THE TRANSPOSITON OF MYTHICAL STRUCTURES IN THE ISSA VALLEY BY CZESŁAW MIŁOSZ

Abstract

The author reads Czesław Miłosz’s novel The Issa Valley through the prism of myth criticism, which was introduced to the humanities by Gilbert Durand. In particular, she focuses on the palingenesis of literary mythemes and the transposition of myth cal structures which can be found in various aspects of the text, including the novel’s chronotope and character construction. Moreover, The Issa Valley features processed paradigms of mythical time, mythical models of space, and individual mythemes transformed by Miłosz’s imaginary. The writer semantically inverts or demythologizes the myths of Tellus Mater, Pammetor Ge, and Arcadia, the mythologem of childhood, and the mythologem of family home, which have been deeply rooted in tradition. Miłosz addresses the given problem in an antithetical manner. He avoids simple answers. Instead, he poses questions, and thus opens the text to the individual hermeneutics of symbolic paths. Miłosz perceived the imaginary that has symbolic and mythical foundations as endowed with redemptive potential. In myth criticism, the symbolic modelling that takes place in the artistic imaginary is closely connected with the therapeutic role of an image. It helps an individual regain the state of internal balance which Gilbert Durand defines as anthropological balance. And, as Ernst Cassirer posits, this balance is a manifestation of human symbolic intelligence.