Literature about creation of The World?

Question

I am looking for literature (important: fiction, not religious of scientific writings), that has some concepts, ideas about how the world was created. It should regard our reality, so Silmarilion and similar, that talks about creation of some imagined realms, are not what I am looking for.

I do not require it as a entertainment, but as a base for writing essay about different views on creation of the world. I know scientific and religious ideas, but it proved to be hard to find some examples of fiction literature on that topic. Because I want to compare it to the science and religion, unfortunately it cannot be a Silmarilion-ish kind of books, as they do treat about a quite different world.

I have found one novel by now, Isaac Asimov's "The Last Question". It seems fitting, as it talks about known reality, but is a pure fiction.

Answer 1

All and every tale I ran across depicting Creation, including religious texts, seemed to me related to a myth or another. Myths are few, very few and they have a way to be recycled again and again as time goes on. Can't recall out of hand any of them related to our reality, but I might be wrong. So why should you rule out the Silmarilion amongst all others? I fail to see where you draw the fine line between what you want and what you don't. A myth is a myth, is a myth, and so on and so forth.

Answer 2

'The Creation of the World' by Miguel Torga;
'The Creation of the World and Other Business' by Arthur Miller.
Not much that I know about what views they are offering, but seems like its not just entertainmental, although its definitely fiction. You can have a try anyway..
Out of books I'm well familiar with 'A History of the World in 10/2 Chapters' by Julian Barnes is somewhat interesting in this way, although it begins its own interpretation of the world history from the Noy times (and thus is reinterpreting religeous concepts), so it's not really about creation but more about development.
You can also try myths of different cultures:
http://www.dreamscape.com/morgana/uranus.htm
http://users.dickinson.edu/~eddyb/mythology/Creation-1.html
http://alexm.here.ru/mirrors/www.enteract.com/jwalz/Eliade/058.html
I would hardly call them scientific writings, nor are they all concerned with religion (a lot do represent religious-like views however but still), and to call them fiction..hmm..well i guess you've thought about this option before anyway..

Answer 3

I can't think of fiction solely about creation but I can think of a piece that is supposidly set around the beginning: Paradise Lost by John Milton. I think it has some of the creation story and discusses Satan's journey and yes it is more fiction than religious based. It shows things from a different point of view.

Answer 4

you should look into some native american folklore; well, really any ethnic folklore will usually contain creation myths/stories

Native American Legends" George E. Lankford, ISBN 0-8743-039-7. This
particular book is Southeastern legends, however the publisher August House has
an "American Folklore Series". Any good library should have such books--

Answer 5

To me, the best literary depiction of the Creation story is still James Weldon Johnson’s poem, called simply “The Creation” in his book God’s Trombones (1927).

Here is one critic’s [1] comment on the book, which serves as a good background for a reading of the poem:

“As a poet, Johnson began to experiment with the free verse form, producing what may be his best-known work, God's Trombones. Though a committed agnostic, Johnson used the work to pay tribute to the black preachers he remembered from his childhood. Each poem presents in lyrical but colloquial language a version of a classic sermon, such as "The Prodigal Son" or "Noah Built an Ark." Johnson rejected the use of broad ***** dialect as comic and derogatory and revealed the old-time black preacher as a folk figure of dignity and eloquence.”

“The Creation” is not simply a retelling of the account of creation in the Hebrew scriptures, nor does it depict the theology of African American churches. Rather, it re enacts the process of creation; that is, the very nature of creativity. Of course, Johnson uses the terminology of the old-time black preacher, and the preacher uses the details of the old-time Bible story. But just as Johnson uses his creativity as a poet to re-envision a sermon of the sort he had probably heard many times; so the preacher himself is using his creativity as storyteller to re-envision the story he has probably heard and re-told many times.

Creation is seen as self-realization, not only by the poet and the storyteller, but universally. What we know as the Finite (our universe, humankind) is seen as a natural outgrowth of the Infinite (the spiritual, God).

Of course, you will have to read the whole poem [2] to see this demonstrated. But to make my point, I will use two excerpts, one from near the beginning of the poem, another from near the end.

And far as the eye of God could see
Darkness covered everything,
Blacker than a hundred midnights
Down in a cypress swamp.

Then God smiled,
And the light broke,
And the darkness rolled up on one side,
And the light stood shining on the other,
And God said: That's good!

* * * * *

And there the great God Almighty
Who lit the sun and fixed it in the sky,
Who flung the stars to the most far corner of the night,
Who rounded the earth in the middle of his hand;
This Great God,
Like a mammy bending over her baby,
Kneeled down in the dust
Toiling over a lump of clay
Till he shaped it in his own image


What one sees in these passages is the act of creation as an act that is self-expressive (God smiled), submissive (God kneeled down in the dust), sensitive (the light broke), sensual (a mammy bending over her baby), onerous and patient (toiling over a lump of clay till . . .), regenerative (in his own image), and celebratory (That’s good!).

Creation is self-renewal, and the creator (the Infinite One, the preacher, and the poet) within himself is finding a new need, out of himself shaping a new response, and before himself recognizing another creature, himself beyond himself.

Johnson’s new need, of course, was the need to find a meaningful relationship with the religious leaders whom he had respected but whose doctrine he no long can accept. So from out of himself, he comes up with this poem.

The preacher’s need, in turn, was to find an African American message in a tradition that had been handed down from another race and another time. So out of himself, he came up with his story.

In the sermon, moreover, God the One realized a need to be God the Many in One: “And God stepped out on space, / And he looked around and said: I'm lonely.” “He looked on his world /. . ./, And God said: I'm lonely still.” So out of himself, he created a world and humankind. God makes/becomes man: “in his own image,” with his own breath, he becomes “a living soul.” “God stepped out on space . . . .” “And man became a living soul.”

For the Creator, to be is to create.

I AM that I AM.

To Johnson, that is not to say, “I create; therefore, I am,” but rather, “I am; therefore, I create.”

By being himself, he creates; by creating, he becomes himself.

Beethoven’s Ninth. Keats’s odes. Michelangelo’s David. Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater. Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane. My grandmother’s quilts. My father’s dreams. The family we are. The stories we retell. The images we reimagine. Eternity’s hour. An idea to Infinite Mind.

To create is to become -- a living soul.

“Amen, amen.”