Hey. My name is Susana Castellano de Subiría and I want to welcome you
to a new episode of Sherif Side stories. Today we have a very special
episode because we close the many chapters that we have made of classical mythology,
that is, of Greece and rom and today we have a very special guest,
Rafael Toledo Plata, who is a bibliophile passionate about opera, besides being
a lawyer and a great friend Rafa how you are welcome, Hi Susa.
Thank you so much for that generous introduction, but especially for the invitation to
this podcast. Let' s say it has been a long journey, on
a very interesting journey, taking into account everything one has been able to learn
from the different currents and different nuances found in classical mythology and which are not
popularly known. And that' s exactly where it comes out a little bit.
The idea of this episode rafa you that you accompanied us, because you
have made the reviews of all these episodes and that all this time, more
than a year, you have accompanied what you find interesting, what you think
is worth highlighting and what you think the myths tell us today people today.
I think it is a question with great relevance, because the first thing I
think can be highlighted from this trip is the validity, the validity of the
classic myths and understand how, through and without entering areas and lands that do
not correspond to me, understand how the figures, the gods, the creatures,
the situations are easily transferable to a convulsed century one and two. How
this mythology or this way of seeing the world as the Greeks and humans imagined
it helps us to understand ourselves. After a few centuries, then understand one
that at this time something as far away as the myths of the Greek gods
or the foundation of the Founding Myth of Rome, which sounds not so far
away, but actually is. I' m not going to say that you
can apply that in your day- to- day life. It is,
in my opinion, the most that can be rescued from this journey of many
episodes, because it has not been a few, but it has not been
a difficult journey to follow, because the way one goes into myths, the
way one gets used to it and to having these gods as companions of the
week makes one enter into a process of self- reflection and is allowed to
try to understand it from mythology. This is perhaps the most relevant thing and
what rescues the most. There is an idea of an author that I like
very much, that is Joseph Campbell, who gave a lot of force to
the myths in the 20th century, that I would like to share with you
for us to explore. It would not be exaggerated to say that myth is
the secret entrance through which the inexhaustible energies of the cosmos are poured into human
cultural manifestations, religions, philosophies, the arts, the social forms of primitive
and historical man, the first scientific and technological discoveries, the very visions that
torment the dream emanate from the fundamental magic ring of myth. What does this
idea evoke to you? It evokes to you many emotions and many sensations that
have been explored during this year, which is precisely to see an even sometimes
self question or wonder if myths are really myths or a story. Let'
s say. That' s a subject that follows me around my head in
a different way and I leave it clear to those who are going to hear
us. I don' t think that bus exists, but the reality as
they are counted and how they have been carried along the centuries, because indisputably
one does face a reality from a completely different approach and a little bit that
Campbell idea, I think we can. I don' t know how you
see him entwining with that vigor that by being repetitive. Yes, I believe
that this process of self- reflection has left me the most through epic poems
or narratives or the same oral tradition that has accompanied human beings since the classical
era. Let' s just say what' s got us allowed. Yeah,
so something you' re saying is interesting. It is like that reality
of myths that have to do with a certain symbolic aspect, with an aspect
that is within ourselves in some way, are spontaneous products of the psyche and
that each one carries within himself as a seed. So existential questions about where
we come from the meaning of life explore human passions. Passions are not only
love, but envy, ambition, jealousy. The importance of foundational myths.
How they give identity to both Greeks and Romans, it is evident in some
way to the Egyptians and in the Near East also then the myths, for
they are not simply infantile rules, but they are helping us to explore and
know ourselves. On the other hand, heroes and their exploits survive in modern
times and then, today we see that in different video games, in different
series sagas, the image of the hero survives. How you see that relationship
between modern heroes, the heroic figure that continues to be maintained and the one
that comes from antiquity. Well, the most interesting thing is that I don
' t think it' s changed. Let' s say one, you
imagine the modern hero and you can imagine Corbata when, evidently, they didn
' t happen to Hercules. But I think the figure or the first thing
that can come to our head is the hero and I think this can be
very closely related to Campbell again, and it' s the inner facet of
the hero as the hero really is not so much the one that is externalized,
but how internally it is going to develop and how all those mental processes
are going to be, also physical, but often emotional because we can'
t forget that the hero, no matter how strongly he had, had his
emotions well marked by the simple fact of having the human condition within himself,
in greater or lesser percentage, but a human condition that in the end didn
' t necessarily give him his quality is mortal. So I think that today
the hero continues to play an important role and does not continue to show us
how to draw strength, how to move forward, how to make certain decisions
in life. A little bit like a jump into the void, we could
say, but without neglecting the strength that is needed and the determination that is
needed to make a certain decision. So I' m completely convinced that one,
the hero, is still among us, but it hasn' t changed
much. Let us say the very essence of the hero and of the heroic.
It remains within all of us and remains in a society where I believe
that this will become more and more important, because it is a city,
a society that is absolutely alienated to certain currents of thought and it is necessary
that these figures help to make a difference, just as it was marked within
the imaginary of the mythologies of the class period. Thank you very much.
Yes, it is very interesting to explore these themes because, for example,
by returning to Joseph Campbell in his idea of the hero' s journey,
p the idea that each of us, as individuals, are heroes and we
take throughout our lives a journey, an inisiatic journey that equates us to the
journey of heroes. This means that you can see the journey of each of
the heroes, of the stories of the heroes, which exist many around the
world, in all the peoples, but which have a common structure that is
identified with our inner journey, with that passage from childhood, to adolescence and
then to maturity. With that knowledge that we are acquiring from the outside world
and in parallel with ourselves and, on the other hand, from that relationship
that we have with nature, with our environment, then everything in the mythical
narratives is symbolic and this means that it reflects something of ourselves, of our
inner knowledge. How you see this exploration. It is an exploration that is
not easy to do and carry out, especially as I said, the prenetism
of the world in which we live necessarily prevents there from being spaces for reflection
and the journey of the hero or to be able to carry out and carry
out the famous journey of the hero. It is necessary to have a moment
of reflection, I do not know how you see that, but I cannot
have or advance without self- questioning and without reflecting, without thinking, without
stopping. And it' s an absolutely convulsed world, an absolutely frenetic world
where sometimes there' s a lot of outside noise. And that outside noise
sometimes interferes with the need or with those pauses that are key and determining to
be able to advance and bring out the hero who, as Campbell put it
well, we all have inside. Because I am fully convinced that, unlike
Greek mythology or Roman mythology, heroes, if we say, had their role
very clearly determined. Not everyone, deep down, could ever be. But
I think that today, when you transpolate these concepts, you encounter with everyone
we have an inner hero and we will all necessarily be able to reach this
point or that coolness of the journey alone and uniquely and exclusively if we propose
it. There' s something interesting about this that you say there are several
things. On the one hand, silence the outside noise and mythology. Let
' s say it. The appreciation of methodology, like art and music,
implies in some way as an inner silence. And what is going to be
mythology, like art in general, or that music is like awakening that inner
intuition. As I see it, then that we can awaken within ourselves,
because mythology, poetry, art, magic are made like those of the same
material. It allows us to wake up inside. And for that, then
we need a silence from the outside to be able to listen to ourselves and
see this symbolic part, which is being reflected in myths. But, on
the other hand, speaking of heroism every hero in different peoples, but in
particular, as we have seen in Greek and Roman mythology, heroes suffer suffering
is an essential part of the process of heroism. Every hero suffers by definition.
There is no way to escape from that if you want to transcend,
if you want to say cross that rite of initiation that involves reaching maturity and
self- knowledge and understanding as the fullness of being alive. If we understand
that initiatic process associated with suffering, it is difficult to relate it to that
search for easy happiness that is lived today, it is felt offered by the
mass media, as you have to be happy, you have to be positive
and there is no recognition of suffering as an essential part of an individual'
s maturity process. How you are that process in the heroes of the classical
world and in the heroes of literature and history you have seen. There is
a subject that brings that up and that seems to me to be quite rescueable,
and that is that currently and for those who hear us ask these questions,
that I think it is very relevant to do that act on the way,
currently it is poorly seen and I tell you in quotation marks the fact
of suffering, because it is that suffering is not necessarily treated to a disease.
Or suffering is not necessarily related to moods of is that nothing comes out
of me, nothing works for me, but I think a little further or
at least so I see it and is understanding, suffering or also better can
be suffered when you don' t know what is the next step to take
in life. But you' re convinced you have to give it. Then,
when one rethinks the concept of suffering and understands that by the mere fact
of having a human condition, there must necessarily be suffering, there must necessarily
be uncertainty and that it is not enough. It is not enough that I
invite you to be positive and to see the world with one and allow me
to say so, with a harmful permanent notion of happiness. You don'
t have because you' re happy all the time, but many times you
feel that if you' re not happy, you' re like betraying something
to someone. But you forget that those states or those alterations of emotions,
or those alterations of leading us to moments of suffering, are necessary and unavoidable
by our human condition, but above all in order to carry out the journey
of the hero who, as I say, I am fully convinced that everyone,
to a greater or lesser extent, if we have a hero within us.
Following that idea and let' s say look a little deeper at the
myths and the subversive, subversive character that can have at this moment a look
from the mythology of society. There is another aspect and it is that myths
transcend that segmentation that is being made today of society, true, for example,
of men, women or different groups, because in this case it is
not about the journey, the hero or the heroine, but that men and
women carry a heroic character within us, just as we all carry within us
a sorcerer. So, when we get closer to the myths, we go
looking, we realize that they talk about something very general, that is,
it doesn' t just talk about a city, it doesn' t talk
about a group of people, if it doesn' t talk to everyone,
to the whole planet. And when he talks about nature, it' s
about the nature of the whole earth. True, and when one speaks of
the heroic journey, from the process of maturation of individuals, from dependence to
adulthood, maturity and then death, and how each individual should be linked to
this society and how to link society to the world, to nature and to
the cosmos. That' s what all the myths have talked about, and
that' s what myths keep telling us. Then they invite us to understand
a kind of planetary society and to transcend the fragmentations that are being made today.
How do you see that about to mythological from the classical Greek mythology of
Rome, since taking up the idea about the historical component that myths have and
when one approaches them, one says well, one finds it difficult or quarrels
with reason. Sometimes this happened or it didn' t happen. And that
bound one and I say it in a very figurative way, a timeline or
where you can follow one myth behind another, one myth behind another and myth
behind another to explain and here. I think it is more Greece than Rome
to explain the world And why I make that difference, Because the Romans,
or at least this is how I understand it, the Romans needed to find
their mythological explanation, because it seemed to them as more cool to be able
to explain it from the gods and explain their lineage from the divine and not
from their own and their land conquests and the absolute control of the Mediterranean Sea.
But in the specific case of the Greeks, they did question themselves in
a very linear way, or at least that' s how they can go
on asking themselves where we came from, but they tried to have an explanation
from the mythological. Yeah, but as rational as possible, and that'
s from B and C. The gods in this and in the end,
what are going to be represented in all these narratives and in all these creatures
and deities, for they are going to be the last elements that end up
giving strength and shape to human beings without distinction. So I think that trying
to fragment or pretend to change things or accommodate them to the needs of today
' s world would necessarily end up emptying. It is at an output level
that myths and universality have understood, because, regardless of the tradition that cultures
have, that the different peoples of the world have, all will be able
to explain themselves or self understand through Greek mythology, through classical mythology later adapted
by the Romans. And so I believe I am fully convinced that dividing or
classifying or Rodular Greek mythology into so many squares exist, as there are people
in the world, necessarily fragmentary to some limits where the same magic and cohesion
that the Greeks gave it would break and that it has allowed it to see
last through the centuries and survive the middle ages and be able to reach the
Holmen again during the period of rebirth, for none of that would be achieved
if one wanted to land it badly landed to the realities and demands of society.
Okay. One of the most interesting aspects of Greek and Roman mythology,
but in particular of Greek, is that it exalts life. That' s
why they didn' t like to talk about ades very much. It is
not a very frequent subject, because what they like is to exalt life,
it is to experience, to be alive, and mythology is like a compendium
of Vital experiences. True they are, although symbolic in principle, they are
as on a purely physical plane and resonate with our and reality more internets on
a symbolic level. But myths tell us about the intensity, the ecstasy of
being alive. Today, perhaps it is the artists who would somehow continue this
mythological expression. You who are passionate about literature and, particularly, music and
opera? How do you see that continuation of that mythological expression in art?
Well, that question will be answered, considering that it gives for a doctoral
thesis. But of course it is, because the specific case of opera,
which is most interesting and is that the birth of this genre, which will
be one thousand six hundred and seven in Italy, is closely related to mythology,
a classical mythology. And why because I say it, why I bring
it to town and it' s the first opera. It' s his
argument. It is the myth of orpheus, it is a myth that developed
here in these episodes and one says that one begins to create a new form
of art, a new way of communicating, but the hook that is going
to be used for this to begin are going to be the myths. That
already tells us of the validity, because if we are talking about one thousand
six hundred and seven quickly in mathematics, if one wants to think of what
year can be the iguada or the odyssey, how many centuries we are talking
about that have passed or theogonias, one says man how much has happened,
many very relevant things have happened in the history of humanity. So that in
that awakening, after those dark years that brought about the Middle Ages, the
most interesting or the greatest marketing that they could grasp from that they could grasp,
it will not be properly religious music in the case with such of the
opera, but it will be the myths, They will be the heroes.
It is going to be that artistic manifestation, the musical representation of something that,
although it could be seen or understood as something very old had an absolute
validity. The same is going to happen with the case of another opera,
which is the return of Ulises to the homeland, because there we are talking
about nothing more and nothing less than odyssey. We are musicalizing the odyssey,
we are musicalizing the said one of the poems, but the greatest epic poem
that has given the human mind. And one goes on and one continues to
draw that line and one begins to find that in the case, for example,
of Mozart, we are going to have a work called Apollo escapius that
says ok we continue with the Greeks, but we are talking about late 18th
century salt. And so you' re going to see all that historical backsliding.
In more than four hundred years it will play a very important role And
in the case of the contemporary, one could say that the 20th century,
which was the century of the revolution, where everything, where it was wanted
to break with everything past, not because it was something bad necessarily, but
because the need to evolve was seen. And in the 20th century there was
a well- loved German composer within the public or present, who is rijarte
Straulth composed an opera that we are talking about, which premieres in nineteen hundred
and nine, which is elected. Then you see the part, and a
little more psychological about the character. But despite being the century of revolutions,
in art, we continue to lay hands on myths. Then I believe that,
obviously, in the future that will not change. And the answer I
think may be valid and I know it sounds. I may sound a little
monotonous about the matter, but it is that validity is something that allows one
to see how one can continue to find answers in poems and in oral tradition
that have more than twenty centuries, because it is a long time that has
passed and one is necessarily going to see it. How human emotions, love,
despair, hatred, anger, happiness accompany music in a rather interesting way,
because here music is going to make us is like a kind of vehicle
that will allow us to enter into those emotions that were narrated so long ago.
Then, yes, I think it plays a role and will play a
very important role. If, as you say, poetry, art in the
West can find its essential themes of inspiration in mythology, in classical mythology.
So that means that they are not just children' s tales, but transcend
that to make powerful guides to the human spirit. And we are also going
to see throughout the coming episodes, that mythological accounts from all over the world,
to go from looking different, are actually very similar and contain within themselves
a kind of universal truth. Yes, it is changing in times and ways,
but it has to do with the pursuit of the heroic. And the
heroic is going to be related to serving others, to giving a meaning to
life from service to others. And that seems very, very interesting to me,
because what a hero is looking for, for example, is not simply
acquiring power, fame glory or staying with the most beautiful couple, but transcending
all that and returning them or doing a service to their community. So that
seems quite interesting to me, because it is associated with a form of wisdom,
a form of knowledge that transcends the immediate and because it has to see
more is like a way to support a society that is in trouble. Then
there we go looking, because it' s worth talking about myths. The
importance of myths of the classical world, because they are, while there are
other myths for the West, classical myths have been fundamental. Those are the
ones we' re going to find mainly in the art of rebirth, in
the neoclassical, in the baroque. They will resume and reinterpret during romanticism,
in literature, in music, in art. So they' re telling us
something beyond the obvious, beyond what we might call the story. So,
so let' s say in this talk it' s worth a bit exploring
what it tells you, what myths tell us about the human spirit and survival.
As we talked about these myths today, despite the time that has passed
when these stories were composed, then we see that it has a deep meaning
and that the myths give us a kind of perspective to understand the rafa life
in your personal experience. There are many myths that you have told me that
you did not know or that you learned in all these episodes, how was
your personal experience of discovering these stories with what you felt affinity, how,
which ones you did not know or which ones you did know? You saw
a new perspective, because prime would dare to say that the general perspective of
Greek mythology changed a little because traditionally and returning to the word that you used
the story, often falls into a historical reductionism, reducing it to that it
is a story and it is a story we give you may have the quality
of but the fact that it is a story should not imply that it can
be subtracted from it. I needed to point that out because, by rethinking
all my knowledge that I had in front of Greek mythology, in front of
the gods, to Mount Olimpo, because because you were there Hercules, thanks
to Disney, But if it was Greece, then you didn' t go
to call Hercules. But then, because it was one you imagine much more
maternal and loving the child and realize that you don' t. When one
approaches this knowledge and these narratives, the first thing to be found is an
absolute rethinking of his knowledge of Greek mythology. Once that rethinking has been achieved,
one begins to say how interesting, what is so striking that many times
the gods or characters one knew, believed to know them and had them in
a kind of unquestionable and perfect beings. I know they' re gods and
you' re god then you' re perfect. But in the case of
this process, as one realizes that being perfect does not imply having no problems,
then one discovers what you are, because you can be the head of
this whole of these Olympic gods. But it is not necessarily as perfect as
one is the hospital or, for example, Adres, which for me was
absolutely revealing a little because one ade has been painted the figure of ades has
built it from the concept of Christian hell. And when one realizes that this
lord, for in himself or with his subjects of character, did not live
so happy where he touched, for, for a little, just as they
cast him out, the luck is that he has sheath with the dead.
But one realizes that he is a character with an inner force makes one necessarily
say, for this has nothing to do with the devil, the lord.
What it has is a number of qualities that allow me to understand myself today
and say I have some Hades, but that doesn' t mean that I
have something or that it' s a negative trait. And that' s
where one starts to create like a figure and it' s just imagine that
you have a ball of clay or clay and you' re following the episodes
and you' re adding the corresponding percentage according to every god or myth that
you hear and start arming yourself and nobody knows you better than yourself, but
you don' t know each other at all. So, when you start
doing these reflexive processes and you start putting together, that doll is clay and
it says I have a percentage of this God and I didn' t know
and it' s not putting it. In the end he realizes how multifaceted
one and two can become of how one could if through the psychoanalysis of jung
that developed so much in these podcasts and archetypes, how one could be explained
if one were in a very hypothetical way ancient Greece. So I think that
' s the second concept and the third, which is I found new Estia.
First I found out that it existed because one of the Olympic gods necessarily
reduced them to Zeus poseidón ades was Athena Aphrodite to tell and when one,
instead of saying name, there is sea is festo, for example, supremely
interesting character, not only from the mythological point of view, but also from
the artistic point of view, is to understand, beauty from what is apparently
ugly In sight And so yes, one is finding and finding. And so
I dare say that in more than fifty episodes related to Greek mythology, saying
that others caught my attention would involve even greater work. And it is to
revisit or what caused me surprise, as surely was generated the surprise in people
when they lived oral tradition and then with writing, they passed the myths from
generation to generation. I am very excited about the rafa because, some time
ago, literature, Greek and Latin mythology, as well as the Old Testament
accounts, were part of the education of all people. But that is no
longer the case and the tradition of mythological information in the West, because it
sometimes seems to be being lost. And that seems important to me to say,
because that is, let' s say, one of the things that
motivated me to open this podcast of Sherrezada' s accounts and is to bear
in mind that there were times when those accounts were in people' s minds.
And when a story is in people' s imagination, almost unconsciously,
you can feel its meaning and use it to interpret something that happens to you
in life and can give you perspective to understand the different events of life.
But if we lose those stories and lose those stories that are really profound to
myself to see from my feelings, there is nothing comparable to mythology, because
these are as part of information that comes from ancient times and that is dedicated
to issues essential to human beings have to do with forms of behavior, with
ways of understanding life, with deep internal problems, with the meaning of the
rituals of passage from one moment to another in life and how they have lived
through millennia. Then they interpret in some ways signs that are along the path
of life and one, without those accounts will have more difficulty finding them.
And I' m interrupting you about that, I think it' s time
to talk about it. Myths are part of DNA and when I talk about
this amy he also wants to invite them to do an exercise that is supremely
interesting and these one. You may not have read the odyssey, but you
know what' s going on? He may not have not read the iliade,
but he knows perfectly the narration around the troya horse and that kind of
rooting is held in different artistic manifestations. You know a lot of works of
art without even seeing them. One may never have been in front of the
monalisa, but he knows perfectly well what the picture is like and knows perfectly
well what can surround this picture. Regardless of the historical mysteries that the company
is. It happens with music, it happens with literature. You don'
t read. One, when they tell him, he' s already given
the quijote. No, no, I' ve read it, but you
know perfectly well who Don Quixote Sancho was from Rough Dulcinea. And that role
is no less the fact that in the two thousand and twenty- one one
can have in the adm works that were written, thought out, imagined,
composed two hundred and four hundred and two thousand and five hundred years ago is
not a minor subject. Surely in this world today, one can have a
civilized conversation. You say this. I' m feeling like this today.
You' re most likely to send him to a madhouse. But what I
think is very interesting is that you know that there are things that happened,
you know that there are things that have been written, that have been thought,
that have been imagined if you haven' t even had the opportunity to
have a book of them in your hands or have heard a record or habels
the same. Yes, thank you for saying so, because it is another
point that it is very important to make clear in this talk, that it
is how the term myth has been distorted. Today it is popularly synonymous with
lies. If someone tells you something is a myth, it' s like
it' s a falsehood. And for this, then, it is worth
bearing in mind that this is not a recent problem. The term myth was
blurred even in the classical period by historians, since the sixth century BC.
We were already associating ourselves with something that was not, that was not a
historical fact, but it maintained true, certain, certain importance, a certain
sacredness, to put it that way. So it has been lost for the
last two hundred years with the rise of rationalism. So, today, only
many people want to hear what is a truth, probable, tangible true by
the senses. But it is important to rethink that there are other forms of
reality beyond positivism and the pragmatic reality of the tangible. It has to do
with the reality that the myths reflect. So that form of meaning, of
meaning that has passed through the times, of meaning and meaning of life,
that transcends the rational, because, obviously, myths do not pretend to be
always rational percent, as rationality is understood today. But we still as humans
need to understand death and face it. We need help to understand the mystery,
the birth, the life, the death, the passions, to glimpse
eternity, to approach the mysteries of life, something that helps us to understand
who we are. And there are the myths to help us express the experience
of being alive. And that transcends the simple plane of pragmatic rationality. That
transcends the simply physical, because we are pointing to what has resonance with the
interior of our being of our most intimate reality. So if we are expressing
what is the joy of being alive, for joy is not necessarily a rational,
true, measurable experience, but it is there that is part of our
life and that is what myths point to expressing both joy and sadness, despair,
anguish. And myths give us keys to finding and resounding with ourselves.
When you mentioned the archetypes that we worked on in all these episodes and that
' s another way to get closer to myths through the reading of psychoanalysis you
have of these we see. It' s a clearer way to see the
myths telling us about us. What aspects of the gods. There is in
ourselves that we want to develop more or even that we want to lower the
volume to those aspects to give us more balance. So, yes, myths
are key to leading us to the spiritual potentialities of human life. Yes,
instead of doubt, that topic you touch would give for many analyses, many
lectures, a lot of work in a world where and I remember a book
that wrote an Italian teacher and writer who died last year, which is Nuccio
Ordini, which is the utility of the useless. And we are in a
world where forgiveness is rejected, rejected, which does not represent an immediate utility.
And he sets an example that serves us a lot for this conversation,
and it is that it makes more use of a symphony, or for me
the answer in media can be a hammer. It depends on why if I
don' t have anything to hammer, what use I can be representing none.
And the same thing is going to happen with the myths as you approach
them, realize that they serve or do not represent any utility until allowed.
I do not say to silence the world, because neither is the idea of
falling into a state of self- absorbing, for as in the allegory of
the platon cavern, much less, but to be able to lower it a
little bit from the volume, to lower it a little bit to the frenetism
of the world in which we move, in order to enter into a phase
of reflection and find how useful it can be to go to mythology to be
able to find, I do not say the solution to life, but to
find something that is more interesting than the solution itself, which are tools to
cope with the problems that can arise and that are inherent in our human condition.
Then, when you enter this universe, you break it down and appropriate
it, because this is everyone' s, that the Greeks have done it
more than twenty centuries ago. It does not mean that it is for the
exclusive use of the Greeks. This is everyone' s, and that universality
must necessarily lead us to be able to appropriate them to find out how I
say it tools answers questions, because it is necessary not to stop self-
questioning, because if we do, I am sure the Greeks would not be
proud of us. Thank you very much. You' re right. We
are so obsessed with doing things or we are realizing goals external to ourselves that
they have as an external value for the world to see them that we forget
many times the inner values of pleasure and the emotion of being alive, which
is what myths are really about, because myths tell us to go back inside,
to begin to understand the message in the symbols of understanding certain, these
messages that put us in contact with the experience of being alive. So that
' s what this podcast of Sherresae' s stories has been about so far,
which is like re- seeking mythology in a world that, in appearance,
is demytologized and there is that term and re- exploring the messages they
have and what they have for us to say these stories about the wisdom of
life, which goes beyond the technology or information we receive daily, which has
a useful practical sense, but is something that transcends those issues. And there
is a subject that is not minor and that is that much is invited in
those processes of historical revisionism, to look towards the same thing, towards the
culture, let us say, in this specific case, of pre- Columbian
cultures and all that period that is said to be by the way, is
not to diminish it worth much less. I believe that every culture and every
form and perspective of seeing and understanding the world is equally important, but that
historical revisionism is often understood, my judgment, from an absolutely perverse way,
and it is that one should not look towards Europe, that one should not
look towards certain civilizations, until one knows the same until one knows each other.
And the subject which, as I say, seems very relevant to me
is, yes, unfortunately, that pre- Columbian cultures do not have such
a supremely solid structure as if they have Greek mythology and judge history according to
current standards to, besides depriving us of or depriving us of knowledge of these
myths, these narratives, these oral traditions, because it is an absolute nonsense.
Then there is the unceasing need to make things useful or useful to my
day- to- day life, with the need to be ensemised in the
typical, in this case Colombia or Mexico, or China or any other country,
to any culture that may have its roots in countries that, in one
way or another, may be involved with those historical processes that took place throughout
Greek civilization and that entire period until the Auge Foundation and the fall of the
Roman Empire. Okay, mythology is universal. He speaks to us of human
beings, he is a kind of music, of imagination, he speaks to
us of energy, of the human spirit, he speaks to us of the
essence of what we are. Then. That is why it transcends borders and
classical mythology has the particularity of having been elaborated, built by many people for
a long time. These are stories that have been written for over a thousand
years. True, there are some people who transcribed them. To put it
that way, it cannot make us forget that they are of tradition collected.
They are a collective creation and we do not easily have other stories that have
been written by the same people who created them for so long, that they
have been rethought for so many years reinterpreted because, moreover, something fascinating about
classical mythology is that there are many versions. That is why we are not
talking about a religion that has a sacred text whose word is immovable. Not
here are many versions of the accounts that maintain one essence, but it has
no superiority of one account over another. Sometimes I work with the older stories
than others, but each one of the stories is speaking to us, in
addition to that reinterpretation, from the look of his time. So nothing else
since classical mythology, as I tell you, is more than a thousand years
in which these stories are being told, as they evolve, they change.
For example, you mentioned. A moment ago the Ades, the ades changes
from Homer' s Hades to Virgil' s Hell in the Eneida. True,
let us see that there is an influence of Egypt, there is an
influence of the Persian because it is already because of Hellenistic culture. Then.
This changes then, just as society changed. His idea of the afterlife was
changing then. There is one essential thing that remains, which is that concern
about what happens in the afterlife. But every society, every historical moment,
is making contributions to that construction of that imaginary. There is one idea that,
moreover, I find supremely interesting that you, who are hearing us,
should take away, and that is that we are generationally connected by those who
made these myths. Here comes an idea that Cortázar put forward in an interview
that he gave to Spanish television in the eighties, when he spoke of the
poem The Kings, where he reinterprets the myth of the labyrinth and the minotaur,
preserving the essence because, because that cannot be altered. And he,
in the interview, said something that seems to me to have a certain reason,
and it is if you tie the links from our present and begin to
tie them back and back and back and go ten twenty- five centuries,
you will realize that there is a kind of magical connection with a Greek character.
I' m not talking about mythology, but yes a poet, someone
who helped the construction to shape this oral tradition and this is related to what
we were telling ourselves and that, in an untimely way, I made the
decision to interrupt in order to get this idea that I believe in the last
few ends up being the great essence of this mythology and it' s how
we are connected and how something that has all that amount of years is still
fully current in a century like the one we are living. Thank you very
much, Rafa. It has been a pleasure to have you in this episode
and I hope that you will accompany us many more episodes and be able to
share with you these stories really is wonderful. Thank you. Thank you very
much for the invitation. Thank you very much. Surely, when more opportunities
are given, happy to be able to accompany you to follow your work as
closely as I have done as a result of these podcasts. Really, thank
you so much for the invitation. Okay One hug and we' ll see
you in a next episode of shere sale stories. Thank you very much.