Cover Story: Old myths, new truths

Atwood believes, following leads from Robert Graves and Mary Renault, that the maids' ruthless murder may symbolise 'the overthrow of a matrilineal moon cult' by male-dominated patterns of power and faith. Through this anthropologist's lens, Odysseus looks like a usurping 'year-king', a temporary top-dog who 'at every turn, dodges his moment to be sacrificed' and so ushers in the whole patriarchal system. 'There must have been a time when, particularly as warfare came to the fore, men acquired more power in the theological structure,' Atwood says. 'You can see why; it's the upper- body strength, of which Odysseus has quite a lot.'

For Atwood, such ancient myths can still tell us living truths. They function, she argues, as 'a big map of the psyche. They are a big map of the human-ness of human beings, and they lay out in the various bits of themselves the full range of human desires and fears " which are in fact what drive the world. It certainly isn't reason or logic. It is desire and fear, and that's true of even the most supposedly real of things: the stock market.'

Local geography and climate may change the scenery of myth, she says. 'The ice monsters of the north would not have appeared in the Amazon forests. But the basic stuff " love, hate, death, life, famine, plenty, animal helpers, the fates of souls, creation myths, what will happen at the end of the world " those are all fixtures. You could add that language and narrative are the most important human inventions. And once you've got a language with a past tense and a future tense, you're going to have a mythology.'

Atwood has written that all writers have to move from 'now' to 'once upon a time', and all 'must descend to where the stories are kept' but 'must take care not to be captured and held immobile by the past. And all must commit acts of larceny, or else of reclamation.' An act of both larceny and reclamation, The Penelopiad shows Atwood making off with an especially well-guarded cultural treasure " and making it new, as she always does.

Like every wise heroine of myth, however, she won't tempt fate or push her luck. 'Maybe I'll never do anything again. Who can tell?' she frets. So, I ask, is she working on another novel? 'Yes!' More howls of laughter. 'That's no guarantee. It could be a complete failure. I could throw it out as I have thrown others out in their turn.' Bears or tales, only the fittest will survive.

Margaret Atwood's 'The Penelopiad: The myth of Penelope and Odysseus' is published by Canongate (pounds 12)

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