„Stierkampf in Bayonne“ – Corrida in Lissabon

Two bold descriptions of bullfighting in German literature – a section of Kurt Tucholsky’s Ein Pyrenäenbuch and the final episode of Thomas Mann’s Bekenntnisse des Hochstaplers Felix Krull – can be read in the context of French authors who (about the 1920 s and 1930s) were fascinated by the corrida and the idea of abject sacredness and transgres­sion. The comparison of striking motives (e. g., the art of the matador, the suffer­ing of the horses) reveals how literary texts reflect the ritual character of bullfighting, represent its disgusting aspects, and deal with the taurobolic “scandalon” of death and eros. Whereas Tucholsky encounters a trivial spectacle and nevertheless feels the attrac­tion of violence, Thomas Mann’s narrator is confronted with mythic thought (Mithras) and Dionysiac excess.

From Mythic Motifs to Sustained Myth: The Revision of Rabbinic Traditions in Medieval Midrashim

Recent years have witnessed a growing interest in the mythic dimension of rabbinic thought. Much of this work emerged from debates between scholars of Jewish mysticism over the origins of kabbalistic myth. Should these origins be sought in external traditions that influenced medieval Judaism or within the rabbinic tradition? As is well known, Gershom Scholem claimed that the rabbis rejected myth in order to forge a Judaism based on rationality and law. Moshe Idel, on the other hand, argues that mythic conceptions and specifically the mythicization of Torah appear in rabbinic literature. While the medieval kabbalists elaborated and developed these ideas, they inherited a mythic worldview from the rabbis. Scholars are now increasingly likely to characterize many classical rabbinic sources as mythic. Medieval myth need not have been due to external influence, but should be seen as an internal development within Judaism. Despite the appearance of mythic thought in rabbinic literature, however, a tremendous gulf remains between rabbinic and kabbalistic myth. The full-blown theogonic and cosmogonic myths of the kabbalists, the complex divine structure of the Sefirot, and the detailed expressions of the theurgic effect of ritual (that is, the effect that specific rituals have upon God or the Sefirot) represent a mode of mythic thinking far more comprehensive than that of the rabbis. In rabbinic literature one finds mythic motifs—succinct, independent, and self–contained expressions—not fully developed myths. How exactly did rabbinic myth develop into medieval mystical myth?