MYTHS, LEGENDS, AND ARCHETYPES from Creative Writing
some quotes and excerpts that inspire our creative writers from the class taught by Jeff Shapiro, author of Renato's Luck.
archetype n. 1.a perfect or typical specimen. 2.an original model or pattern; protoype. 3. Psychoanal. one of the inherited mental images postulated by Jung as the content of the collective unconscious. 4. a constantly recurring symbol or motif in literature, painting, etc. [C17: from Latin archetypum an original, from Greek arkhetupos first-moulded] —archetypal or archetypical adj. —archetypically adv.
When you set out on your journey to Ithaca,
pray that the road is long,
full of adventure, full of knowledge.
The Lestrygonians and the Cyclops,
the angry Poseidon -- do not fear them:
You will never find such as these on your path,
if your thoughts remain lofty, if a fine
emotion touches your spirit and your body.
The Lestrygonians and the Cyclops,
the fierce Poseidon you will never encounter,
if you do not carry them within your soul,
if your soul does not set them up before you.
Pray that the road is long.
That the summer mornings are many, when,
with such pleasure, with such joy
you will enter ports seen for the first time;
stop at Phoenician markets,
and purchase fine merchandise,
mother-of-pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
and sensual perfumes of all kinds,
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
visit many Egyptian cities,
to learn and learn from scholars.
Always keep Ithaca in your mind.
To arrive there is your ultimate goal.
But do not hurry the voyage at all.
It is better to let it last for many years;
and to anchor at the island when you are old,
rich with all you have gained on the way,
not expecting that Ithaca will offer you riches.
Ithaca has given you the beautiful voyage.
Without her you would have never set out on the road.
She has nothing more to give you.
And if you find her poor, Ithaca has not deceived you.
Wise as you have become, with so much experience,
you must already have understood what Ithacas mean.
C.P. Cavafy was born in Alexandria, Egypt on April 29, 1863 and died in the same city on April 29, 1933. He descended from an old Greek family from Constantinople, then the capital of the Ottoman Empire. Cavafy was educated in England and spent some of his young adulthood in that country. Some of his early work was in English and French, as well as in Greek. Cavafy's preoccupations dealt with the world of the senses and that of history. He was aware particularly of the directions taken by Hellenic civilization through time and the peoples and cultures it affected. Hellenism was for him one of the universal expressions of world culture, perhaps one of the most refined.
In 1919 the English writer E.M. Forster visited Cavafy in Alexandria and then enthusiastically introduced his work to the English-speaking world. English literary circles were sensitive to Cavafy's poetic sensibility, so much so that T.S. Eliot came to refer to him as the Poet. There are four major English translations of Cavafy's opus. —excerpt from http://egnatia.ee.auth.gr/~bchr/cavafy/bio.htm
