This morning’s thought started with Leda and the Swan, mythology to do with water… and how one could make an argument that eggs resonate with Project Spectrum’s element of water.
Castor, Pollux and Helen were all born to Leda after the Swan (Zeus) incident. I’ve read that Pollux and Helen were either in the egg, with Castor being the mortal twin from Leda’s union with her husband, or Castor and Pollux were in the egg. It’s all fluid and strange, like mythology, eggs, and water. The myth ranges into the kidnapping of Helen, later on, and the siege of Troy.
A quote about Castor and Pollux:
During the voyage a storm arose, and Orpheus prayed to the Samothracian gods, and played on his harp, whereupon the storm ceased and stars appeared on the heads of the brothers. From this incident, Castor and Pollux came afterwards to be considered the patron deities of seamen and voyagers, and the lambent flames, which in certain states of the atmosphere play round the sails and masts of vessels, were called by their names.
– Bullfinch. Mythology Age of Fable Stories of Gods and Heroes. Found online at: http://classiclit.about.com/library/bl-etexts/tbulfinch/bl-tbulfinch-age-20.htm
There’s the connection with water I seemed to remember from reading Bullfinch years ago.
I’m rereading some classic texts in translation, some Greek and some Roman. I’m having difficulty keeping the events in the Odyssey separate from the Aeneid. The first one is attributed to Homer and talks about Odysseus’ travels to return home. The second one is by Virgil and describes Aeneas’ voyage to found a new home.
Both are told in flashback style, heavy on the justifications of escaping from danger through the will of the Gods, with much rattling of swords. Both have a heck of a lot of water to them, from Neptune calming the waves for Aeneas (see a sculpture from the Victoria and Albert Museum of Neptune and Triton here) to Poseidon favoring the Greeks in the Odyssey. There is a cast of thousands in both books, including the Gods (Roman or Greek versions). Throughout both books, there are discussions of how to avoid ocean hazards (Scylla or Charybdis). Aeneas has the tragic Dido, and Odysseus has the tragic Calypso. The Romans call Odysseus by the name Ulysses (which would be why I had to read a translation of the Odyssey that James Joyce might have had on hand when I studied Joyce’s novel, Ulysses).
In some ways, it’s almost as though the Iliad, the Odyssey, and the Aeneid were hatched from the same egg at different times. Reading them has a fluid effect, as though one needs a timeline to figure out where Aeneas was when Odysseus (or Ulysses) was doing X or Y. Or perhaps a picture book to show which God, Goddess, or water nymph is alternating between angry/offended and protective/loving and sad/suicidal. The fluidity of characters taking on other peoples’ guises reminds me of water. There are a great deal of poems and novels I’ve had to read based on these three epics… there’s an inundation of data out on the Web, on my bookshelves, etc. If I were writing a novel, I’d totally follow Neil Gaiman’s lead and pick a different mythology as inspiration.
I think as a chaser, I want to find Native American stories of origins and storms. So, between art, poetry, and music, which mythologies or sagas are resonating with you?
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