Читать книгу Hope, a Myth Reawakened - Lillian Moats - Страница 9

If you have picked up this little book and thumbed through a few pages, the arrangement of lines might prompt you to regard it as poetry; I don’t think of it as such. The format reflects the writing process I use to remind myself to be concise and attend to the rhythm of language. If I were reading aloud to you (which would be fun for me since I’m a one-to-one person) I would not pause to indicate line breaks as poets often do. So be my guest and read right through.

On a deeper plane, where did the idea of such a book come from? Most of us speak of hope frequently—cheerfully, nervously or fervently—and yet in our more somber moods we ask ourselves and each other, “Is there any hope?” I am one who has struggled hard with that question, especially in the last decade or so as I’ve become more painfully conscious of the condition of our world.

But perhaps my unease, and yours if you feel it, may be as old as humanity. This is what led me to turn to a classical myth and let my own allegorical extension of it reach into the present. The ancient Greeks expressed the conundrum of hope in the multiple and contradictory myths of a fateful “gift” from the gods to the first humans.

The gift was contained in a storage jar or urn. (In the Pandora myth it was translated as “box” centuries later). Did this gift from the gods contain evils as collective punishment, or blessings? Who let the contents escape? The first woman, cunning and curious, or a foolish man?

Hope is a central theme in these ancient myths, for in each rendition it is the only element not released from the jar. Scholars still debate whether hope’s perpetual containment conveys optimism or pessimism.

HOPE, a Myth Reawakened is an invitation to join me in an allegorical adventure, grappling with the age-old question that has taken on pressing relevance in our contemporary lives: Is there hope for the world?

Lillian Moats

2015