Monday April 16

Demeter and Persephone: we end where we begin

T. S. Elliot: The 4 Quartets:

1) Burnt Norton
2) East Coker
3) The Dry Salvages
4) Little Gidding

"We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time" ~Stanza 10 of Little Gidding

In the Meta you end up where you started, but are in a different place. Like Dorothy with Kansas and Oz

Lucius has to eat roses to transform: "... and the fire and the rose are one"

"I'm sorry but you are all asses, and you all need to be transformed" ~ Dr. Sexson

1 Corinthians 15: 52- "we shall be changed in the twinkling of an eye"

Wallace Stevens transformed religion: "To believe in a fiction that you know to be fiction and there being nothing else."

"The great goddess" with many functions

"The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers" ~ King Henry VI, part II

Joyce had to beat Shakespeare, who had to beat Ovid, so Joyce really had to beat Ovid

It took Shakespeare 36 plays to beat Ovid

Aros and Psyche is the best version of a woman's psychology

psyche = the soul

This is the Ulysses butterfly!

CUPID AND PSYCHE:

• falling in love with love
• then Cupid runs home to mommy when he gets an owy
• mommy makes it all better
• he leaves Psyche pregnant and barefoot
• Cupid is a displacement of the Greek god Eros- who was strong and powerful
• The fulfill her tasks she has to get her wings and develop her soul
• she got revenge on her sisters though, although she is Innocent
• she made them think that Cupid wanted them, and told him that the wind would 'wafe' them down the hill like she did, but they fall to their deaths
• Cupid:
• allegory: can't help it because the names of the characters mean what they represent: soul and love
• Hans My Hedgehog: the Storyteller
• Mother's in law: critical, and demanding for their son

Psyche's tasks:

1. separate wheat barley, etc pg 132


2. get the sheep's wool pg 134


3. get the water pg 135


4. get the box of beauty from Persephone in the underworld pg 137

Persephone:

• likes it in the underworld because of the power that she has there
• Psyche has to follow specific and direct instructions to get to Persephone
• the story to get to the underworld reminds you of the major story
• Lucius has to go through his trial in order to transform into what they had to be

WARNING:

• when a fairy tale tells you "don't do it" they always do
• you have to disobey to get a moral, there is no story if you obey
• you need to do the thing that you should not do because you were supposed to
• this reminded me of the Mirror of Erised from Harry Potter

• Psyche opened the box because she was supposed to
• Both Snow White and Sleeping Beauty fell into a deep sleep and had to be rescued by their Prince
• it wasn't Zeus's fault that he was a man whore because he had been stung by the arrow of love - HA!
• voluptuous= pleasure
• "Every man you ever slept with is a man in transformation" ~ Dr. Sexson
• Bestiality= disturbing