“For myth is alive at once and in all its parts, and dies before it can be dissected.”
"Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics" (1936), p. 14
Context: The significance of a myth is not easily to be pinned on paper by analytical reasoning. It is at its best when it is presented by a poet who feels rather than makes explicit what his theme portends; who presents it incarnate in the world of history and geography, as our poet has done. Its defender is thus at a disadvantage: unless he is careful, and speaks in parables, he will kill what he is studying by vivisection, and he will be left with a formal or mechanical allegory, and what is more, probably with one that will not work. For myth is alive at once and in all its parts, and dies before it can be dissected.
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John Ronald Reuel Tolkien 78
British philologist and author, creator of classic fantasy … 1892–1973Related quotes
“Myth must be kept alive. The people who can keep it alive are the artists of one kind or another.”
Source: The Cause Lost: Myths and Realities of the Confederacy (1996), p. 178
On the ideas of Sigmund Freud, p. 66.
Strong Opinions (1973)
“Well, I think he shatters the myth of white supremacy once and for all.”
Rangel (2005) in an interview on New York Public Television (March 28, 2005): On George W. Bush
Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction (1942), It Must Be Abstract
Context: p>The clouds preceded us.There was a muddy centre before we breathed.
There was a myth before the myth began,
Venerable and articulate and complete.From this the poem springs: that we live in a place
That is not our own and, much more, not ourselves
And hard it is in spite of blazoned days.</p
The Paris Review interview (1982)