intermediary between man and his creator, the guiding spirit that raised man from his physical nature (including sexual drive) to a spiritual one. Mary became the role model for a variety of medieval figures from Dante's Beatrice to Petrarch's Laura. The concept of knighthood (chivalry) was in large part based on this notion of love as an ennobling emotion, with a woman the center around which the knight bound his life, her virtuousness inspiring him to a higher plane. Thus, the notions of modem psychoa-nalysis are in keeping with the concepts of love that developed eight centuries ago and have kept a hold on our imaginations since.

Men began to be sent to sea to search for the three holy mountains which are said to be not far away from men; unfortunately, when one has almost reached them, the boat is carried off course. Formerly, it is said, people were able to get there; there dwell the Blessed, and there is kept the drug of immortality; there, all beings, birds, and quadrupeds are white, and the places are made of gold and silver. Before arriving, people saw them from afar like clouds; when they got there, the three holy mountains were found upside down under the water....In a word, no one has been able to reach them; though there has never been a great man who has not desired to go there. -Sseuma Ts'ien

Love, then, is one means by which the body is used to attain a higher state. Similarly, the Eleusinian mysteries of the Greeks preached, as did Plato, that the soul preceded the body and survived after it, so that in its earthly state, the soul was trapped by the body. The body, therefore, kept the soul from its true, paradaisical state, and the work of our lives was to overcome the body's limitations. To that extent the Greeks and later generations believed that education was the means by which the soul could be awakened and reminded of its truer state, thereby disciplining the body and keeping it in its proper place. This parallels the courtly love notion where the woman (symbolizing the divine presence) reminds the purer nature in man (his soul) of its true calling and leads it back to God. Thus, love and education have historically been seen as means by which the "true" parts of our natures can regain contact with paradise, but the haven't been the only means.

In the Dionysian cults of the Greeks (related to their Orphic rites), members engaged in frenzies of physical pleasure induced by wine. In their enebriated state, they felt their bodily liberation enabled them to become one with god, an act further suggested by their symbolic ingestion of the god's body (Christianity would adopt the same symbolism a few centuries later in its ritualistic eating and drinking of God's body in an attempt to unite with him). The emphasis, as Fromm again notes, is on the liberation from the body to overcome our sense of separateness and unite with a higher principle: "One way of achieving this lies in orgiastic states. These may have the form of auto-induced trance, sometimes with the help of drugs...In a transitory state of exaltation the world outside disappears, and with it the feeling of separateness from it... Closely related to, and often blended with this orgiastic solution, is the sexual experience. The sexual orgasm can produce a state similar to the one produced by a trance, or to the effects of certain drugs.. .It seems that after the orgiastic experience, man can go on for a time without suffering too much from his separateness" (10, 11).

"Woodstock" by Joni Mitchell I came upon a child of God, He was walking along the road And I asked him where are you going? And this he told me "I'm going on down to Yasgur's farm I'm going to join in a rock 'n' roll band I'm going to camp out on the land I'm going to try an' get my soul free" We are stardust We are golden And we've got to get ourselves Back to the garden Then can I walk beside you; I have come here to lose the smog And I feel to be a cog in something turning Well maybe it is just the time of year, or maybe it's the time of man I don't know who I am, but you know life is for learning We are stardust We are golden And we've got to get ourselves Back to the garden By the time we got to Woodstock, we were half a million strong And everywhere there was song and celebration And I dreamed I saw the bombers riding shotgun in the sky And they were turning into butterflies above our nation We are stardust Billion year old carbon We are golden Caught in the devil's bargain And we've got to get ourselves back to the garden

If such practices sound strange to our modern thinking, they shouldn't. We have no less a desire for liberation than our cultural parents, and we attempt similar methods. To overcome our sense of limitation, some seek the liberation knowledge provides (writer/scholar Walter Kaufmann once wrote, "Scholasticism is an opiate for intellectuals"); others find in philosophy and religion the consolations that promise an eventual freedom from earthly bondage; many find in love the feeling of release that makes our existence not only bearable, but pleasurable; and some find in drugs, sex and alcohol those states that keep at bay the gnawing sense that the world is not always sympathetic to our needs. And in our current interest in UFOs, reincarnation, astrology and parapsychology, we belie our desire for people, states and universes that will relieve us of our own.

In her attraction to alcohol, sensuality, love and culture, Blanche embodies the modern soul that finds substitutes for the world, Belle Reve or otherwise, it cannot return to. Our modern terror is that we believe less in our ability to overcome earthly restrictions, as Williams symbolizes in Blanche's destruction. Nevertheless, the yearning remains, and few of us avoid it. Thus in our myths, our stories, our literature, philosophy, religions, our individual pleasures, we reflect our awareness of our loss and our desire to overcome it.

 

WORKS CITED

Bergmann, Martin. The Anatomy of Loving. New York, Columbia University Press, 1987.

Dooling, D.M. "The Dangerous Passage." Parabola. 1 (1976): 50-55.

Dundes, Alan. "Earth Diver: Creation of the Mythopoeic Male." Sacred Narrative: Readings in the Theory of Myth. Ed. Alan Dundes. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984.

Eaton, Evelyn. "Towards Initiation." Parabola. 1 (1976): 16-23.

Eliade, Mircea. "Nostalgia for Paradise," Parabola. 3 (1977): 6-15.

Fromm, Erich. The Art of Loving. New York: Perennial Library, 1956.

Jung, Carl. Man and His Symbols. Ed. Carl Jung. London: Doubleday, 1964.

Numazawa, K. "The Cultural-Historical Background of Myths on the Separation of Sky and Earth." Sacred Narrative: Readings in the Theory of Myth. Ed. Alan Dundes. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984.

Thompson, Stith. The Folktale. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977.

Von Franz, Marie-Louise. Creation Myths. Dallas: Spring Publications, lnc, 1972.

---Interpretation of Fairytales. Dallas, Spring Publications, Inc., 1970.

 

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