The Happiness Myth_ An Expose - Jennifer Hecht [140]
Demeter was the goddess of grain and the harvest, a sister of Zeus and Hades. She had a daughter called Kore, the maiden, a pretty young goddess who liked to pick flowers and play in the fields. Demeter had Kore by Zeus, her brother. We take the incest in Greek myth rather for granted, partly because the gods were all family, but why write it that way? Of course, the problem is worse than the fact that mother and father are siblings. One day little Kore disappears. Demeter goes looking for her, begging any possible witnesses to tell her what happened. The sun speaks up. He has seen what happened to Kore, and, softened by Demeter’s maternal grief, he tells her: Zeus allowed his brother Hades, Lord of the Underworld, to take the girl. Hades had used a flower as a lure and caught her up in his carriage. She screamed as he took her away:
He caught her up reluctant on his golden car and bore her away lamenting. Then she cried out shrilly with her voice, calling upon her father, the Son of Cronos, who is most high and excellent. But no one, either of the deathless gods or of mortal men, heard her voice, nor yet the olive-trees bearing rich fruit…she cried to her father, the Son of Cronos. But he was sitting…in his temple…and receiving sweet offerings from mortal men. So [Hades] was bearing her away by leave of Zeus on his immortal chariot—his own brother’s child and all unwilling.4
Having listened to the sun, Demeter is in an apoplectic fury at what these men, her brothers, have done to her little girl. She responds by not letting anything grow on earth. She is the goddess of grain and agriculture, and she shuts herself down and it all freezes over. Turning her back on the world of the gods, she dips out of sight, masquerading as a baby nurse for a mortal family—the king and queen of Eleusis—who sense she’s a bit of a goddess and minister to her sadness. A woman named Iambe tells stories, cracks jokes, and even strips naked in front of Demeter, until at last she forgets her misery for a moment and laughs.
Faced with a world where nothing will grow, Zeus confronts Hades and makes him agree to return the girl to her mother. There is a rapturous reunion. But as soon as mother and child have thrown their arms around each other, Demeter has a bad thought and asks her daughter sharply, Did you eat anything while down there? If she has done so, Demeter explains, the girl will be bound to Hades for a third of every year. The girl responds that when she found out she was allowed to go home, “I sprang up at once for joy; but he secretly put in my mouth sweet food, a pomegranate seed, and forced me to taste against my will.” It is a pretty straightforward allusion to rape. It is also important to hear the rest of the girl’s story: As he let her go (again, only at Zeus’s command), Hades told Kore that she could do worse than to stay and be his bride. While she is there, she is royalty, Queen of the Underworld, and all would worship her. Note also that what he tricked her into doing was sweet, by her own description.
That part gets played down because the story is told from Demeter’s point of view: its great version is the Homeric “Hymn to Demeter.” Demeter has lost her child for a third of every year. That is why there is winter: for one third of the year, the pining goddess will not let anything grow. Kore, no longer a maiden, is now called Persephone, and when she returns to her mother—and to her family, the gods of Olympus—each year, it is springtime and the world rejoices. If it were called “Hymn to Persephone,” it might begin when Kore first sees Hades approaching amid the fields of blossoms, luring her close with a false flower, then the terror, the abduction, the force or seduction, the sweetness of the pomegranate seed, the fear, the delight, the flattery, the pleasure in being far from home, being a queen, being unreachable by her mother. This is the