C.S. Lewis

"We all agree that the story of Balder is a great myth, a thing of inexhaustible value. But whose version - whose words - are we thinking when we say this? For my own part, the answer is that I am not thinking of anyone's words. No poet, as far as I know or can remember, has told this story supremely well. I am not thinking of any particular version of it. If the story is anywhere embodied in words, that is almost an accident. What really delights and nourishes me is a particular pattern of events, which would equally delight and nourish if it had reached me by some medium which involved no words at all - say by a mime, or a film. And I find this to be true of all such stories."

in the preface of George MacDonald: An Anthology, 365 Readings, xxix