Поэтика мифа

The discoveries of Frazer and Ithe Cambridge group (objectively supported by Malinovsky's achievements) were extensively made use of by culture historians and the ritualistic mythological literary criticism, but lacked the proof of the ritual priority over myth (myth-ritual unity is semantic and not genetic, cf. works of Stanner, Levi-Strauss, Turner and others). They also misplaced the accents in the correlation of mythical temporal paradigms of «primeval times» and «cyclic renaissance». The ritualism facilitated the discovery of the cyclic model of the mythological idea of time (this cyclic notion was essentially adopted by the modernistic novel). But there is another more archaic and fundamental model of the dichotomy of sacred primeval times of creation and the empirical time. The world in the myth is totally determined by these primeval times paradigms and inspired by them. Hence the reactualization of «primeval times» and their life-giving forces in magic rituals. The true emotional charge of rituals is in this reactualizaton, but not in the f'^ct of repetition or their cyclic nature. Some contemporary ethnologists, though only indirectly connected with ritualism, like M. Eliade, for example,, rearranged the accents and myth acquired an absolute ecstatic sentiment of eternal reiteration and purposeful opposition to the historic time. Though Eliade himself has done much to investigate the mythologema of «beginning», influenced by some Nietzsche ideas. This feeling of eternal going round has proved consonant to the modernistic literature. Meanwhile, the absence of historical time in the myth (in contrast to a modernistic novel) is only a by-product of a certain manner of thinking, but not the purpose of mythology and certainly not the expression of the subjective fear of history.

Levy-Bruhl, who discovered the unique logic of mythology and postulated the prelogical nature of collective ideas, was very subtle in demonstrating the functioning of mythological thinking, never leaving the concrete context and making use of signs. But he was not able to see through the prism of «mystical participation» the intellectual meaning of peculiar thinking in the mythology and its practical cognitive results. He took the diffuseness of mythological thinking for a unique «unlogicab» logic sealed off completely for any personal or social experience, for logical operations as such. The focus upon emotional impulses and magical ideas has opened up the way for purely psychological interpretations of «deintellectualized» myths and the chance was not missed by Jung.

Levy-Bruhl, it seemed, found scientific arguments for a false dilemma proposed by the «philosophy of life» (Nietzsche, Bergson and others): myth or logic, magic or thinking (Frazer was still in favour of considering magic a sample of primitive science). The dilemma makes it hard to accept Jung's-ideas which were a strong impetus for «mythologiizing» in literature and literary criticism. He discovered homogeneity or even common factors in various types of human imagination but his reductive attempt to find a certain collective unconscious is highly provocative but lacks proof. Jung, Ke-renyi, Baudouin, Campbell and others underestimate in particular the fact that primitive mythology was not focussed on critical moments of persona psychology, but was aimed at involving a person in the social medium. Here lies the meaning of rites of passage (rites de passage). The fundamental myths, therefore, are creation myths (collective cosmic myths) and not heroic myths proper. Initiations and other rites of passage are therefore paradoxically transferred into fairy-tales, dealing actually with the personal fate of the hero. This was magnificently demonstrated even before Campbell by Saintive and Propp. The combination of Jung's ideas and ritualistic concepts served as a scientific background for ethnologization of literature and literary criticism. Both rituals and archetypes filled the vacuum formed by «deintel-lectualization» of myth. Serious consideration should be given to those myth theories which 'attempted to overcome the bias enforced by the «philosophy of life» and onesided discoveries ofLevy-Bruhl and Jung.