Words of Gold

In the early 19th-century, in Petelia in southern Italy, a small cylinder-shaped amulet was unearthed together with its gold chain. When the amulet was opened it was found to contain a tiny rolled-up plate of pure gold which, when flattened out, was no larger in size than a matchbox (above, shown approximately twice size). On the plate was inscribed a text, which turned out to be the oldest known text which we have, and one of the very few to survive, of the Orphic mysteries of Ancient Greece. 

We know so very little about these ancient mystery schools. The initiates guarded their secrets well, and we must guess what most of their teachings were about. The Petelia Tablet, as it has become known, lifts a small corner of the veil with which time has covered these teachings, but as with the few surviving fragments which we have of the poetry of Sappho, even this small leaf of gold is enough to hint at the intense beauty and poetry of those mysterious teachings.

‘Orphic’ we know comes from the name of the Ancient Greek poet and musician Orpheus, an immensely popular figure in stories of the time, the best-known today of which is the story of his journey to the Underworld in a bid to be reunited with his deceased love Eurydice. To defy Death itself to regain a lost loved one is a powerful theme to which any age can relate, which probably accounts for the enduring fascination of this story. Orpheus also appears in the story of Jason and the Argonauts in their quest for the Golden Fleece. In this story Orpheus takes on the role of Odysseus before him to outwit the Sirens, for when Jason and his crew approach the island of the Sirens, it is Orpheus who takes up his lyre and drowns the Sirens’ alluring song with his enchanting music, allowing the ship to sail safely onwards.

This is the central character of the Orphic mysteries: a character who is both poet, musician and daring adventurer, both in this world and in other unknown realms beyond. Orpheus, like many larger-than-life cultural heroes, exists somewhere between myth and folklore, and his presence apparently was powerful enough to have a mystery school founded in his name. So what does the Petelia Tablet actually tell us? What can we learn from these few brief lines of ancient text rescued from the earth? When translated from its original Ancient Greek, it begins by warning us (that is: the deceased thirsting soul) not to drink from a specific spring in Hades, but instead to seek another to quench our thirst from the Lake of Memory. But, we are warned, the guardians are nearby, and to them we must say:

“I am a child of Earth and the starry Heavens;

But my race is of Heaven alone; and this you know yourselves.

I am parched with thirst and I perish; but give me quickly

refreshing water flowing forth from the Lake of Memory.”

The fragmentary text then closes by reassuring us that the guardians of the Underworld will then allow us to drink from this divine spring, after which we may celebrate with the souls of other heroes. More text would have followed, but this is as much as has survived for us to read. Even this much leaves more than enough room for wondering. Are we being told that our soul is originally from Heaven, that the text is describing a mere metaphor? Or more profoundly, is the Petelia Tablet telling us a great secret: that we originally come from the stars? We might be both of Earth and Heaven, but our race – humankind – is originally from Heaven alone. Looked at in this way the text could not be more specific, and all that we can do is ponder these words of gold, and gaze up at the stars and wonder.

The Fragile Voice of Sappho

She was short and rather unattractive. She was tall, and her beauty was transcendent. Even these descriptions of her appearance, which were themselves written long after her death, conflict completely with each other. But one aspect of her life was generally agreed upon: in a society which tended to view women as second-class citizens, she was widely regarded as the greatest poet of her age. What survives of her poetry is as fragmented as the few facts which we know of her life. It is as if we were to try and assess the genius of Shakespeare through only a few surviving lines from Hamlet or The Tempest. But even if those few lines of Shakespeare were all that existed, we still would know that we were in the presence of a voice of true greatness, and so it is with Sappho of Lesbos.

Sappho lived her life twenty five centuries ago on the large island of Lesbos in Ancient Greece, composing poems which were intended both to be sung in performance for special occasions such as weddings and other celebrations, and as personal expressions of her thoughts and emotions. Today we take the idea of poetry as self-expression for granted, but such was Sappho’s originality that this idea was thought to have begun with her. Before Sappho, poetry was confined to the formal reciting of epic ideals and traditional stories. What I find so touching about her work, and what speaks to me, is the sense of passion for life which she clearly retained even into her later years. True art needs such passion to express itself – and to communicate itself to, and so to touch, others.

Most of Sappho’s poetry was almost certainly lost when Crusaders sacked Constantinople in the 13th-century and destroyed its libraries and cultural treasures. Fragments from other locations have been discovered in such places as ancient refuse pits, inscribed on shards of pottery, and even among the padding used for the wrappings of mummies. What we have managed to rescue from the jaws of time is but a fraction of what once existed, which from contemporary accounts we know to have been a substantial body of work. We are fortunate that other writers who admired her work also quoted from her in their own writings, for it is these which have provided another source of her poetry for us.

Sappho’s is a voice which has endured against all the vagaries of history. I also think of the Gnostic Gospels, buried in a jar in the Egyptian sands, and lying undiscovered for sixteen long centuries – or the charred and blackened manuscript which is our only known copy of the epic of Beowulf, which was so very nearly destroyed by fire. It is as if some voices are simply not meant to be silenced, in spite of all apparent efforts to erase them from history, either wilfully or by the misadventures of time.

Voices are so fragile, and reflect the very fragility of life itself. But their very survival also paradoxically reflects the tenacity of life: the tenacity to endure, to reach beyond the time in which these voices speak, so that they may be heard by others in a future unimaginable to them. Delicate and exquisite, passionate and refined, Sappho’s words remain like rare flowers pressed between the pages of the book of centuries. My slim edition of her poems, which contains all of the few known surviving fragments of her work, seems to speak of a fragile hope, and of that hope’s will to endure against all the odds. 

Artistic rendering of Sappho by William Adolphe Bouguereau

SAPPHO: Stung With Love: Poems and Fragments.
Translated and with an introduction by Aaron Poochigian, and with a preface by Carol Ann Duffy, published by Penguin Classics. 

Echoes of Reality

'Narcissistic' is one of those myth-derived adjectives which has passed into our language. But who was Narcissus? We meet Narcissus in the myths of Ancient Greece, a handsome and vain youth whose self-absorption prevented him from truly loving anyone but himself. Alas for the beautiful nymph Echo, as the myth relates:

Echo had her own character fault: she was always chattering. Hera, the consort of haughty Zeus, tired of Echo's busy tongue, cursed the incessantly-chattering young girl: from that time on, her first and only words were to be the last words somebody else had spoken. People began to shun Echo, for no one likes to be parroted. They treated her unkindly and her friends did not want to be with her any longer. Lonely and bewildered, Echo fled into the forests. 


But then Narcissus appeared on the scene while out on a hunting party with his friends. As soon as Echo saw him, she lost her lonely heart and began to follow him. 

With the unfortunate Echo in mind Sappho, the 7th-century BCE Greek poet from Lesbos, writes:

Foolish child
why do you try
to touch a heart of stone?

Narcissus did indeed have a heart of stone, breaking many hearts of young women and men. Worshipped like a god for his looks, he only took, but never gave. Echo was just one of his many victims. When at last she plucked up enough courage to approach the handsome youth, Narcissus shunned her, angrily telling her to get out of his sight with as much revulsion as if she had been a venomous snake. Deeply hurt, Echo sought shelter far away from people, and found a remote cave in the high mountains where she gradually pined away until her voice was all that remained.  


Nemesis, the goddess of vengeful fate, took mercy upon the girl and decided in turn to punish Narcissus for his grotesque insensitivity and scornful manner. She knew that when he stared into the water of a brook pond, he would see only his own reflection. 

And so it was that he fell madly in love with himself. Countless times he tried to kiss himself, countless times he plunged his arms despairingly into the water seeking to embrace his own mirrored reflection. Then one day he found a deep pool, nearby the cave where Echo's voice still lived,  and stared into its silent depths in heartbreaking yearning for his beloved in the water.

"Why do you keep so utterly beyond reach, my love? Come, my beloved!"
And the voice of Echo repeated: "my beloved... my beloved."

Little by little, like water over a stone, love wore him away until Echo's voice repeated his last sigh: "Love..." and at last, he died. 

Waterhouse

Falling in love with an image of oneself, or one's god(dess) often turns out to be a disastrous projection, for the reality is often quite different from the image of it. The reality is the initiation; the image, at best, is only the yearning for it. Narcissus literally drowned in his own image, driven by the desperate yearning to be united with it. For vain Narcissus, it was too late for him to understand that we mirror ourselves best, not in our own image, but in that of another.