Nine Visits to the Mythworld

John Steckley teaches in the Human Studies Program at Humber College in
Toronto. He is the author of Beyond Their Years: Five Native Women's
Stories.

Nine Visits to the Mythworld is the second of three volumes in the
author’s “Masterworks of the Classical Haida Mythtellers,” a
collection in which Bringhurst translates and comments on these works.
In this case, the stories come from Ghandl (1851–c.1920) and were
originally recorded and transcribed by ethnologist John Swanton, with
the invaluable translating assistance of Haida Henry Moody.

Bringhurst, an accomplished poet, brings a poet’s sensibility to the
translation, yet important components have been sacrificed in the
process, not just from Haida to English (with the meaning of puns lost)
but also in the reduction of the oral artist, with his changing rhythms,
gestures, and movements, to the two-dimensional constraints of a book;
the storyteller himself is missed.

The limitations of the present-day reader are another consideration. As
Bringhurst puts it, “In some respects the maturity and character of a
work of oral literature depend upon the listener

as much as on the teller.” Yet, as the reader becomes familiar with
such stock Haida characters as the Master Carver and the “child of
good family,” this book rewards as much as it challenges.