Christmas

myth

Robert Frost

nationality

American

occupation / innovator as

university teacher

poet

literary critic

is a story that has both religious and pagan origins, and to ignore its power is to ignore the power of myth those symbols and legends that help us to ground our lives.

Christmas is a story that has both religious and pagan origins, and to ignore its power is to ignore the power of myth those symbols and legends that help us to ground our lives. Jay Parini

is a story that is not just not true, but it's a story that is especially true. And I think the myth of Jesus is especially true.

Actually, a myth is a story that is not just not true, but it's a story that is especially true. And I think the myth of Jesus is especially true. Jay Parini

is a story which has particular energy, mythic resonance. It is a tear in the fabric of reality through which all of this spiritual energy pours.

I say that a myth is a story which has particular energy, mythic resonance. I always say that a myth is a tear in the fabric of reality through which all of this spiritual energy pours. Jay Parini

is one who uses masks not to deflect the personal voice but to find one, or several. He speaks truthfully when speaking as someone else, when he can assume the otherness of a mask, looking through those eyeholes at the world. Tone, he notes, is how you take yourself, your stance toward the world; literally, it is your attitude. Paradoxically, it seems harder to speak as one’s self without the sustained practice of speaking as somebody else.

Frost uses masks not to deflect the personal voice but to find one, or several. He speaks truthfully when speaking as someone else, when he can assume the otherness of a mask, looking through those eyeholes at the world. Tone, he notes, is how you take yourself, your stance toward the world; literally, it is your attitude. Paradoxically, it seems harder to speak as one’s self without the sustained practice of speaking as somebody else.

Jay PariniThinkers

Jay Parini