The Power of Myth

by Joseph Campbell

A few days after his death, I received a letter from one of his former students who now helps to edit a major magazine. Hearing of the series on which I had been working with Campbell, she wrote to share how this man’s “cyclone of energy blew across all the intellectual possibilities” of the students who sat “breathless in his classroom” at Sarah Lawrence College. “While all of us listened spellbound,” she wrote, “we did stagger under the weight of his weekly reading assignments. Finally, one of our number stood up and confronted him (Sarah Lawrence style), saying: ‘I am taking three other courses, you know. All of them assigned reading, you know. How do you expect me to complete all this in a week?’ Campbell just laughed and said, ‘I’m astonished you tried. You have the rest of your life to do the reading.’ ” She concluded, “And I still haven’t finished—the never ending example of his life and work.”