The venerable Oxford philologist Max Müller held that ‘mythology, which was the bane of the ancient world, is in truth a disease of language’. Gods filled a void, reanimating meaning as words became more fixed and less metaphorical. A more fundamental disease of language — the words themselves — is the subject of Paul Kingsnorth’s memoir.
It takes the form of a series of meditations that weave to and fro around the question that forms its narrative thread: should he give up writing in favour of a more innocent life of working his land and raising his family? The old trope of the writer as wordsmith, forger of truth and meaning, no longer applies: instead, the words, and their compulsion to exist, own him. ‘I feel that words are savage gods and that in the end, however well you serve them, they will eat you alive,’ Kingsnorth writes. And perhaps, he argues by way of forays into a breadth of religious, philosophical and mythological traditions, they own all of us more than we might like.
Drawn to the mindset of some of the indigenous cultures he encountered as a journalist investigating the environmental ravages of globalisation, Kingsnorth has a strong affinity for the mythological disease of language over its Enlightenment cousin, whose relentless taxonomising grip he sees as the tool of an all-consuming machine. If the system-building world of sterile facts and certainty is the enemy of aliveness, a softer form of knowledge of the sort glimpsed in oral storytelling traditions, or meditation, or poetry, remains possible. He listens to a Botswanan tale of the dance of fire and water, in which the driving force of fire characterises the flight and rage of youth and, over time, gives way to the quieter, settled waters of middle and old age.
Comments
Join the debate for just £1 a month
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for £3.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just £1 a monthAlready a subscriber? Log in