Comments on comparative mythology 7, finding a cure for the anger of Hērā
2020.04.03 | By Gregory Nagy
§0. In a previous essay, Classical Inquiries 2020.03.20, I highlighted some ancient artwork picturing the hero Hēraklēs being breast-fed by the goddess Hērā after he was brought back to life after death. In the present essay, I will analyze the mythological background, showing that the ultimate benevolence of Hērā toward Hēraklēs, as manifested in the act of breast-feeding, had to be preceded by the malevolence of the goddess during the hero’s lifetime before his death. That malevolence, as I will also show, takes the form of a special kind of anger, which to my mind bears an uncanny resemblance to the anger of Mozart’s Queen of the Night in The Magic Flute (première 1791, Vienna)—especially as visualized by Ingmar Bergman in his Swedish-language film version of the opera, Trollflöjten (1975).
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Aphrodite of the Waters, by Mary Yntema
All we think now is stop stop stop. Three whole days in black walls of frozen spears and icy nails no up no
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The idea of immediate learning in an age of necessitated distance education
2020.03.22, rewritten 2020.03.25 with minimal changes | By Gregory Nagy
Sent to my students in Comparative Literature 156, “Performance and Lyric,” one day before the first day of the new online format for my course.
§1. The immediacy of learning, indicated by the title immediate learning, should be a personal experience that can happen to each and every one of us when we gather as a group to engage in dialogue.
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Comments on comparative mythology 6, trifunctionality and the goddess Hērā
2020.03.20 | By Gregory Nagy
§0. In Classical Inquiries 2020.03.13, where I was testing the idea of trifunctionality in the Homeric retelling of the Judgment of Paris, I analyzed aspects of the goddess Hērā that point to her third function, which is fertility, to be distinguished from her first function, which is sovereignty. Here in Classical Inquiries 2020.03.20, I will analyze further such aspects pointing to the third function of this goddess—as well as other divine aspects that point instead to the second function, which is warfare. For my analysis, I will focus on a moment in Iliad 5 where the hero Hēraklēs is caught in the act of shooting an arrow at Hērā, wounding the goddess in her right breast. I will argue that the wound, which causes a pain described as incurable in the Homeric narrative, is a sign of a dysfunctional relationship between hero and goddess in the world of myth. To be contrasted, however, is a functional relationship between the two in the world of ritual. The image that I have chosen as illustration for this argument highlights the functional side of the relationship between Hērā and Hēraklēs: in this image, of Etruscan origin, we see the goddess showing her benevolence toward the hero, breast-feeding him as if he were a newborn child. I will have to start my analysis by considering such benevolence before I can consider the malevolence of Hērā.
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Comments on comparative mythology 5, an afterthought of Georges Dumézil about trifunctionality and the Judgment of Paris
2020.03.13 | By Gregory Nagy
§0. In the previous two posts, Classical Inquiries 2020.02.28 and 2020.03.06, I analyzed the idea of trifunctionality in the myth about the Judgment of Paris, especially with reference to the version of this myth as retold in Homeric poetry, at Iliad 24.25–30. In my analysis, I followed the formulation of Georges Dumézil in his book Mythe et épopee I (originally published in 1968), who shows that the goddesses Hērā, Athena, and Aphrodite are representatives of the first, second, and third “functions” of society: (1) sovereignty, (2) warfare, and (3) “reproductivity” or, to say it more simply, (3) fertility. As we saw, the hero Paris praised the goddess Aphrodite in her role as the representative of sexual pleasure—which is a vital aspect of the third function—and that he thus undervalued the first and the second functions of sovereignty and warfare as represented respectively by the goddesses Hērā and Athena. As we also saw, the act of praising Aphrodite required the commensurate act of insulting Hērā and Athena by way of blaming them. And so, in terms of the overall myth about the Judgment of Paris, the dysfunctionality of undervaluing Hērā and Athena by way of overvaluing Aphrodite resulted in disaster both for Paris and for his homeland of Troy. But now, in the post here for Classical Inquiries 2020.03.13, I draw attention to an afterthought of Dumézil about the Judgment of Paris as narrated in the Homeric verses I have already cited, Iliad 24.25–30. In terms of his afterthought, the myth about this judgment—and about the resulting disaster—is signaled not only in those verses. Rather, the Judgment of Paris is a grand epic theme that pervades the overall plot of the Iliad, visible especially in Rhapsodies 3, 4, 14, and 21. I will focus here on Rhapsody 14, which features an erotic scene where Hērā seduces her husband and brother Zeus on the heights of Mount Ida. The painting that I have chosen as illustration for this posting pictures the divine couple at the very moment when they begin to engage in an act of cosmic lovemaking.
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Comments on comparative mythology 4, a dysfunctional misunderstanding of trifunctionality in myths about the Judgment of Paris
2020.03.06 | By Gregory Nagy
§0. In the previous two posts, Classical Inquiries 2020.02.21 and 2020.02.28, I connected the idea of “trifunctionality” with the idea of “sins” committed in myths connected with two different Greek heroes, Hēraklēs and Paris/Alexandros. Each of these two heroes violated, according to myths told about them, three “functions” of society, which are (1) sovereignty, (2) warfare, and (3) what I described already in the first post, 2020.02.21, as “reproductivity.” In the case of Hēraklēs, as we saw in that same post, the myths show that he committed three different “sins” on three different occasions, violating on each occasion one of these three functions of society. In the case of Paris/Alexandros, on the other hand, as we saw in the second post, 2020.02.28, the myths show that he violated the three functions not on three separate occasions but all at once, on a single occasion, known as the Judgment of Paris, which is retold most concisely in Iliad 24.25–30. As we also saw in the second post, the “sin” of Paris was that he praised the goddess Aphrodite in her role as the representative of sexual pleasure—which is a vital aspect of the third function—and that he thus undervalued the first and the second functions of sovereignty and warfare as represented respectively by the goddesses Hērā and Athena. In such a zero-sum mythological game of having to choose one goddess as the best of the three goddesses, the act of praising Aphrodite requires the commensurate act of insulting Hērā and Athena by way of blaming them—and we can see a visual interpretation of such an insult in the painting I have chosen as illustration for my essay here. In the logic of such mythmaking, however, the undervaluing of the first and the second functions resulted not from giving too much praise for Aphrodite. Rather, as I will now argue, such undervaluing resulted from a dysfunctional misunderstanding, by the hero Paris, of the functionality of trifunctionality.
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