In the Homeric hymn to Demeter, we have a
strong focus on women's experience. The main characters, the main driving
themes are things that are connected specifically to this example of the human
species that is gendered female. In our Odyssey, by contrast, we've seen
that the main point of this all was to look at the Andro, the Anthropos that was
gendered male. Well, here, we're going to look at an anthropos that is gendered
female and look at those kind of relationships, and the experiences that
are specific to that part of what it is, To, what,
What it is to be human. To start off, I thought we would take a
look at a couple of pairs. There are interesting doubleings that
happen inside of the story. Metaneira and Demeter is the first one I
wanted to say a few words on. With Metaneira and Demeter, we have an
interesting pair of figures. Metaneira is,
Near the end of her childbearing years, it says that she is someone who was waiting
for a long time for Demophoon to come. She was quite frightened that he wasn't
going to come at all. She was praying to the Gods to see if he
would come. And then, Demophoon arrives and she's
thrilled and excited by it. We have someone who is nearing the end of
that reproductive window, and she's coming to a close on those childbearing years.
Now she's entering into a maturing state of taking care of this child and raising
it, and nurturing it, and moving along. We meet in the figure of Demeter someone
who, in the guise that she takes in the story, is beyond her childbearing years.
In her disguise, she shows up as a person who has just been cast aside. She talks
about, She's referred to by people that see her
sitting on the edge there before they know who it is.
They don't understand who the stranger is. They call her granny.
They talk about her as having an appearance of someone who is long, caught
off from child birth. And when they do that, they start to peg
her as a person who belongs in a society only in certain places.
With that age come different rules for Demeter.
Most of these rules are not the kind of thing that a woman who is aspiring to a
grand position in society would aspire to. Demeter is someone who has limited
responsibilities and possibilities in this older stage of life.
She could be a housemaid, or a nurse. But she's not going to someone who has as
grand as a mother or head of a household. Metaneira is, by contrast,
Someone who can have those rules. She has a head of the household, the
fullness of her reproductive powers has been shown through this through this
child. She has capabilities, and influence, and
authority by those kind of powers of reproduction.
The same thing is mostly deprived of Demeter because of her position on the
other side of this divide. Persephone interestingly shows up in this
understanding this meditation as well. She's making a transition of a certain
kind from being a girl living with her mother to living in another man's home as
a wife of some other person. This transition in the story is very
clearly cast as a kind of violence done to her.
It's not a pleasant thing. It's painful for her and for her mother.
Its great of its these single source of the most dramatic moments in the story and
none of this drama is, is good drama. It's bad drama.
Persephone shows this transition into the husband's household as filled with fear
and isolation, a loss of innocence, and she has to now reimagine her relationships
that she had, that were most dear to her with her mother and others.
This is made in to in her case, an absolutely explicit parallel between
moving away from her matrilineal home, being pulled in to the home of her new
husband the, the, the man who takes her away, in this case, being pulled away.
That is characterized specifically as a kind of death.
Persephone, who is an, an immortal, goes down and experiences what it is to be
dead. Gods mostly don't do that.
Poor Hades, he spends all his time down there. but none of the other gods do.
There are trips that they make here and there, but very few of them go.
Most try to avoid it. Why would a person want to go down there?
Persephone lives as an immortal experiencing the life of a mortal after
death. So, her position, positioning here as a
girl who is making a transition from childhood into adulthood is specifically
characterized as a kind of death. It's quite heart wrenching, it's quite
poignant to think about all the kind of trauma that happened as a life goes,
undergoes great change. In Persephone, it's also characterizes her
entering into the stage of fertility. She now becomes, in the terms of the
story, it's suggested and hinted that what's happening here is that Persephone
is entering into the stage when her relationships with men are going to
change. The pomegranate seed is an interesting
symbol, likely to be the, symbol of a man's seed. And the fact that she took it
in, is something that now changes her status completely.
You'll recall that when she comes back and has a moment of audience with her mother
again after having been gone for so long, the mother is very nervous and asked, have
you eaten anything? Have you partaken of anything down in that
underworld? It's as though she already knows because
she could, can see it in her daughter, and having ingested the pomegranate seed means
that now Persephone is now in a different stage in her life.
And again, it is not a happy moment. It is a, it is a moment filled with drama
and a certain kind of certain kind of, of pain and loss.
Now together, Persephone makes an interesting pair with Demophoon. Demophoon
is the child that we see who emerges out of in, at,
In, For Metaneira late in her reproductive
life. And, she is the one that gives it over to
Demeter to be raised. Well, Demeter right away thinks, I have
this investment in raising this child. Demophoon clearly represents for her a
kind of substitute for the Persephone that she's missing.
She gets a chance to take this figure in and she brings Demophoon, interestingly,
from his state as a mortal child and tries to bring him over into becoming an
immortal. Notice that she gives him no mortal food,
He doesn't have mother's milk. Instead, she gives him something amazing.
She gives him ambrosia. That's the kind of food that the gods eat.
And in fact, in Homer's traditional association, the eating of ambrosia and
drinking of nectar is exactly what the gods do.
And the more of it they do, the more they're like gods.
When humans get a chance to taste these things, they start to become show signs of
being immoral. So, it seems in the Honeric tradition,
ambrosia and nectar actually connected with becoming a divinity itself.
So, the, if, the keeping food away from Demophoon, human food and then giving the
ambrosia to him, bring him long toward the immortal side of things.
Then, also, this strange custom she has of burying him in the fire at night, which
causes Metaneira to be a little upset, you can imagine.
Well, this is a linkage to blacksmithing, as you want to heat up metal and can make
it harder, and firmer, and more durable, So also, Demeter is doing this with
Demophoon. She thinks that through this cycle of
treatments with the ambrosia and with the fire, she's actually going to produce
Demophoon a immortal character and she will then have replaced in some little,
Or not replace, but she will have gone some way to recompense the loss of the
immortality of her daughter. So, in the book ends around the question
of death, mortality, and immortality, we have the figures of Demophoon and
Persephone framing them, also Metaneira and Demeter.
Demophoon is the mortal who is maybe making a transition to immortality.
Persephone, the immortal who is making the transition to mortality.
And, we have a lot of meditation that's done round this question of reproduction.
Human fertility and it's complexity, These are what the themes that are built
into our story. Each of them, interestingly, is connected
with this question of, re, reproduction is connected with a question of mortality and
immortality. Both features, I think, are present in the
idea of human reproduction. We're reminded at each time, the birth
happens, the marvelous miracle of new life coming into the world.
But, then also, each time those new lives are, are, are settled and we learn about
them, see them, there is some quality of them that also reminds us that, yes
indeed, all of us are mortal. The miracle of birth is a reminder also of
all of our mortality. So, human fertility is built into this
kind of complex and fragile set of ideas where a promise of immortality is tinged
always with the specter and presence of mortality.
So, it's as though with enfolding these two things together, the whole, author of
the Homeric Hymn is telling us that we can't really have one without the other.
We can't have this reproductive desire to produce offspring together with
immortality, instead mortality is going to come with it.
The two of them are enfolded together. Just behind me here we've got a wonderful
freeze that has our Demeter and Persephone.
Demophoon may be this figure standing between the two of them or another figure,
Triptolemus. And in later tradition, Triptolemus who's
one of the figures in the household and Demophoon start to exchange places.
So, it could be that that's what our artist is representing here.
What we're seeing here is a set of, of, of meditations on really important core
themes about what it is to be interesting to human and this drama is put over on the
side of the gods. We learn about stories through intimate
portrayal of characters and going through this upsetting, difficult times.
These characters just happened to be immortals but they sure do seem extremely
human.