Life-and-Destruction Page 22
The Maker is seen not as a remote life-giver, a "god" acting from afar, but as
making from her "own heart" all the pain and joy of creation:
I am the tranquil lake
to mirror their joy and pain,
and all their pain and joy
I from my own heart make.
Joseph Campbell sees the mirror as a symbol of the ancient Japanese goddess
of the sun, Amaterasu :
the mirror, reflecting the goddess and drawing her forth.. .is symbolic of
the world, the field of the reflected image. Therein divinity is pleased to
regard its own glory, and this pleasure is itself inducement to the act of
manifestation or "creation".17
Campbell's description of the mirror reflecting the goddess does not present
something static but an ongoing interaction and continuing creation. The
Maker's mirror is described as being like "a tranquil lake", capturing not only
joy but also pain. Joy and pain, pain and joy mirror each other like a series of
reflected images in deep water. Objects reflected in water seem to ripple down
with no cut-off point. In short lines and carefully patterned words Judith
Wright offers these double images and depths. The tranquil lake is not a cold,
flat surface: "I am the tranquil lake...I from my own heart make". Between
these two lines the poem economically contains the joy/pain, pain/joy twins of
the life of the world.
If one were to visualise a ripple on this lake the reflections of pain and joy
would all be fractured and merged. It would be impossible to tell which was
which. There are always ripples. Pain is not "tranquil", its "ripples" mingle
with joy.
17 The Hero With A Thousand faces,- (Princeton, New Jersey. Princeton University Press, 1973) p.213
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