Myth and Beauty

Outside Reading 

October 16, 2016 

Albert Camus writes in The Myth of Sisyphus of the absurd man who “catches sight of a burning and frigid, transparent and limited universe in which nothing is possible but everything is given, and beyond which all is collapse and nothingness” (60). He describes a paradigm in which there is an understanding that this world is all there is, that death is imminent, and that in order to be authentic we most hold that in the forefront of our mind. This leads us to a life in which we pursue maximum meaning and not the best meaning. It diminishes the value of beauty and, with beauty, myth, by rejecting the hope of an eternity.

C.S. Lewis had an original stance on myth that they were simply “lies breathed silver.” This perspective aligns itself with Camus’ position. If life is simply about maximum meaning, what is the purpose of story or fiction? Its only purpose would be in its entertainment. Yet, Lewis moves past this view of myth as merely entertainment and asserts that myth should reveal truth. This is a truth that might not be rational or able to be understood through mere empiricism. In the Silver Chair, Puddleglum speaks out against the spell of the witch saying that even if Narnia is a play-world, it is a better world than the underground. Herein lies the value of myth: it heralds beauty and adventure and possibility. Myth reveals a better world than the “collapse and nothingness” that Camus articulates even if that world is not always immediately evident.