The Courage-giving Power of Myth
What the fight for Kyiv can teach us about reality
I drafted the following piece in the early weeks after Russia attacked Ukraine, but there was no opportunity for publication at that time. Recently, some friends expressed interest, so I decided to publish it here. Though the discussion of the Ghost is dated, the larger point still stands. During this Advent, the plight of Ukraine has not been far from my thoughts as I imagine “hopeful anticipation” in a war-torn nation facing winter without heat. With my Ukrainian brothers and sisters, I pray, Maranatha! Come, Lord Jesus.
Dear God, calamity again! ... It was so peaceful, so serene; We but began to break the chains That bind our folk in slavery ... When halt! ... Again the people`s blood Is streaming!
Beloved Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko’s words ring just as true today as they did over 150 years ago. Russia has begun yet another brutal and unjust attempt to enslave the Ukrainian people. I have watched with the world in wonder at Kyiv’s passionate and courageous defense, David battling Goliath. Though beleaguered throughout history, it is a city with a long tradition of heroes and of hope. A new hero is the Ghost of Kyiv. Immediately as the war began, tales of an ace pilot began circulating on Ukrainian social media. He was credited with shooting down ten Russian jets within the first week of the war. Videos from the Ghost's flights began to circulate, and the hope of their protector in the sky became a rallying cry. A Ukrainian photograph of clouds in the shape of an angel’s wings hovering protectively over the city seems to support the claim.
From the comfort of their couches, however, western media began scrutinizing the “reality” of the Ghost. Snopes analyzed video footage purported to be evidence of the Ghost. In their self-anointed role as arbiters of truth, they determined that the videos were recycled training footage, casting dispersions on the Ghost’s reality. Moralizing western editorialists quickly began lecturing about the “harmful and dangerous loss of truth in wartime”. Two things are immediately apparent. First, we do not share the same definition of truth. Secondly, they are asking the wrong question. Ghost: myth or fact? is not the question that westerners should be asking. The important question is, what do Kyivans understand about reality that makes them so brave?
Ukrainians enjoy a literary history rooted in a rich, mythopoeic tradition of tales, epics, and hagiography. The earliest medieval tales are gathered in the collection now known as the Primary Chronicle. One of the earliest tales is the tenth-century story of Olga of Kyiv. Olga was widowed when her husband, ruler of Kyiv-Rus, was killed in a military campaign on what is now the Polish border. The warring Derevlian tribe decided to capture Olga for a bride and enslave her son Sviatoslav. She not only agreed to their proposal but also expressed a desire to honor the Derevlian retinue before her people. The people living in Kyiv, fearing slavery, despaired. Arriving to collect their prize, the first retinue demanded to be carried across the land in their ship. Olga had prepared a trench, and her followers dropped the boatload filled with men into the trench and buried them alive. She sent for a second retinue and asked them to bathe upon arrival; then, locking them in the bathhouse, she set it on fire. Finally, she went to the Derevlians, where she gave a feast and served much mead. When they were drunk, her followers slaughtered five thousand men in the Derevlian Massacre. Descended from heroes like Olga, it is little wonder that a ghost protects the skies.
How can we make sense of the world in a way that results in such courage and hope? In his book Chance or the Dance? Catholic scholar Thomas Howard argues that our modern secularism is due to a reshaping of myth. He explains that the new, enlightened myth is that nothing means anything. The old myth is that everything means everything. He describes the imagination as a synthetic faculty by which we organize our experiences and apprehend significance. The new myth sees the imagination as a "flight into fancy"; the old myth sees it as a "flight toward actuality". The new myth sees the ghost as a harmful falsehood. The old myth inspires farmers to steal unattended Russian tanks and women to debilitate drones by throwing canned goods out their apartment windows. The Ghost is what Howard calls an “epiphany of what is true at the heart of the matter”. What is the heart of this story? Bravery. Loyalty. Hope. The heart of the matter is virtue.
I would much rather be guilty of misattributing kills to a fictitious pilot than be guilty of smallness of soul. Aristotle writes that through multiple tragic events "nobility shines through, when a man bears with resignation many great misfortunes, not through insensibility to pain but through nobility and greatness of soul." Part of developing greatness of soul in our children and students is to teach them to see so that when they look to the skies, they see meaning and possibility rather than chaos or a "chance concatenation of physical events". Imagine Snopes stretching back through Western Civilization’s annals. Did Odysseus really defeat the Cyclops? Did Horatius really hold the bridge? The thought of applying the same metric of "reality" used by Snopes throughout history is laughable. And frightening. Where would we be as a civilization if the truth had always been limited to verifiable facts?
When I look back on my early days in the classroom, my most cringe-worthy opinion was my attitude toward myth. Though I believed in the classical model’s promise, the deep grooves from my progressive public education were a handicap. Mythology was something to be "covered" when time allowed. An over-attentiveness towards fact memorization in the Grammar Stage did little to dispel this attitude. Years later, a chance discussion with an 11th-grade student in my Medieval Humanities class brought a paradigm shift. She had among the best memories of any student that I had taught, so I was shocked that she couldn't remember the date of Charlemagne's coronation as Holy Roman Emperor. However, she did remember the narrative portion from the history text perfectly, retelling Charlemagne's entry to the church for mass on that cold Christmas day. Do we really know that Charlemagne entered that church humbly as a pious worshiper, unaware of the pending coronation? For that matter, how can we be sure that it was even cold that Christmas day? Dates are useful, but alone they are not meaning-makers. The factual date of the coronation inspires a correct answer on a test; the tale inspires piety and faithfulness.
The Ghost is not the only hero of the war; Ukrainians tell the tale of another hero. It is a story of a new Olga, an old woman in a village just above Kyiv. An American war correspondent shares the story, told so often that he has learned it by heart. A Russian commander and his staff enter this babushka's home, demanding food. She agrees but adds a secret ingredient to the commander's food: laxatives. When he runs to the outhouse, she douses it in gasoline and sets it aflame. Though the journalist did not know the original myth of Olga's revenge, her story lives on, still resisting occupation a millennium later. I can easily imagine how Snopes would rewrite the correspondent’s story: the story of a flight into fancy. Sorry, Snopes; when reality is at stake, I’m with Olga.