Some years back I wrote out some chapters of a hypothetical book outlining aspects of the combative mode and the Num Formula in much simpler, less prolix terms that what I employ here. Then I back-burnered the project. Recently I revisited certain sections, and I found that this one, in which I tried to show how "the uncanny"-- here called "The Lesser Metamundane"-- manifested even in narratives devoted to such famous Greek heroes as Heracles and Theseus, known largely for their adventures in the realm of the marvelous, i.e. "The Greater Metamundane." But I decided that most general readers would not be interested in the varied careers of these archaic Greek legends. So I cut Heracles and Theseus and reworked other aspects of the argument. By the way, what I call the metamundane is the same as what I call "metaphenomenal" on this blog, but with two less syllables and maybe less chance of chasing off receptive readers. But I decided to preserve this excerpt here in case it proves useful down the road.
In the first section of
this chapter, I was careful to cite examples of the metamundane that ranged
from phenomena that were just barely beyond the mundane, as with my implied
mention of The Lone Ranger, to phenomena that took over the entire narrative.
From now on I will distinguish between the two extremes as “The Lesser
Metamundane” and “The Greater Metamundane.”
The cultures of the ancient
world—Egypt, Sumeria, and Classical Greece—are replete with many stories of
gods transforming mortals into plants and animals, or of monster-killing heroes
gifted with super-strength or invulnerability. To pursue a parallel with modern
comic-book heroes, such extravagant stories might be called the “Superman type”
of narrative. However, in the extant culture of the Greeks we also see the rise
of a “Batman type” of narrative. In such stories, the audience is still dealing
with metamundane subject matter, but with less recourse to monsters or magical
powers.
Heracles, for instance, is
regarded as the Greek hero par excellence. He possesses unbelievable
strength and lives in a world of out-and-out marvels. During his famed Twelve
Labors he defeats the invulnerable Nemean lion and the immortal Hydra; he
journeys to the edge of the world to gather the Apples of the Hesperides and
descends to Death’s realm to capture the Hound of Hades. All of these
adventures contain elements that contravene everyday reality so strongly that
they belong to a category I’ll call the “Greater Metamundane.” However, one tale, that of the Ninth Labor,
is not quite so extravagant.
In the Ninth Labor,
Heracles is charged with the task of acquiring the Girdle of Hippolyta, queen
of the Amazons. He journeys to the Amazons’ domain, and tries to negotiate with
the queen. The peaceful negotiations are interrupted by troublemaking Hera, who
spreads the rumor among the other Amazons that the Greek hero intends to kidnap
the queen. The Amazons attack Heracles, and he kills several of the
warrior-women before retreating with a valuable capture, the queen’s daughter.
Later Heracles ransoms the princess for the girdle, and so accomplishes his
mission.
In my view the Amazons
belong to the domain of the metamundane subject matter just as much as Cerberus
and the Hydra. Yet it’s obvious that these mortal warrior-women aren’t nearly
as overtly fantastic as Heracles’ usual opponents. The hero doesn’t perform any
super-feats to defeat them, and any competent Greek warrior could have simply
taken a hostage to gain an advantage. There is no archaeological evidence that
the Amazons ever existed. Yet the idea of a matriarchal cult of warrior-women,
while far from the continuum of everyday experience, resonates as “something
that might happen” under the right circumstances. The Amazons choose to diverge
from the norms of Greek society—meaning patriarchal rule—and so they became,
for the Greeks, “monsters” in a purely figurative manner. This figurative, less
extravagant manifestation of the metamundane I term “the Lesser Metamundane.”
Theseus is generally deemed
Athens’ belated attempt to design a Heracles of their own. Modern readers
usually know the Athenian hero for his one monster-killing feat, slaying the
Minotaur of Crete. Prior to the Cretan adventure, though, Theseus has some episodic
adventures that are closer in spirit to the Lesser Metamundane.
The hero is raised in the
Greek city of Troezen, his mother’s city. Upon reaching manhood he travels
overland to meet with his father, the ruler of Athens. On the way the hero—who,
despite being the son of the sea-god Poseidon, has no special powers—encounters
a bunch of mortal brigands, most of whom seem like the archaic ancestors of
Norman Bates and Hannibal Lecter. The bandit Cerycon has a thing for waylaying
travelers, challenging them to wrestle, and then killing them. Theseus accepts
the bandit’s challenge and breaks
Cerycon’s neck. Then Theseus meets Sciron, who has the habit of kicking
travelers off a neighboring cliff. Appropriately, the hero introduces this
brigand to the wrong end of the same cliff. Finally, the hero encounters an
innkeeper worthy of Edgar Allan Poe. When Procrustes allows guests to sleep in
one of the beds at his inn, he insists on making the guest fit the bed, either
trying to lengthen the guest’s limbs on a rack-like device, or cutting off body
parts that are just too darn long. Theseus forces the innkeeper to sample his
own hospitality, putting him to bed and chopping off the evildoer’s head with
Procrustes’ own axe.
These tales have a simpler
ring to them than many Heracles stories, following the folkloric pattern of
“the biter bit.” One can find this simple pattern in stories like the Aesop’s
Fable “The Cock, the Fox, and the Dog,” which depicts how a predatory fox,
seeking to prey upon a rooster, gets lured into the jaws of the rooster’s
buddy, a fox-killing hound. Like the Amazons, and like Theseus himself, the
three brigands have no special powers. What makes them metamundane is that they
diverge from the practical ways of real robbers. Each criminal has an almost
fetish-like preoccupation with executing victims in some particular way. Given
their impractical preoccupations, the brigands of Theseus loosely anticipate
Batman’s fetish-oriented fiends, who pattern their crimes after birds (The
Penguin) or cats (The Catwoman) in a perverse assertion of their quirky
identities.
Roughly contemporaneous
with the culture of Classical Greece is that of ancient Israel. The stories of
the Hebrew Bible are generally regarded as belonging to religious mythology,
and so there are many narratives of God and his angels. Yet the Lesser Metamundane
also appears here, as seen in the narrative of David and Goliath. Goliath is
called a “giant,” but standing a mere nine feet by current reckoning, he’s a
long way from the behemoths that stormed Mount Olympus. As with the story of
Heracles and the Amazons, if one disregards the deities hanging on the
periphery of each story, the physical contest is very close to a mundane
battle. Yet Goliath, like the Amazons, belongs to the Lesser Metamundane in
being a lesser transgression of the expectations of everyday experience.
During the Christian eras
that followed, non-Christian mythological tales became verboten, though
some of the material of mythology was recorded in the form of stories of olden
days. Some storytellers, like the composer of Beowulf, attempted to fuse
the charms of a Celtic warrior-ethos with the moral meaning of Christianity
(Grendel is called “the son of Cain.”) Other writers, usually monkish scholars,
recorded the myths of their ancestors with some degree of fidelity, as seen in
such compilations as the Elder Edda and the Book of Kells. However, only in the
13th century did Christian Europe develop a purely literary
mythology: that of the courtly epic. The original Arthur appeared in a
chronicle from the sixth century, where he was simply a skilled warrior. Yet
over the centuries he became not only a king but also a lodestone drawing other
heroes into his field of influence, so that in time names like Lancelot, Gawain
and Tristan began to sustain their own legends. Aside from Arthur, who wielded
a magical sword, most of the knights were ordinary skilled men wielding
ordinary weapons. Yet the element of knights’ armor was sometimes used for a
metamundane effect of the Lesser kind. When Malory gives readers a Black
Knight, or Spenser uses a Red Knight, both authors are emphasizing the
metamundane aspects of the knights’ appearance, in a way that would eventually
be mirrored in the costumes of 20th-century superheroes.
