| Chapter 1: | Myth and Theory |
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thing but instead will seek to vary what he or she is saying slightly, playing with the variation of phrasing, intonation, and resonance (ibid.). The second person would not, of course, get the whole of any given sentence but would get bits of meaning, which he or she could eventually piece together in order to understand the message (ibid.).
Lévi-Strauss suggested that these messages could be plotted onto a chart to create a series of chords, like an orchestra score (1963, 213). It is because myth must be read, like music, both horizontally and vertically that many people have been confused, just as they would be if they tried to read music in the same way that we read linear languages; therefore, myth, like music, must be read both horizontally and vertically. This means that narratives must be broken down into sections and each section looked at in its own right rather than as a necessary continuation of the previous. If we are therefore presented with the sequence of events 1, 4, 7, 8, 2, 3, 6, 8, 1, 2, 5, 7, we must not read it as one large sequence but rather as three sequences, the first of which is 1, 4, 7, 8; the second of which gives us 2, 3, 6, 8; and the final of which tells us 1, 2, 5, 7. When we plot these next to each other, we can read a complete sequence of 1–8 if we move not only from left to right but also up and down.
Lévi-Strauss argued that it is legitimate to carve up a single narrative in this manner; however, this is not because (as often is assumed) he was trying to disentangle the distinct segments of the myth: For Lévi-Strauss, such a point was meaningless, for the process of bricolage means that whatever elements are at hand will be used, and it is how they are employed that is significant. Instead, Lévi-Strauss legitimised his approach by claiming that, while myth unfolds in a temporal dimension, this is a consequence of it being expressed through the linear medium of speech and is not an innate aspect of myth, which would form a significant element of the myth’s structure.
Problems arising from the apparent contradiction of a narrative are also circumnavigated by concentrating on the underlying structure. The message of a myth may appear at times contradictory for two reasons: myth plays with the various possibilities and combinations of its structure, which lead it to formulate various combinations and inversions