Part 2 (2/2)

”I begin the song of Demeter”--says the prize-poet, or the Interpreter, the Sacristan of the holy places--”the song of Demeter and her daughter Persephone, whom Aidoneus carried away by the consent of Zeus, as she played, apart from her mother, with the deep- bosomed daughters of the Ocean, gathering flowers in a meadow of soft gra.s.s--roses and the crocus and fair violets and flags, and hyacinths, and, above all, the strange flower of the narcissus, which the Earth, favouring the desire of Aidoneus, brought forth for the first time, to snare the footsteps of the flower-like girl. A hundred [84] heads of blossom grew up from the roots of it, and the sky and the earth and the salt wave of the sea were glad at the scent thereof. She stretched forth her hands to take the flower; thereupon the earth opened, and the king of the great nation of the dead sprang out with his immortal horses. He seized the unwilling girl, and bore her away weeping, on his golden chariot. She uttered a shrill cry, calling upon her father Zeus; but neither man nor G.o.d heard her voice, nor even the nymphs of the meadow where she played; except Hecate only, the daughter of Persaeus, sitting, as ever, in her cave, half veiled with a s.h.i.+ning veil, thinking delicate thoughts; she, and the Sun also, heard her.

”So long as she could still see the earth, and the sky, and the sea with the great waves moving, and the beams of the sun, and still thought to see again her mother, and the race of the ever-living G.o.ds, so long hope soothed her, in the midst of her grief. The peaks of the hills and the depths of the sea echoed her cry. And the mother heard it. A sharp pain seized her at the heart; she plucked the veil from her hair, and cast down the blue hood from her shoulders, and fled forth like a bird, seeking Persephone over dry land and sea. But neither man nor G.o.d would tell her the truth; nor did any bird come to her as a sure messenger.

”Nine days she wandered up and down upon the earth, having blazing torches in her hands; [85] and, in her great sorrow, she refused to taste of ambrosia, or of the cup of the sweet nectar, nor washed her face. But when the tenth morning came, Hecate met her, having a light in her hands. But Hecate had heard the voice only, and had seen no one, and could not tell Demeter who had borne the girl away.

And Demeter said not a word, but fled away swiftly with her, having the blazing torches in her hands, till they came to the Sun, the watchman both of G.o.ds and men; and the G.o.ddess questioned him, and the Sun told her the whole story.

”Then a more terrible grief took possession of Demeter, and, in her anger against Zeus, she forsook the a.s.sembly of the G.o.ds and abode among men, for a long time veiling her beauty under a worn countenance, so that none who looked upon her knew her, until she came to the house of Celeus, who was then king of Eleusis. In her sorrow, she sat down at the wayside by the virgin's well, where the people of Eleusis come to draw water, under the shadow of an olive- tree. She seemed as an aged woman whose time of child-bearing is gone by, and from whom the gifts of Aphrodite have been withdrawn, like one of the hired servants, who nurse the children or keep house, in kings' palaces. And the daughters of Celeus, four of them, like G.o.ddesses, possessing the flower of their youth, Callidice, Cleisidice, Demo, and Callithoe the eldest of them, coming to draw water that they [86] might bear it in their brazen pitchers to their father's house, saw Demeter and knew her not. The G.o.ds are hard for men to recognise.

”They asked her kindly what she did there, alone; and Demeter answered, dissemblingly, that she was escaped from certain pirates, who had carried her from her home and meant to sell her as a slave.

Then they prayed her to abide there while they returned to the palace, to ask their mother's permission to bring her home.

”Demeter bowed her head in a.s.sent; and they, having filled their s.h.i.+ning vessels with water, bore them away, rejoicing in their beauty. They came quickly to their father's house, and told their mother what they had seen and heard. Their mother bade them return, and hire the woman for a great price; and they, like the hinds or young heifers leaping in the fields in spring, fulfilled with the pasture, holding up the folds of their raiment, sped along the hollow road-way, their hair, in colour like the crocus, floating about their shoulders as they went. They found the glorious G.o.ddess still sitting by the wayside, unmoved. Then they led her to their father's house; and she, veiled from head to foot, in her deep grief, followed them on the way, and her blue robe gathered itself as she walked, in many folds about her feet. They came to the house, and pa.s.sed through the sunny porch, where their mother, Metaneira, was [87]

sitting against one of the pillars of the roof, having a young child in her bosom. They ran up to her; but Demeter crossed the threshold, and, as she pa.s.sed through, her head rose and touched the roof, and her presence filled the doorway with a divine brightness.

”Still they did not wholly recognise her. After a time she was made to smile. She refused to drink wine, but tasted of a cup mingled of water and barley, flavoured with mint. It happened that Metaneira had lately borne a child. It had come beyond hope, long after its elder brethren, and was the object of a peculiar tenderness and of many prayers with all. Demeter consented to remain, and become the nurse of this child. She took the child in her immortal hands, and placed it in her fragrant bosom; and the heart of the mother rejoiced. Thus Demeter nursed Demophoon. And the child grew like a G.o.d, neither sucking the breast, nor eating bread; but Demeter daily anointed it with ambrosia, as if it had indeed been the child of a G.o.d, breathing sweetly over it and holding it in her bosom; and at nights, when she lay alone with the child, she would hide it secretly in the red strength of the fire, like a brand; for her heart yearned towards it, and she would fain have given to it immortal youth.

”But the foolishness of his mother prevented it. For a suspicion growing up within her, she awaited her time, and one night peeped in upon [88] them, and thereupon cried out in terror at what she saw.

And the G.o.ddess heard her; and a sudden anger seizing her, she plucked the child from the fire and cast it on the ground,--the child she would fain have made immortal, but who must now share the common destiny of all men, though some inscrutable grace should still be his, because he had lain for awhile on the knees and in the bosom of the G.o.ddess.

”Then Demeter manifested herself openly. She put away the mask of old age, and changed her form, and the spirit of beauty breathed about her. A fragrant odour fell from her raiment, and her flesh shone from afar; the long yellow hair descended waving over her shoulders, and the great house was filled as with the brightness of lightning. She pa.s.sed out through the halls; and Metaneira fell to the earth, and was speechless for a long time, and remembered not to lift the child from the ground. But the sisters, hearing its piteous cries, leapt from their beds and ran to it. Then one of them lifted the child from the earth, and wrapped it in her bosom, and another hastened to her mother's chamber to awake her: they came round the child, and washed away the flecks of the fire from its panting body, and kissed it tenderly all about: but the anguish of the child ceased not; the arms of other and different nurses were about to enfold it.

”So, all night, trembling with fear, they [89] sought to propitiate the glorious G.o.ddess; and in the morning they told all to their father, Celeus. And he, according to the commands of the G.o.ddess, built a fair temple; and all the people a.s.sisted; and when it was finished every man departed to his own home. Then Demeter returned, and sat down within the temple-walls, and remained still apart from the company of the G.o.ds, alone in her wasting regret for her daughter Persephone.

”And, in her anger, she sent upon the earth a year of grievous famine. The dry seed remained hidden in the soil; in vain the oxen drew the ploughshare through the furrows; much white seed-corn fell fruitless on the earth, and the whole human race had like to have perished, and the G.o.ds had no more service of men, unless Zeus had interfered. First he sent Iris, afterwards all the G.o.ds, one by one, to turn Demeter from her anger; but none was able to persuade her; she heard their words with a hard countenance, and vowed by no means to return to Olympus, nor to yield the fruit of the earth, until her eyes had seen her lost daughter again. Then, last of all, Zeus sent Hermes into the kingdom of the dead, to persuade Aidoneus to suffer his bride to return to the light of day. And Hermes found the king at home in his palace, sitting on a couch, beside the shrinking Persephone, consumed within herself by desire for her mother. A doubtful smile pa.s.sed over [90] the face of Aidoneus; yet he obeyed the message, and bade Persephone return; yet praying her a little to have gentle thoughts of him, nor judge him too hardly, who was also an immortal G.o.d. And Persephone arose up quickly in great joy; only, ere she departed, he caused her to eat a morsel of sweet pomegranate, designing secretly thereby, that she should not remain always upon earth, but might some time return to him. And Aidoneus yoked the horses to his chariot; and Persephone ascended into it; and Hermes took the reins in his hands and drove out through the infernal halls; and the horses ran willingly; and they two quickly pa.s.sed over the ways of that long journey, neither the waters of the sea, nor of the rivers, nor the deep ravines of the hills, nor the cliffs of the sh.o.r.e, resisting them; till at last Hermes placed Persephone before the door of the temple where her mother was; who, seeing her, ran out quickly to meet her, like a Maenad coming down a mountain-side, dusky with woods.

”So they spent all that day together in intimate communion, having many things to hear and tell. Then Zeus sent to them Rhea, his venerable mother, the oldest of divine persons, to bring them back reconciled, to the company of the G.o.ds; and he ordained that Persephone should remain two parts of the year with her mother, and one third part only with her husband, in the kingdom of the dead. So Demeter suffered [91] the earth to yield its fruits once more, and the land was suddenly laden with leaves and flowers and waving corn.

Also she visited Triptolemus and the other princes of Eleusis, and instructed them in the performance of her sacred rites,--those mysteries of which no tongue may speak. Only, blessed is he whose eyes have seen them; his lot after death is not as the lot of other men!”

In the story of Demeter, as in all Greek myths, we may trace the action of three different influences, which have moulded it with varying effects, in three successive phases of its development.

There is first its half-conscious, instinctive, or mystical, phase, in which, under the form of an unwritten legend, living from mouth to mouth, and with details changing as it pa.s.ses from place to place, there lie certain primitive impressions of the phenomena of the natural world. We may trace it next in its conscious, poetical or literary, phase, in which the poets become the depositaries of the vague instinctive product of the popular imagination, and handle it with a purely literary interest, fixing its outlines, and simplifying or developing its situations. Thirdly, the myth pa.s.ses into the ethical phase, in which the persons and the incidents of the poetical narrative are realised as abstract symbols, because intensely characteristic examples, of moral or spiritual conditions. [92]

Behind the adventures of the stealing of Persephone and the wanderings of Demeter in search of her, as we find them in the Homeric hymn, we may discern the confused conception, under which that early age, in which the myths were first created, represented to itself those changes in physical things, that order of summer and winter, of which it had no scientific, or systematic explanation, but in which, nevertheless, it divined a mult.i.tude of living agencies, corresponding to those ascertained forces, of which our colder modern science tells the number and the names. Demeter--Demeter and Persephone, at first, in a sort of confused union--is the earth, in the fixed order of its annual changes, but also in all the accident and detail of the growth and decay of its children. Of this conception, floating loosely in the air, the poets of a later age take possession; they create Demeter and Persephone as we know them in art and poetry. From the vague and fluctuating union, in which together they had represented the earth and its changes, the mother and the daughter define themselves with special functions, and with fixed, well-understood relations.h.i.+ps, the incidents and emotions of which soon weave themselves into a pathetic story. Lastly, in proportion as the literary or aesthetic activity completes the picture or the poem, the ethical interest makes itself felt. These strange persons--Demeter and Persephone--these marvellous incidents-- the translation into Hades, the seeking [93] of Demeter, the return of Persephone to her,--lend themselves to the elevation and correction of the sentiments of sorrow and awe, by the presentment to the senses and the imagination of an ideal expression of them.

Demeter cannot but seem the type of divine grief. Persephone is the G.o.ddess of death, yet with a promise of life to come. Those three phases, then, which are more or less discernible in all mythical development, and const.i.tute a natural order in it, based on the necessary conditions of human apprehension, are fixed more plainly, perhaps, than in any other pa.s.sage of Greek mythology in the story of Demeter. And as the Homeric hymn is the central expression of its literary or poetical phase, so the marble remains, of which I shall have to speak by and bye, are the central extant ill.u.s.tration of what I have called its ethical phase.

Homer, in the Iliad, knows Demeter, but only as the G.o.ddess of the fields, the originator and patroness of the labours of the countryman, in their yearly order. She stands, with her hair yellow like the ripe corn, at the thres.h.i.+ng-floor, and takes her share in the toil, the heap of grain whitening, as the flails, moving in the wind, disperse the chaff. Out in the fresh fields, she yields to the embraces of Iasion, to the extreme jealousy of Zeus, who slays her mortal lover with lightning. The flowery town of Pyrasus--the wheat- town,--an ancient place in Thessaly, is her sacred precinct. But when [94] Homer gives a list of the orthodox G.o.ds, her name is not mentioned.

Homer, in the Odyssey, knows Persephone also, but not as Kore; only as the queen of the dead--epaine Persephone+--dreadful Persephone, the G.o.ddess of destruction and death, according to the apparent import of her name.+ She accomplishes men's evil prayers; she is the mistress and manager of men's shades, to which she can dispense a little more or less of life, dwelling in her mouldering palace on the steep sh.o.r.e of the Ocea.n.u.s, with its groves of barren willows and tall poplars.

But that Homer knew her as the daughter of Demeter there are no signs; and of his knowledge of the rape of Persephone there is only the faintest sign,--he names Hades by the golden reins of his chariot, and his beautiful horses.

The main theme, then, the most characteristic peculiarities, of the story, as subsequently developed, are not to be found, expressly, in the true Homer. We have in him, on the one hand, Demeter, as the perfectly fresh and blithe G.o.ddess of the fields, whose children, if she has them, must be as the perfectly discreet and peaceful, unravished Kore; on the other hand, we have Persephone, as the wholly terrible G.o.ddess of death, who brings to Ulysses the querulous shadows of the dead, and has the head of the gorgon Medusa in her keeping. And it is only when these two contrasted images have been [95] brought into intimate relations.h.i.+p, only when Kore and Persephone have been identified, that the deeper mythology of Demeter begins.

This combination has taken place in Hesiod; and in three lines of the Theogony we find the stealing of Persephone by Aidoneus,*--one of those things in Hesiod, perhaps, which are really older than Homer.

Hesiod has been called the poet of helots, and is thought to have preserved some of the traditions of those earlier inhabitants of Greece who had become a kind of serfs; and in a certain shadowiness in his conceptions of the G.o.ds, contrasting with the concrete and heroic forms of the G.o.ds of Homer, we may perhaps trace something of the quiet unspoken brooding of a subdued people--of that silently dreaming temper to which the story of Persephone properly belongs.

However this may be, it is in Hesiod that the two images, una.s.sociated in Homer--the G.o.ddess of summer and the G.o.ddess of death, Kore and Persephone--are identified with much significance; and that strange, dual being makes her first appearance, whose latent capabilities the poets afterwards developed; among the rest, a peculiar blending of those two contrasted aspects, full of purpose for the duly chastened intelligence; death, resurrection, rejuvenescence.--Awake, and sing, ye that dwell in the dust!

[96] Modern science explains the changes of the natural world by the hypothesis of certain unconscious forces; and the sum of these forces, in their combined action, const.i.tutes the scientific conception of nature. But, side by side with the growth of this more mechanical conception, an older and more spiritual, Platonic, philosophy has always maintained itself, a philosophy more of instinct than of the understanding, the mental starting-point of which is not an observed sequence of outward phenomena, but some such feeling as most of us have on the first warmer days in spring, when we seem to feel the genial processes of nature actually at work; as if just below the mould, and in the hard wood of the trees, there were really circulating some spirit of life, akin to that which makes its energies felt within ourselves. Starting with a hundred instincts such as this, that older unmechanical, spiritual, or Platonic, philosophy envisages nature rather as the unity of a living spirit or person, revealing itself in various degrees to the kindred spirit of the observer, than as a system of mechanical forces. Such a philosophy is a systematised form of that sort of poetry (we may study it, for instance, either in Sh.e.l.ley or in Wordsworth), which also has its fancies of a spirit of the earth, or of the sky,--a personal intelligence abiding in them, the existence of which is a.s.sumed in every suggestion such poetry makes to us of a sympathy between the ways [97] and aspects of outward nature and the moods of men. And what stood to the primitive intelligence in place of such metaphysical conceptions were those cosmical stories or myths, such as this of Demeter and Persephone, which springing up spontaneously in many minds, came at last to represent to them, in a certain number of sensibly realised images, all they knew, felt, or fancied, of the natural world about them. The sky in its unity and its variety,--the sea in its unity and its variety,--mirrored themselves respectively in these simple, but profoundly impressible spirits, as Zeus, as Glaucus or Poseidon. And a large part of their experience--all, that is, that related to the earth in its changes, the growth and decay of all things born of it--was covered by the story of Demeter, the myth of the earth as a mother. They thought of Demeter as the old Germans thought of Hertha, or the later Greeks of Pan, as the Egyptians thought of Isis, the land of the Nile, made green by the streams of Osiris, for whose coming Isis longs, as Demeter for Persephone; thus naming together in her all their fluctuating thoughts, impressions, suspicions, of the earth and its appearances, their whole complex divination of a mysterious life, a perpetual working, a continuous act of conception there. Or they thought of the many-coloured earth as the garment of Demeter, as the great modern pantheist poet speaks of it as the ”garment of G.o.d.” Its [98] brooding fertility; the spring flowers breaking from its surface, the thinly disguised unhealthfulness of their heavy perfume, and of their chosen places of growth; the delicate, feminine, Prosperina-like motion of all growing things; its fruit, full of drowsy and poisonous, or fresh, reviving juices; its sinister caprices also, its droughts and sudden volcanic heats; the long delays of spring; its dumb sleep, so suddenly flung away; the sadness which insinuates itself into its languid luxuriance; all this grouped itself round the persons of Demeter and her circle. They could turn always to her, from the actual earth itself, in aweful yet hopeful prayer, and a devout personal grat.i.tude, and explain it through her, in its sorrow and its promise, its darkness and its helpfulness to man.

The personification of abstract ideas by modern painters or sculptors, of wealth, of commerce, of health, for instance, shocks, in most cases, the aesthetic sense, as something conventional or rhetorical, as a mere transparent allegory, or figure of speech, which could please almost no one. On the other hand, such symbolical representations, under the form of human persons, as Giotto's Virtues and Vices at Padua, or his Saint Poverty at a.s.sisi, or the series of the planets in certain early Italian engravings, are profoundly poetical and impressive. They seem to be something more than mere symbolism, [99] and to be connected with some peculiarly sympathetic penetration, on the part of the artist, into the subjects he intended to depict. Symbolism intense as this, is the creation of a special temper, in which a certain simplicity, taking all things literally, au pied de la lettre, is united to a vivid pre-occupation with the aesthetic beauty of the image itself, the figured side of figurative expression, the form of the metaphor. When it is said, ”Out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword,” that temper is ready to deal directly and boldly with that difficult image, like that old designer of the fourteenth century, who has depicted this, and other images of the Apocalypse, in a coloured window at Bourges. Such symbolism cares a great deal for the hair of Temperance, discreetly bound, for some subtler likeness to the colour of the sky in the girdle of Hope, for the inwoven flames in the red garment of Charity. And what was specially peculiar to the temper of the old Florentine painter, Giotto, to the temper of his age in general, doubtless, more than to that of ours, was the persistent and universal mood of the age in which the story of Demeter and Persephone was first created. If some painter of our own time has conceived the image of The Day so intensely, that we hardly think of distinguis.h.i.+ng between the image, with its girdle of dissolving morning mist, and the meaning of the image; if William Blake, to our so great delight, makes the morning stars [100] literally ”sing together,”--these fruits of individual genius are in part also a ”survival” from a different age, with the whole mood of which this mode of expression was more congruous than it is with ours. But there are traces of the old temper in the man of to-day also; and through these we can understand that earlier time--a very poetical time, with the more highly gifted peoples--in which every impression men received of the action of powers without or within them suggested to them the presence of a soul or will, like their own--a person, with a living spirit, and senses, and hands, and feet; which, when it talked of the return of Kore to Demeter, or the marriage of Zeus and Here, was not using rhetorical language, but yielding to a real illusion; to which the voice of man ”was really a stream, beauty an effluence, death a mist.”

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