Word: dionysus
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...wrong order and with the wrong cast of characters. This resulted in various anomalies, such as the story of Eve's creation from Adam's rib-"equaled in perversity only by the post-Homeric Greek legends of Athene's birth from the head of Zeus, and Dionysus' birth from his thigh." For in all primitive myth, says the Goddess' Graves, "the female, not the male, gives life, even if she is no more than a primordial Scandinavian cow licking stones into human shape...
...famed, spirited, but excessively proper translation of British Classicist Gilbert Murray, Aeacus. judge of the dead, mistakes the wine god Dionysus for Heracles, who has stolen Cerberus, the watchdog of Hades...
...printed version Young got out, it won an accolade from T.S. Eliot: "A most delightful piece of work. I enjoyed it immensely." A bit of the original Greek retained in Young's Puddocks as well as Murray's Frogs-the croak of the frog chorus that mocks Dionysus as Charon ferries him across the Styx...
...their temples and processions. King David "danced before the Lord with all his might" (11 Samuel 6:14), and the Old Testament Hebrews danced in their vineyards on the Day of Atonement. The Greeks danced in honor of Apollo, of Pan, of Artemis, and in the ecstatic mysteries of Dionysus. In Islam, the Mevlevi dervishes still dance in patterns designed to expound cosmic laws as well as to achieve a state of inner peace...
...orthodox have always been a little leery of Simone Weil, and with some reason. The Notebooks, chockablock with the ritual lore of a dozen sects and faiths, show that she was deeply preoccupied with Dionysus, Osiris, Buddha and Plato as well as Christ. She applauds continually the Greek ideals of harmony, measure, proportion and order. Yet she herself burns with a passion for the Absolute, and the Hellenic "nothing in excess" is precisely the law she could not live by. Her grandeur, as well as her absurdity, it has been pointed out, is that she shares the apocalyptic vision...