Pesephone

This is mostly a retelling of the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, also known as the story of the abduction of Persephone. This story seems to hold significance for a lot of people and I wanted to see what I could discover in it if I worked with it. This is what I found. I hope to illustrate it by the end of the summer.


A long time ago, when anything could still happen and gods were as real as you and I, there was a girl called Persephone. She was the daughter of summer-haired Demeter, the earth goddess. It was Demeter who caused apples and wheat to grow, who gave life to all the trees and grasses and living things of the earth. Her gentle hands gave birth to the flowers, made the breezes warm, made the streams flow. And lovely Persephone was her mother’s pride and joy. For her the days were full of sunlight and laughter and music.

Often she would go with the nymphs of the forest or the river to the meadows, where they would play and sing and pick flowers. One day as the dryads were sitting on the grass, lazy with the summer sunshine, Persephone went off over the hills alone. Farther and farther she wandered, into fields filled with flowers. She went on, gathering leaves and blossoms until her arms were full. She turned to go back to the shade of the trees and the company of the nymphs, but stopped as she saw a new flower.

Surely there had never been anything like it. It was growing on a bush covered in thorns, yet the flower itself was the strangest and most beautiful she had ever seen. Its many petals were a deeper red than that of poppies, and it filled the hillside with its fragrance. Amazed at its beauty, she reached out with both her soft hands to take the blossom. As she did, she heard a terrible thunder behind her.

She turned, frightened. The earth itself had split open and rising from the gorge was a golden chariot pulled by night-black horses. They stamped and snorted, their small eyes red like cinders. And in the chariot was a dark-cloaked man. When Persephone saw him she knew him to be an immortal like herself, for he was far too tall and formidable to be a human man.

She stood there on the hillside, her bright hair blowing around her and the flowers dropping from her hand. The only sound was the hard breathing of the horses. The scent of the rose was overpowering, hypnotizing. Then he seized her, pulling her up onto the chariot platform. She screamed, flailing her fist against him, but he cracked his whip and they were borne down into the cold earth.

Down they rushed, faster and faster. The split in the ground above them had closed again, leaving them in darkness. Down they went into the underworld. For she knew now that the man in the chariot was Hades, ruler of the dead. He had seen her running on the hillside, had loved her. Now he had carried her down into this darkness to be his bride. Persephone had heard of this place but never thought to see it. Here the souls of the dead wandered aimlessly, sad misty shapes without substance.

When Persephone saw where she was, all her hope flew from her like a flock of blackbirds. I shall never see sunlight again, she thought. Hades showed her all the wonders that lay within his kingdom, but she never spoke a word. To him she seemed like a glass doll, fragile and perfect and silent. He hardly recognized her as the shining, singing girl who had entranced him on the hillside. When taken by the hand she would go wherever she was led, but left alone she would only sit in the room Hades had given her.

For her it was as if the world had been inverted – sunlight had been replaced by darkness, laughter by despair. She hardly knew herself anymore. At night she dreamed of her queenly mother. “Persephone?” came that sweet voice. “Persephone? Where are you? Persephone!” In the dream Demeter was wandering the fields, searching for her daughter, the rain in her hair.

“I’m here,” Persephone whispered. “I’m here. . .”

Hades tried to be kind, but his black hair and big hands frightened Persephone. Her bed was covered in beautiful silk sheets, but she never noticed. He left beautiful jewelry wrought of silver and gold, but she would not touch it. He brought her to caverns full of the living jewels of the earth, shimmering faintly in their own light. He handed her a poppy carved from a single glowing ruby, but she burst into tears and ran from the cavern. Hades felt his heart would break.

When Demeter had heard Persephone’s screams she had run to find the girl. Over the fields she went, through the valleys and into every village. The child was nowhere to be found. Farther and farther she wandered, asking everyone she met if they had seen Persephone. But no one had been near, no one had seen what had happened.

In her search for her daughter Demeter began to neglect the earth. She was so sorrowful she did not care when the apple blossoms withered on the tree. The leaves on the trees turned brown and drifted to the ground without her touch. Fruits disappeared one by one. Animals hid themselves. At last even the sun grew smaller and more distant, not wanting to see the earth so barren, so hard.

At first the people of the earth were frightened by this emptiness, but as time passed they grew hungry with no food to sustain them. “Great goddess!” they pled. “Restore life to the earth! What have we done to deserve such suffering?”

Demeter turned cold eyes to them. “Where is my daughter?” The people were silent. They had no answer for her, and her dark cloak swirled as she strode away from them. At last a wind began to blow from the north, bringing a terrible cold with it. The streams froze in their beds and the sky turned grey. The soil grew so hard that nothing could have grown in it, even had Demeter been willing.

But the goddess’s great heart was wounded sore by the loss of the one thing most precious to her. Such a grief came upon her that she shrouded her shining face with a deep hood the color of night. Her gentle hands grew clenched and claw-like. Her beautiful hair became like dead grass and her face grew harsh, the face of an old woman. Still colder and still harder the earth became, barren of all beauty.

The people were starving now; the children clutched at their mothers’ skirts and begged for food. But there was no food, no grain, no fruit, no milk. The people cried to the gods above for help, fearing the skies too were empty. And when even the gods themselves could no longer bear to see the earth so desolate, they sent for Demeter.

She stood before them on the fragrant mountain Olympus, bitter as old lemons. They offered her rich gifts: bolts of grass-green silk, strings of tiny bells, ribbons in beautiful colors, the sweet nectar of the gods. But she would have none of their presents and would listen to none of their soothing words. In vain they asked her to restore life to the world. At last Zeus motioned that the other gods be silent and he himself, the greatest of the gods, begged his sister to relent.

Demeter threw back her dark cloak and her face shone with anger, dazzling even the gods. “How dare you! How dare you treat me so, like some child who can be bribed! I want Persephone back and until I have her, I don’t care if the rest of the world lives or dies.” And even great Zeus, the thunder-thrower, was so amazed at the glory of her rage that he told the goddess where her fair daughter was. He sent swift-footed Hermes as a messenger to win Hades over and return his sorrowful bride to Demeter.
Golden Hermes sped down through the stone corridors on light feet, his wand parting the mist. And in the dreary throne room he found Hades and sad Persephone sitting on their jeweled chairs before the many shadows of the dead. With winged words he told the dark king of Zeus’s order. Persephone’s eyes sparked for the first time in months. She ran to Hermes, who was her half-brother, and threw her arms around him. Then she hurried to fetch her sandals and her mantle.

Hades came to her as she was getting ready to leave. “I’ll miss you,” he said, his eyes not meeting hers, and she knew it was true. “I love you…” He was holding a pomegranate in his had. “Here,” he said, cutting it open and breaking it in halves. “Take this, at least.”

She turned, trying to judge his face. They both knew what he was asking. All her life she had heard it – “You mustn’t eat the food of the dead.” “If a living person goes down in to Hades, they retain a small chance of escaping. But if once they take food or drink, all hope is lost.” “You become one of them when you eat their food. Don’t touch anything they give you, darling!”

She looked at the pomegranate in his hand. It was a deep red, the color of blood and poppies and love. Take it, his eyes said. Afterwards she never knew why she did it, but she brought the fruit to her mouth. The taste of its bitter-sweet juice filled her, stung her lips and her throat. And he was eating the smooth seeds too, so beautiful she wanted to cry. “I love you,” she said, and ran out to where Hermes was waiting.

When they reached the surface she was shocked at the bleakness of the earth. The air was cold and steely clouds masked the sky. A harsh wind blew at the cloak of a solitary figure. “Mother?” Persephone stepped forward. As her foot touched the stony soil a shudder went through it and shoots of grass burst through the earth. Soft leaves appeared on trees before her very eyes, the green penetrating every inch of soil. She watched it spread, rippling, to the horizon until the whole world was green. Flowers blossomed and birds called to each other in confusion. A frozen stream coming from the cave melted and began to flow through the valley. The clouds split and a white sun shone weakly through. The cloaked figure turned, amazed at this sudden change. Mother and daughter recognized each other at the same time and ran to each other.

Demeter embraced Persephone, her rich hair falling over her daughter like wings. Here they were together again, something that hours ago had seemed quite impossible. And yet, there was something different about the girl. She held her daughter back to look at her face, and the eyes that looked back were somehow deeper than they had been. Where before her face had been sweet, childlike, there was now something thoughtful. What happened?” she asked, and Persephone told her the entire story. When she got to the pomegranate her mother gasped. “To think that my own brother would do that to you! Why, I’ll - ”

“He didn’t force me to do anything, Mother,” said Persephone in a quiet voice.

Demeter’s face froze. “You mean you chose to eat it? But now you’ll have to stay! Now you’re one of them! Don’t you see what you have done?”

“I understand it, Mother. And I love him.” As the goddess looked at Persephone’s face she hardly recognized her daughter. Her skin was pale from her long stay underground, the pupils of her hope-colored eyes wide from the darkness. And her expression was changed a little, though Persephone herself probably hadn’t noticed it. She was more woman now than child.

In the end Zeus judged that since Persephone had only eaten half the pomegranate, she would divide her time in halves between the earth and the underworld. And so she spent that spring and summer with her mother as she had always done, wandering the bright fields with her arms full of flowers. But at the end of summer she returned to the welcoming darkness of Hades. Once more Demeter withdrew into mourning and all the while her daughter was underground the whole earth was empty and cold. But in the spring when Persephone returned, the wheel of the seasons continued turning and spring followed winter again.

And so each year when the green growing things are starting to show above the black earth, Demeter waits to see Persephone rising from the ground, her hair shining like a second sun. And each year when Hades smells the smoky air of autumn he listens for the sound of her quick footsteps in the stone passageway. Because she always comes back.