2. Leda and the Swan
A sudden blow: the great wings beating still
Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed
By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,
He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.
How can those terrified vague fingers push
The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?
And how can body, laid in that white rush,
But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?
A shudder in the loins engenders there
The broken wall, the burning roof and tower
And Agamemnon dead.
Being so caught up,
So mastered by the brute blood of the air,
Did she put on his knowledge with his power
Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?
-- W. B. Yeats
3. “Young man,
two are the forces most precious to
mankind.
The first is Demeter, the Goddess.
She is the Earth -- or any name you wish to
call her -- and she sustains humanity with
solid food.
Next came Dionysus, the son of the virgin,
bringing the counterpart to bread: wine
and the blessings of life's flowing juices.
His blood, the blood of the grape,
lightens the burden of our mortal misery.
Though himself a God, it is his blood we
pour out to offer thanks to the Gods. And
through him, we are blessed.”
― Euripides, The Bacchae
Dionysus with satyrs.
Interior of a cup painted by the Brygos Painter,
Cabinet des Médailles.
4. Attic black-figured amphora depicting Athena being
"reborn" from the head of Zeus, who had swallowed
her mother, Metis, the goddess of childbirth. Eileithyia,
on the right assists, circa 550–525 BC (
Musée du Louvre, Paris).
I, Minerva
You gaze down with storm cloud eyes.
That squall, though, won’t hide your lies.
I see through that misty glow.
Τεν αληθεια ξερο
Wisdom, your gift as heiress,
Flees, post judgment of Paris.
All because he chose your foe.
Τεν αληθεια ξερο
Justice echoes in your halls,
Just as did round Trojan walls.
But do they still stand tall? No!
Τεν αληθεια ξερο
Lies you hate above the rest,
Unless spear they put to chest.
Much to Priam’s tearful woe.
Τεν αληθεια ξερο
I’ve shown you a hypocrite,
Why the gods would laude such wit!
Here your myth shall cease to grow,
For it is the truth I know.
Τεν αληθεια ξερο is Greek for “I know the
truth,”
-Sam Cardosi
5. Botticelli's The Birth of Venus
(c. 1485–1486, oil on canvas, Uffizi, Florence)
)
Vulcan Plucking Petals
She loves me-
since she rose,
encumbered by ebbing ocean lace,
swelling the seas
(and swelling heads and hearts ever since).
Invoking in me,
her stooped, crooked boy,
delicate as a house of cards,
the abashed blushes
of a rosy-fingered dawn,
the lecherous yearnings
of a writhing flame.
But she departs
quick as a quiver
on Eros' bow,
intoxicating, beckoning,
stirring hunger of a crouched animal
in some poor, sorry sap before
soaking their bones in a lover's brine.
And for all her philandering,
she recoils from my touch
lest I leave a sooty-fingered print
on her heart
as I tinker, tinker
the key to her padlock.
But it's too late.
The candle's snuffed.
She loves me not.
--Lisa Burgoa
6. Amor Vincit Omnia (Love Conquers All),
a depiction of the god of love, Eros.
By Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, circa
1601.
.
.
Eros
BY ROBERT BRIDGES
Why hast thou nothing in thy face?
Thou idol of the human race,
Thou tyrant of the human heart,
The flower of lovely youth that art;
Yea, and that standest in thy youth
An image of eternal Truth,
With thy exuberant flesh so fair,
That only Pheidias might compare,
Ere from his chaste marmoreal form
Time had decayed the colors warm;
Like to his gods in thy proud dress,
Thy starry sheen of nakedness.
Surely thy body is thy mind,
For in thy face is nought to find,
Only thy soft unchristen’d smile,
That shadows neither love nor guile,
But shameless will and power immense,
In secret sensuous innocence.
O king of joy, what is thy thought?
I dream thou knowest it is nought,
And wouldst in darkness come, but thou
Makest the light where’er thou go.
Ah yet no victim of thy grace,
None who e’er long’d for thy embrace,
Hath cared to look upon thy face.
7. Demeter and Metanira in a detail on an Apulian
red-figure hydria,
circa 340 BC (Altes Museum, Berlin).
, Berlin).
DEMETER
No mother wants to see her child
courting death—
covering her gleaming locks
in dull black dye,
until the only bits of color left
are red splashes of nails
and the odd surprise of
shining silver studs.
No mother wants to see her child
spending days in a darkened room—
and nights out,
who knows where.
I never wanted to see her
lost to someone else.
I knew she wanted to be a princess,
back when she wore pink ribbons in her hair,
but running off with the prince of death
is taking things too far.
And I can’t help it if it gets a little colder
all the time she’s gone.
-- Maura MacDonald
8. Prometheus (1868 by Gustave Moreau).
The myth of Prometheus first was attested by
Hesiod and then constituted the basis for a
tragic trilogy of plays, possibly by Aeschylus.
and then constituted the basis for a tragic
trilogy of plays, possibly by Aeschylus.
and then constituted the basis for a tragic
trilogy of plays, possibly by Aeschylus.
The punishment of Prometheus and the
foolishness of Pandora in releasing evil and
suffering into the world are a version of the Fall
and the end of innocence as told in Genesis.
Frankenstein can be compared with
Prometheus in the way in which he steals fire by
harnessing the power of lightning to animate his
monster but
like Prometheus, he also defies the supreme
being and continues to pursue knowledge
(symbolized by fire) until it has fatal
consequences: a clear parallel with
Frankenstein's crimes against nature.
9. Apollo (early Imperial Roman copy of a fourth-
century Greek original, Louvre Museum).
We cannot know his legendary head
with eyes like ripening fruit.
And yet his torso is still suffused
with brilliance from inside, like a lamp,
in which his gaze, now turned to low,
gleams in all its power. Otherwise the curved
breast could not dazzle you so, nor could a
smile run through the placid hips and thighs
to that dark center where procreation flared.
Otherwise this stone would seem defaced
beneath the translucent cascade of the
shoulders and would not glisten like a wild
beast’s fur:
would not, from all the borders of itself,
burst like a star: for here there is no place
that does not see you. You must change your
life.
“Archaic Torso of Apollo”
by Rainer Maria Rilke
10. Apollo (early Imperial Roman copy of a fourth-
century Greek original, Louvre Museum).
We cannot know his legendary head
with eyes like ripening fruit.
And yet his torso is still suffused
with brilliance from inside, like a lamp,
in which his gaze, now turned to low,
gleams in all its power. Otherwise the curved
breast could not dazzle you so, nor could a
smile run through the placid hips and thighs
to that dark center where procreation flared.
Otherwise this stone would seem defaced
beneath the translucent cascade of the
shoulders and would not glisten like a wild
beast’s fur:
would not, from all the borders of itself,
burst like a star: for here there is no place
that does not see you. You must change your
life.
“Archaic Torso of Apollo”
by Rainer Maria Rilke
