The durability of myths

Watching a post-mortem chatshow on Tuesday evening one of the talking heads described Altaf Hussain as ‘a mythic character’ and that myths were not turned on and off like lightbulbs. Having not the slightest intention of venturing into any analysis of the Karachi political minefield, instead let’s look at myths, how they are made and whether The Man in London really is the stuff of them.

Myths and I grew up together. The Greeks and Romans gave me my first fix, and I was hooked. The Nordic and Celtic mythologies followed then the Eastern and subcontinental and I still dip into Robert Graves’ classic work ‘The Greek Myths’ in moments of quiet reflection. Heroes loom large in all mythologies, though not all heroes in myths are themselves mythical, the tale is the myth not its inhabitants. They do brave deeds, rescue maidens from dragons, slay fell creatures and generally make a bit of a mess before heading off home to a victory parade and a spot of wining-and-wenching. Any bells ringing?

But hist! What is this I find lurking in an online dictionary of definitions? A myth is ‘a traditional story, especially one concerning the early history of a people… typically involving supernatural beings or events.’ Hmmm… or this — ‘ …a widely held but false belief or idea.’ Any stirrings in the belfry I wonder? Bit of cling-clangery?

Historically myths were used to make sense of things people knew had to exist or have happened but they did not understand the how or why of it. Thus the Doric, Ionic and Orphic creation myths, the recurrent themes of great floods and pestilences, entire pantheons of gods and goddesses, many with distinctly colourful not to say hedonistic private lives cavorted around the empyrean ordering the affairs of man. Making all sorts of not-always welcome or indeed appropriate interventions in the lives of mere mortals and generally leaving a bit of a shambles behind them.

Not OCD these Immortals, didn’t tidy up after themselves and not infrequently walked away in sniffy hauteur whilst mankind, culture immaterial, got busy with fixing whatever it was that had got broke the last time that Mythic Being had passed that way. Glimmer of light anywhere? The faintest tinkling of a faraway bell?

The stuff of myth and legend is not real. It is metaphor and allegory, the characters never existed though the belief in them was powerful, underpinning whole civilisations for centuries. But what if the characters were real? Genuinely did lop off the heads of (metaphorical) serpents? Vanquished evil foes and brought sweetness and light into the lives of all and sundry? Actually did walk this earth or sit bellowing on the end of a telephone to a throng far away in a distant land in a simulacra of entities less corporeal?

What if there was no distinction between the myth and the reality — does the myth take over, subsume reality, eat it up in the same way that those monsters it was sent to kill off would do had not the mythical hero done his duty?

Still with me? Pay attention at the back of the class please as I don’t want to have to explain all this again tomorrow.

Aye and there’s the rub, as Bill Spokeshave would probably have said had I not made it up for him. Thing is there’s an awful lot of monsters out there in Myth Land. Which is absolutely fine so long as they stay on the right side of the unreality line. Considerably less fine if we get leakage. A seeping through of mythical monster qualities here into the world where we all struggle to make ends meet and not upset the neighbours. Moreover a seepage facilitated by a very real and in that sense un-mythical creature.

But hist again Dear Reader! Behold an imp! Could it be that with his vorpal sword he will slay the Dark Lord? Cut his phone line even? Could it be that in making a myth a myth is slain, to be mythologised down the years, made evergreen and garlanded in flowers? And is the Man in London mythical? Probably too early to say but I’d give it a definite maybe. Tootle-pip!

Published in The Express Tribune, August 25^th, 2016.

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