Book Review the Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony

Evelyn de Morgan, Cadmus and Harmonia, 1877

I n the first of twelve, long capacity of The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony, Roberto Calasso retells the story of the abduction of Europa by Zeus and repeatedly poses the question: "But how did information technology all brainstorm?" Ostensibly this question refers to the mythical history leading upwards to the abduction but more generally to the philosophical question: how did our world and everything in information technology begin.

Creation myths are an important role of myth, simply Calasso'southward concern is with the already existing Olympian gods. A more pertinent question is the genesis of Greek mythology itself, which first emerged into public consciousness in the context of ritual recitations of Homeric poems at Athenian festivals, initiated by the tyrant Pisistratus (600-527 BC). The Iliad and the Odyssey are idea to have been equanimous either by Homer or by several unknown poets prior to 800 BC before the advent of writing in Greece. The subject field of these epic poems, the Trojan wars, has been dated to effectually 1190 BC. The Olympian gods, and their innumerable supporting bandage of divine and human characters, therefore, accept come down to united states of america as literary inventions rather than in the form of the monolithic, more often than not animistic deities of ancient Egypt or Mesopotamia.

Presumably, in that location are twelve chapters respective to the Olympic pantheon, simply the content of each chapter in The Spousal relationship of Cadmus and Harmony displays no such systematic nomenclature. Instead the narrative follows the whimsical preferences of the author in elucidating his ideas. In retelling seemingly random selected myths, Calasso indulges in imaginative fiction, attributing thoughts to the characters, every bit would a modern novelist, like Mary Renault.

For example, Calasso writes:

Ariadne was dazzled by the divine glory the god offered her. And secretly she sneered at Theseus, who had brought that glory on her by his very treachery. (p19)

This imitates the Roman poet Ovid, who puts similar words into Ariadne's mouth, proverb,

Why did I weep like a land-daughter, his agnosticism has been my gain? (Fasti, Book 3)

This same technique reinforces the literary character of the myths that have come up down to u.s. from their principle sources. But clearly Calasso's work is not a novel. Rather a kind of hybrid creation. Part of the intention is to bear witness that item types of myths (for example, abductions) belong to a general course of events, which may have been based on the historical adventures of costless-booting bandits and traders in the Mediterranean region.

Calasso tells us, "In any Cretan story, in that location'south a bull at the beginning and a bull at the end." (p.21) One is tempted to remove the indefinite articles and remember that "all Cretans are liars", like those who exercise mythopoeia, or the making of myths in the get-go place. He points out that, "No other woman, or goddess had so many deaths every bit Ariadne", underlining the fact that myths are inherently fluid and unreliable if viewed as proto-history.

In assessing whatever work near mythology, one is curious to know what approach the author has adopted. For the early Christian writers, the notwithstanding active stories of Greco-Roman mythology posed serious competition and had to be denounced as utterly false. They adopted the euhemerist argument that the stories of the old religions were cypher more than fables. Frazer's Golden Bough is a work of comparative religion, an anthropological report, where the author says that religion and science gradually precipitated from the magical thought of archaic societies.

Frazer'south unifying thesis was that the vegetative myths of Nemi were of universal import. Like Frazer and later writers, Robert Graves took the view that mythology had been invented to explicate and support aboriginal rituals, rather than having any footing in heroic deeds by bodily historic persons. In his literary work, however, refered to as a novel past critics, Calasso seems to keep without such unifying theses.

Max Weber clung to the validity of religious ideas and treated Indian mythology equally the repository of immutable truths. Jung refined this approach by finding mythological archetypes inherent in the collective unconscious. The atheist Freud's use of the Oedipus myth was more past way of analogy than a belief in the living presence of mythical forces, finding rather that actual sexual and power relations in family life gave ascension to various fantasies.

19th Century writers in all disciplines were overshadowed by their classical instruction, as well as past Christianity, and expressed themselves fluently with reference to the Greco-Roman myths in which they had been schooled.

Joseph Campbell, in his non-fiction text, Hero with a Thousand Faces, adopts the Jungian idea, and uses the motif of the hero as its organising principle. Campbell provides u.s. with a prologue explaining his arroyo and a definite structure, together with a detailed index.

Roberto Calasso offers no such road map or index, although there is a detailed list of sources to overt quotations in the text, which is perchance less interruptive than the more than usual footnotes. For those who seek a more detailed exposition of the myths, such a list in invaluable. The sources are very extensive and include virtually of the classics of aboriginal Greek and Roman literature.

A hint about the author's mental attitude to mythology is given in Chapter III:

Human's relationship with the gods passed through two regimes: showtime conviviality, then rape. The third government, the modern one, is that of indifference, but with the implication that the gods have already withdrawn, and, hence, if they are indifferent in our regard, we can be indifferent as to their existence or otherwise. (p.53).

This keeping open the possibility that the gods are still active in our globe runs counter to the rationalism of Plato and to the irreligious materialism of the present day, simply is advisable in a work which the publishers have classified as fiction/literature. Calasso's intention is to laissez passer on his love and agreement of mythology as a perennial fund of wisdom, which is withal pertinent to our lives today, rather than engaging in sterile debate well-nigh the genesis of religions past and present.

To reinforce the indicate, Callasso sees the humans in the myths every bit puppets of the gods; for example, the exploits of Theseus in relation to Dionysus and Apollo, who create human destiny through their conflicts and cooperative machinations.

Behind such stories lies a philosophical belief in fate, characterised by the goddess Ate, who led both gods and men astray, and by Ananke who represents the principle of necessity, more familiar to u.s. equally the laws of nature. Apollo, despite his patronage of the arts and sciences, eptomises the uncaring psychopath and Dionysus exemplifies a homocidal bedlamite aptitude of realising romantic dreams of blood and lust. Calasso's sympathies are clearly with Zeus, although his mode of creation is through seduction and rape. This Calasso sees equally the basis of all things including gods and humans, and hints that Zeus sowed the seeds of monotheism.

The narrator explains the myth of Helen, which began with the rape of Leda by Zeus, and distils out the idea of beaty as a superior power to the creature strength used by men and gods. The egg from which Helen hatched contained her twin brother Pollux. A second egg, fathered by Leda'due south married man King Tandareus, contained Castor and Clytemnestra who became the wife of Agamemnon and later on his murderer.

The bounden of such unbelievable fantasies to the quasi-historical story of the Trojan War (caused past the abduction of Helen by Paris)—creates a seamless myth which explains how the reprehensible deeds of Zeus sowed the seeds of the tragic beginnings of Greek social club.

If we excise the mythical elements we are left just with the blank basic that tin be unearthed past archeology and lose the poetic ability that was the real, creative, driving force of ancient Mediterranean societies. Calasso sums this up by saying,

For the Greeks, Helen was the embodiment of that vision, beauty hatched from the egg of necessity. (p.134).

Homer'south epics are even attributed to Helen, who is said to have appeared to him in a dream, commanding him to write them, another case of myth reinforcing myth.
Dissimilar Robert Graves's The Greek Myths, Calassos's approach is thematic rather than lexical, references to private gods or heroes existence distribued beyond the work. Zeus, Apollo and Dionysus appear in several capacity. For example, in Chapter IX the relationship between hierogamy (the union between a god and a goddess) and the metaphysics of sacrifice is one such theme.

The kickoff cede, we are told, was due to one Sopatrus, whose offering of cakes to the gods was eaten by an ox. Enraged, Sopatrus slew the ox, buried information technology and rushed off to Crete. A drought followed and the idea of the expiation of blood guilt by ritual cede was built-in, which led not only to sacrificing animals to the gods only also to the bloody rites of Dionysus and the consumption of animal and human flesh by his Maenads (female followers of Dionysus).

Not until Affiliate XII exercise we learn of the marriage of Cadmus and Harmony, which was important enough to exist attended by the Olympian gods. 1 day, the deadly monster Typhon, son of the earth mother Gaia, reached out to Olympus and chanced to find Zeus's thunderbolts, without which the cracking god was powerless, and was before long torn to pieces by the multi-armed monster. The Olympians fled to Arab republic of egypt, leaving Typhon as supreme ruler. To cutting a long story curt, Cadmus flattered and overjoyed the rather stupid monster with his pipe music and allowd the dismembered Zeus to reassemble himself and regain his thunderbolts in fourth dimension to blast Typhon and restore the Olympian gild.

The gratitude of the gods bestowed power and wealth on Cadmus, who founded the urban center of Thebes. Like nearly of the Greek myths, destruction and misery eventually followed, although Cadmus and Harmony escaped in a apprehensive ox cart, transformed into intertwined snakes. Making sense of this and other myths is what Robert Calasso does, by seeking out the mutual ideas which underlay the development of ancient Greek idea up to its final flowering in the works of the not bad dramatists and Athenian philosophers.

The Matrimony of Cadmus and Harmony provides the neophyte with a fascinating introduction to Greek mythology, and for those with more than than a passing acquaintance of this item field, the novel offers a masterly representation of its significance. The thoughts and inventions of the aboriginal Greeks were the foundation of western culture, admitting overlaid by the equally elaborate mythology of Christianity, and nonetheless shine through the dark canyons of our post-modern materialism with a hopeful if always fading light. Robert Calasso has given us the opportunity to rekindle this light and to rethink our present condition in the every bit tragic circumstances of our ancient forbears.

Tony Thomas was born in England in 1939, and is a retired bureaucrat living in Brisbane, Australia. He has an Australian wife, two developed daughters, a canis familiaris and a cat. He holds a degree in economics from the University of Queensland. His interests are cosmic, and include: writing fiction, poetry, and blogging political diatribes. Other abiding interests include political and social philosophy, with occasional forays into logic and the foundations of mathematics.

christiansenenone1979.blogspot.com

Source: https://www.escapeintolife.com/essays/reinventing-the-gods-the-marriage-of-cadmus-and-harmony/

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