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A Myth for the Contemporary Man
Walter Anderson found Poetry in very interesting circumstances; a walk around the beach where the rays of the sun hit in the morning those little rays that curled round his feet made his poetry. On the swampy bayou’s bank, a mocking bird fairy charmed an alligator dragon; while a masked raccoon in the water ceremoniously washed his breakfast’s edge aster- starred shadows. He not only found the Lily pads he was looking for but also found gold. In autumnal glory a sumac bush fed his spirit. Indeed, it is an incredible thing to live in metaphor and to get the metaphor transformed into images that contain immense power. It becomes even extraordinary and mythical at that if metaphor is used to move other people’s lives (Anderson 60).
“Today I saw strange things which made me walk through fire. I also heard the fairy where Para Banon was singing to the dragon; the most striking of all is that I saw a junior prophet make an offering amongst the stars. I looked for Lily pads and found them as well as yellow daisies of weird new types. I saw the once again the brining bush and warmed my heart with its fire (Anderson 62)”
Today, Anderson’s reaches and moves individuals from various lifestyles; his works to new heights of creative novelty have inspired musicians, visual artists, dancers, poets, and novelists. Businessmen, Lawyers, and Doctors perceive in a robust inclination at the world around them. Naturalists and Scientists wonder at his ingenious observation, his capacity to magnify, and comprehend the critical attributes of sea creatures, reptiles, and insects (Anderson 67).
Enthralled psychologists evaluate the facts of mental illness and dark episodes against the overflowing spring of Anderson’s ingeniousness. Engineers wonder at his use of natural mathematics in the geometry of his creations, his comprehension of pattern, and knowledge in growth as apparent in feathers, back, scales, and petals. World literature and Art history scholars marvel at the application and scope of his diverse allusions. Children and college students, wandering gypsies, and weary mothers are all captivated by his images and words dream of ancient camps and small boats in Horn Island (Husain 40).
Joseph Campbell in his Power of Myth asserted that whenever an individual becomes other people’s model, he in effect moves into the realm of being mythologized. It is certain that the stories of Anderson and his vision have grown to be a myth; a gifted scientist who suffered brain failure and protracted hospitalization returns to offer society his gifts only to be rejected. Inspired by his art, he abandons friends and relatives to lead a lonely life on an island off the shore where he draws his vision about a unified universe. Only after he dies is his vision accepted, his genius recognized, and his gifts acclaimed (Campbell 12).
Moved by animals music, Walter Anderson retorted with art; in a water color angled intervals of grass harmonized with curling green lizards, a frogs rhythm encircles a cereal bowl, while across a page of typing paper horses resonate in clay or wood while a cat’s melodic line flows. The animals, which echoed in Anderson’s artworks for over four decades, find enlightening accompaniment in his miscellaneous writings, letters and logs (Anderson 75).
While being interviewed by a local journalist, Agnes Anderson at one time referred to her husband as shaman meaning a way shower. The journalist wrote showman upon misunderstanding; however, both words are suitable and would have definitely pleased him. Like the ancient shamans who graved their images on cave walls, Anderson evoked the beauty and power of Fish, bird, paintings, beast in drawings, and sculpture with a religious passion. To Anderson they were not lesser beings he asserts, “There is no standard, all things are in existent and have their own veracity (Anderson 78)”
His experience at Les Eyzies caves inspired the following words: “In the middle and dark ages man created and still creates images. Rats, dogs, cats and pigs all have had worlds created for them. Despised by man, they have their own worlds. To the turtle that lowly crawls and bears his shell’s burden flowers were made, stars came low and hang immediately below his head filling the space between his grass blades.” “Primeval men would certainly have comprehended the mystery in these words; “the music is caused by the beasts, man is moved by it, the birds keep time to it (Anderson 81)”
In his quest to bring ‘nature and art together into one thing,’ Anderson looked for relations amongst civilizations layered riches. He explored the humanities and arts for connections. Like poetry his works were filled with metaphor which were picked from nature; he asserted that, “true art entails spreading the intervals to let imagination fill space within trees ” When art succeeds like poetry, it goes beyond methodologies and tools and explodes like light into our consciousness (Martin 75).
Even though the journalist referred to him as showman, Anderson refers to himself as a dramatic painter in the Horn Island logs and his stage is the island. Like a Broadway impresario, he perceived and liked the climactic instant and deliberately maneuvered color’s properties harmonic order, color, tension, contrast, balance, light, composition, and shadow to optimize the drama in his realizations (Husain 40).
Not just as producer and director, Anderson perceived himself in various roles. He was, by discovering the world once more, for the first time he became Adam in a hat. “I continually arrive from some strange places and I see strange and new things, it is through feeling that I encounter the realization of space and form. Upon feeling a tree’s trunk or a flower’s beauty I get inducted into a three dimensions world and gain the sense of form that contrasts artificial conventions and forms. This is the assumption; I have my being and live in a world of forms and space that have shape and color; to be a live is being conscious of this, it is through the five senses that one arrives at such consciousness: taste, smell, touch, sight and hearing (Best-Maugard 34)”
Campbell insists, in his Power of Myth, that indeed the artist is a hero who provides the myth for today’s man. He does this by noting that, “myths tend to associate man not only to their own nature, but also to the power of the natural world something of which they are part and thus necessary guides for a society’s health.” “The modern myth should relate man not to his local cohort but to the earth instilling an environmental awareness that transcends individual interests. This is because it becomes even extraordinary and mythical at that if metaphor is used to move other people’s lives (Campbell 34)”
Annotated Works Cited
Anderson Walter, The Horn Island Logs of Walter Inglis Anderson, ed. Redding S. Sugg, Jr. (Jackson: U P of Mississippi, (2005): 60-81.Print.
This is an exposure of the art and mind of an exceptional artist lost and lonely in the natural world, this fine-looking book records Anderson’s encounters on one of the obstruction islands in the Mexican Gulf over a period spanning two decades.
Best-Maugard, Adolpho. A Method for Creative Design. New York and London: Alfred A. Knopf,(2009): 23-34.Print.
He studied the primitive designs of African, Greek and Aztec. Through art and pottery he harnessed a contemporary strategy to old design methodologies. It is a very good instruction book for the baby boomers or the historian. It looks simple but is very detailed in the primary design knowledge.
Husain, Shakrukh. The Goddess. London, England: Duncan Baird Publishers, (2005):32-45. Print.
Drawing from an enlightening assortment of iconography on myth and religious beliefs, from the and antique Egyptian Isis images to Paleolithic Venus of Willendorf Shahrukh Husain provides readers a complete, cross-cultural view of goddess worship over the ages by employing a wealth of cases in point from every tradition and era.
Joseph Campbell. The Power of Myth with Bill Moyers New York, NY: Doubleday. (2006):12-37.Print.
He depicts how people are able to generate and live out mythology themes. It is deconstructionist literary criticism work that intends to celebrate the ordinary outfits that run through all perspectives and cultures.
Martin, Robert Bernard, Gerard Manley Hopkins: A Very Private Life. New York, NY: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, (2006): 67-76. Print.
The good works of Robert Bernard Martin’s new life of Hopkins are such as to make it not only a good life of a great poet but the best we are likely to have until such time as the world becomes profoundly moved again by those religious controversies that so moved Hopkins
