Why the Chimera Is the Monster for Our Uncertain Age
MYTHS, WHEN THEY are good, are never static. They stand in a creative relationship to every new time. That potential is perhaps what separates them from mere fantasy. The latter is an efflorescence of the imagination, often an individual imagination; the former is born of a collective imagining, and is hard-wired to be reborn. Every time the world seems to slip from its axis, exposing what feels like the deep solitude of being human, the chimera returns, reminding us that our stewardship of the planet, which has been granted us, either by accident or design, is in jeopardy. The raven-beaked figure of the plague doctor, which was popularized in the mid-16th century by the Italian theatrical form commedia dell’arte, is imbued with something of the lingering terror left in post-medieval Europe by the Black Death. The atomic age in Japan inspired any number of mutants that personify the fear of mutually assured destruction — of which Godzilla, who falls in the category of kaiju, or “strange beasts,” is only the most well traveled. The chimera, as Diel writes, externalizes a certain danger, “in the form of a monster encountered by chance,” that “chimerical enemy” that “every man carries secretly within himself … the devouring monster.” In the Western conception, the chimera reacquaints us with the double-edged sword of what it means to be human — to be simultaneously magnificent, capable of genius and generosity, and inescapably (if not irredeemably) flawed, greed and self-destructiveness rising up in us like they’re second nature.
Two instances in recent culture capture the uncertainty of our present moment, forcing us to reconsider the locus of the chimerical enemy. The first, following from Borges, is the appearance of dragons in the HBO series “Game of Thrones” and its prequel, “House of the Dragon.” To see the fetishization of dragons in these shows, either as the emblem of royalty — “Dragons will rule the Seven Kingdoms for the next hundred years, just as they did the last,” says the aging King Viserys in “House of the Dragon” — or as the ultimate mark of valor and power is a world away from how Borges encourages us to think of dragons in the Western imagination. Viserys’s son Aemond yearns for a dragon of his own. His taming of Vhagar, among the largest, most powerful dragons alive, provides one of the show’s most thrilling scenes. Here, dragons are terrifying, but in a good way, and certainly not ridiculous. They represent the mystical bond between man and beast but also kingship and its heraldic symbol. These dragons are not awaiting a human slayer, a bumptious avatar of St. George. They are, in fact, much closer to how Borges describes the place of dragons in Chinese myth: “For hundreds of years the Dragon was the symbol of the Empire. The Emperor’s throne was called the Dragon throne, his face, the Dragon visage.” In the “Game of Thrones” universe, men are monsters, and monsters can be redemptive. The chimerical enemy is firmly within humanity, not as an abstraction of human nature but in real human form. The White Walkers, intent on destroying the human race, the show’s Wiki will tell you, are humanoid, “an ancient race of formerly human ice creatures.”
