The Match Between Rival Twins in Myth and Literature
The Match Between Rival Twins in Myth and Literature
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“Every man needs an enemy” – this saying, which I heard from two different American men who did not know about each other, sounded quite astonishing to me each time. Naturally being used to generalized language, I assumed the word “man” meant “person”; and as I have never had the need of an enemy, I felt quite baffled until I recalled Robert Graves’ theory about ancient mythology. In his book The White Goddess, he explains the essence of the ancient theme of poetry, which is the story of the birth, life, death and resurrection of the God of the Year; this god, representing the seasons of the year, is sometimes divided into two: the God of the Waxing Year, and his twin and rival, the God of the Waning Year. The first is the protagonist of the story, the second is the antagonist, and for the completeness of the tale, one cannot exist without the other. In the two stations of the year when they meet, one always kills the other and takes his place by the side of the great Nature goddess, who is the twins’ mother, lover and killer. Thus, each of the two mythological characters needs his enemy to be a whole person.
It must be remembered that in ancient pagan mythology, none of the twins is either good or evil, both are necessary to make one whole, as summer needs winter, day needs night, light needs darkness. It is a natural dichotomy existing in nature, which human beings have tried to understand and interpret throughout their existence as Homo sapiens.
The idea of this rivalry for love and power is best represented by the ancient Canaanite myth of Baal (meaning Master) and Mot (meaning Death). The goddess Anat is the sister and lover of these twin brothers (the role of mother is filled by the Mother goddess Athrat/Astarte, while Anat’s role as a killer is subtly masked, this written myth being later than its original tale of the single all-powerful Nature goddess). The story goes thus: at the season of spring, when all rains cease and the vegetation begins to dry up in that area of the eastern coast of the Mediterranean sea, Mot kills Baal – who represents both the rains and the green vegetation – and buries him in a hidden place up north, from which the sun never shines. At the height of summer, (in the month of Tamuz, the Babylonian counterpart of Baal), Anat with the help of the Sun goddess, find Baal’s grave, takes his body out and mourn him. She then catches Mot in the shape of the dry wheat, cuts him down – i.e. reaps him – thrashes him and scatters his body to the wind as the dust-like chaff. In the autumn, Baal comes back to life, bring rains which cause the earth to soften and the green grass to grow again; the grains of wheat (=corn), which represent Mot’s dead body, are buried in the belly of the earth – i.e. sown – from which the corn grows green in the body of Baal, and the cycle begins all over again. It is quite clear here that both seasons of the year, and both aspects of the corn, are necessary for life to exist and continue.
This pagan belief in the yearly dichotomy was so strong, that in some places the myth, and the connection between the Goddess’ love and the political power, was used not only as a basis for ritual but also for actual reality. In his book The Greek Myths, Graves presents a historical evidence for such a religious-political situation: in some city-states of ancient Greece, at the pre-classical period, there existed seasonal alterations between pairs of rulers. One of these pairs was the twin-brothers Castor and Pollux, called the Dioscuri (“twins”), who seasonally interchanged the Spartan throne; after their death the brothers became gods and were fixed in the sky as the stars representing the Zodiac’s Gemini (“twins”) sign.
The myth is symbolic, both for reality and for the ritual, and it is not always possible to differentiate between the two. In the European year, the Sacred King symbolizing the increasing year marries the Goddess’ young priestess of Spring and Summer; his rival-brother, symbolizing the decreasing year, marries the old priestess of Autumn and Winter, who is also the Goddess of Death. Ritualistically, when the Sacred King marries the Death goddess, he dies and becomes King of the Underworld.
In my opinion, the whole idea that a good literary story needs a conflict between a protagonist and an antagonist stems from the theory of rivalry between the God of the Waxing Year and the God of the Waning Year. This literary idea is particularly prominent in the 19th cent. what is called Romantic literature (which must be distinguished from the more recent “romantic novel”). Two such prominent books are those written by the Bronte sisters, Emily and Charlotte.
In Emily Bronte’s book Wuthering Heights, the heroine Kathy is in love with Heathcliff, who