Trickster Makes This World. Lewis Hyde

      CONTENTS

       List of Illustrations

       Introduction

      PART ONE: TRAP OF NATURE

      1: Slipping the Trap of Appetite

      2: “That’s My Way, Coyote, Not Your Way”

      3: The First Lie

       INTERLUDE

       The Land of the Dead

       PART TWO: TWO-ROAD CHANCE

      4: An Attack of Accidents

      5: The God of the Crossroads

      6: The Lucky Find

       PART THREE: DIRT WORK

      7: Speechless Shame and Shameless Speech

      8: Matter Out of Place

       PART FOUR: TRAP OF CULTURE

      9: Hermes Slips the Trap

      10: Frederick Douglass and Eshu’s Hat

      11: Trickster Arts and Works of Artus

       CONCLUSION

      12: Prophecy

       Envoi

      APPENDIX I. The Homeric Hymn to Hermes

      APPENDIX II. Trickster and Gender

      APPENDIX III. Monkey and the Peaches of Immortality

       Notes

       Bibliography

       Acknowledgments

       Art credits

       Index

       LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

      Hermes running with the lyre. From a red-figure kylix by Makron, c. 500–475 B.C.

      “Coyote and Bird” petroglyph from Painted Desert—Petrified Forest National Park, Arizona. Late Anasazi, c. A.D. 1100–1300. Detail of photograph by Linda Connor.

      Divination tray with Eshu’s face at the top and a set of the sixteen palm nuts used in divination.

      Tlingit Raven Helmet from Sitka, Alaska. In his beak, Raven holds the box of sunlight that he stole from heaven.

      The baby Hermes in his cradle with his mother, Maia, and the cattle of Apollo. Hermes, only a day old, is wearing the petasos, the traveler’s hat. Exterior of a red-figure kylix by the Brygos painter, c. 480 B.C.

      Danish forge stone showing Loki with his lips sewn shut.

      The baby Krishna, tied to a mortar by his mother and the gopis, after having broken into the hanging butter pots in the background. Miniature by Kangra, c. 1790.

      Bronze head of a caduceus (Hermes’ staff). Early fifth century B.C.

      Baubo, the nurse in the Eleusinian Mysteries. Fifth-century B.C. terracotta figurine from the city of Priene in Asia Minor.

      Monkey, from an early-nineteenth-century Japanese edition of The Journey to the West.

      TRICKSTER MAKES THIS WORLD

       INTRODUCTION

      Every generation occupies itself with interpreting Trickster anew.… —Paul Radin

      We interpret always as transients. —Frank Kermode

      Once during the winter after I got out of college I was hitchhiking north of Winslow, Arizona. Just after sundown three Navajo men in an old green Chevy picked me up. The driver I remember distinctly as his hair was as long as mine, and he had lost the top of his right ear. He and his friends had been working a construction site near the New Mexico border and were headed home to Tuba City for the weekend. Two or three times in the fading light we came upon coyotes crossing the road or slinking along in the nearby brush, and there began a somewhat reverent and somewhat joking discussion of coyotes and their ability to see in the dark, which led in turn to my hearing what I only later understood to be a very old story.

      Long ago, the driver said, Coyote was going along and as he came over the brow of a hill he saw a man taking his eyes out of his head and throwing them up into a cottonwood tree. There they would hang until he cried out, “Eyes come back!” Then his eyes would return to his head. Coyote wanted very much to learn this trick and begged and begged until the man taught it to him. “But be careful. Coyote,” the man said. “Don’t do this more than four times in one day.” “Of course not. Why would I do that?” said Coyote. (The others in the car laughed at this, but not the driver.)

      When the man left, Coyote took his eyes out and threw them into the cottonwood tree. He could see for miles then, see over the low hills, see where the stream went, see the shape of things. When he had done this four times, he thought, “That man’s rule is made for his country. I don’t think it applies here. This is my country.” For a fifth time he threw his eyes into the tree and for a fifth time he cried “Eyes come back!” But they didn’t come back. Poor Coyote stumbled about the grove, bumping into trees and crying. He couldn’t think what to do, and lay down to sleep. Before too long, some mice came by and, thinking Coyote was dead, began to clip his hair to make a nest. Feeling the mice at work, Coyote let his mouth hang open until he caught one by the tail.

      “Look up in that tree, Brother Mouse,” said Coyote, talking from the side of his mouth. “Do you see my eyes up there?” “Yes,” said the mouse. “They are all swollen from the sun. They’re oozing a little. Flies have gathered on them.” The mouse offered to retrieve the eyes, but Coyote didn’t trust him. “Give me one of your eyes,” he said. The mouse did so, and Coyote put the little black ball into the back of his eye socket. He could see a little now, but had to hold his head at an odd angle to keep the eye in place. He stumbled from the cottonwood grove and came upon Buffalo Bull. “What’s the matter, Coyote?” asked the Bull. The Buffalo took pity on him when he heard the story, and offered one of his own eyes. Coyote took it and squeezed it into his left eye socket. Part of it hung out. It bent him down to one side. Thus he went on his way.

      The driver eventually dropped me off at a cheap motel (“Heat in Rooms!”) outside Tuba City. The parting was too brief; I had wanted to offer a story of my own, or chip in on gas, though in fact I was tonguetied and short of cash. I couldn’t make head or tail of the Coyote story, and wondered nervously if it hadn’t been directed at me in some way. It was weird and