RE:

Your letter to me of May 12, 1940

Y:

Hello and good-bye. Inasmuch as in the course of

I. My life’s First Cycle

A. On Carl Jung’s 94th birthday (6/26/69) our friend Magda Giulianova underwent uterine surgery. By her own account, a hysterectomy.

B. Fitzroy Richard Somerset, 4th Baron Raglan, mythologist and descendant of the Crimean War field marshal after whom the raglan sleeve, analyzed the biography of the typical mythic hero into 22 several events or features, to wit:

1. The hero’s mother is a royal virgin;

2. His father is a king, and

3. Often a near relative of his mother, but

4. The circumstances of his conception are unusual, and

5. He is also reputed to be the son of a god.

6. At birth an attempt is made, usually by his father or his maternal grandfather, to kill him, but

7. He is spirited away, and

8. Reared by foster parents in a far country.

9. We are told nothing of his childhood, but

10. On reaching manhood he returns or goes to his future kingdom.

11. After a victory over the king and/or a giant, dragon, or wild beast,

12. He marries a princess, often the daughter of his predecessor, and

13. Becomes king.

14. For a time he reigns uneventfully, and

15. Prescribes laws, but

16. Later he loses favor with the gods and/or his subjects, and

17. Is driven from the throne and the city, after which

18. He meets with a mysterious death,

19. Often at the top of a hill.

20. His children, if any, do not succeed him.

21. His body is not buried, but nevertheless

22. He has one or more holy sepulchers.*

C. Joseph Campbell, mythologist and comparative religionist, drawing upon Lord Raglan’s analysis and the theories of Carl Jung, arranged these events into a cycle of 9 (or 23) several events or features, thus: †

D. I, whom these matters have long and obsessively concerned, find such divisions, while illuminating, as finally arguable as the measurement of an irregular coastline (Bertrand Russell’s example). Is the perimeter of Bloodsworth Island 10 miles? 100 miles? 1,000 miles? The answer depends upon how much particularity one ignores: the larger and smaller coves (Okahanikan, Tigs, Pone); the larger and smaller creeks (Long, Muddy, Fin); the bights and bends; the several points and spits that grow and shrink with the tide; the individual tussocks, hummocks, and fingers of each of these; the separate spartina stalks, oyster shells, and sand grains that comprise them, themselves irregular down past their molecules to the limits of definition. The coastline of Bloodsworth Island is infinite!

Likewise the itemization of, say, Perseus’s career, which I can as reasonably divide into 2, 8, 28, or 49 coordinate parts as into Campbell’s 9 or Raglan’s 22. Many of the 49, even, in my tidy 7x7 diagram thereof (which never mind), could be separated further or combined with their neighbors. Ought its items C5, C6, and C7, for example (Espial of Andromeda on Cliff at Joppa, Slaying of Sea Monster, Marriage to Andromeda), to be a single item (Rescue and Marriage)? Or ought its C7 to be divided into Rivalry with Phineus, Wedding Feast, Battle in the Banquet Hall, etc.?

All which considerations are but homely reminders of what mystics and logicians know (and mythic heroes at the Axis Mundi): that our concepts, categories, and classifications are ours, not the World’s, and are as finally arbitrary as they are provisionally useful. Including, to be sure, the distinction between ours and the World’s.

E. If therefore, for formal elegance, I divide the story of Perseus the Golden Destroyer first into 2 “cycles” (e.g., I: The official myth; II: My projected fiction about his later adventures: his midlife crisis and its resolution); and if I further divide each of those cycles into, say, 7 parts or stages, of which the 6th in each case is the climax; and if I still further divide each of those climactic 6th stages into 7 parts, of which ditto, my division will be about as defensible as those of Lord R. & Co.

F. Such an analysis might give us, for example,

1. In the First Cycle, like scenes in a mural,

I. The official myth

A. Perseus’s conception in Argos upon virgin Danaë in the brass contraceptive tower, by Zeus in the form of a shower of gold.

B. His rescue, with Mother Danaë, from the brassbound box in which his maternal grandfather has set them adrift in order to escape the usual oracle: grand-infanticide or grand-parricide.

C. After an otherwise eventless childhood-in-exile on the island of Seriphos, his advisement by Athena on ways & means to accomplish the task laid on him by King Polydectes (i.e., the slaying of Medusa the Gorgon), who wants Perseus dead so that he can have Danaë. Athena’s further equipping him with Hermes’s curved sword and her own mirror-bright shield.

D. His outwitting of the 3 Gray Ladies, who alone know where the Styx-Nymphs live, who alone can give him the other equipment he needs to kill Medusa. His theft of the Graeae’s single eye as surety, and subsequent loss of it into Lake Triton.

E. His acquisition from the odorous Styx-Nymphs of Hermes’s winged sandals, Hades’s helmet of invisibility, and the petrifactionproof sack to carry the Gorgon’s head in.

F. 1. His successful decapitation of sleeping Medusa and escape from her sister Gorgons.

2. His petrifaction, with Medusa’s head, of inhospitable Atlas into an African mountain, as he tries to navigate his way back onto the map.

3. His espial of Andromeda chained to the Joppan cliff, and his rescue of her from the sea-beast Cetus.

4. His marriage to her despite the protests of his rival Phineus, and his recitation to the wedding guests of his story thus far.

5. The battle in the banquet hall when Phineus &” Co. disrupt his recitation; their petrifaction by Medusa’s head.

6. His honeymoon return with Andromeda to Seriphos, where he rescues Danaë by petrifying Polydectes. I.e., the termination of his tasks by the extermination of his taskmaster.

7. His triumphal further return to Argos with wife and mother, his accession to the throne, and his accidental slaying of Grandfather Acrisius (his prenatal and postpartum adversary) with a mispitched discus.

G. His 8-year reign and establishment of the Perseid dynasty.

2. And if this mural exfoliated upon a wall not flat like Dido’s Carthaginian frescoes (in which Aeneas sees his own story thus far, even his own face), nor circular like Campbell’s diagram, but logarithmically spiraling out as in a snail-shaped temple, then the Second-Cycle scenes, each positioned behind the original it echoes, might well depict

II. My projected fiction etc.

A. Perseus’s fall from favor with the gods, the decline of his marriage, and the general stagnation or petrifaction of his career; his hope to be “reborn,” at least rejuvenated, by a revisit to the scenes of his initial triumphs.

B. His quarrelsome voyage with Andromeda, who scoffs at his project; their shipwreck and rescue by a descendant of old King Polydectes: handsome Prince Danaus of Seriphos, who flirts with Andromeda.

C. His resolve to continue the reenactment alone, leaving Andromeda to her affair with Danaus. His reconsultation of veiled “Athena” for advice and equipment. She lends him the winged horse Pegasus but is otherwise equivocal, even skeptical of his project. The truth is, she is not Athena but Medusa in disguise! Moreover, she loves Perseus; has loved him all along! Athena, her original punisher, has recapitated her and restored her maiden beauty, but with certain hard conditions, to be disclosed in IIF1.