Imperial Mailer: Ancient Evenings

Abstract

This essay offers a Jungian reading of Ancient Evenings. Inspiring it is the fact that the novel’s central character, Menenhetet, corresponds to Jung’s description of the aimlessly peripatetic heroes of Egyptian mythology, who figuratively resemble “the wandering sun” (Aspects 22), a symbol of the ego, moving in repetitive cycles toward and away from the dark, primordial waters of the unconscious. Specifically, the tendencies and traits definitive of the ego inhabiting the second of three stages of the Hero archetype are similar to the features of Ancient Evenings that have resulted in its main critiques. Literalism, egotism, projection, narcissism, and sadomasochistic violence—interestingly, these terms itemize both the “unfortunate results” (Beebe, Aspects 14) of the ego’s “rejection of the unconscious” in the second stage of heroic-archetypal development, and the reasons that Ancient Evenings is commonly disparaged. For instance, the result of Mailer’s intention “to treat mythology as if it were real” (Whalen-Bridge, “Karma” 4) is its “outrageous literalism” (Bloom 33). Another criticism centers on the fact that the novel is set in ancient Egypt and based on the Egyptian Book of the Dead, but patently reflects the author’s fascination with his own ego (De Mott 3). A third involves the ways in which Ancient Evenings blurs distinctions between Egypt’s ancient culture and concepts about the United States that can be found throughout Mailer’s oeuvre (Olster 63).

[E]go is awareness of one’s will.

Norman Mailer, Conversations 226

Is it not true that defending the One involves, ipso facto, rejecting the unconscious; since the latter implies that part of the psyche exists which is acting in its own interests, thwarting the empire of the ego?

André Green, Life Narcissism, Death Narcissism 9

When heroic consciousness dominates, one thinks one knows better than the unconscious who one is and feels one should therefore be in control of one’s life.

John Beebe, Introduction to Jung’s Aspects of the Masculine xii.

As we know from ancient Egyptian history, [events which are in accord with an end of an era] are manifestations of psychic changes which always appear at the end of one Platonic month and at the beginning on another. Apparently they are changes in the constellation of psychic dominants, of the archetypes, of ‘gods’ as they used to be called, which bring about, or accompany, long-lasting transformations of the collective psyche. This transformation started in the historical era and left its traces first in the passing of the aeon of Taurus into that of Aries, and then of Aries into Pisces, whose beginning coincides with the rise of Christianity. We are now nearing that great change which may be expected when the spring-point enters Aquarius.

Carl Jung, Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies, 5