Philip Pullman’s official site now includes the text of a lecture the author gave to the Blake Society in October 2005 at St James’s Church, Piccadilly.
“The word narrative suggests another meaning that system might have, and that’s mythology, with a set of stories about characters like Yahweh, or Zeus, or the giant Albion, or Jesus Christ. Mythologies deal with the creation of things, and the appearance of human beings in a world we did not create. I’m not aware of any mythology that says the universe was created by human beings; we always turn up afterwards, and the relation we have with the place we find ourselves in is part of what gives the system its emotional tone: determines whether it’s tragic, or optimistic, or dramatic, or whatever. Sometimes we are the rebellious children of the great creator; sometimes we are the children made by a sub-creator who rebelled against the first creator, like the creatures of Prometheus; but our presence here is accounted for in the story. We are part of everything that’s going on; even if we don’t fully understand it, we have the sense of coherence somewhere.”
