Laura Lauberte's Story

"Seiren" - Demeter and Persephone: A Reorientation

When one is alone, one fears the hollow echo of one’s voice. I fear the echo now, of a voice aeons-hoarse from singing, as I tell this story. A tale I have told before, that is not my tale; by telling it I will not be reconciled to my fate. But I must tell it. If this tale is mine, it is only of my failure.
This is the tale of she who I failed and will one day know again, of how she came to moisten mortal springs with tears and take her pleasures in cursing men and ruling spectres. Only one’s songs have stirred her in the aeons I have been condemned to sing, and those were the haunting ballads of Orpheus. This how she became the Iron Queen, and how she was before when she still demurely smiled: Maiden of Antenor, Proserpine, Kore, Persephone, my friend…

I want to state that it was spring, but it couldn’t have been. There were no seasons in that age. This is their tale as well. I remember the narcissi were blooming, I remember that clearly. We were in Enna, in Sicily. Kore, as I and my sisters called her, was young then – for a goddess. Many gods had tried to woo her, but her mother had rejected them all. Sometimes I wonder if that was for the best; perhaps it would have altered both our fates… selfish thoughts. She and her mother were close, very close. Was I jealous? I don’t remember. Aeons dull such feelings. But I remember it was I who suggested we go to Enna to pick the narcissi in bloom. Kore loved narcissi, but Enna was very far from her mother. She hadn’t wanted to go so far.
But we went to Enna—Kore, my two sisters and myself—and wandered the countryside of Sicily’s navel. My sisters left us alone. She was so beautiful and radiant. I remember how I used to watch her. I remember how I sang to her, before my voice took on its rapine euphony. No, perhaps it had it even then, unbeknownst to me. Perhaps that song which I was to sing again and again was what condemned her. But she loved my singing. It was my pride, my joy.
We spent most of that last day alone. Hyperion alone beheld us. The last day… I didn’t know it was the last day then…
Eventually we met up with my sisters, and the four of us continued our search for the narcissi. The day was waning and Kore wanted to return, but I insisted on finding the flowers. (Just one more minute, one more moment…) So we searched, and the shadows lengthened, and eventually we found one, I found one, weeping. I called to her; she came. I remember her smile, that beautiful smile, so radiant it burns me to recall it, as she knelt besides the bloom as it wept, as she reached out and took it in her alabaster hand. Oh gods, how that memory is tainted for me. That last smile. She plucked it, with her pristine hands at my behest. Mine! I was the one, me, my fault, my sin, not hers, and yet I could do nothing!
She fell at that moment. The earth opened and consumed her, and I did nothing, could do nothing. What could I have done? It was so fast. Hyperion saw, as I later learned, for he sees all. The earth swallowed her, down among the dead and the dank and the dark, my pure and radiant Persephone; my Kore; my guilt.
(Why didn’t he take me? Was I just not pure enough for his tastes, that king of shadows?)
I searched through the night, with my sisters. (It was not their sin, why did they suffer? Why was it only they who cast themselves onto the rocks when Odysseus passed? Why am I the only one to remain? I know why: because I am a coward, because I cannot face her even now, when aeons segregate us.) But we searched and scoured and cried the night away, perhaps I more desperately then my siblings. We found nothing, and I returned to Kore’s mother full of sin. My sisters did not deserve their fate.
It was that day that we were bound to sing, and so my greatest joy became my greatest pain. I have never seen Kore since that day; I learnt what happened from Hermes. Even when she returns to her mother’s side for half the year I do not see her. I cannot see her. And why would she want to see me, who led her to the place of her fall? I who condemned her to her torment: once-friend and companion. I doubt she would recognise me. I am hideous now, hideous and hoarse from singing. But this is not my story.

It was Hades who had taken her, I later found, down to his hidden halls beneath the world. The earth bleed dry at her descent; Demeter could not be consoled. She eventually learnt from Hyperion what had happened, though while he sees all he did not tell her everything. I am grateful for that. Perhaps he pities me, gazing down at me upon the rocks crying to the sea.
Hades held her captive for a long time. The gods tried to bargain with him, but he would not listen. What did he care for the earth? Its desolation filled his halls and Hades always loved it when his kingdom waxed. They said that Kore ate nothing, slowly wasting away. She would not wed him. The moons went by. Everything died. And all the time I sung. I could do no other: a solemn requiem, a hollow echo.
Eventually they rescued Kore from her prison. Hecate and Hermes did it, smuggling her up from the avernine halls to the embracing arms of her mother. But she was no longer Kore. She had eaten six pomegranate seeds, only six, but anyone who eats in Hades’ halls becomes his property. That was the Law. So when Hades came charging to reclaim their prize, they struck a deal. Six months below, six months above. His property. How could they… to her?
But it was my fault. If I had never taken her selfishly to Enna she would not have fallen. She is different now, I hear. She doesn’t smile. Her gaze is empty and pitiless. My sisters have descended, and daily I send hapless sailors to meet her through their watery graves. I cannot face her, even if she no longer knows me for who I was, even if my curse and the millennia I have sung have twisted me.
(My fault, my sin, my crime, my passion…)

I am old now. Nymphs are not immortal. I will have to see her. Her stare will fall to me. I look at my reflection in the water. What remains of the me that was? The bones of my sisters have long worn away. I open my mouth and listen once again to the hollow echo of a voice aeons-hoarse from singing. Endlessly singing the song I sang to her that day beneath Hyperion’s gaze: Maiden of Antenor, Proserpine, Kore, Persephone, my love… forgive me.

Retelling of Demeter and Persephone

Now I feel exposed..

One thing about having a fertility goddess as a mother is that you always see too many damn trees, and flowers, and mating animals. I mean, don’t these people ever get bored of just endless nature in harmony. You’d think so, but then, they’re Gods, I guess they can’t help being kind of... conceptual in scope, it’s just how they seem to get imagined a lot of the time, not least of all by me. Anyway, you get the general idea. There I was, just frolicking endlessly around in the hills, basking in the glory of the natural world and it was starting to get pretty dull, let me tell you that. So when this guy shows up, gets talking, then grabs me by the wrist and drags me off you’d think I’d be a bit more horrified than I actually was.

So anyway, suddenly I’m miles away from my little eternity of flowers and fornication, and there I am in the middle of the underworld. Of course, I didn’t know it was the underworld. I think what hit me first was ‘Well, this is all a bit different.’ Because I suppose the underworld really is just a place which is not, I don't know what to call it, the overworld? Anyway, you’re probably better off imagining it yourself. Picture the epitome of overflowing natural bliss I was living in before (because you didn’t imagine that up, seriously, that's just how things are - right?) and then imagine the furthest thing removed from that, like a little binary, in fact. Imagine a world without sustainability or regrowth, and then pretend you're not already living in it at least a little. Anyway, the important thing is that it wasn’t where I was before, because that's the only way you could ever tell that the scene had changed. Seriously, though, I’m getting way beyond myself. Work that one out for yourself, I suppose. Not that I’m saying you should particularly care about a binary I imagined – but hey, didn't you imagine something like that? Really?

So yeah, Hades, that’s the guy who dragged me there, introduces himself and reveals that he’s brought me to be his wife. I’m serious - and yes, it doesn't sound like this guy gets out much, does it? So anyway, there I am about to explain that you can’t just go out and grab random women off a hillside when I realize I don’t know how to get back. Anyway, I talk about how my mother is a goddess and all, and how pissed she’s going to be if I’m not back on time. But Hades just keeps going on about how beautiful and great I am and how I have to stay with him forever. After a while, it just becomes kind of pathetic, so I figure I might as well stay. I mean, it’s not as if I had a choice anyway, and I can think of worse fates than being eternally worshiped by deluded deities. At least, it doesn’t sound so bad to me. Kind of ironic, when you think about it.

Anyway. Some time passes, damned if I know how long because it’s not really important to the story (maybe) and I’m starting to get a little annoyed. If you think snatching women off hillsides hints at some kind of deep insecurity, well, you’re probably right, and I mean the probably. The weird fixation was fun at first, I’ll admit, but after a while it was really starting to grate. Talk about clingy. That, and the underworld isn’t actually as interesting as you’d think, assuming you might have somehow got the idea it would be interesting. I mean, there’s only so many times you can watch the same guy push a boulder up a hill or get pecked to death by eagles before it just gets old. Oh, and I was absolutely starving. I mean, apparently there’s this rule where I wasn’t supposed to eat food from the underworld. Don’t ask me, why would I have made something like that up, maybe some kind of metaphorical warning about the dangers of the unknown. Personally though, I reckon it’s all about sex, in which case I’d appreciate it if you’d just come out and say it directly instead of all this shit about pomegranate seeds. Why all this ‘she was so hungry, she just had to eat the seeds’ or ‘oh, how deceived she was when she munched on those seeds’ instead of ‘intercourse ensued’ or, if you want to be blunt about it, ‘he fucked her.’ Of course, in the highly likely event that you weren’t thinking that, I’m sorry. You’re obviously better adjusted (or repressed) than I give you credit for, or perhaps just more so than me. I guess you can relate anything to anything if you're thus inclined, but isn’t that kind of the point (and I use the word ‘point’ loosely.)

So anyway, yeah, I ‘ate the pomegranate seeds,’ whatever that’s supposed to mean (seriously, what do you want it to mean?) which supposedly bound me to the underworld and to him forever. Sucks to be Persephone. I was a bit pissed off when that one got explained to me. Who needs an eternity of being static and unchanging, be it stuck in a rut back in dear mummy’s pointless sweaty life-planet or down here in miserable death world where all that seems to happen is people doing the same things over and over again. Damnit, so boring! Fortunately/unfortunately, I’d reckoned without mother. Apparently, she’d got all the other Gods involved, and they’d all got very angry with Hades and forced him into a compromise. Naturally, noone thought to clear all this with me, but still it was probably the best result I could have hoped for really. Half the year of nature and sunshine with mother, the other half I get to be queen of the underworld and be generally adored by an emotionally stunted funerary deity. Fun, in small doses.

Anyway, what’s this ‘point’ I’ve been trying not to refer to but seem to be unable to resist coming back to over and over again? I suppose if you wanted to look clever you could maybe say that it’s all about how the natural world functions in cycles. Winter to spring, then through summer and autumn and back to winter again, but what about me! Just because I’m a mythological figure whose purpose is to be wheeled out to illustrate things for you doesn’t mean I deserve that kind of impersonal treatment. Maybe you can let a little ambiguity in and suggest that maybe it’s about how no-one ever completely fits into one category, we all have to find our place, even if that place is in a kind of borderland between two states, constantly flicking backwards and forwards. I like that one, except that it's still too simple. Personally, I think the real story, despite what might be implied from this neat and coherent little narrative I’ve created here, is that stories are arbitrary collections of images which don’t have to have a neat point or easy summary - but wait, isn’t that a point? Oops. Well, I guess with the point having been made and a purpose established for these lines of text, I imagine this must be the end.

Dolor

Drifting slowly, silent Dolor’s pitiful form

dragged himself along, exhausted,

watching vain, false hopes –

hopes flitting past him and the goddess.

 

Withered and wasted arms,

tired and aching legs, still kept ever driving him forwards,

quivering with the burden of untold griefs;

 

Griefs as countless as the grains of sand on the shore, leaves in a forest,

stalks of corn once so often seen at harvest time;

stalks which now ceased to bear some – any -

craved, desired, crucial sustenance for the people of the earth.  Crops caused to

wither by the neglect of Ceres, mother of the earth, goddess of the harvest.

 

The once fruitful fields, swaying gently in the mellow summer breeze,

nodding sleepily with heavy heads of corn, full of sun and rain,

had long perished. 

Desolate earth was all that remained, cold and wintered, barren and bare,

 

Over which Dolor wandered, his gaunt

And sallow face immortally etched by the burden of turmoil.

Pale presence, trembling lips, sunken eyes

spoke - and kept speaking – of innumerable nights, alone with tears of anxiety.

Wasted body racked with the sobs of despair, of lost Joy

- Joy fleetingly come and gone -

not even a shadow of a being.

 

His every presence hung over Ceres,

trailing steadily and stealthily behind the goddess, step for step,

as she drifted over the landscape in search of her beloved child,

Prosperina.   

Tutorial Questions

What is the difference between representational and ontological narrativity? What is the relationship between narrative and experience? What are the benefits of taking an ontological approach to narrativity particularly in terms of the 'dimensions of narrativity' that Somers outlines? And finally, do you think that we could analyse the theorists and theories of myth we have looked at this term using Somer's reconfigured theory of narrativity? What would be revealed if we did?

If that doesn't grab you, maybe a trip to the pub after the lecture on Thursday will?

Pennie does pomegranate

...and he tells me that my breasts are getting empty. I mean, I know 6 years is a long time by most peoples standards but what better way of feeding Xena in times of drought than by the most natural thing a woman can give a child, the milk of a mother.

We go together to feed the animals, plough the fields and water the plants: she's very strong--it's a family trait. The rest of the household will do their bit later. I still don't understand why my small breasts are such a big issue.

Read the rest here

A Re-telling

Essays

Just to remind you the possible essay topics. For any question, either comment down here or ask me (or James) during next week's tutorial. Have fun.

In this essay you should examine the ways in which the category of ‘myth’ is produced and to what ends. Choose one of the following 3 quotations and discuss with reference to any of the myth theorists or theories covered in class in term 1:

1. ‘There may be the word “myth”, but the word names numerous and conflicting “objects” of inquiry, not a “thing” with its name written on it. Myth names a reality that we “cut out”, not one that “stands out”’ (Strenski 1987: 1).

OR

2. 'The category ['myth'] is often intellectually committed to an a priori clean distinction between fact and fiction, truth and falsehood, fabulous delusion and scientific lucidity, us and them, just as it is rhetorically wielded to reinforce these oppositions by coordinating them with a scale of moral, social and political values' (McCutcheon 2000:192).

OR

3. '...whenever someone calls something a "myth", powerful--and highly consequential--assertions are being made about its relative level of validity and authority vis-à-vis other sorts of discourse' (Lincoln 1999: ix).

Submission Deadline: 4pm, January 5th 2009
Word limit: 4-5000 words

And remember that it will be electronic submission via the Ble! Don't go with the essay to the faculty office because they won't accept it!

Annie tells stories too

Read the Annie's brand-new story at the usual place.

Hope

Six pomegranate seeds.

That’s all it took.

The things we don’t know when we finally give in. If only we did.

‘Persephone’. A rich, sylvan name. Fecund. Sylph-like. We try out these syllables on our tongues, tasting the fruit that dooms us to a cold dark world at least half the time.

‘Demeter’ altogether more real, determined, sharp somehow. It is her will that won’t be bent. She doesn’t eat—no hidden, forbidden fruit for her. She doesn’t sleep, dream, hope, relent until that which is hers is hers again. What is it to be a mother who yearns for what she will never keep? For that which was never hers to begin with?

And where do we begin?

With the gathering of flowers. Hyacinth, Narcissus, Anemone. Mythical names. A mythical girl who somehow stands in for all of us who are lost and who yearn for our mothers.

I miss her.

And the dark shadow lurks. Spectre. Lord of ghosts. Thief.

He rends the earth. Splits it in two. Swallows a whole life whole. Makes it his. But not wholly. Because six pomegranate seeds were not twelve. No disciples here then.

I miss her.

This is what everything means to me.

The vanishing point. That’s where Demeter roams. Wild hair, ravaged face. Tears that drip drip drip without awareness. It’s her body that is ripped in two. Always two. Her fate.

The gods think her grief is intolerable, failing all the while to notice that it is her grief. Others are stake apparently. The world pivots on a mother’s love apparently. Is Demeter still a mother? Her daughter gone. Hope is gone. She’s gone. Is Demeter a mother? A compromise must be reached for the sake of the other.

Persephone in her prison grieves too.
Perfect symmetry. If they could both but know it, maybe there would be some small comfort in a mourning that is shared.

But no.

Burning for comfort. Refusing comfort. There is none to be had.

The storytellers don’t notice her grief. Because it’s still, frozen, disbelieving.

Because of six pomegranate seeds. They mark six moments of (in)decision. Irrevocable. The law you see. There is a law that says No. The law. Of the name. Of the Father. Non. Nom. None. Not one. A compromise is always a decision.

She eats the seeds without thinking. Why don’t the poets see that that is the point? She does not know. She didn’t know what she was doing. She didn’t know that in saying yes she was yielding to the big No. The big zero. The vanishing point. That vanishing now marks the hours, the days, the minutes. Marks all of our time.

She returns from time to time. In dreams. It makes her want to die without death and without killing. To die up against her mother. To place her head on her shoulder, enter into her chest and double-lock herself in.

Instead, the back and forth. The interminable wandering. The dark, the light both flooding through her. Mostly in the dark. She never saw the light. Never sees it.

I miss her.

Henry tells a story

Henry has told a splendid story! And you can too!
https://www.ble.ac.uk/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_id=_2_1&url=%2Fwebapps%2Fblackboard%2Fexecute%2Flauncher%3Ftype%3DCourse%26id%3D_17098_1%26url%3D

Parodying

Following the discussions about language and retelling the classics, I thought I might put the marvellous Wendy Cope's limericks parodying the Waste Land on the blog, since we studied T.S.Eliot a couple of weeks ago. So funny and mordant, especially the end of the third...


Waste Land Limericks

I

In April one seldom feels cheerful;
Dry stones, sun and dust make me fearful;
Clairvoyantes distress me,
Commuters depress me--
Met Stetson and gave him an earful.

II

She sat on a mighty fine chair,
Sparks flew as she tidied her hair;
She asks many questions,
I make few suggestions--
Bad as Albert and Lil--what a pair!

III

The Thames runs, bones rattle, rats creep;
Tiresias fancies a peep--
A typist is laid,
A record is played--
Wei la la. After this it gets deep.

IV

A Phoenician named Phlebas forgot
About birds and his business--the lot,
Which is no surprise,
Since he'd met his demise
And been left in the ocean to rot.

V

No water. Dry rocks and dry throats,
Then thunder, a shower of quotes
From the Sanskrit and Dante.
Da. Damyata. Shantih.
I hope you'll make sense of the notes.

 -- Wendy Cope

Challenged as I am computerwise, I couldn't find the real thing on the blog anymore. It's linked here.

Also, here's a link to an article which continues on the Rothko-Art-Money discussion. It's the Times Literary Supplement, so prepare for a dash of ponciness, but anyway, it touches upon those topics here and there. And the author used the word 'perfidious', which is a brilliant word that I didn't know existed in English.

Question

Thursday's tutorial question is as follows:

Are Jung's theories wholly explainable in terms of his psychology, national origin, and political commitments? What does knowing about the various anti-semitic statements he made make you think about his theories? Is it important to know the biography of a scholar in order to understand and assess his or her theories? In what ways is the discussion of Jung's biography itself a form of mythmaking?

Stories

Just to remind you that last time we decided for the last day of this term to be the deadline for your stories. So far we got only 2 of them: one is here, and the other you can find in the BLE (it was too long to form a post) if you log in, then click on the Myth and Mythmaking course, then click on 'Teaching Resources' and open the folder 'Demeter and Persephone'.

For those of you who still have no idea what this storytelling businness is (i'm sure there is someone...), I suggest you go back and read some previous posts in this blog, here and here.

I hope it's all clear.

Have fun.

UPDATE: now (Wed 3/12) there is a third story to read on the BLE!