Central Intermediate School - Memories Yearbook (Ottawa, IL)

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75,1362-5 so Pol.YscQPE 3 -:iaszsi I:235j DUNSANY'S MYTHOLOGY By J OSEPHINE ALLEN Someone has said that the dead and the living, men, beasts and gods, trees, stars and rivers and sun and moon dance through the region of myths .... where everything may be anything, where nature has no laws and imagination no limits. Instead of going back to the old Celtic legends, as we might suppose, or eve11 to Greece for myths, Dunsany follows the prompting of his imagination and creates his own mythology. Very few are able to create a new mythology in an age of materialsm-to see giant gods beyond towering heaps of masonry. The secret of his power lies in the fact that he believes in the world he creates. We are at first skeptical, mystified, and fascinated, then we begin to see his enthusiasm and believe. We find ourselves in a strange, far-off land in the midst of pagan gods who hold the threads of destiny in their hands and laugh at us as we try to defy them-we who are only a speck in an immeasurable sea. Dunsany carries the reader away to his countries on fascinating jaunts or in his own words to lands of wonder or the edge of the world. In eternities of time and space the gods watch the fall of cities and even the coming of man from under eyebrows white with years. Dunsany pos- sesses the gift of the sense of infinity and he takes us into star-girt places and shows us not the greatness but the infinite littleness of man. Man is puny compared to the terrible power of the gods which he blindly follows. He is a mere lump of clay in the hands of destiny. These demons seem to be playing a game that, for the mortal, is life or death, but men go groping back to them, searching for true gods and at the end a little squeaking one cries shrilly, I know not! I know not I The gods laugh at the efforts of men to disregard their century old laws. The horrible, rumbling laughter of the gods forbodes tragedy to man. A king once left the gay and glamorous city for the quiet, lonely jungle. He learned to love and admire the profusion of purple orchids before his castle door and refused to listen to the prophecy that his retreat would be destroyed, but lo, at the end of three days, houses and men crashed down in a thundering boom together. Woe be to those who attempt to im- personate the gods, for they are revengeful! Seven beggars pretended to be the green gods of the mountains and were turned to stone, and strange to say the people believed them to be the real gods. How easily humanity is deceived! This play shows 1nan's willingness to accept as gods strange towering things of stone which mock men. There is a sense of sorrow in Dunsany's myths. Life is melancholy because it is dominated by hidden gods that delight in shrieks of sacrifice upon the altar and in the doom of men. The stars are also to be reckoned with, for they are symbols. I In The Golden Doom the fate of an empire and a boy's desire for a new plaything are linked as facts of equal import- ance in the web of fate resting on the symbolism of the stars. The king

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ggggefi.-its PDLYSCQIFE 3 Iri-P19262 L2341 with, loaded with insurmountable tasks, and dictated to until he longs for the carefree days of childhood. I beseech you to heed this warning before your condition becomes hopeless. If you have yearnings to be grown-up, banish them. Preserve your youth. Strive rather for old age, for never until then are your great- est hopes realized. Not until then can you do anything you please and merely be called eccentric. The philosopher was right who said old age enjoys many privileges which are denied the youth. Long not to be grown up, but to attain old age, then you will come into your own. 1111- TO.TT..T THE GREAT MOTHER By DORAN THARP I am the Earth. Out of me you are born. Even though you are but a short time away, I miss you. But I am patient, I wait. You must soon come back to me For I am the Earth. I am the mother of all, all. No matter what you are, Or what you have done, I shall take you back, For I am the great mother I hold out my arms to you always, Ready to fold you back into the great cool breast of me.

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P519-Q6-3 Z PDLYSCQPPE 2 :fr-192.62 52361 disregarded them and they punished him through the simple verse which a boy had written on the palace door: I saw a purple bird. Go up against the sky, And it went up and up, And round did fly. I saw it die. How many of us are purple birds flying round and round in measureless time-only to die. This symbolism is due to the Oriental influence of par- allelism, for in many instances Dunsany uses the Bible as a model. Simple things are created in a magic world. Dunsany's plays contain a religious mystery or moral passion in the avenging gods. There is a sense of great forces beyond mortals. The sub- ject is the struggle of man through the ages to escape this something that he does not understand. There is an idea of moral responsibility. In the Glittering Gate two burglars jimmy the gates of heaven and think they have been cheated when the swinging gates reveal infinite stars. Man's reaction to an unknown power marks the zenith of Dunsany's achievements. He sees life in terms of the spiritual 3 man is a tiny mote in fathomless, pur- poseless will, a fleck in measureless eternity. Dunsany's tales are nature myths dealing with the immensity of time and space and personifying the elements, as Time, Death, Love, Fame, and Notoriety. They are to dream over and gloat upon at midnight hours. There is ironic j uxtaposition, a king longs for the desert and an Arab longs for the throne, a slave overthrows a king and then hungers for bones like a slave. The Tents of the Arabs contains exquisite love lyrics and descriptions of the desert. A king, who loves the desert and longs for it, welcomes an imposter to his throne and wanders back with his gypsy love. Terror is dominant suggesting Assyria, Babylonia, and Ancient Egypt. The shorter tales are a world of simplicity in elemental things. Dunsany uses simple narrative to illustrate his philosophy. Dunsany has transported us to a weird land of gods and mortals play- ing a game in the web of fate, the threads of which are held by the gods. A priest of open spaces, Dunsany's creed, though pessemistic, has a sense of infinite and is a worship of years to come. A soul that hath the walls of piled centuries for guard.