Byatt's Ragnarök: re-purposing mythology.

After reading trendy Eggers' underwhelming recent essay on the D'Aulaires' childhood classic Norse Gods & Giants (which one already knows is wondrous all-ages magic without his stamp of uninsightful approval), running across celebrated A.S. Byatt doing her take on Norse lore was an offering Nine Worlds better.



Known for one of the most refined epistolary novels, the Booker Prize winning Possession (1990), which will rip your heart out and make it pump tears of saddest sad sadness, one can only imagine the Wagnerian angst & pathos such a talent could lend to the verses of the Gods. Yet the tender Possession and the Icelandic skald Snorri Sturluson's mythopoeic collection are also worlds away from each other, and the gap shows at times.

[Friedrich Wilhelm Heine's "Kampf der untergehenden Götter" (1882).]

In Ragnarok: The End of the Gods (2011), Byatt brings her own modern insights into the built-in eschatology of the Northmen. While she's hardly the first one to do this academically or creatively, having her mind turned toward a personal interpretation gives one surprising perspective on Asgard and its gods. While many dismiss Loki as an antagonist for antagonism's sake (or conversely worship him [semi- or even non-apologetically] as a divine medium of difficult change & transformation), Byatt presents Loki less as a god of mischief and more as an explorer of the patterns found in chaos theory, an outsider by nature of his extremely inquisitive, and possibly superior, mind. This also lets us to see how the higher functioning Odin continues to allow his both disruptive but useful presence as a blood brother and travel companion, as Odin may have more in common with Loki on intellectual levels than the others of his heavenly house. Byatt also puts forward the theory that Loki is part of the original triumvirate who creates man & woman from an ash & elder tree, and specifically is able to contribute to the miracle of mankind by transmuting the tree's sap into blood, making him far more integral to humanity's story. She also explains that Odin ascends to be the ruler over his two man-making peers as he sacrifices himself, his eye, and identity, for ecstatic knowledge.



Byatt also a offers a psychological take on the monstrous wolves who chase the sun & moon across the sky as "wolves of the mind", an ever-present built-in idea of the intellect's potential for self-destruction manifest as the ravening creatures that threaten to swallow the sources of illumination in ourselves & the world. Plus she posits that if the wolves weren't there as the clockwork that drives day into night and night into day, there would be no demarcations of time or season without them, and no universal/internal motivators to keep ourselves achieving instead of descending into darkness or lassitude.

Framing all this re-appropriation of the lore is Byatt herself presented as "the thin, pale child", a nameless girl displaced into the countryside by the Blitzkrieg of World War II (much like a Pevensie of Narnia), with naught much else but a copy of a Norse mythology book to give her some strange & fantastic comfort. The child's voice is hardly that of a child, but of our 75-year-old authoress looking back at herself, and at the Heathen legends that fascinated her far more than the compulsory trips to monotheistic church or a secular schoolhouse.



Outside the lines, Ragnarok succeeds as a commentary of amazement with a wonderfilled personal embellishment, an ambitious filling out of the cosmology. Most inventive is Randrasill, the undersea skeletal analogue to Yggdrasil, her construct equally full of life, giving the reader a deepwater survey of the aquatic legion that surrounds Midgard. Exiled into this world by Odin, Byatt also performs another first by presenting a POV from world serpent Jormungandr, and adding scenes of Loki's fathership in raising his daughter from simple sea snake into an ominous ouroboros.



Less than these two inventions, Byatt lends her explanations to the Baldur story. One always questions that if Baldur's death means the worlds' end, why would the gods make a game of throwing potentially deadly things at him? Yet once the gods come up with it, "Hit the Baldur" isn't just an afternoon novelty but the best-game-ever invented, and they find they can't stop from playing. One also questions why if Frigga went through the trouble of ranging the whole of the Nine Worlds to obtain a promise from everything animate & inanimate, how did mistletoe get neglected? We find that mistletoe appeared in the world just after this infinite contract was closed, that it was still childlike and "too young to make a promise", leaving its innocence open for Loki's manipulation into a weapon.



When Ragnarok does unfold, another in-battle perspective Byatt presents is that Thor doesn't realize he's been poisoned until it's too late, turning to brag to the Aesir that he bested his nemesis and lived, only to fall to the venom on his ninth & very last step.

[Marvel Thor is not amused.]

Vocabulary of note is the repeated use of the fatalistic word "ineluctable", and the admirable neologism "ur-book". ("Ur-book"! Wow!)



Conclusions? Ultimately there's no payoff with the Nazi threat, or the conflict inherent in her Germanic heritage, or a ratification of a Heathen worldview, so the framework for the storytelling's inconclusive as it never comes back around to the pale child who is Byatt in any satisfying way. There could've been a sort of Teutons versus Angles call-forward, an examination of the "wolves" that drive the conflict of war, like natio/tribal fascism, and comment on the necessity of preparation for war, but none of these ideas are ever truly exercised.



Byatt uses parts of Ragnarok as an allegory on our inability to save the world, to change our story, and in her afterword goes so far as to place her interpretation's concern for the world as an ecological one, which is a thoroughly modern use. The disconnect here's evident: Byatt's contemporary purpose is not the timeless purpose of the lore. Not to say that the Norse creation/apocalypse doesn't contain everything (oh it surely does), but the tenuousness of physical existence more reflects man's barely sustainable grasp in a world of forces that defies his daily living with an unrelenting ice & harsh frost that deny him resources and its impact on him, as opposed to his impact on it. If one can bypass this mis-inversion, there's alot of other grand exploration to be had in Byatt's otherwise earnest rendition the Norse lore. Like in Possession, there's a strong lifelong and even more cosmic love here that cannot be denied.

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While a
mostly happy bookstore fixture for over two decades, Guillermo Maytorena
IV is currently willing to entertain your serious proposals for
employment as a literary/cinema critic, goth journalist, castellan,
airship pilot/crewperson, investigative mythologist, or assisting in a
craft brewery. Should you be connected to any of the above or equally
interesting endeavours, do contact him.

a second marvel-ous norse saga.

Co-opted from Norse lore by writer Stan Lee & artist Jack Kirby in 1962, their comic book Thor was designed as an adversary for The Hulk, but in selecting such a richly backgrounded character their story's potential far outgrew a mere contest-of-strength rivalry with the moody green simpleton in purple stretch pants. And here we are, hundreds of issues and half a century later, treated to the doom-filled thunder of Marvel's second pantheon-based cinematic blockbuster "Thor: The Dark World".



With the withdrawal of Shakespearian first director Kenneth Branagh due to Disney's less-generous shooting timetable, the sequel's helmed by Alan Taylor (episodes of "Game of Thrones"/"Mad Men"/"The Sopranos"), but the main difference being instead of having hammerless Thor humbled among the down home people of enchanting small town New Mexico, we find ourselves on a eye-goggling tour of the multiverse with the fate of not just frost giant populated Jotunheim to consider, but all the Nine Worlds at stake from a long-thought dead re-awakened ancient enemy.



Best performance in the film goes to ... Iceland! Iceland's starkness & desolate beauty easily depicts another world (most recently done in "Prometheus"). From a Thor-centric standpoint, it's appropo to use the nation with the most Thor prefixed place names, and who therefore historically honoured Thor the most. Volcanic rock, ashen landscape, outcroppings sculpted from tectonic violence, dancing aurora borealis, and midnight sun, all work to distance the viewer from the idea of a soundstage or digital environment with Iceland's abundantly exotic amazingness.



Best cameo goes to ... London! (Sorry, loveable Stan Lee.) It's great to see Marvel leave Manhattan as its metropolis of choice and upscale to some well-known London location placement. St. Paul's Cathedral, The London Eye, Greenwich Naval College, Thames River, Charing Cross Station, The Gherkin, and more. Having heroes & villains duke it out to damage some of those precious sites gave "T:TDW" a risk & flinch factor that hits literature's most beloved home, and that's also effectively played for laughs without breaking the tension.



The multiversal itinerary continues with glimpses of some of the other Nine Worlds: a beginning action sequence in Vanaheim, a flashback to Svartalfheim, a later stop through Jotunheim, and alot more of the home of the gods, Asgard, the Realm Eternal. And it's all these settings that lend the film a grandeur & scope worthy of Jack Kirby's world-building legacy.

[Jane Foster, you big Midgardian tourist!]

With any smart sequel the good things are carried forward: knit-bundled intern Darcy Lewis' perfectly timed quips (oh-so-hawt Kat Dennings), awkwardly cute astrophysicist Jane Foster (originally a nurse), the gratuitous Chris Hemsworth beefcake moment, parascientific explications of mythology, trickster Loki trickin', oh-no-we-shouldn't-do-it Asgardian decisionmaking, Idris Elba (BBC's "Luther") as stalwart Heimdall, Odin's sweet massive golden throne Hlidskjalf, all reappear to give us the touchstones we've waited two years to see again.



The first film was rooted in a father-son-son story, because having your dad running the universe as ruler of the gods while you bide your time over millennia for his job is bound to make heirs competitive, but after the first flush of obvious anger is spent, the complexity borrowed from the original Eddaic characters comes into play in this second chapter. The story continues to explore fallout from the Thor/Loki brotherly dynamic explosion in "The Avengers" (an overly bombastic offering which should be edited down to the Thor/Loki bits [and the shawarma eating easter egg because who ever really bought such a poorly mismatched group as The Avengers getting stuck together]), and expands upon an idea that resembles "The Animatrix" (2003) short "Beyond".



Other changes include the role of dashing Fandral being recast from Josh Dallas to Zachary Levi due to Dallas' obligations to "Once Upon a Time", energy & modern-style projectile weapons getting put up against the Asgardians' melee ones, an odd underused cameo from character actress Alice Krige (The Borg Queen from "ST: First Contact") as healing goddess Eir, and also underused Tony Curran (Marcus Corvinus of "Underworld: Evolution") as Odin's father Bor.



By contrast Rene Russo as Frigga gets a much longer turn as more than a foil for Anthony Hopkins' Odin and delivers a divine performance.



"T:TDW" presents some of the most striking design work, most notably an illuminated book whose designs animate on the pages themselves (with "The Secret of Kells" style but cooler since it's on a live action prop, or bearing resemblance to the limited but potent storytelling technique in a Marvel motion comic, such as "Thor & Loki: Blood Brothers" [which is in itself a really, really awesome Loki setpiece story]).

[Or like The Diamond Age's "A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer"!]

And there's the floating Jelling knotwork chandeliers which rotate & glow in Asgard that were totally golden, beautiful, and made you wish you could decorate with them.



Hearkening back to some 1960s film intros & outros, there were gorgeously painted end credits, meant to remind us that all of this visual richness originally came from a tradition of 1960s illustration.



Best of all "T:TDW" continues to fill in Marvel's mythological blanks in the Asgardian storyline, while still leaving some open for a definite trilogy in the making. Hail to the Hammer for "Thor 3"!

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While a mostly happy bookstore fixture for over two decades, Guillermo Maytorena IV is currently willing to entertain your serious proposals for employment as a literary/cinema critic, goth journalist, castellan, airship pilot/crewperson, investigative mythologist, or assisting in a craft brewery. Should you be connected to any of the above or equally interesting endeavours, do contact him via LinkedIn or G+. 

the arc of mythology.

Since I was seven I'd intended to read the source texts. I remember checking the Eddas out of the public library, big blue hardbacks, alternate potential bibles for living clutched to my chest as though I was the first to discover them. Compared to Catholicism with its guilt and its faceless god, his nearly passive son, and inexplicable holy spirit, the three-in-one trio of whom were content to just be self-satisfied watchers, there was an allure in distinct polytheism, a group of gods that were do-ers: lovers, warriors, sowers, movers and earthquakers, embodiments of worldly forces, involved in the lives of their creations, gifting favour to those who earned it in their lifetime.



The infinite paths of other reading led me away from that intention, finding the Eddas inaccessible to my gifted but young mind. As yet unschooled in poetry or archaic language structures found in Dante or Shakespeare, instead I started reading the staples of fantasy -- Tolkien, Leiber, Moorcock -- but still knew at root of all that high adventure, mythology was that genre's foundation, and that base would one day await me when I was ready. And while I was ready decades ago it's only now I've since walked the labyrinth, drank mead in Valhalla, witnessed geneses and apocalypti, and have much to report of unexpected disappointment, ancient wonder, and the revelations of the gods themselves in these first-hand sources.



Enuma Elish

(~7000-1100 BCE)

Possibly the earliest mythology, there's precedent of the flood, a washing away that occurs in many other myth cycles, but may very well be remembered from a flooding of the Tigris and Euphrates, or even Mediterranean tidal waves. The Elish is moreso a Babylonian story of creation and generational change that ends in fire god Marduk's victory over a more primal Tiamat, his grandmother and ancient she-dragon/water-serpent bent on revenge and destruction. Reading of sky-god Anu (Ah-nu) and company feels representational and there's alot of speculative prehistory that speaks of these deities being ancient aliens or advanced astronauts, but if it's really there it's not overtly apparent. We could possibly spend the same amount of millenia guessing what else may have been at play behind these stories, but we may never know short of finding The Tablets of Destiny hidden away somewhere next to a lightning gun and levitation harness.



The Library of Greek Mythology

(~100-200 CE)

Less a storybook and more of a primer, it's like reading a genealogy with addenda interspersed in the family lists. As a reader this was rather disappointing, though it delivered small delights for me from time to time in versions and variants of tales I'd read about before. Historically this document's priceless and lends itself to comparing with other surviving classical works, like the royal dramas of Sophocles and Aeschylus, or the Homeric epics and hymns. The Greek writers and scholars saw no difference between history and mythography. To them, it was the same, sacred as if automatically channeled from a muse, and given the overall consistent structure of the stories it may very well have been. 



Prose Edda

(~1200 CE)

The big surprise here is the recontextualization of Norse myths into classical Greek works by stating that the Aesir were descended from the house of Ilium at the beginning of the book(!). Given then-Christianity's recent ascent in Scandinavia one might imagine the author as ruler of Iceland had to cover his hind by couching the Norse beliefs in an already accepted body of ancient religion or otherwise be branded a heretic. Pragmatically he did it to gain favour with the regional rulers in Denmark by adding a genealogy to tie their royal house to the Aesir's lines of descent, granting them a legendary legitimacy and thus cementing his alliances to the Danes by presenting the work. But all this effort in setting down these stories also raises the question if he still believed in the Norse deities. Sturlusson died in a basement, discovered while hiding from his enemies. He was 70, which was quite old for a man in the 13th century. Maybe he had a cane in one hand, but I hope he had a sword in his other when they found him waiting for them, which would be answer enough.



Poetic Edda

(~1200 CE)

This Edda's made up of surviving verse poems, much of which is retold and filled in more completely by the aforementioned Prose Edda.



Odin's "Sayings of the High One" could easily be repackaged for contemporary management and business schools, the same way one reads Sun Tzu's "Art of War" or Musashi's "The Book of Five Rings". The God of Wisdom's advice holds to this day, a timeless counsel for handling negotiations of any sort.



The 19 spells of Odin could have be metaphors for social and leadership skills, but I'd like to think of its runes, magick swords, and elixirs as literal. In our quantum world the truth is that they are both at once.



A scientific rationalization of Ragnarök (the Norse end of the universe) implies that the all-consuming fire of Surt over the Nine Worlds may have been a volcanic cataclysm that happened in Iceland, which would seem a final soot black sunblotting winter and rolling lava fire over nearly everyone and everything on the small island nation.



What's startling is how recently the Codex Regius (the Edda's manuscript) comes to us, only widespread into English in the mid-1800s, possibly on the coattails of the Gothic literary movement with its taste for doom and grim tragedy.



The tragedy seems to be that it isn't inevitable external forces that bring about the end: It's an internal lack of integrity and honour. Over and over the lays (especially in the Sigurd/Völsung/Nibelung cycles where family strife destroys whole kingdoms) show that dishonesty and oath-breaking not only weaken the operational fabric of society but show a decay in the fiber of the world wrought by the gods through compacts and agreements, and when these given words are rendered worthless the resulting existential void proves real and the world seals its own physical destruction.



The Zohar

(~1300 CE)

Not really the occult tour-de-force I'd expected from "The Book of Splendour", or a hidden pre-genesis account, but more of a secretive religious commentary on the Torah. It's insight comes from an edgy exploration of the nature of YHVH, and its emanations from spirit to material as it flows through its ten aspects in the kabbalistic tree of life. These ten Sephiroth are somewhat akin to a pantheon, but are also rungs in the overall ladder to the Ein Sof (the Infinite). The heart of YHVH's divinity is that it needs us to manifest, to actively hold the four-fold meanings of the Torah in our hearts so we may share completeness with our partners, families, and selves to reclaim the illumination that was lost but can be refound through the practice of kabbalah. That sounds rather mamby-pamby but it's really a pretty profound approach to actively connecting to the divine. One could spend a lifetime delving into the workings of this body of knowledge and many scholars throughout the generations have.



Codex Boturini

(~1500 CE)

In the wake of The Conquista, the Spaniards burn the codices, condemning them as books of black magick and idolatry. More significantly they were the repositories of Mesoamerican culture and learning, the myths, academia, astronomy, religious ritual, and histories, and, to finalize their conquest, the Spaniards destroyed them to subordinate the surviving Aztecs and other peoples of the Mexica Empire.



Of the innumerable codices crafted by the scribe class (yes! A whole class of writers from which I'm descended!), a mere 500 (only 15 of these authentically being pre-conquest) survive, the conquest's subordination even now reflected in many of them being named after whichever European's collection they ended up in. The Borturini would more accurately be called "The Migration of the Aztecs", and was probably made during the early Spanish colonial period just after the conquest. 



A codex was originally painted on a shredded and pressed sacred fig tree bark paper (called amatl) horizontal scrolls, which were then folded accordion-style and bonded to a top and bottom cover.



The "Migration" is the legendary pictographic history of the Aztecs leaving their lagoon homeland at the behest of their deity Huitzilipotchtli, the hummingbird god of war, whereafter they wandered for 100+ years! One always thinks of the Aztecs being the gloriously ascendant rulers of the central Mexican valley, but here is a tale of faith, separation, ritual, disease, defeat, and perseverance that is truly epic. The unfortunate bit of this story is that on page 23 it ends in a torn page! We obtain the rest of the story from other records, fragments, and ethnographic accounts, but "The Migration" reveals a wandering nation's long quest for hard-earned dominance.



Codex Borgia

(~1500 CE)

This 76 plate codex of stunningly painted panels is at its simplest a 260-day perpetual calendar made of 13-day weeks, with 20-day signs, but if you think of our calendar with its seasons, equinoxes, holidays (holy days), astrological breakdowns, and other annual periods, this codex reveals cycles in the lives of the Aztecs.



This tonalpohualli (book of days/destiny) presents the calendar in repeated forms and fashions, associating the weeks and days by turns with cardinal directions, particular deities, trees, offerings, celestial bodies, or legendary and supernatural events and locations, all interchangeably, compatibly, astrologically and prognosticatorially. And given the accordion form of the codex it can be opened as wide or compressed and tesserated into many different page combinations, adding even more complexity into how it could be read.



While much of the pictography is subject to interpretation, like tarot, tea leaves, dreams and visions, all these permutations not only prescribe ritual for the individual and society, but also actually divine the future. One is named in Aztec culture after the day they where born, and from this one's tonal (soul/spirit/self) is given direction.



Academically, alot of supposition by linguists and anthropologists has been put together in figuring out the Borgia. Odds are that the meanings in these arrangements are for the initiated priests of the particular temple the codex was housed in, and this codex may very well have been a regional or even one-of-a-kind document.



Depicted in bright iconographic colors were the gods and goddesses of the Aztec pantheon: god of games Macuilxochitl, goddess of flowers Xochiquetzal, and the messianic Quetzalquatl, the feathered serpent, who stood for civilization itself.



And like an ancient graphic novel, eight pages host the enigmatic adventures of initiate "Stripe Eye" and the black priest "Smoking Eye" as they cross sacred boundaries, interlope through temple districts, and deal with a curious bag full of supernatural darkness. Also mentioned in a few places is Chalchiuhtotolin, "turkey of the precious stone" (WTF?), along with other compelling and unexplained references.



From this and other sources, the Aztecs lived in a dream of beautiful horror where sacrifice wasn't just representational, it was literal as there are illustrations of bratty children being drowned to make it rain, noble kings piercing their genitals to show they had a pair tough enough to lead, and devout priests cutting hearts out of many, many, many human sacrificial offerings. The universe didn't provide for us, we provided for it -- or the sun didn't rise, the gods turned against us, and the cosmic gears that ran on blood & hearts would just stop. Which begs the question of 2012 ... and the coming of the sixth world. Perhaps Quetzalquatl will return to save us all. Or god of sorcery Tezcatlipoca will show up to save us from him.

[Tezcatlipoca vs Quetzalcoatl.

Credit to Patrick Charles.]

After reading through these seven mythologies what hurts most are their implications of greater bodies of myth that have been lost through conquest, fire, and genocide, these tales of irreplaceable insight that might never be found again. But what has come down to us might yet serve as models for other value systems, other rituals, different worldly goals and heavenly rewards, showing us that the modern secular world we smugly think we know may reveal a hands-on pro-active divinity in it yet. And since that divinity is as varied as the stars are numbered, those same divinities still cast their shine & shadow through us.





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Addenda from 9/4/2012 response to inclusion of other mythological sources:



Thanks for the praise.



Outside of Budge's pieced together interpretations, there doesn't seem to be much Egyptian source material, plus when one goes to Egypt you find out alot of the stories tend to be socio-political metaphors for Upper versus Lower Nile conflicts and resource squabbles, and more attention's focused on the dynastic legacies of the pharaohs which makes it all much less compelling, but I find their death-centric architecture & design of deities aesthetically wondrous. Just scored a Set statue this week, which is way weird because in Egypt he's really nowhere to be found, except in relief at Abu Simbel.



The Indian Mahabharata, Upanishads, and Vedic literatures just seem to be a daunting & lifetime undertaking. And where even to start such a bottomless body of study? And with whose translations? A girl recently told me a terrific story from Upanishads where a boy, via his father's offhanded dismissal, unintentionally gives his son to Yama, the lord of death. That narrative's totally my flavour of ice cream, but unsure if the overall system speaks to me on an intuitively truthful level, truth being personal and relative, (oooh, big cans of worms there. Yeah.) or it could just be it's just so outside of my cultural bias that I can't wrap myself around it spiritually. Am watching a Bollywood movie featuring re-incarnation as a central plot-point mechanism, so maybe it'll learn me something.



Right now I'm drawn again toward Norse Reconstruction, which I gather you're also curious about with your Odin post. There's some really good podcasts out there where they discuss modern paganism and the ancient lore. Ravencast's done by a well spoken East Coast professional couple who do a nice job of presentation, and Raven Radio's an unedited technical glitchfest but nearly every show there's some great perspective being issued forth from a Kindred in New Mexico with members who have completed all the serious mythology homework and aren't afraid to apply it to the now. They're all about drinking as ritual, too. Got mead?

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While a mostly happy bookstore fixture for over two decades, Guillermo Maytorena IV is currently willing to entertain your serious proposals for employment as a literary/cinema critic, goth journalist, castellan, airship pilot/crewperson, investigative mythologist, or assisting in a craft brewery. Should you be connected to any of the above or equally interesting endeavours, do contact him via LinkedIn or G+.