cultures. The reason we find myths difficult to grasp is just this 
fact, that they do not exclude any facet of experience as 
literate cultures do. All the levels of meaning are simultaneous. 
Thus natives, when asked Freudian questions about the 
symbolism of their thoughts or dreams, insist that all the 
meanings are right there in the verbal statement. The work of 
Jung and Freud is a laborious translation of nonliterate 
awareness into literary terms, and like any translation distorts 
and omits. The main advantage in translation is the creative 
effort it fosters, as Ezra Pound spent his life in telling and 
illustrating. And culture that is engaged in translating itself 
from one radical mode such as the auditory, into another mode 
like the visual, is bound to be in a creative ferment, as was 
classical Greece or the Renaissance. But our own time is an 
even more massive instance of such ferment, and just because 
of such “translation.”