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In ancient Greek mythology, the Demeter and Persephone story tells of the deep connection a mother shares with her daughter. It also tells the story of a young girl who comes of age and falls in love with the dark god of the underworld.
It represents the fading of innocence as a young woman charts her way into maturity to forge her destiny to the dismay of her fiercely protective mother. You can draw inspiration from this story and use it as a guide to how you deal with the different seasons in your life.
It’s a story about love, relationships, family bonds, grief, loss, and a renewal of hope. Read on.
The Demeter and Persephone Story: The Genesis
It's a place of dialogue on occasion as you can find Persephone alone in there or Persephone and Hades. It's just an aesthetic feature of the House. The Garden of Proserpine is composed by Algernon Charles Swinburne in 1866 published in his collection Poems and Ballads. This poem addresses the myth of Greek Pagan Goddess Proserpine, who is the daughter of Demeter also known as Ceres; Goddess of agriculture and crops and Jupiter who is the God of sky and thunder.
As the legend goes, Hades rarely ventured out of the underworld. But, the few times he did, he encountered Persephone. She was the alluring daughter of Zeus and Demeter.
From the moment he first set his eyes on her, he was drawn to her and instantly fell in love. So, Hades went to his brother Zeus to consult him. Zeus had previously promised Hades one of his daughters in marriage. And when Hades told him that he wanted to marry Persephone, Zeus obliged.
He knew, however, that Persephone’s mother Demeter would never allow her daughter to marry the dark god of the underworld. Hades was heartbroken that he would never be able to have Persephone as his wife. So, the two brothers hatched a plan that would see him marry the woman he desperately loved.
The next morning, Demeter and her daughter descended upon the earth. The two were incredibly close just as most mothers and daughters are when girls begin to transition into womanhood.
Demeter was the life-giving goddess of agriculture, grain, and harvest. Little caesars rewards club. She provided mortals with plants, food, and vegetables. She also gave them the ability to cultivate wheat.
She showed them how to plant the seeds, nurture them, and harvest them. She even taught them how to grind the grain to produce flour, which they could turn into bread. Demeter left her daughter with the nymphs of the sea to watch over her while she went to tend to her earthly duties.
Zeus knew that the nymphs would never let Persephone out of their sight for fear of Demeter’s wrath. So, he had Gaia plant an enchanting narcissus flower in a nearby garden. As Persephone wandered away from her mother and into the garden, she saw the flower and was immediately drawn to its beauty.
The Abduction
No sooner had she stooped to pick it, than the ground beneath her feet began to quake and a gaping crack soon appeared. As the crack widened, Hades and his chariot of black horses emerged from it and began charging towards Persephone.
Before she could even master a scream, Hades grabbed Persephone and took her down with him to the world of the dead. The nymph named Sion witnessed the abduction and had tried to rescue Persephone, but there was nothing she could do.
She was no match for Hades. Sion was so distraught over her friend’s abduction that she cried until she melted into a pool of her tears, forming the river Sion.
When Demeter returned, she couldn’t find her daughter anywhere. So, she asked the nymphs about it, but they had no answer. Demeter was furious that they didn’t protect her daughter like they were supposed to.
Her wrath rained down on the nymphs, and she cursed them with plumed bodies, scaly feet, and wings. They would no longer be called nymphs of the sea. They would henceforth be known as sirens.
When her Persephone’s belt was washed up by the river Sion, Demeter knew that something dreadful had happened to her daughter. She roamed the earth for days on end driven mad by her beloved daughter’s disappearance.
She searched endlessly, neglecting her duties to tend to the earth to nourish the mortals. Plants withered, animals died, and famine ravaged the earth resulting in untold misery. The cries of the mortals reached mount Olympus, and Zeus knew that he had to intervene to calm Demeter’s wrath and spare humanity.
Persephone: The Dark Queen
Zeus sent Hermes to the underworld to bring Persephone back home to her mother. When he got there, he was surprised by what he found. Instead of finding a sorrowful grief-stricken maiden, he was met with a radiant Queen.
During her time there, Hades had beautiful gardens built for Persephone. He treated her with respect and compassion, and she inevitably began to fall in love with him. She saw a side to him she had never seen before, and she embraced her new home helping the spirits of the dead to cross over.
When Hermes requested her return, Persephone was conflicted. On the one hand, she loved Hades and wanted to remain with him, but on the other, she loved and deeply missed her mother.
Hades was terrified that if she was presented with the choice of staying with him of returning to her mother, he would lose. So, he gifted her with six pomegranate seeds to eat, and she did. In Greek mythology, it was believed that if one ate food given to them by their captor, they would always return.
Love Conquers All
When Hermes brought Persephone back to Mount Olympus, Zeus asked her where she would like to live. She expressed that she wanted to stay by her husband’s side.
Demeter was infuriated by her response and was convinced that Hades had something to do with it. She wouldn’t have any of it. She said made it known in no uncertain terms that if her daughter did not return to her, she would never again tend to the earth.
Zeus decided that Persephone would split her time between her mother and her husband. Since she ate six pomegranate seeds, Persephone would spend half the year with her mother at Olympus and the other half with Hades.
The Changing Seasons
Many believe that the Demeter and Persephone story explains the seasons of the year. Diamond mind online. During the time that Persephone spends away from her mother, Demeter causes the earth to wither and die. This time of year became autumn and winter.
Persephone’s arrival to be reunited with her mother signals a renewal of hope. It represents the rebirth of untold splendor and abundance. The earth once again becomes fertile and fruitful.
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'The Garden of Proserpine' is a poem by Algernon Charles Swinburne, published in Poems and Ballads All casinos in louisiana. in 1866.
Proserpine is the Latin spelling of Persephone, a goddess married to Hades, god of the underworld. According to some accounts, she had a garden of ever blooming flowers (poppies) in the underworld. The Greek and Roman festivals honoring her and her mother, Ceres, emphasized Proserpine's return to the upper world in spring. According to the myths which talk of Persephone's Pearls, bringing visitors for lonely Persephone, these poppies induce waking sleep if picked and travelers forget their purpose, trapped wandering the underworld until they no longer are touching these flowers. In Swinburne's poems, however, the emphasis is on her role as goddess of death and eternal sleep.
There are twelve stanzas in the poem. Each stanza is an 'octave stanza' of eight lines, and all of the stanzas have the same internal pattern of rhymes. This rhyme scheme is recognized as a trimeter, with the pattern ABABCCCB, placing stress at the end of the poem where the three Cs rhyme and when Bs rhymes with the start of the poem. The rhyme scheme reflects Algernon Charles Swinburne's emphasis on the last line of each stanza, breaking it up from the rest of the poem, creating a harmonious ring to the feminine ending of each stanza.[1]
Diction is another crucial aspect to Swinburne's poem because it conveys the tone and feelings deeper than the writing. In 'The Garden of Proserpine', the Victorian Crisis of Faith is an underlying issue that Swinburne uses strong, emphasizing diction and metaphors to convey Proserpine’s feelings challenging Christianity and asserting his values of paganism and masochism.[2] Phrases such as 'who gathers all things mortal; with cold immortal hands' and 'Here life has death for neighbour' are examples of the specific diction used to portray a negative tone toward religion, linking directly to the theme of life and death of the poem, as Proserpine is a symbol of the threshold between life and death.“The Garden of Proserpine” was also written as part of his first series of Poems and Ballads in 1866, depicting the spirit and form of Greek tragedy, including more of his most popular poems such as “Dolores”.
History[edit]
'The Garden of Proserpine' brings up various questions commonly accompanying the Crisis of Faith of the Victorian era involving what happens after death. The Crisis of Faith was the response to new scientific evidence that contradicted the long-accepted claims of the Church of England. It resulted in a growing sense of secularism and a sense of vulnerability by the people. The question of what happens after death was one of the church's biggest defenses to this growing secularity, as faith guaranteed immortality after death.[3]
Swinburne was a strong advocate of aestheticism, and believed that art should be able to exist independently of political and moral ideologies. This concept was often referred to as “art for art’s sake.'[4] Swinburne once announced that his poetic theory 'insists upon the uninhibited exploration of all issues and experiences relevant to comprehensively prophetic treatment of the human condition'.[5] In Garden of Proserpine, we see elements of aestheticism and this applied poetic theory in the fact that it works to challenge Christianity and Pagan religions.
'The Garden of Proserpine' works to challenge these religions by displaying a godless afterlife, tormented only by the blind will to live. This lyric expresses feelings validated by Swinburne's pessimistic philosophy.[3] Proserpine is the goddess of eternal death, which by nature overpowers the other gods. However, she is not actively powerful considering she represents nothingness herself. The Garden of Proserpine represents a sense of harmony, calm, and oblivion that only truly exists in this realm of nothingness. It is said to symbolize 'the brief total pause of passion and thought after tempestuous pleasures when the spirit, without fear or hope of good things or evil, hungers and thirsts only after the perfect sleep'. This poem celebrates the finality of death and the nothingness that lies beyond Persephone's welcoming arms, making a stark contrast to the beliefs of leading religions during this time.[3]
Critical response[edit]
During his years as a journalist, John Morley famously described that Swinburne was always either “the vindictive apostle of a crushing and iron shod despair or else the libidinous laureate of a pack of satyrs” and that his poem “The Garden of Proserpine” displayed what kind of person Morley thought he was. In a contradicting book called 'Persephone Rises, 1860-1927' by Margot Kathleen Louis, she presents that not everyone thought the same as Morley did about Swinburne and the poem. 'In the 1870s, Swinburne and Dante Gabriel Rossetti had a close friendship. The painting of a picture of Proserpine with a pomegranate in her hand done by Rossetti may have well been influenced by Swinburne's poem. He also wrote a sonnet to accompany the painting.'[6]
Martha Hale Shackford states in her article 'Swinburne and Delavigne'(1918), that his poem has 'long been a favorite, for its subtle cadences have elusive, indefinable melody, and the dim beauty of Proserpine's realm is a masterpiece of descriptive art.'[7]
In the same article review, Shackford compares Swinburne’s poem to Casimir Delavigne’s poem 'Les Limbes'. According to Shackford, Swinburne 'derived some of his inspiration in the writing of his poem from Delavigne's'. Most of the parts of Swinburne's poem, he borrows many of Delavigne’s ideas, modifies them and makes them his own. Shackford writes, 'the relationships between the two poems are summed up as this; The theme is the lower or underworld, both devote many stanzas to the description of the underworld, the development of theme is proceeded by descriptions of natural aspects to the description of the listless beings who inhabit the underworld, and that both conclude the third section depicting a central dominate feminine figure.'
In other media[edit]
The poem is mentioned in Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events (where the first line of the poem, 'Here, where the world is quiet', was slightly modified to become the motto of the secret organization V.F.D.) and The Lightning Thief. It is also quoted at the end of episode 2 of season 3 of Netflix's adaptation of Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events. This poem is also quoted by Adam West and Linda Evans in the first episode entitled “Silent Bottle” of the 4th season t.v. series “ Big Valley”. A portion of the poem is quoted, and plays a pivotal role, in the novel Martin Eden by Jack London. The poem serves as an inspiration and is quoted in Frank Belknap Long's short story 'Step Into My Garden' published in August 1942 in the pulp magazine Unknown Worlds.[8] A portion of the poem was also used in the Bat Masterson TV episode Wanted: Alive Please of 26 May 1960. It is also mentioned in A. S. Byatt's book Possession. In 1899, the young English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams put to music several poems, for soprano, chorus and full orchestra, into a 25-minute piece 'The Garden of Proserpine', work that had to wait 112 years for a public performance. It was recorded in 2010 and released on CD in the year 2013. Many British composers (Parry, Stanford, Bantock, Bax, etc.) seem to have been inspired by Swinburne's writing as well.
See also[edit]
- 'Hymn to Proserpine', another poem by A. C. Swinburne
References[edit]
Garden Of Persephone Poem
- ^Shackford, Martha Hale (1918). 'Swinburne and Delavigne'. Pmla. 33 (1): 88. doi:10.2307/456973. JSTOR456973.
- ^Meyers, Terry L. 'A Manuscript of Swinburne's 'The Garden of Proserpine''. Retrieved 1 June 2015.
- ^ abcLouis, Margot (Feb 1999). 'Proserpine and Pessimism: Goddesses of Death, Life, and Language from Swinburne to Wharton'. Modern Philology. The University of Chicago Press. 96 (3): 312–346. doi:10.1086/492763. JSTOR439220.
- ^Kay, Andrew (2013). 'Swinburne, impressionistic formalism, and the afterlife of Victorian poetic theory'. Victorian Poetry. 51 (3): 271+. doi:10.1353/vp.2013.0016. Retrieved 25 May 2015.
- ^Harrison, Antony (1982). 'Swinburne's Losses: The Poetics of Passion'. ELH. The Johns Hopkins University Press. 49 (3): 689–706. doi:10.2307/2872761. JSTOR2872761.
- ^Louis, Margot (1988). Persephone Rises, 1860-1927 Mythography, Gender, and Creation of a New Spirituality. Ashgate Publishing. pp. 61–62. ISBN978-0-7546-6455-0. Retrieved May 27, 2015.
- ^Shackford, Martha. PMLA: Swinburne and Delavigne. 33. Modern Language Association. pp. 85–95. JSTOR456973.
- ^Belknap., Long, Frank (1978). The hounds of Tindalos (1. Jove/HBJ ed.). New York: Jove/HBJ. pp. 245–265. ISBN0515046558. OCLC770626968.
External links[edit]
The Garden Of Persephone In Underworld
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