Margaret and Her Friends: or, Ten conversations with Margaret Fuller upon the mythology of the Greeks and its expression in art, held at the house of the Rev. George Ripley, Bedford Place, Boston, beginning March 1, 1841Fuller, Margaret
Philosophy
Margaret and Her Friends: or, Ten conversations with Margaret Fuller upon the mythology of the Greeks and its expression in art, held at the house of the Rev. George Ripley, Bedford Place, Boston, beginning March 1, 1841
Fuller, Margaret
Mythology, Classical, in art; Mythology, Greek
Margaret recapitulated the statements she made last week. By thus giving
to each fabled Deity its place in the scheme of Mythology, she did not
mean to ignore the enfolding ideas, the one thought developed in all—as
in Rhea, Bacchus, Pan. She would only imply that each personification
was individual, served a particular purpose, and was worshipped in a
particular way.
Before proceeding to talk about Ceres, she wished to remind us of the
mischief of wandering from our subject. She hoped the ground she offered
would be accepted _at least to talk about_! Certainly no one could deny
that a mythos was the last and best growth of a national mind, and that
in this case the characteristics of the Greek mind were best gathered
from this creation.
Ceres, Persephone, and Isis, as well as Rhea, Diana, and so on, seem
to be only modifications of one enfolding idea,—a goddess accepted by
all nations, and not peculiar to Greece. The pilgrimages of the more
prominent of these goddesses, Ceres and Isis, seem to indicate the life
which loses what is dear in childhood, to seek in weary pain for what
after all can be but half regained. Ceres regained her daughter, but only
for half the year. Isis found her husband, but dismembered. This era in
Mythology seems to mark the progress of a people from an unconscious to
a conscious state. Persephone’s periodical exile shows the impossibility
of resuming an unconsciousness from which we have been once aroused, the
need thought has, having once felt the influence of the Seasons, to
retire into itself.
CHARLES WHEELER reminded Margaret that she had said that the predominant
goddesses, without reference to Greece, enfolded only one idea, that of
the female _Will_ or _Genius_,—_the bounteous giver_. He had asked her
if she could sustain herself by etymological facts, and she replied that
her knowledge of the Greek was not critical enough. Since then he had
inquired into the origin of the proper names of the Greek deities, and
found that it confirmed her impression. The names of Rhea, Tellus, Isis,
and Diana were resolvable into one, and the difference in their etymology
was only a common and permissible change in the position of the letters
of which they are composed, or a mere provincial dialectic change. Diana
is the same as Dione, also one of the names of Juno.
E. P. P. asked if Homer ever confounded the last two? MARGARET thought
not. Homer was purely objective. He knew little and cared less about the
primitive creation of the myths.
R. W. EMERSON thought it would be very difficult to detect this secret.
Jupiter, for instance, might have been a man who was the exponent of Will
to his race.
MARGARET said, “No; they could have deduced him just as easily from
Nature herself, or from a single exhibition of will power.”
R. W. EMERSON said that a man like Napoleon would easily have suggested
it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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