1 A Greek Myth

He is standing there, in the middle of eternal darkness, he cannot see. If he could see, he would have seen the dark walls with stains surrounding him. ./ … /. He can feel, he feels that now his time has arrived.

(Dahlsveen, 2021)

My subject area is oral storytelling and the above quote, which here serves as an opening and a bridge to the topic of this chapter, comes from a digital performance in autumn 2021 in which I told a Greek myth. The performance did not start with the beginning of a story, but with a scene from the myth towards the end of the story from which the above quote is taken. By starting the performance in this way, I hoped to invite the listener into something sensual. My choice to start a storytelling performance in this way reflects a desire to create an artistic signature that, in turn, is based on a personal artistic identity. The personal identity is both constant and changeable at the same time, and the narrative identity arises to mediate between the two (Synnes, 2010, p. 130).

I am a performing storyteller, as well as teaching the discipline. In this chapter, I will not address teaching oral storytelling, but concentrate on how performing stories has formed my personal and professional life as a performing storyteller. Oral storytelling is described as a vivid, contextualised and situated event influenced by those present (Lwin, 2010) in a storytelling situation. By storytelling situation, I simply mean that a storyteller tells a story to a listener who is aware of the performative happening.

I believe that all stories have the ability to be related to experiences, even traditional narratives such as folk tales and myths, which constitute the main material in my repertoire as a storyteller. Traditional stories carry historical truths with them (Propp, Martin, & Martin, 1984) and there are connections between traditional narratives and concrete historical experiences (Hodne, 1990). Traditional stories point to beliefs, communities and cultures that once were. When I tell traditional stories in the present, I use my own experiences to understand both the story and the present. I even wonder whether the traditional stories have become part of my narrative identity. According to Paul Ricoeur (1913–2005), a narrative can be regarded as a laboratory for imagination (Synnes, 2010, p. 138) and, to me, the imagination is highlighted in the traditional narratives. These stories portray a character in a story world quite unlike the world we normally inhabit as human beings. The world of this myth is contrasted with gods, creatures and human beings.

This chapter is based on a long-term relationship with a particular Greek myth. Through the story, I will try to understand my own profession as a storyteller by focusing on mimesis and its relationship to experience; this focus is also a path towards an understanding of narrative identity. The preliminary endpoint of the myth was an online performance called Embroidery and Storytelling November 2021.

Narrative Inquiry (hereinafter referred to as NI) considers research as a place for negotiation (Caine, Estefan, & Clandinin, 2013, p. 576) and the principle of NI is to generate new connections between human being and context (Clandinin, 2013, p. 14). I choose to consider my presentation and telling of the myth as a relational place of negotiation about mimesis, where the personal, professional, the intimate and the public, and the aesthetic meet and are reflected in interaction. Furthermore, NI shows that there are many topics that can be extracted from a story, and the place you are, temporally and socially, during a research phase can help to determine the selection of topics (Caine, Estefan, & Clandinin, 2013, p. 577). My focus in this chapter will be on the idea and the concept of mimesis. The question is therefore: What possibilities does the concept of mimesis offer in terms of understanding the relationship between experience and story, and how does mimesis affect my narrative identity?

The myth, told as interpreted by me and used here, is the myth about the Minotaur in a maze or labyrinth. In short, it is about Crete and King Minos who breaks a promise he has made to the gods to sacrifice a white bull born out of the sea. A curse is cast on Minos, which causes his queen to mate with the white bull and then give birth to a boy who is half-human and half-bull. The architect Daedalus builds a maze in which the boy is placed. Finally, the monster Minotaur is killed by Theseus, a young hero. The performance in November was performed in an online space.

2 The Name-Giving

The origins of the Greek myth about the Minotaur may lie in the long-gone Minoan culture and/or bullfighting, and the narrative arose to commemorate Minoan rulers. The Roman poet Ovid (43 BC–17 AD) is an early written source of the Minotaur myth. Another source is a vase painting from about 500 BC. The vase contains a depiction of a being that is half-human and half-bull. In the painting, the Greek hero Theseus grabs the creature and sticks a sword into its neck. There is something powerful and striking about the myth that may have helped to ensure its survival.

In the myth, the queen, the mother of the Minotaur, calls him Asterius, his birthname. How many people know about this? There is something fragile about the fact that we do not use the character’s real name but know him as a monster.

My name is Mimesis, a name I have given myself based on an avatar. It may seem ridiculous, or childish to name oneself in this way, but technology has entered my life. Technology or an idea of technology made it possible to imagine a cross between human and animal. Both mimesis and telling are about ‘an extended naming’ of the reality that surrounds us.

I choose to call mimesis a concept, due to the different understandings associated with the word. Dealing with mimesis offers a wealth of possibilities and ideas. Much of the challenge lies in the interaction between the Platonic and Aristotelian understanding of the concept (Halliwell, 2002). The term mimesis is of unknown origin (Willbergh, 2008, p. 11). The word derives from Greek antiquity. Although variants of the word mimesis are found in early sources, such as the Greek poet Homer (928 f.kr.), Plato (428 BC–347 BC) was the first to explore the idea of mimesis theoretically (Halliwell, 2002). Both Plato and Aristotle (384 BC–322 BC) have influenced how we understand the concept today (Willbergh, 2008, p. 11). Mimesis is usually understood to mean imitation or representation (Halliwell, 2012), which in itself is a challenge, since representation is time- dependent and will be different at different times (Nyrnes, 2002, p. 256). For example, elements of the myth of the Minotaur represent a reality that is not applicable today.

According to Ricoeur, Aristotle’s mimesis relates to poiesis, meaning art, and that it is therefore only within art that mimesis is effective (Ricoeur, 1991). Mimesis is an artistic process that helps to clarify the work leading up to a performance. Mimesis is a way of connecting text and experience, and is associated with ethos – what concerns the teller (Nyrnes, 2002, p. 236).

Essentially, for me, mimesis is a concept that concerns choices and means of creating closeness and a dynamic in a narrative. Mimesis is also a process consisting of phases that follow each other temporally. Ricoeur’s triple mimesis can be used as a methodological tool that moves from an experience to narrative, and an experience for the listener, through three phases. In this context, it is important for me to emphasise that I see a narrative as a form of construction based, among other things, on experiences, and that experiences in themselves do not necessarily have narrative structure (Verhesschen, 2003, p. 451).

3 Another Beginning

Research in NI begins with a beginning, with the researcher’s starting point and the edge of the researcher’s own narrative (Mello, Murphy, & Clandinin, 2016, p. 568) as input to the topic.

I remember how I came across this myth, which I am returning to. I think the reason I am looking into mimesis is related to my first public storytelling performance. Back in 1996, I also told a Greek myth. I retell the event as follows:

In the spring of 1996, I performed my first story in public. It was a mandatory storytelling night in the study programme ‘storytelling’, and it was a sad experience. I had processed a Greek myth and ‘engaged in historical vandalism’ in the ‘here and now’ situation. My knees and my jaw shook, I was lisping, but the worst thing was a hand that appeared in the corner of my eye when I told the story. I jumped, it was my own arm that had begun to live its own life.

(Dahlsveen, 2008)

In this short narrative, I have configured an experience I had into a narrative. In the process from experience to story, I have made some choices to make a point. That is not to say that the narrative is less true than the experience I had or, to put it another way, that the narrative has become the experience. The little story is a core story in my identity as a storyteller. In the perspective of looking back, not being able to tell, or to configure an event into a narrative, is a loss to the narrative identity (Synnes, 2010, p. 139).

As a starting point, I draw a distinction between diegesis and mimesis. To simplify, one can say that diegesis is to tell, while mimesis is to ‘dramatize’ the material. One can also say that diegesis is when the voice belongs to the storyteller, while mimesis is when the voice belongs to a character (Berger, 1994, p. 416). These two concepts can be traced back to Plato’s Republic, where Socrates explains different ways of presenting a story (Halliwell, 2013). Mimesis consists of the steps and choices I make, and the means I use to create closeness and dynamics in the material and make the story live in the imagination, so that the listener can rest in a story world.

When performing my first story in public, I see in retrospect that I had no control over diegesis, but perhaps even less of mimesis. If mimesis can be regarded as representation, one can say that, at that time, I did not have the skills required to tell that story. I knew very little about Greek mythology, and had never been to Greece. I believe that I lacked the basic experience to tell this story as well as mimesis, in the sense that I did not have the skills to create a performative expression.

The process of turning an experience into a story requires some knowledge. For example, one must be able to see semantic connections between the events an experience consists of (Verhesschen, 2003, p. 453). I must be semantically creative and be able to use my imagination.

Imagination is necessary for meaning to be produced, interpreted and understood (Bjørsnøs, 2012, p. 68).

Piet Verhesschen claims that an understanding of Ricoeur’s triple mimesis could be a help in NI in terms of understanding the process that takes place between experience and a narrative (Verhesschen, 2003). The first area – mimesis one – is the living life, (Willbergh, 2008, p. 87); it is here the preconception is found (Bjørsnøs, 2012, p. 68). This is where the potential of an event is discovered, where a structure the narrative can have is seen, where the elements that make up a narrative are recognised, such as temporality (Verhesschen, 2003, p. 453). The narrative above, which builds on what, for me, was a decisive event, could have had several variations depending on what I want to achieve with the story. I could have gone into more detail, embroidered the story, talked about who was present. Instead, I have chosen to turn the spotlight on what I experienced as a physical presence. This is because I use the story to talk about what can physically happen when you are nervous about performing. The story reveals shortcomings I had, which I later considered necessary competences to be a performative storyteller.

Verhesschen claims that researching narratives must also be related to narrative identity. The narrative identity is constantly changing (Verhesschen, 2003, p. 459). This means, for example, that the narrative above will naturally change as I change. I would not have been able to tell the story above right after the incident that occurred in spring 1996. It was not until years later that the event could be turned into a ‘narrative’, because I am now more confident about what I am doing when performing.

4 Fictional Experiences

According to Ricoeur, the narrative is necessary for our existential confirmation (Bjørsnøs, 2012, p. 66), telling stories about life is to be a co- author of the meaning of life (Synnes, 2010, p. 142). A long time has elapsed between a Greek myth told in 1996 and the tale of the Minotaur in 2021.

According to NI, we live our stories in connection with different temporal places that are divided into three: the cultural, the institutional and the personal (Clandinin, 2013, p. 22). My encounter with and work on the myth touches on these three areas.

Despite the obscure origins of the myth, the narrative is widely used. Not only has the myth inspired art, but it has also been used as a metaphor in, for example, medical science (Tilney, 2003) and humanitarian aid (Warner, 2018).

When I told the myth in 2021, after the opening of the performance, I told the following:

To understand what goodness is, one must understand the vulnerable. Take Crete, for example, imagine Crete. Maybe you have even been there. An airflight, slept under the sun wearing a newly purchased bikini, been to a restaurant, filled up your plate and ate half of it. After all, we have oil. Once Crete was the centre of the world, there were merchants there from all over the world. In Knossos, women sat on balconies and looked down at the fully loaded ships. The streets were filled with smells of spice and at the market you met strangers who had the strangest things to tell. Here reigned a king, Minos.

(Dahlsveen, 2021)

In the quote, I describe, stereotypically, how Crete is perceived today, and in the quote, there is a transition from ‘today’ to the mythical time in which myths took place.

This move says something about me as a storyteller. The transitions between concrete experiences of lived life and what I choose to call fictional experiences are something I often use as a storyteller to highlight the current aspect of a traditional narrative. In this move, I reveal myself as a storyteller. I take a position that can be criticised, the danger being that I interpret the material for the listener. I want the myth to be representative and make what I might call a mimetic move. I blend contemporary experiences with fictional experiences. Fictionalisation can be understood as ‘as an intrinsic quality of a text’ (Gjerlevsen, 2016) depending on a specific context, which, as mentioned earlier, means that a Greek myth will today be perceived as not real, and the term also means an intended invented action (Gjerlevsen, 2016). The above- mentioned move also points to my narrative identity. The way I compose and structure the narrative comes from the specific background I have (Verhesschen, 2003, p. 459).

Jean D Clandinin encourages people to be ‘attentive to the three- dimensional narrative inquiry space with its dimensions of place, temporality, and sociality’ (Clandinin, 2013, p. 143). In this context, this means that I want listeners to be aware that the Greek myth comes from a different time and place, while at the same time seeing a connection to their own time. Ricoeur emphasises the importance of fiction and imagination to a narrative. All fiction is about an embedded world of reality (Bjørsnøs, 2012, p. 68).

Receiving a narrative, as a listener, is to be subjected to the power of transformation that springs from the imaginary (Bjørsnøs, 2012, p. 71).

If I return to the idea of triple mimesis – the process of mimesis, in the telling of a story, I have left the area of mimesis one. The story has been through a process, this process is to be found in mimesis two. (Willbergh, 2008). In mimesis two, operational actions are taken to ‘bring about a synthesis between heterogeneous components like actors, means, purposes, interactions, circumstances, unexpected results and so on’ (Verhesschen, 2003, p. 453).

This means that telling a narrative is not just about the content of a story, or who I am, in which context a story is told, but also about how this narrative is constructed, what choices I have made at the expense of what, and how I deliver on these choices in an artistic expression. In NI, two strategies are used when analysing stories: ‘thematic and structural. Thematic analysis is most common in narrative inquiry’ (Bailey, Montgomery, & Mossey, 2013, p. 272). But meaning can also be found in the structuring of a story, because, as a storyteller, I am aware of what rhetorical strategies I use to build a narrative.

5 The Personal Experience of the Myth

In the myth the king, Minos, is given a gift – a bull – by the sea god Poseidon that he is going to sacrifice to the god Zeus. In the performance, I relate the following:

Minos walked the bull through the streets of Knossos to show it off. He locked it in his own garden. There he was standing looking at the bull. As he stood like this, he thought, ‘What a beautiful creature. It would be a shame to sacrifice such a bull. I think I will sacrifice my own bulls!’ No sooner said than done, Minos sacrificed seven of his own bulls, the sacrificial smoke rose heavenward and the people partied after the sacrifice.

Gods cannot be fooled. That night, the sea god Poseidon rose furious out of the sea, with his fierce fork. His shadow lay over all of Crete, and using only his gaze, Poseidon put a curse on Minos.

Once I was in Athens, I was there on a job and the commissioners wanted me to see some of Athens. It was January, it was raining. We went up to the Acropolis and all the way, the commissioners told me about Greek history. I was both tired and lightheaded by all the talk, what was the point of dragging me all that way up for me to see a ruin in grey weather, rain, and fog?

(Dahlsveen, 2021)

The quote from the performance shows how I combine the Greek myth with an autobiographical episode. The transition is abrupt. Such abrupt breaks between fiction and my own experience were used in several places throughout the performance. In the quote, there is a personal event, a desire to create a connection to the myth so that it relates to others as well as myself. The motives in the narrative are not only action-bound by a narrative structure, but can account for something outside the specific storytelling world that is formulated through the myth. In the process of working on a narrative like a Greek myth, I use motifs, actions, characters and the like to evoke memories of my own experiences – first freely, then searching for correlations and contrasts, then with scepticism to see what works. I then recycle these experiences back into the narrative, where I deliberately seek such abruptions. As mentioned earlier, one should be aware of such choices, as they place me as a storyteller in the material. This work takes place in the second area of mimesis – mimesis two – ‘where multiple incidents are transformed into one narrative’ (Verhesschen, 2003, p. 453). The mixing of the autobiographical and the traditional or mythical is an operational method I use in most of my performances. I cannot trace this method back to one incident, but it might have something to do with how I came across this myth.

Although the origin of the myth is unknown, I have a clear recollection of my own first encounter with it. The first time I found the myth, I was in my late teens; I remember standing in the library, filled with concentrated tranquillity, in Fredrikstad, a city in Norway. There, I found the myth in the form of a novel by the author Tor Åge Bringsværd. I did not know at the time that I was going to be a storyteller. The day I started primary school I more or less stopped talking, I only spoke at home … with sheep. This was not seen as a problem, I was simply a silent child. I grew up on an island and not many people lived in my local area, except for a multitude of sheep. Stories in books became my world and, as I got older, I travelled as often as I could to the nearest city to borrow books. That is where I found the myth. It is not so strange that I then fell for the myth. I spent a lot of time with animals, fantasising about myself with animal traits.

I used the myth of the Minotaur as a story I told around 1998 when I was working as a storyteller at a primary school in Oslo. My version of the story is strongly influenced by Bringsværd’s version, where the focus is on how a monster is created. I processed the myth in terms of a particular boy in a class. At that time, this boy was considered to be ‘violent’ by the teachers at the school, yet every time I told stories, he sat quietly. Admittedly, he did not want to sit in the storytelling circle with the other students, but he listened and could always retell the stories I told. The last time I worked in this boy’s class, I decided that he should get a narrative about being trapped in a role, which is what I regarded the Minotaur myth as being about at the time.

NI emphasises that we should be observant of what shapes us as researchers and that the researcher’s own narrative is part of the reflection. By showing this, the researcher shows the reader that she/he is connected to the material in more than just an academic way (Mello, Murphy, & Clandinin, 2016, p. 569). Because I invest much of my own memories of experiences in the story, mimesis becomes a reflective process. I choose the traditional material based on my own experience. This gives me more memories from my own experiences and the narrative becomes a place for negotiation about this process. This cyclic process between my experience and the fictional experience creates a wealth of opportunities that are made visible by telling the traditional and autobiographical stories in combination. How this is completed first reveals itself in mimesis three. Here, the field opens out even more, because ‘Our transformed actions and experiences will call for narration and this will lead to different narratives’ (Verhesschen, 2003, p. 454). According to Ricoeur, it is not only the revelation that occurs in mimesis three, but also a transformation, and it is in a fusion between the two that the narrative identity is created. In this sense, I can say that my professional identity as a storyteller is built on both real and fictional events.

6 Mimesis and Desire

Minos was furious when he learned of the kind of monster born at his castle, by his queen. He ran to Daedalus and said, ‘You, who do you think you are? You who cross the boundaries set by the gods. You must destroy the monster you have helped create’. ‘So, so, O King’, Daedalus said, ’this is science. Can you not see that the monster you hate will serve you well?

O King, do you not see that the monster you fear will become your most powerful weapon?

O King, do you not see that the monster you find hideous will adorn you?

O king, leave him to me and I will build a building the world has never seen before. And the monster will be named after you. His name should be Mino’s bull, Minotaur’.

(Dahlsveen, 2021)

In the quote above, I begin by describing what happens and then I lend my voice to the architect Daedalus, thereby leaving diegesis and entering into mimesis.

Narrative inquiry uses narratives to understand experiences (Caine, Estefan, & Clandinin, 2013, p. 575), and considers life lived to be a source of knowledge and understanding (Clandinin, 2013, p. 17). Experiences interact and lead to changes in people and the context in which they are situated here and now (Caine, Estefan, & Clandinin, 2013, p. 576). Although the myth of the Minotaur is not a personal narrative, it consists of personal choices, and I believe that the myth, as it lives in me and my choices, reflects the institutional, the cultural and the personal. In the quote above, the king, Minos, accuses the architect Daedalus of creating a monster. What Daedalus says is my interpretation, my narrative and not something I find in a written source of the myth. My interpretation of the myth has changed over the years – from a picture of myself, to a picture of a certain boy in a primary school, to an interpretation of the pursuit of good. Not only does the interpretation change, but also how I express this interpretation in a performative expression.

Ricoeur claims that mimesis is a chain of actions related to practice (Ricoeur, 1991, p. 139). The process requires an understanding of what can serve as a choice of artistic expression (Ricoeur, 1991, p. 140): ‘Mimesis is this pre-understanding of what human action is, of its semantics, its symbolism, its temporality’ (Ricoeur, 1991, p. 142).

Ricoeur’s triple mimesis is seen as a process that proceeds from experience to an artistic experience through three phases.

In the last stage of mimesis, the past is made present in the presence (Ricoeur, 1984, p. 55). This means that I tell the story in a way that allows listeners to see the events in their imagination and perhaps discover something they have not noticed before. Ricoeur calls this a poetic mimesis (Verhesschen, 2003, p. 456).

The listener’s presence influences my identity as a storyteller. The listener’s ability to imagine what is happening in a story or to enter a storytelling world is helped by the storyteller’s use of varied language, visual, verbal and vocal (Aadland, 2016), where the listener is present through inner participation (Nagel & Hovik, 2016).

The quote from the story above comes at the end of the performance, I tell it differently as listeners are different. Not only the words said to the king, created by me based on various impulses I have received, but the words will change as I meet the listener and intuitively interpret what they need in a situation. When mimesis works, it will open new narratives, in the listener and in me as the storyteller.

NI considers a narrative to be a three-dimensional place with ‘its dimension of temporality (past, present, future), sociality (with attention to the personal and the unfolding existential events), and place (the topological geographic places where events including inquiry events take place)’ (Mello, Murphy, & Clandinin, 2016, p. 567). This place is filled with tensions. Can this also include mimetic desire? The idea of mimetic desire was developed by René Girard (1923–2015). Our desires ‘exist only in relation to others and thanks to them’ (Tomelleri, 2015). Desire is part of the dynamics of the relational.

Envy is an example of desire, but it is not necessarily something negative it can ‘be a stimulus to improving oneself, looking for a better job, changing our general situation in life’ (Tomelleri, 2015, p. 79).

The mimetic desire is linked to my own narrative, and my development as a storyteller. My desire to be better has been a driving force, taking me from a clumsy situation in 1996 to the performance in 2021. In my own professional narrative, desire has characterised the narrative I have carried to become a storyteller.

7 Conclusion

NI presents a method for understanding one’s own professional and personal development. In my case, I want to turn the spotlight on mimesis, because it touches so many parts of being a storyteller.

I opened the chapter by asking what possibilities the concept of mimesis offers in terms of understanding the relationship between experience and story, and how mimesis affects my narrative identity?

Mimesis is about making a story come alive in a listener. This means that I as storyteller must make some choices. These choices, I believe, refer to my own experiences, some preferences I have acquired during my career as a storyteller. Because of the narrative identity, the stories will always change, as the experiences change.

Mimesis is a focal point for understanding the storyteller’s development, the process of working on a narrative, as well as the artistic expression.

Mimesis can be linked to my desire to constantly develop, i.e. to make sure that I gain experiences that provide new competences and skills. Mimesis can also serve as an artistic process that moves a narrative from an experience to a performative expression. This performative expression becomes someone else’s – the listener’s – experience.

Mimesis is also about my narrative identity, an identity undergoing constant flux and shifts.

Mimesis is a diverse concept that I want to explore further, which is where the possibilities lie. So, mimesis is an idea, an opportunity and a focal point.