Cassier, Ernst. Language and Myth. Susanne Langer Trans. New York: Dover, 1946. Print. Summary: Cassier’s book first establishes his meaning of myth, its creation among different cultures, and myth’s connection to language, art and science as symbols in the sense that they are “organs of reality, since it is solely by their agency that anything real becomes an object for intellection apprehension, and as such is made visible to us” (8). His main concern is to figure out where language came from and how it developed, though at one point he writes that ends up like a “monkey puzzle,” never really resolving (32). A couple of the chapters deal more with the implications of myth regarding religion, but it is chapter three that makes most of the connections to language and how the brain forms consciousness (24). He is more phenomenological, considering thought and myth and language construction, and he has a broader view of what language is, beyond just text or words and into expressions (24, 25, 28). Casier also traces some examples of how language is tied to relation, and even creation, as with the Word and Christianity (61). His final chapter ends on metaphor by releasing word and myth as realities that once constrained (99). Response: In the beginning of the reading, I didn’t really understand the idea of the inner tension, but when it was described in class, I understood it better. Thinking of the ground as that inner tension that exists between experiences/impulses and then the representation of them was clear with the example from Contact. I could think of examples of that awe and the attempt to explain it fell short. From there the stem of consciousness of the tree is growing out of the roots of that inner tension and off shoot myth and language. While not all of Cassier’s example pertained exactly to what we were studying, the cultural examples did help illustrate some of the concept quite well and were somewhat more convincing because they provoked memories from my own experiences. It’s interesting when Cassier write about how language in society makes it possible for there to be an individual. I hadn’t really thought of this before I read that passage, though I’ve thought about the social aspect of language from other readings we did early on. As I’ve read, I’ve found myself more and more drawn to these ideas of the social and how they are connected to language. I think that I think like this because so much of my own writing and speaking (initially how I defined language) is based in the social because I don’t do either of those for myself or without an eventual audience. Connections/Questions: “The formation of language, too, should not be traced back to any sort of reflective contemplation, to the calm and clearheaded comparison of given sense impressions and the abstraction of definite attributes; but here again we must abandon this static point of view for the comprehension of the dynamic process which produces the verbal sound out of its own inner drive” (34). This quotation reminded me of the couple of times this semester we’ve talked about the concept of how thought and language interact. Specifically this reminded me of Vygotsky and his assertion that to understand words we must understand thought as well. In addition, we talked about that day which we thought came first and how we would know, but I don’t think we came to much of a conclusion to that in the class discussion. Also, Vološinov wrote about the role that ideology plays in the formation of ideas, that they are inescapable from one another really. So when Cassier writes about myth and the relation to language, that goes together with with Vološinov’s views as well. Similar to Piece, he does see that humans like to create order and classification, but I don’t know if that he would agree with Heidegger’s desire for full freedom from those constraints, though Cassier might. “Here the name is never a mere symbol, but is part of the personal property of its bearer; property which must be carefully protected, and the use of which is exclusively and jealously reserved to him” (50). We haven’t talked much about names and their importance, though we have discussed how words gain meaning. This part of the text about names stood out to me because it actually connects to Dr. Robbins’ authorship class and our discussions about copyright and the author as a commodity, which is different that the writer him/herself. So I found that this connects in some way to Barthes, Foucault, and Bourdeiu, and their writing about role of the author and how our understanding of the author, or the name attribute (or not), to the text. |
Quotations:“Mythology is inevitable, it is natural, it is an inherent necessity of language, if we recognize in language the outward form and manifestation of thought; it is in fact the dark shadows which language thaws upon thought, and which can never disappear till language becomes entirely commensurate with thought, which it never will” (5). |
