Demeter is become the
divine, sorrowing mother. Kore, the goddess of summer, is become
Persephone, the goddess of death, still associated with the forms
and odours of flowers and fruit, yet as one risen from the dead
also, presenting one side of her ambiguous nature to men's
gloomier fancies. Thirdly, there is the image of Demeter
enthroned, chastened by sorrow, and somewhat advanced in age,
blessing the earth in her joy at the return of Kore. The myth has
now entered upon the third phase of its life, in which it becomes
the property of those more elevated spirits, who, in the decline
of the Greek religion, pick and choose and modify, with perfect
freedom of mind, whatever in it may seem adapted to minister to
their culture. In this way the myths of the Greek religion become
parts of an ideal, visible embodiments of the susceptibilities
and intentions of the nobler kind of souls; and it is to this
latest phase of mythological development that the highest Greek
sculpture allies itself."
This illustration of the divination by which the man of culture
possesses himself of a half-forgotten and obscurely recorded
experience and rehabilitates and interprets it, is so complete that it
makes amplification superfluous.
Pages:
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76