Day 4 with Dionysus (27.09.2016)
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A continuation of explorations of why homer matters
The idea of mythologies being a “grand metaphor”, can seem a little belittling. It makes it all seem a little insignificant. That somehow Homer isn’t real life. And I don’t buy that. I think this was really real in a way to the ancient Greek audience. Not real as in happening right in fron of them. But a special kind of realness that both happens and does not. It’s complex in my mind, anyway, point is I don’t want to get caught up thinking it’s all one giant metaphor and nothing more.
still
that, in some respects the gods are aspects of ourselves, that, THAT, is a truely wonderful and comforting idea I think. Especially if we think that Dionysus is the god of inclusion, then we might say we all have the power within ourselves to be a force for boundary breaking, even for ourselves.
The notion of an
inner geography
is also pretty awesome. Just as an idea I mean.
two things: first that the Homeric poems may be a reception of their own. A combination and reworking in their ‘first’ incarnation is pretty awesome.
I guess I feel as though most mythologies are like that, a collection of all the people who came before it got written down. And then somehow, by writting it down it became sacred, something to not be touched…like ever.
So then the poem, story, play, whatever, then it just sits there as it was that last time it was spoken.
Secondly: That Homer, or any mythology might have bourne or born out of “the demands of greif”, out of a “desperate and clamouring anxiety”, that it is the “nature of existence and the pains or mortality” (Nicolson), it just makes me feel better. a “clamouring anxiety” is somehting I can completely relate to. That Homers tales, or anything from ancient Greece came out of the smae kind of experience as mine is comforting. And it seems to tell me that they’re worth paying attention to.
