Thoughts on PERSEPHONE
Persephone: one, two, three, or four – a paradox?
Like with all Greek myths, there is a great variety of traditions on Persephone. She seems to embody a paradox – as a goddess of both life (agriculture, fertility) and death (as Queen of the underworld). Nevertheless, she remains one and the same person, seemingly symbolising different stages in a woman’s life: youth and innocence into powerful womanhood/wifehood.
These different roles of Persephone make her a flexible, multi-use goddess. She is somehow two-partite in herself; she forms a duality with Demeter, with whom she is often depicted; she forms a duality with Hades, her husband. Sometimes, she is described as part of a female Trinity with Hecate (sky), Demeter (earth) and Persephone (underworld). She is even considered one of the four earliest gods: Zeus (sky), Poseidon (water), Hades/Plouton (underworld) and Persephone. This last reading is dubitable, yet significant in that it shows the power ascribed to her.
Naming Persephone
The earliest occurrence of the name Persephone is in Linear B, the written syllabic language of the Mycenaean kingdoms. It was written Pe-re or Pe-re-swa.
Persephone actually comes with another name too: Kore, meaning nothing more than Daughter. This is her name when she’s on earth, in her capacity as goddess of (agricultural) fertility. Persephone is her name only in the Underworld. A Greek praying for a good harvest would never pray to Persephone, a Greek praying for the dead would never call on Kore.
Interesting fact: it was bad luck to pronounce the name of Persephone. So, in prayers she would appear nameless… I find this fascinating and heartbreaking!
Striking here is that Persephone has no real name when she is on Earth with her mother. Her only role is daughter. While in the Underworld, she seems to be the boss-queen.
In Latin, Persephone is called Proserpina.
The rape of Persephone
There is no mention in any ancient tradition that Persephone was raped in the modern sexual sense of the word. The Greek word harpaxein is used throughout and means nothing more than ‘to snatch away’. Only by the time the myth is incorporated into Roman culture, could one make a case for sexual abuse: the Latin word raptu can mean both rape in the sense of kidnapping and sexual abuse. But Latin was a poorer language than Greek.
Character
Here, we need to make a distinction between her appearance as Kore and as Persephone. Kore is pure, pretty, chaste, innocent. In the underworld she is addressed as queen. She is the dread Persephone in Homer and Hesiod, awesome, awful and thought to mislead humans traveling to the Underworld. A force to be reckoned with! On the other hand, no one who travels underground seems to be afraid of Hades…
She is also as Persephone still described as chaste, even though she is married. The only allusion to Persephone’s sexuality may be the tradition of her fight with Aphrodite over the baby Adonis. But it may also be just that, the fight over a baby. There are no traditions that ascribe own children to Persephone (one text alludes to her as the mother of Dionysus, but ALL others give that part to Semele).
Transition
We could call Persephone a goddess of transitions:
- From winter to summer, from summer to winter
- From life to death, from death to life
- from girl to woman. Demeter herein mirrors the mother who cannot let her daughter go and be a woman herself.
Note: even the latter tradition is cyclic. That must really feel terrible, to keep returning to naïve childhood every single year, after having acted as a queen. She’s basically an eternal boomerang-child.
Interesting is also what she does NOT become:
- a seductress
- a mother
Some more thoughts
1. Persephone is no historic character. There are no facts, as such. There are, however traditions. I have only looked at the Greek side of things, since I find Romans liberal, right wing, emotionless buggers and they should never attempted to take up literature. But by any means, I am not opposed to any modern versions of the story 😉
2. There is a Persephone before the abduction and a Persephone after the abduction. They are two different narratives that never interact. They are simply a before and after. The abduction by Hades takes only place once and therefore stands as a single event, while the life after the abduction is an eternal status quo.
3. I believe, mindful of the universal language of myth, there’s a pretty convincing connection with some ideas in Buddhism: the seeming paradox of life and death being one, and the cyclic nature of this goddess’ existence.