"Out of That Hole: Reflections of the Demetrian Myth in six contemporary poems" (original) (raw)
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The mystery of woman has captured the imaginations of humanity since before the dawn of agriculture. The capability of woman’s body, seemingly without cause, to create and possibly destroy life within her seemed to mankind akin to the mystery of the seed in the soil; this eternal cycle of birth, death, and rebirth eventually became symbolized through the myth of the Grain Mother Demeter and the loss, and return, of her daughter, Persephone. In representing woman at both extremes of her life, that of maiden turned mother, this myth grew to represent the process of women’s maturation, both socially and psychoanalytically. Yet, the archetypal figure with whom women should empathise in this process, the daughter Persephone, has a shadowy, incorporeal presence in the myth. Her experiences once she has descended to the Underworld are undescribed; only through parallels with the experiences of other females in the narrative, particularly those of her mother Demeter, is Persephone’s maturation supposedly brought to light. Applying a Jungian psychoanalytic viewpoint to the narratives gives the Underworld a new perspective: representing the unconscious mind. That Persephone literally descends to the Underworld in the myth could be seen to represent the way woman represses conflicts of her adolescence in order to be a better mother figure. Projection onto the mythic archetypes of Persephone and Demeter allow a woman to explore these repressed emotions and experiences objectively while simultaneously extending her own conscious. Rita Dove and Louise Glück, two contemporary female authors who have appropriated these archetypes in their poetry for this very purpose, provide models of successful and insightful processes of unconscious awareness of themselves. Through understanding the myth in all its forms—agrarian, social, and psychoanalytic—and applying that understanding to Dove’s and Glück’s poetry, woman can begin to reconcile herself not as two identities of just maiden and mother but of one identity as woman.
τιμή and the Nurturing Principle in the Iliad and the Homeric Hymn to Demeter
In her set of interpretive essays on the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, Foley famously analyzed what she termed “the mother/daughter romance,” suggesting that “for ancient women, Demeter and Persephone may have represented the extraordinary endurance of the bond between women of different generations in the same family.” By contrast, Clay insists in her chapter on the hymn that “while the hymn-poet is by no means unaware of the psychological and sexual implications of his narrative, his attention remains fixed on the larger political and theological ramifications of his story.” Clay and Foley each bring out different points of emphasis in Demeter’s well-known hymn, but I believe there is a way to read these various elements as complementary to one another. In this paper, I argue that the hymnic poet places the bereaved mother’s intensely personal and even guilty anguish on an equal plane with the combined grief and anger of a Homeric hero derived of personal τιμή. With the rape of Persephone cruelly framed as a breach of the maternal protective-instinct—which is central to Demeter’s τιμή as the goddess of nurturing and fertility—Demeter’s subsequent grief and rage are brought into parallel with those of the tragically ironic mother-figure, Achilles himself. Too often overlooked by those wishing to focus on the more “political” elements of the hymn, Demeter’s early period of mourning for her lost daughter shares numerous parallels with that of Achilles for Patroclus. Both Achilles’ grieving process, however, and his correspondence to the bereaved, anti-mother Niobe draw attention to his undeniable guilt in the death of his beloved. Demeter, on the other hand, can take no rational responsibility for the rape of her daughter. Rather, the hymnic poet parallels her mourning process to that of the shamed and guilty Achilles in order not only to place her personal grief on a level with that of the archetypal Homeric hero, but even more so to bring out her inviolable dedication to her maternal duty. In the mind of the hymnic poet, Demeter is such a paragon of Homeric motherhood that her sense of personal responsibility for the well-being of her child leads her to grieve in the very same manner as the pitiably failed mother-figures, Achilles and Niobe. Throughout the body of her hymn, Demeter is consumed with the desire either to restore her personal τιμή as the goddess of nurturing and fertility or at least to avenge its deprivation. Her final success depends upon her effective manipulation of the aspect of her nurturing τιμή which has not been stolen from her—her patronage of human agriculture. By withholding her maternal care from the fields of men and threatening her fellow gods with a loss of all γέρα and θυσίαι, Demeter finally reasserts her own power as a maternal nurturing figure—a force absolutely necessary for the maintenance of Zeus’ cherished cosmic order. Nickel summarizes, “Her position in the Olympian community is thereby confirmed and even augmented. No longer having any reason to be angry, Demeter returns with her daughter to Olympus.” As numerous scholars have pointed out, Demeter and Persephone act as mirror images for one another throughout the body of the hymn. Thus, with Zeus’ final redistribution of τιμαί at the hymn’s close, Persephone actually becomes an extension of her mother’s power into the realm of Hades. As mother and daughter return physically to Olympus, the primal maternal force which they together embody is stretched out over all three realms of the cosmos—Hades, earth, and Olympus. Paradoxically, the temporary break in the mother-daughter relationship of protection and care serves finally to extend and augment the power of that relationship and to reestablish its central importance for the solidarity of Zeus’ cosmos.
“At the heart of legend”: Feminist Revisionist Mythology in Twentieth-Century Poetry
2020
The female existence and experience is not singular in the way that is often perpetuated by the narratives of Greek mythology. In acknowledging that each female revisitation to a myth is an attempt to add a kind of humanity to narratives of female existence which have been made static by myth and tradition, one can begin to question whether myth has the power to tell a true story. My project investigates the feminist project in the poetry of Eavan Boland, Rita Dove, Louise Glück, and Margaret Atwood in revising the existing and well-known myths of Demeter, Persephone, and Circe. It will use these poets’ different treatments of each myth to investigate the nature of myth as a cultural touchstone, or as something that is culturally powerful enough to change the patriarchal narrative that exists within society surrounding these myths. Each poet, in choosing to interact with and revise myth, has a different project which ultimately seeks to imbue a vein of the “true” and fluid female ex...
A Feminist Reading of Kizer's " Persephone Pauses "
This paper discusses the adaptation of Demeter and Persephone's myth by the American poetess Carolyn Kizer. The poem is a dramatic monologue, exploring Persephone's part of the story and her journey to the Underworld with Hades. The poem is approached from a feminist point of view. The paper sets two sections, the first reviews the theoretical parts concerning mythology and feminism, the second presents the application of the feminist theories on Kizer's poem. The study aims to provide answers to crucial questions of the differences between the myth and the poet's interpretation, portrayals of Demeter and her daughter Persephone, and the myth's reinvented themes, as well as the depictions of her heroine. The study has arrived at some outcomes; first, Kizer's poem is describing womanhood in Persephone's individuation. Second, Kizer's version is exploring woman's psychological rather than social states. Third, the poetess composes her poem as a dramatic monologue to give the rightful voices to her heroine.