Book: Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860

V >> Various >> Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860




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ELEUSINIA.[a]

[Footnote a: See Number XXIII., September, 1859.]


THE SAVIOURS OF GREECE.

Life, in its central idea, is an entire and eternal solitude. Yet each
individual nature so repeats--and is itself repeated in--every other,
that there is insured the possibility both of a world-revelation in the
soul, and of a self-incarnation in the world; so that every man's life,
like Agrippa's mirror, reflects the universe, and the universe is made
the embodiment of his life,--is made to beat with a human pulse.

We do all, therefore,--Hindu, Egyptian, Greek, or Saxon,--claim kinship
both with the earth and the heavens: with the sense of sorrow we kneel
upon the earth, with the sense of hope we look into the heavens.

The two Presences of the Eleusinia,--the earthly Demeter,[b] the
embodiment of human sorrow, and the heavenly Dionysus,[c] the
incarnation of human hope,--these are the two Great Presences of the
Universe; about whom, as separate centres,--the one of measureless
wanderings, the other of triumphant rest,--we marshal, both in the
interpretations of Reason and in the constructions of our Imagination,
all that is visible or that is invisible,--whatsoever is palpable in
sense or possible in idea, in the world which is or the world to come.
Incarnations of the life within us, in its two developments of Sorrow
and Hope,--they are also the centres through which this life develops
itself in the world: it is through them that all things have their
genesis from the human heart, and through them, therefore, that all
things are unveiled to us.

[Footnote b: Demeter is [Greek Gae-mhaetaer], Mother Earth.]

[Footnote c: The same as Iacchus and the Latin Bacchus.]

But these Two Presences have their highest interest and significance as
_foci_ of the religious development of the race: and inasmuch as all
growth is ultimately a religious one, it is in this phase that their
organic connections with life are widest and most profound. As such they
appear in the Eleusinia; and in all mythology they furnish the only
possible key for the interpretation of its mystic symbolism, its
hieroglyphic records, and its ill-defined traditions.

Accordingly we find that all mythology naturally and inevitably
flows about these centres into two distinct developments, which are
indicated,--

1. In Nature; inasmuch as they are first made manifest through symbols
which point to the two great forces, the _active_ and the _passive_,
which are concerned in all natural processes (_sol et terra subjacens
soli_); and,

2. In the primitive belief among all nations, that men are the offspring
of the earth and the heavens,--and in the worship equally prevalent of
the sun, the personal Presence of the heavens, as Saviour Lord, and of
the earth as sorrowing Lady and Mother.

Why the earth, in this primitive symbolism and worship, was represented
as the Sorrowing One, and the sun as Saviour, is evident at a glance.
It was the bosom of the earth which was shaken with storm and rent with
earthquake. She was the Mother, and hers was the travail of all birth;
in sorrow she forever gathered to herself her Fate-conquered children;
her sorrowful countenance she veiled in thick mists, and, year after
year, shrouded herself in wintry desolation: while he was the Eternal
Father, the Revealer of all things, he drove away the darkness, and in
his presence the mist became an invisible exhalation; and, as out of
darkness and death, he called into birth the flowers and the numberless
forests,--even as he himself was every morning born anew out of
darkness,--so he called the children of the earth to a glorious rising
in his light. Everything of the earth was inert, weighing heavily upon
the sense and the heart, only waiting its transfiguration and exaltation
through his power, until it should rise into the heavens; which was the
type of his translation to himself of his grief-oppressed children.

Under these symbols our Lord and Lady have been worshipped by an
overwhelming majority of the human race. They swayed the ancient world,
from the Indians by the Ganges, and the Tartar tribes, to the Britons
and Laplanders of Northwestern Europe,--having their representatives in
every system of faith,--in the Hindu _Isi and Isana_, the Egyptian _Isis
and Osiris_, the Assyrian _Venus and Adonis_, the _Demeter and Dionysus_
of Greece, the Roman _Ceres and Bacchus_, and the _Disa and Frey_ of
Scandinavia,--in connection with most, if not all, of whom there existed
festivals corresponding, in respect of their meaning and use, with the
Grecian Eleusinia.

Moreover, the various divinities of any one mythology--for example, the
Greek--were at first only representatives of partial attributes or
incidental functions of these Two Presences. Thus, Jove was the power of
the heavens, which, of course, centred in the sun; Apollo is admitted
to have been only another name for the sun; AEsculapius represents his
healing virtues; Hercules his saving strength; and Prometheus, who gave
fire to men, as Vulcan, the god of fire, was probably connected with
Eastern fire-worship, and so in the end with the worship of the sun.
Some of the goddesses come under the same category,--such as Juno,
sister and wife of Jove, who shared with him his aerial dynasty; as also
Diana, who was only the reflection of Apollo,[d] as the moon of the sun,
carrying his power on into the night, and exercising among women the
functions which he exercised among men. The representatives of our Lady,
on the other hand, are such as the ancient Rhea,--Latona, with her dark
and starry veil,--Tethys, the world-nurse,--and the Artemis of the East,
or Syrian Mother; to say nothing of Oreads, Dryads, and Nereids, that
without number peopled the mountains, the forests, and the sea.

[Footnote d: This connection of Diana with Apollo has led some to the
hasty inference, that the sun and moon--not the sun and earth--were the
primitive centres of mythological symbolism. But it is plain that the
sun and moon, as _active _forces referable to a single centre, stood
over against the earth as _passive._]

The confusion of ancient mythology did not so much regard its subjective
elements as its external development, and even here is easily accounted
for by the mingling of tribes and nations, hitherto isolated in their
growth,--but who, as they came together, in their mutual recognition of
a common faith under different names and rites, must inevitably have
introduced disorder into the external symbolism. But even out of this
confusion we shall find the whole Pantheon organized about two
central shrines,--those of the _Mater Dolorosa_ and the _Dominus
Salvator_,--which are represented also in Christendom, though detached
from natural symbols, in the connection of Christianity with the worship
of the Virgin.

The Eleusinia, collecting together, as it did, all the prominent
elements of mythology, furnishes, in its dramatic evolution through
Demeter and Dionysus, the highest and most complete representation of
ancient faith in both of its developments. In a former paper, we have
endeavored to give this drama its deepest interpretation by pointing to
the human heart as the central source of all its movements. We shall now
ask our readers to follow us out into these movements themselves,--that,
as before we saw how the world is centred in each human soul, we may now
see how each soul develops itself in the world; for thither it is that
the ever-widening cycles of the Eleusinian epos will inevitably lead us.

And first as an epos of sorrow: though centring in the earthly Demeter,
yet its movement does not limit itself by the remembrance of _her_ nine
days' search; but, in the torch-light procession of the fifth night,
widens indefinitely and mysteriously in the darkness, until it has
inclosed all hearts within the circuit of its tumultuous flight. Thus,
by some secret sympathy with her movements, are gathered together
about the central Achtheia all the _Matres Dolorosoe,_--our Ladies of
Sorrow;--for, like her, they were all wanderers.

They were so by necessity. All unrest involves loss, and thus leads to
search. It matters not if the search be unsuccessful; though the gadfly
sting as sharply the next moment as it did the last, still so must
continue her wanderings. Therefore that Jew, whose mythic fate it is to
wait forever upon the earth, the victim of an everlasting sorrow, is
also an everlasting wanderer. All suffering necessitates movement,--and
when the suffering is intense, the movement passes over into flight.

Therefore it is that the epos of suffering requires not merely time for
its accomplishment, but also space. Ulysses, the "much-suffering," is
also the "much-wandering."

Thus our Lady in the Eleusinian procession of search represents the
restless search of all her children.

Migrations and colonizations, ancient or modern,--what were they but
flights from some phase of suffering,--name it as we may,--poverty,
oppression, or slavery? It was the same suffering Io who brought
civilization to the banks of the Nile.

Thus, from the very beginnings of history or human tradition, out of
the severities of Scythian deserts there has been an endless series of
flights,--nomadic invasions of tribes impelled by no merely barbarian
impulse, but by some deep sense of suffering, flying from their Northern
wastes to the happy gardens of the South. In no other way can you
account for these movements. If you attribute them to ferocity, what
was it that engendered and nourished _that_? Call them the results of
a Divine Providence, seeking by a fresher current of life to revive
systems of civilization which through long ages of luxury have come to
frailty,--still it was through this severity of discipline alone that
Providence accomplished its end. Besides, these nomads were fully
conscious of their bitter lot; and those who fled not in space fled at
least in their dreams,--waiting for death at last to introduce them to
inexhaustible hunting-grounds in their happy Elysium.

The very mention of Rome suggests the same continually repeated series
of antecedent tragedy and consequent wandering,--pointing backward to
the fabled siege of Troy and the flight of Aeneas,--"_profugus_"
from Asia to Italy,--and forward to the quick-coming footsteps of the
Northern _profugi_, who were eager, even this side the grave, to enter
the Valhalla of their dreams.

It is said that the Phoenician cities sent out colonies from a desire of
gain, and because they were crowded at home. It is said, too, that,
in search of gold, thousands upon thousands went to El Dorado, to
California, and Australia; but who does not know that the greater part
of these thousands left their homes for reasons which, if fully exposed,
would reveal a tragedy in view of which gold appears a glittering
mockery?

The great movement of the race westward is but an extension of this
epic flight. Thus, the Pilgrim Fathers of New England,--the grandest
_profugi_ of all time,--or even the bold adventurers of Spain, would
have been moved only by intense suffering, in some form, to exchange
their homes for a wilderness.

The world is full of these wanderings, under various pretences of gain,
adventure, or curiosity, hiding the real impulse of flight. So with the
strong-flowing current in the streets of a great city; for how else
shall we interpret this intricate net-work of human feature and
movement,--this flux of life toward some troubled centre, and then its
reflux toward some uncertain and undefined circumference?

And as Nature is the mirror of human life, so at the source of those
vast movements by which she buries in oblivion her own works and the
works of man there is hidden the type of human suffering, both for the
race and the individual. And hence it is, that, over against the eternal
solitude within us, there ever waits without us a second solitude, into
which, sooner or later, we pass with restless flight,--a solitude
vast, shadowy, and unfamiliar in its outline, but inevitable in its
reality,--haunting, bewildering, overshadowing us!

* * * * *

"Who is it that shall interpret this intricate evolution of human
footsteps, in its meaning of sorrow?--who is it that shall give us
rest?" Such is the half-conscious prayer of all these fugitives,--of
our Lady and all her children. This it is which gives meaning to the
torch-light procession on the fifth night of the Festival; but to-morrow
it shall find an answer in the Saviour Dionysus, who shall change the
flight of search into the pomp of triumph.

* * * * *

But let us pause a moment. It is Palm Sunday! We are not, indeed, in
Syria, the land of palms. Yet, even here,--lost in some far-reaching
avenue of pines, where one could hardly walk upon a summer Sunday
without such sense of joy as would move him to tears,--even here all the
movements of the earth and the heavens hint of most jubilant triumph.
Thus, the green grass rises above the dead grass at our feet; the
leaf-buds new-born upon the tree, like lotos-buds springing up from
Ethiopian marble, give token of resurrection; the trees themselves tower
heavenward; and in victorious ascension the clouds unite in the vast
procession, dissolving in exhalation at the "gates of the sun"; while
from unnumbered choirs arise songs of exultant victory from the hearts
of men to the throne of God!

But whither, in divine remembrance,--whither is it that upon this Sunday
of all Sundays the thoughts of Christendom point? Back through eighteen
hundred years to the triumphant entry of Jesus into Jerusalem, followed
by the children crying, "Hosanna in the highest heavens!" Of this it is
that the processions of Nature, in the resurrections of birth and the
aerial ascension of clouds,--of this that the upward processions of our
thoughts are commemorative!

Thus was the sixth day of the Eleusinia,--when the ivy-crowned Dionysus
was borne in triumph through the mystic entrance of Eleusis, and from
the Eleusinian plains, as from our choirs to-day, ascended the jubilant
Hosannas of the countless multitude;--this was the Palm Sunday of
Greece.

Close upon the chariot-wheels of the Saviour Dionysus followed, in
the faith of Greece, Aesculapius and Hercules: the former the Divine
Physician, whose very name was healing, and who had power over death,
as the child of the Sun; and the latter, who by his saving strength
delivered the earth from its Augean impurities, and, arrayed in
celestial panoply, subdued the monsters of the earth, and at last,
descending to Hades, slew the three-headed Cerberus and took away from
men much of the fear of death. Such was the train of the Eleusinian
Dionysus. If Demeter was the wanderer, he was the conqueror and centre
of all triumph.

And this reminds us of his Indian conquest. What did it mean? Admit that
it may have been only the fabulous march in triumph of some forgotten
king of mortal birth to the farthest limits of the East. Still the fact
of its association with Dionysus stands as evidence of the connection of
human faith with human victory. Let it be that Dionysus himself was only
the apotheosis of victorious humanity. In strict logic this is more than
probable. Yet why apotheosize conquerors at all? Why exalt all heroes to
the rank of gods?

The reason is, that men are unwilling to draw a limited meaning from any
human act. How could they, then, connecting, as they did, all victory
with hope,--how could they fall short of the most exalted hope, of the
most excellent victory; especially in instances like the one now under
our notice, where the material circumstances of the conquest as well
as of the conqueror's life have passed out of remembrance; when for
generations men have dwelt upon the dim tradition in their thoughts, and
it has had time to grow into its fullest significance,--even finding
an elaborate expression in sacred writings, in symbolic ritual, and
monumental entablature? Osiris, who subjected men to his reign of peace,
was also held to be the Preserver of their souls. Even Caesar, had he
lived two thousand years before, might have been worshipped as Saviour.
All extended power, measured by duration in time or vast areas of space,
becomes an incarnate Presence in the world, which awes to the dust
all who resist it, and exalts with its own glory all who trust in it.
Achtheia mourns all failures; and here it is that the human touches the
earth. But they who conquer, these are our Saviours; they shall follow
in the train of Dionysus; they shall lift us to the heavens, and
sanctify in our remembrance the Sunday of Palms!

But Dionysus not only looks back with triumphant remembrance to ancient
conquest, but has his victories in the present, also, and in the great
Hereafter. For triumph was connected with all Dionysiac symbols, hints
of which are preserved to us in representations found upon ancient
vases: such, for instance, as the figure of Victory surmounting the
heads of the ivy-crowned Bacchantes in their mystic orgies; or the
winged serpents which bear the chariot of the victor-god,--as if in
this connection even the reptiles, whose very name (_serpentes_) is
a synonyme for what creeps, are to be made the ministrants of his
conquering flight. The tombs of the ancients from Egypt to Etruria are
full of these symbols. Many of them have become dim as to their meaning
by oblivious time; but enough is evident to indicate the prominence
of hope in ancient faith. This appears in the very multiplicity of
Dionysiac symbols as compared with any other class. Thus, out of
sixty-six vases at Polignano, all but one or two were found to be
Dionysiac in their symbolism. And this instance stands for many others.
The _character_ of the scenes represented indicates the same prominence
of hope, sometimes as connected with the relations of life,--as, for
example, the representation, found upon a sepulchral cone, of a husband
and wife uniting with each other in prayer to the Sun. Frequent
inscriptions--such as those in which the deceased is carefully committed
to Osiris, the Egyptian Dionysus--point in the same direction; as
also the genii who presided over the embalmed dead, a belief in whose
existence surely indicated a hopeful trust in some divine care which
would not leave them even in the grave. Statues of Osiris are found
among the ruins of palaces and temples; but it was in the monuments
associated with death that they dwelt most upon his name and expressed
their faith in most frequent incarnation and inscription.

The epic movement of Eleusinian triumph was in its range as unlimited
as the movement of sorrow. Each found expression in sculptured
monument,--the one hinting of flight into darkness, and the other of
resurrection into light; each in its cycle inclosed the world; each
widened into the invisible; as the wail of Achtheia reached the heart of
Hades, so the paean of Dionysus was lost in the heavens.

* * * * *

But in what manner did this Dionysus make his _avatar_ in the world? For
he must needs have first touched the earth as human child, ere he could
be worshipped as Divine Saviour. Latona must leave the heavens and come
to Delos ere she can give birth to Apollo; for, in order to slay the
serpent, the child must himself be earth-born,--indeed, according to one
representation, he slew the Python out of his mother's arms. Neither the
serpent of Genesis nor the dragon of Revelation can be conquered save
by the seed of the woman. From this necessity of his earthly birth,
the connection of the Saviour-Child with the _Mater Dolorosa_ becomes
universal,--finding its counterpart in the Assyrian Venus with babe in
arm, in Isis suckling the child Horus, and even in the Scandinavian Disa
at Upsal accompanied by an infant. It is from swaddling-clothes, as the
nursling of our Lady, and out of the sorrowful discipline of earth, that
the child grows to be the Saviour, both for our Lady and for all her
children.

Hence, according to the tradition, Dionysus was born of Semele of the
royal house at Thebes; and Jove was his father. A little before his time
of birth,--so the story goes,--Jove visited Semele, at her own rash
request, in all the majesty of his presence, with thunderings and
lightnings, so that the bower of the virgin mother was laid in ruins,
and she herself, unable to stand before the revealed god, was consumed
as by fire. But Jove out of her ashes perfected the birth of his son;
whence he was called the Child of Fire, ([Greek: puripais],)--which
epithet, as well as this part of the fable, probably points to his
connection with the Oriental symbolism of fire in the worship of the
Sun.

And it is worth while, in connection with this, to notice the gradations
by which in the ancient mind everything ascended from the gross material
to a refined spirituality. As in Nature there was forever going on a
subtilizing process, so that

"from the root
Springs lighter the green stalk, from thence the leaves
More aery, last the bright consummate flower
Spirits odorous breathes,"--

and as, in their philosophy, from the earth, as the principle of Nature,
they ascended through the more subtile elements of water, air, and fire,
to a spiritual conception of the universe; so, as regards their
faith, its highest incarnation was through the symbolism of fire, as
representative of that central Power under whose influence all things
arose through endless grades of exaltation to Himself,--so that the
earthly rose into the heavenly, and all that was human became divine.

The enthusiasm of victory and exaltation in the worship of Dionysus
tended of course to connect with him whatsoever was joyous and jubilant
in life. He was the god of all joy. Hence the fable which makes him the
author and giver of wine to men. Wherever he goes, he is surrounded by
the clustering vine and ivy, hinting of his summer glory and of his
kingly crown. Thus, the line of his conquests leads through the richest
fields of Southern Asia,--through the incense-breathing Arabia, across
the Euphrates and the Tigris, and through the flowery vales of Cashmere
to the Indian garden of the world: and as from sea to sea he establishes
his reign by bloodless victories, he is attended by Fauns and Satyrs and
the jovial Pan; wine and honey are his gifts; and all the earth is glad
in his gracious presence. Hence he was ever associated with Oriental
luxuriance, and was worshipped even among the Greeks with a large
infusion of Oriental extravagance, though tempered by the more subdued
mood of the West.

But that depth of Grecian genius, which made it possible for Greece
alone of all ancient nations to develop tragedy to anything like
perfection, insured also even in the most impassioned life the most
profound solemnity. Into the praises of Apollo, joyous as they
were,--where, to the exultant anthem was joined the evolution of the
dance beneath the vaulted sky, as if in his very presence,--for the sun
was his shechinah,--there enters an element of solemnity, which, in
certain connections, is almost overwhelming: as, for instance, in the
first book of the "Iliad,"--where, after the pestilence which has sent
up an endless series of funeral pyres,--after the strife of heroes
and the return of Chryseis to her father, the priest of the angry
Apollo,--after the feast and the libation from the wine-crowned cups,
there follow the _apotropoea_, and the Grecian youths unite in the
song and the dance, which last, both the joyous paean and the tread of
exultant feet, until the setting sun. I know of nothing which to
an equal degree suggests this element of solemnity, that is almost
awe-inspiring from its depth, short of the jubilant procession of
saints, in the Apocalypse, with palms in their hands.

This element is also evident in the worship of Dionysus,--so that the
inspiration of joy must not be taken for the frenzy of intoxication,
though the symbol of the vine has often led to just this
misapprehension. Besides, Dionysus must not be too closely identified
with the Bacchanalian orgies, which were only a perversion of rites
which retained their original purity in the Eleusinia: and this latter
institution, it must be remembered, was from the first under the control
of the state,--and that state at the time the most refined on the face
of the earth.

Surely, it is not more difficult to give a pure and spiritual
significance to a vintage-festival or to the symbolic wine-cup of
Dionysus, than in the rhapsodies of a Persian or Hindu poet to symbolize
the attraction between the Divine Goodness and the human soul by the
loves of Laili and Majnum, or of Crishna and Radha,--to say nothing of
the exalted symbolism attached to the love of Solomon for his Egyptian
princess, and sanctioned by the most delicate taste.

Indeed, is it not true that whatsoever is most sensuous in connection
with human joy, and at the same time pure, is the very flower of life,
and therefore the most consummate revelation of holiness? Nothing in
Nature is so intensely solemn as her summer, in its infinite fulness of
growth and the unmeasured altitude of its heavens. And within the range
of human associations which shall we select as revealing the most
profound solemnity? Surely not the sight of the funeral train, nor of
the urn crowned with cypress,--of nothing which is associated with death
or weakness in any shape;--but the sight of gayest festivals, or the
paraphernalia of palace-halls,--the vision of some youthful maiden of
transcendent beauty crowned with an orange-wreath, within hearing of
marriage-bells and the whisperings of holy love,--or the aspirations of
the dance and the endless breathings of triumphant music. These are they
which come up most prominently in remembrance,--even as the whole race,
in its remembrances, instinctively looks back to the Orient,--to some
Homeric island of the morning, where are the palaces, the choral dances,
and the risings of the sun.[e] And as Memory has the power to purify the
past of all material grossness, Faith has the same power as regards the
present Hence, the closest connection of religious faith with the
most joyous festivals, with a finely moulded Venus or Apollo, with an
Ephesian temple or a splendid cathedral, or the sweetest symphonies of
music, does not mar, but reveals its natural beauty and strength.

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