In her retelling of Greek myths collected in “The Beautiful Stories of Life,” Newberry-winning author Cynthia Rylant offers some food for thought. The retelling of six Greek myths are not stunning. The language is a bit clunky and contemporary, and I did not find that the stories came alive. Kids seem to enjoy them, but that has, perhaps, a lot more to do with the enduring merits of the stories themselves and not necessarily the merit of the retelling.
What I found hampered the retelling was its overly psychological language that seems to afflict everything we think about in our postmodern era. I don’t care much for a psychological analysis of Narcissus, I would rather hear the story unfiltered. However, as much as this distracted from the substance, in my opinion, there was at least one striking moment that cut to the quick of our current-day afflictions, bringing the myths into startling contact with our daily culture.
In the story of Pygmalion, Rylant writes, and here I am paraphrasing, that Pygmalion was in control of every aspect of his life, “except his own loneliness.” He was an artist who ate precisely what he liked when he wanted it, he devoted himself to his work without interruption and commanded his own time. The shortcoming of this carefully calibrated comfortable life was his total lack of companionship.
Does that not express the conundrum of the current age? There are endless statistics about anxiety and depression—conditions made worse in isolation—yet few people willing to spend time with living creatures capable of speaking the human tongue. Spa days and doggy friends are not adequate for an anguished soul.
The loneliest people are those with no context to understand their own loneliness, afflicted by a pain they cannot name.
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