The Gods, They Are Not Like Us

This week, I finished reading Madeline Miller’s novel, Circe (2018). As you can probably tell from the title, this is the story from Greek mythology of the renowned witch whose island is visited by Odysseus and his men when they are on the way back to Ithaca; she transforms the men into pigs but later turns them back into men for love of Odysseus. The episode of Circe’s island is but one incident among many in Odysseus’s journey, but in this novel, the story is told from Circe’s point of view and encompasses hundreds of years of her life, beginning in the court of her father, the sun god Helios.

Circe’s mother is a naiad, and all of her children with Helios turn out to be witches. In the novel, they are distrusted more than any other immortal save Prometheus for their powers, which threaten the gods because they stem from the earth, and in particular from pharmaka, magical plants. Never a favorite at her father’s court, Circe is eventually banished, for various transgressions, to the island of Aiaia, where she is marooned as a permanent exile. What’s meant as a punishment turns out to be the making of Circe as a witch; she begins to learn the ways of the island and develop her skills using native plants, while also befriending the animals who are for a time her only companions. She is later summoned to tend her sister Pasiphae as she gives birth to the Minotaur (a feat worthy of an entire team of witches). While at Knossos, Circe meets both her niece Ariadne and the famous Daedalus, the craftsman who, at the command of King Minos, builds the labyrinth to contain the Minotaur.

From all of this, you can see that Circe’s story overlaps with that of the characters central to the legend of the labyrinth. Ms. Miller takes a character peripheral to that story and lets us see Ariadne, Theseus, Minos, Pasiphae, Daedalus, and the rest from the point of view of someone who is immortal but almost human in her outlook. In my book, I explored the characters for their symbolic and psychological significance, but Ms. Miller turns them into flesh-and-blood characters—even the ones who are actually immortals. Pasiphae, for one, is thoroughly unlikeable but gives an admirably clear-eyed and unvarnished assessment of what life is like for a minor goddess in the court of a powerful father, something not even Circe is fully capable of acknowledging.

Ms. Miller manages the difficult task of “fleshing out” gods and goddesses, major and minor, and the legendary heroes and humans they interact with, giving them distinctive personalities and motivations. The inexplicable whims of the gods become understandable when she reveals them to be a mostly selfish lot of bored and egotistical goons with nothing but time on their hands. They’re either fatuous or vicious, or both. No wonder they thrive on flattery, pleasure, gossip, novelty, and the exercise of power—they’re a bit like the Ewings of Dallas or the Carringtons from Dynasty (for all you Boomers who don’t mind references to ’80s TV shows)—minus any of their redeeming qualities. They’re glorious and awe-inspiring, wonderful to look at; all hat and no cattle, if you will (though they have cattle, too, as it turns out—it’s character they lack). If you’ve ever felt sorry for the humans in the Greek stories fated to live under the thumb of the immortals who use them as pawns until the day they die and have to spend eternity in that gray and dismal spot, the Underworld: think again. This novel turns the entire matrix on its head and makes you consider whether being human is really so bad after all.

“Dreaming the myth forward” is a concept often spoken of at Pacifica, which is of course where I studied mythology. This novel is an excellent example of that, as the author creates a story that in many ways is quite faithful to the source material while putting a fresh interpretation on it. Circe, as a witch, is usually lumped in with all the other villainous gods, demigods, and monsters Odysseus must hazard on his way back home from the war. But in Ms. Miller’s conception, they meet almost as equals, having a believable if tragic relationship. When you see the situation from Circe’s point of view, turning men into pigs is an act of self-defense, perfectly understandable when you realize it is they who are abusing her. Odysseus is very much the flawed hero here, a strong man with some depth of character who is nevertheless brutal when dealing with others and out of his depth when he does return to Ithaca.

Circe is one of best retellings of classical mythology I have read. In some ways the novel might be characterized as a feminist retelling, with its emphasis on Circe’s Prospero-like claiming of her own power and agency, but the author gives a balanced view of the foibles of both gods and goddesses. Circe is in many ways a sympathetic character but remains a goddess until the end, and the twists and turns of her own fate make for a narrative every bit as compelling as that of Odysseus, if not more so.

Mythology for the Literal-Minded

It came to my attention this week, quite by accident, that author Mark Haddon included a piece in his collection The Pier Falls and Other Stories that retells the myth of Ariadne and Theseus. Neither is named, but the plot parallels the events of the myth closely enough (on a literal level, at least) that anyone familiar with the story will recognize what is meant. I'll be honest in saying that I didn't like the story, nor the one that preceded it, which was not myth-based, though it seemed to bear an odd kind of kinship to "The Island," the story I'm writing about. Both deal with horrific loss of life near the sea.

I sometimes feel that it's worth staying with an unpleasant book or sitting through an unpleasant movie, depending on what I perceive the artist's intent to be. I watched Munich, for instance, even though I found it difficult, because the theme was compelling. The question of just where the dividing line is between terrorists and anti-terrorists is a very real and important one, and it was brought home to me in a way I'll never forget in that film. It was worth sticking it out for the lesson it taught me.

Likewise, Mr. Haddon may well have a purpose in mind with his book, and if so, I may have gleaned it from the first two stories, though it's probably unfair to characterize the whole book without having read it all the way through. I guess what I'm saying is that if Mr. Haddon's purpose is to reveal the coarser side of human nature and the unfortunate tendency many people have of being drawn to the grisly and horrific events that befall others simply for the thrill of it, then I get what he's saying and thank him for his efforts, but I won't be reading any further. It may be that the rest of the book deals with other themes, but when I started on the third story and still found myself in carnival sideshow territory, I felt it was time to call it a day and go on to something else.

It's probably obvious to anyone who's read my book that I look at the story of Ariadne, Theseus, and the labyrinth as very symbolic and, underneath it all, life-affirming. My way of looking at it is not the only way, of course. Mr. Haddon's version is a horror story that nevertheless stays pretty close to the actual outline of the myth; the devil is in the details. His story even begins as quasi-realistic, as if Ariadne and Theseus might have been actual people--Ariadne a spoiled but sheltered princess who makes a fatal error in betraying her people for a man she's besotted with and Theseus a calculating and manipulative brute.

Mr. Haddon's way of dealing with the Dionysus part of the myth is not one I had seen before and conjures up the destructive aspect of the god. This side of Dionysus certainly appears elsewhere in mythology but not in the context of this myth, at least not to my knowledge, so it seemed to me a bit like mixing bad apples and worse oranges, though of course one has the creative license to do just that in a story of one's own telling. Ariadne's marriage to Dionysus in the classical version of the myth is a much more benign event than Mr. Haddon makes of it and supports the idea that Ariadne herself was viewed, at an earlier period of Greek history, as a powerful goddess. In some versions of the myth she, a goddess, was already married to Dionysus when she decided to help Theseus, so that perhaps the marriage on Naxos in later versions is a way of linking Ariadne, now a mortal, back to her original husband.

I discussed in my book some of the thinking about Ariadne's role in the myth, which centers on the idea that the labyrinth may originally have had a powerful religious meaning. I tend to see Ariadne as a positive figure guarding the secrets of life itself, the labyrinth in this sense becoming a symbol for birth, and even more than that, for becoming human. In that regard, her pairing with Dionysus makes sense, because he, too, is deeply connected with life in his associations with wine and the life cycle of the grape.

Whereas Demeter oversees agriculture in general, Dionysus's connection with the vine speaks of something that, paradoxical as it seems, is in some ways even more nuanced and refined. I'm talking about the life cycle of the grape and of how many things have to go just right in order for the winemaker to produce a fine wine. Dionysus presides over all of this, not just the growing of the grapes. The wine distills some of the essence of everything that goes into its making, the soil, the water, the sunlight, the container it's placed in, and, in no small amount, the soul of the winemaker, whose care of the vines has a great deal to do with how the wine turns out. Every vintage is unique, just as every person is.

By the way, I'm indebted to the movie Sideways for revealing to me so evocatively this nurturing aspect of Dionysus. That the main character, Miles, has a difficult relationship with wine, the very thing he loves and appreciates so well, is both a sad irony and a reminder that Dionysus does indeed have two sides, though bookish Miles is in some ways really more an Apollo kind of guy. Miles's boorish friend Jack, who has no appreciation for the subtle beauties of wine, embodies the dark side of Dionysus much better than Miles does. Miles's love interest, Maya, combines characteristics of both Demeter and Aphrodite, which really makes her the Ariadne to Miles's Dionysus.

All of this is just to say that in my reading of the labyrinth myth, Ariadne and Dionysus are both nurturing figures, and there is some support for this in scholarship. I was honestly rather shocked by Mr. Haddon's story, and even though I think most people realize there are many ways to read a myth, I want to point out, in this era of sensationalism and over-emoting that takes place everywhere from The Weather Channel to the nightly news, that the most shocking interpretation of a story isn't necessarily the best one and definitely isn't the only one. You can look at life through the eyes of love as a rich adventure filled with beauty and interest (despite its many serious problems) or you can look at it as a carnival sideshow, with one freakish event screaming for your attention until another one even worse comes along to take its place. I recommend that you not be that guy. (You know the one I mean.)

I don't know whether to thank Mr. Haddon for a lesson in the dangers of literal-minded mythology or to wash his mouth out with soap, but I rather suspect he had a reason for telling the story the way he did. As an example of literature as shock therapy, I'm not sure I've ever seen its equal. It's like a literary hairshirt. A tiny dab of that may be edifying, but more than that is going overboard. Whether he even expects you to finish the book or not is a question I'm not sure I can answer.

Ariadne Meets Arachne

So how do you pass the time when your dissertation draft is in someone else's hands and you're free to turn your attention to other things? We've been lucky with the weather this New Year, and there has been a succession of mild, sunny days, perfect for long walks in the afternoon under a cerulean sky. I have also watched a recorded course on Jung and spirituality; done some dusting; thrown away a bunch of accumulated receipts; made gingerbread cookies; watched Lord of the Rings all the way through; completed some paperwork; started and finished Death Comes to Pemberley, and ("Ta-da!") started a knitting project.

The knitting project may or may not be a good idea. I spent an hour reading through a "knitting for dummies" book and getting more and more intimidated. I was looking for the part that explained the difference between "knit" and "purl" and what all those little abbreviations in my "Vintage Pull-Through Scarf" kit mean. The yarn that came with my kit is a lustrous green merino wool with paler shades mixed in, 230 yards of it. When I bought the kit, I thought it would be self explanatory but found out that was not the case. It actually assumes you know what you're doing.

Attracted to the photo of the smartly knotted scarf on the package, I decided that this kit couldn't be too difficult to master, even for an absolute beginner. I mean, I'm getting a doctoral degree, right? How hard can it be? I have to say the whole knitting thing is a bit of unfinished business for me. I had an Irish grandmother who was constantly knitting sweaters (I have two of them) and who tried to encourage me from the age of 8 or so to pick up the craft. I think I received two of those little loom kits before I succeeded in completing a potholder, and I don't remember what became of the knitting kit, except that I never started it.

Part of the problem was that, although I loved dolls, play kitchens, and tea sets, the idea of actually doing something useful like knitting seemed less like play and more like being domesticated. It was more like work, the kind of thing that could result in someone expecting you to do it all the time. I remember I didn't want any part of it. Now that I know no one's expecting me to do it, I'm attracted to it. I like the idea of doing something complex with my hands that results in something tangible. It requires a different kind of intelligence than the one I'm used to.

It's off to a slow start so far. In my opinion, a book on knitting should start by telling you how to make a stitch, but mine started by pointing out all the difficulties inherent in knitting, all the mistakes you're likely to make, the deceptive nature of patterns, and the myriad types of yarn, including their drawbacks. In the midst of a discourse on the finer points of needles, I finally had to admit I was lost when I looked at mine and realized they might as well be chopsticks for all I could tell.

Leafing ahead, I finally found the place where the book gets down to defining terms and tells you how to make a slip stitch, which is apparently the entry point, the equivalent of "Speak Friend and Enter," for knitters. After attempting this very basic technique for several minutes without getting anywhere, I fortified myself with hot tea and gingerbread and sat down for another go. It seems to me that the instructions don't really match the diagram, but that might be my fault. A lifetime spent with your nose in books, studiously avoiding the domestic arts, may make you a little dumb when you try to shift gears.

Come to think of it, this business of knitting could be another way of tangling myself up in knots and intricate paths (once you start thinking about labyrinths they just keep coming at you). There is a story in Greek mythology about Arachne, the girl so skilled in weaving that she became conceited and was turned into a spider by Athena, the goddess of the arts and crafts. I don't anticipate attracting any dangerous notice with my own knitting; I'll be too busy learning the difference between K2tog, SSK, and K1fb, how to tell the Wrong Side from the Right Side, and what gauge means. Come to think of it, watching that Great Learning Course on The Divine Comedy might be a little less taxing.

Mythology in Aisle 12

I don't know what's up with the yogurt case at Kroger lately, but they have definitely been bringing in some new stock. I bought some Greek yogurt, a new item at my store, and tried the pomegranate variety a few days ago. I had never tasted yogurt made with pomegranates, and the myth student in me was charmed because of the association of pomegranates with Persephone. It seemed an uncommon flavor but a very appropriate one for Greek yogurt.

I got more than I was expecting when I bit into the fruit and encountered something hard. Thinking I had gotten a stem or pit left in accidentally, I threw it away. With the next spoonful came a realization: these hard bits were pomegranate seeds, they were supposed to be in there, and I was swallowing them.

In the myth, it's the eating of the pomegranate seeds that ensures Persephone will have to stay part of the year in the Underworld with Hades. When she is reunited with her mother, Demeter, she is told she will have to stay in the Underworld for one month out of the year for every seed she ate (the number usually given is six). Persephone's descent to the Underworld in the autumn and her return to the upper world each spring correspond with the cycle of the growing season.

I was always affected by the pathos of this story and thought it terribly sad until I wrote a paper about it a few years ago and had to look at it from various angles. One thing I hadn't considered was that the myth could be read not as a tragedy but as a story of maturation. Persephone, after all, is a queen in the Underworld and rules there independently of her mother. If they hadn't been separated, she would never have come into a kingdom of her own. From this angle, the myth describes a natural process of growing up, which sometimes happens willingly, and sometimes doesn't. I had never considered what Persephone might be like if she had never left home.

I was going to get some more yogurt, but when I went to the store yesterday, the shelves of that brand, advertised at $.99 a carton, had been emptied. I was hunting for a substitute when I found another brand called (I'm serious) "The Greek Gods Traditional Greek Yogurt." Well, I knew I had to try it, so even though it only came in big 24-ounce cartons, I bought one. I looked at it just now and noticed that there is a picture of Hermes on the lid. Hermes is the god who entered the Underworld to bring Persephone back to her mother; he is a messenger, able to come and go between all the realms as he pleases, and is also something of a shapeshifter.

This yogurt didn't come in a pomegranate flavor, but they did have honey, and that's what I got. Now the plot thickens. Bees were associated with the Goddess, and Demeter is one form in which she appeared. Honey is connected with the labyrinth, too, in some mysterious way. I have been reading lately about the inscription on a clay tablet, found in ancient Knossos, dating from around 1400 BCE. The inscription reads something like, "One jar of honey to all the gods, one jar of honey to the Mistress of the ? Labyrinth." Ariadne was probably a goddess early on, so this inscription may refer to her.

I don't know what any of this means, unless Hermes is now the buyer for Kroger's dairy department. But I am going to eat a spoonful of the honey yogurt before I go to bed, just to see if it will give me sweet dreams.

Ariadne Goes to the Movies

I saw Inception this afternoon and, like just about everyone else, left the theater wondering about what really happened at the end. The movie is purposely ambiguous, but I think Cobb was actually in "the real world" after he woke up on the plane. I read somewhere that you get confirmation of this if you stay through the end of the credits, which we didn't do, but I'm satisfied with that interpretation of things. It's emotionally satisfying and makes the movie feel complete. (From one perspective, no story is ever complete, so that may be why some people see the ending differently. Maybe it's a test of how postmodern you are.)

If you don't know what I'm talking about, you haven't seen the movie yet, and you may want to forget about all this if you're planning to go. I hate to know anything about a movie before I go to see it and managed to miss all the controversy about the ending of Inception beforehand; I didn't know about any of it until I Googled the movie once I got home.

I had been told by friends that there were labyrinths in this movie, and indeed there are. There are many haunting images of narrow alleys and hallways, interlocking passages, and tricky escapes, in which city streets, buildings, and houses become complicated and labyrinthine; there is often a locked room or hidden place as the goal. And of course, the ultimate labyrinth is the mind itself. In the movie, dream architecture makes use of elaborate mazes, and the young architect recruited by Cobb is even named Ariadne. I agree with the movie's premise; psyche is a labyrinth, the prototype on which other labyrinths are all based. That's why labyrinths are so fascinating.

Before going to the movie, I was reading something I wrote a few years ago about James Hillman's views on psyche and the imagination. In Re-Visioning Psychology, he sometimes gives the impression that he believes the world of the imagination is more important than the "real world." Imagination is real and certainly shapes and informs our reality, but in the movie, tension arises from the inability to distinguish the layers of dream from the waking world.

From a practical standpoint, I can tell the difference between the dream I had last night in which an ex-boyfriend sent me a videotape of him and his new girlfriend at the beach, after which I went around putting tickets into the gas tanks of police cruisers, and the fact that in the real world, I had Cheerios for breakfast this morning. What's really intriguing is thinking about why I dreamed what I did.

Who are the people in the dream? Was that really my ex-boyfriend, or a helpful figure from my unconscious telling me something I need to know? Were those really tickets I was putting into the gas tanks, or a subtle reminder to watch where I invest my time and energy and to keep on eye on where it ends up? Why were there so many police cars in my dream -- does my psyche feel overrun by authority figures? Why was I the one "giving tickets"? Was I turning the tables on those animus figures and getting them to work for me?

I don't have any answers about last night's dream, just some thoughts. Sometimes I can look back on a dream months later and see it more clearly than I can when I'm still close to it, but dream interpretation is a difficult art. Another thing Inception got right about dreams is their deep and mysterious nature and the seeming impossibility of ever getting completely to the bottom of one.

Rainy Day Mnemosyne

I’m reading a book called Ariadne's Thread, in which author J. Hillis Miller uses the associated metaphors of thread and line to examine narrative. I've been thinking so much about the labyrinth itself that I had forgotten the aftermath of the story until Miller reminded me. After escaping the labyrinth, Theseus abandons Ariadne on the island of Naxos.

Without Ariadne's help, Theseus could not have defeated the Minotuar and found his way out of the labyrinth. Despite this, he doesn't feel obligated to stick with her and ends up marrying her sister instead. That's Theseus's little white sail in the painting above, as he hightails it out of Naxos. Ariadne has just realized she's been betrayed when Dionysus shows up with his retinue, telling her to forget about Theseus, that he himself is her rightful husband.

This painting reminds me of my first conscious encounter with mythology. I must have been about four, and I was fascinated by an ad in a magazine for what, as I remember it, was chewing gum. The ad was full of fantastical figures – gods, goddesses, nymphs, cupids with arrows – crowded together in a busy tableau. I couldn’t stop looking at it. I didn’t quite know who they were, but I think what enchanted me was the energy and variety; they had human characteristics but were obviously not people. I was in awe of this not-quite-human cast and the dynamic interplay.

The chapter I’ve been reading in Miller discusses character in literature and the problem of “self.” Miller examines the assumptions we make about the unity of self and casts doubt on them. He is only taking up the thread, so to speak, of other critics before him who deny that we can speak of the self as a distinct, consistent entity, believing instead that identity is a "necessary fiction."

In spite of the attempts of so many philosophers to dispense with the self, for me the idea sticks. I do experience myself as a consistent identity, with attitudes and ways of thinking that persist from day to day. I think most people do the same. Ten years from now, I will be able to remember tonight, just like I can now remember myself as a four-year-old.

Mnemosyne, one of the oldest of the immortals, is Memory in Greek mythology. She is the mother of the nine Muses (and may even have been somewhere in that fascinating ad all those years ago). Memory makes identity possible, so maybe Memory is Ariadne’s thread, the constant matter out of which a life is woven. This is Memory not just in the sense of what I consciously remember but also in the sense of instinctual and biological memories buried in my cells.

When I first encountered Ariadne and Dionysus in this myth, they seemed like a strange couple. But if myth is really a reflection of lived experience, their belonging together makes sense. Ariadne holds the thread that makes inspiration possible. This thread allows Theseus to penetrate deep into a mystery he couldn’t have managed otherwise, but back in the light of day, he discards the thread. Theseus is, after all, a warrior, and lives by the sword, not by inspiration. Dionysus, a vegetation god, embodies creative life force, ecstasy, song, and dance. Cross him with inspiration, and that makes art. Maybe if you follow the thread back far enough, you always meet Dionysus.