Are there parallels between Paul Bunyan and Poseidon?
First, and most importantly, they both sport impressive beard growth. They are both normally depicted with chiseled physiques. Both have blue animals associated with them (an ox and a dolphin, respectively). Both carry sharp implements (axe, trident). And both, of course, come striding to us out of the mists of mythology.
Yet, I propose that the mythologies they come from are vastly different in nature.
Paul Bunyan statue at the Enchanted Forest in Old Forge, New York. Library of Congress. (Public Domain)
What Mythology Means
The word “mythology” presents a difficulty. The word can be used in many different ways, and these various definitions overlap to some degree, muddying the waters further. “Mythology” can refer to folktales and tall tales, mere oddball stories that develop in a certain time and place.
Sometimes the word is used to describe a culture’s stories about its origins or founding. It can also refer to an overarching narrative that guides a society, such as the myth of progress. Today, it’s frequently used to describe, simply, an untruth.
Finally, mythology may mean the use of narrative and poetry to discover and explore essential mysteries of life and gain glimpses of truths that cannot be properly expressed by other, more rationalist means.
The Enlightenment and America’s Founding
This last definition of mythology—a story that offers truths—is mythology in its oldest, deepest sense. And it is this that America, along with other younger countries, largely lacks.
True, America has certain myths surrounding its founding, or the days of the frontiersman, or the Wild West. We might argue that America continues to be guided by myths in the sense of grand narratives that shape our culture. But all of these fall into what we might call secondary mythological categories. America does not have a body of mythology in the primary sense, the kind of mythology that Greece or Rome or Scandinavia possess.
Book cover for "Tall Tales of America,"1958, with illustrations by Al Schmidt. (Guild Press, Inc.)
Why is this? At least in part, it’s because we are a modern country. The United States began after the Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment, and was strongly influenced by both. Enlightenment thinking often disregards poetic, mythological, or religious means of arriving at truth. According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Enlightenment philosophers ... tend to have a great deal of confidence in humanity’s intellectual powers, both to achieve systematic knowledge of nature and to serve as an authoritative guide in practical life. This confidence is generally paired with suspicion or hostility toward other forms or carriers of authority (such as tradition, superstition, prejudice, myth and miracles).”
The Enlightenment’s emphasis on rational and scientific knowledge left little room for the more mystical modes of knowing, including poetry and myth. As heirs of this new way of thinking, we Americans lack access to the mystical spirit earlier cultures, like Greece and Rome, could benefit from. Mythology simply cannot develop in a society suffused with Enlightenment thought.
"Allegory of the Sciences, Minerva and Chronos Protecting the Sciences Against Envy and Ignorance," 1614–1616, by Jacob Jordaens. Oil on canvas. Private collection. (Public Domain)
Though mythology may not be true in a literal sense, it nevertheless expresses certain timeless and universal truths in a compelling way—far better, perhaps, than science or reason by themselves. As literature professor John Senior writes, “To most of life’s grave issues, science, dialectic and rhetoric are blind; their reasons cannot penetrate to mysteries like love and war, or why a sinner hopes for redemption.” For all of its uses and powers, science struggles to explore these big picture questions of human existence.
As James Sale recently wrote for The Epoch Times, science and mythology (or logos and mythos) ought to complement one another, like two pillars holding up civilization. “There is something dramatically incomplete about our knowledge, and so our lives, when we ignore one fundamental modality of our being and overemphasize the other,” he says.
Yet America has long suffered from this kind of monocular vision. In an article for “The American Mind,” philosopher Edward Feser has argued that science has become the accepted way of viewing everything in American life—from economics, to morality, to public health measures—as though it were an all-encompassing religion itself. “The Enlightenment merely replaced the dogmatism of religion with the dogmatism of scientism,” he asserts. And he, like Sale, understands how lopsided our view of reality becomes when we use only one means of finding truth. We fall into tunnel vision. (How often do we hear “trust the science,” as though science were an infallible guide in all aspects of life? And how rarely do we hear “trust the philosophy” or “trust the mythology”?)
The acceleration of technology since the 16th century has reinforced this tunnel vision. Since that time, we have beguiled and bedazzled ourselves with our technological advancements to such a degree that we begin to think we hold the ultimate key to the universe in our hands, through the power of applied science. We need nothing else.
A drawing of Diogenes (fourth century Greek philosopher) in search of an honest man, 1642, by Jacob Jordaens. National Gallery of Victoria, Australia. (Public Domain)
Yet, at times, in spite of everything, our modern technological culture yearns for legend and myth. In a song titled “We Need a Myth,” American alternative folk rock singer Will Sheff laments, “We need a myth / We need a path through the mist ... Scrape away grey cement / Show me the world as it was again / As it was in a myth ... And if all we’re taught is a trick / Why would this feeling persist?”
The same desire is expressed in the words of Russell Kirk, American theorist and moralist: “Our time, sick nigh unto death of utilitarianism and literalness, cries out for myth and parable. Great myths are not merely susceptible of rational interpretation: they are truth, transcendent truth.”
In a mysterious way, neglecting the mythic way of knowing may cause us to forget something key about what it means to be human.
And rediscovering it may help us rediscover ourselves.
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Walker Larson teaches literature at a private academy in Wisconsin, where he resides with his wife and daughter. He holds a master's in English literature and language, and his writing has appeared in The Hemingway Review, Intellectual Takeout, and his Substack, “TheHazelnut.” He is also the author of two novels, "Hologram" and "Song of Spheres."
