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".
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