The Negro-Spiritual is a genre in music, created by Black slaves before emancipation, and which has endured. As you know, Frederick Douglass’ textbook was the Bible. The Bible is not easy to read but it offers a “paradise lost,” a very humble saviour who rewards those who are in pain. Such themes are precious to oppressed people. Heaven also offers winged beings: angels. They can fly, which one cannot do if one is in shackles. Uncharitable owners kept their slaves in shackles or punished them by putting them in shackles. It was extremely painful and it could break a person’s body. The word anamnesis is linked to the Negro-Spiritual. One goes back in time and remembers that there is a promised land.
The poor, or those whose life has been broken, know they will be saved. Life eternal awaits them and those who suffer often commit suicide. There is life eternal and they may be reborn. Rebirth is a central theme in world literature and the arts. Nature awakens when Spring arrives. Those who cannot read know that there is a circle and a cycle. Vivaldi’s Four Seasons makes so much sense. The fourth movement contains a restful melody. In Winter, nature rests. The music suggests a form of suspension.
John Milton’s Paradise Lostis also Paradise regained. The desperate poets of 19th-century France looked upon man as remembering paradise. He cannot, therefore, find a comfortable place on earth. Baudelaire’sAlbatroslooks clumsy on the deck of ships. Sailors laugh. In full flight, he is divine. This is a powerful image. Le Souvenir, remembering is an important theme in 19th-century French literature, beginning with Lamartine. Le Lac is an essential poem. Lamartine has lost the woman he loved. She has died, but he asks nature to remember. To be remembered is an option. My favourite line in Lamartine is:
Un seul être vous manque, et tout est dépeuplé ! (L’Isolement) [Only one being is missing, and all is gone!]
Black slaves turned to religion, mixing the music of Western Africa and Christian themes. (See Negro Spiritual, simple English, Wikipedia). It is music one sang while working. The voyageurs of New France sang as the paddled their Amerindian birch bark canoe. One had to be a singer to be hired. The favourite song of voyageurs was À la claire fontaine. It ended with the words I will never forget you: Jamais je ne t’oublierai.
The Blacks also knew French fables based on Reynard the Fox. These are told in Uncle Remus, by Joel Chandler Harris. Such narratives can be seen as African-American, because Br’er Rabbit, brother rabbit, outfoxes the Fox. He is the trickster. Yet, Uncle Remus bears considerable resemblance to Reynard, the trickster. Many Acadians deported in 1755, made their way to Louisiana. They walked through Georgia. They had lost everything. Some walked back to Acadia. However, their land had been settled by the British. I gave a paper on Reynard, in Hull, England, in 2001. I saw the tombs of my husband’s ancestors at Beverley Minster. David died in August 2001.
Black slaves found sustenance in the Bible, and created a repertoire of songs that speak to the soul. The negro-spiritual is one of the United States’ most important legacies. It is unique and expresses both despair and hope.
It is within the nature of the human mind to invent what is lacking. We cannot fly, but birds fly. Flying is so powerful a wish that we have invented angels and archangels who inhabit not only the Old and the New Testaments, but also belong to other cultures. For instance, there are Islamic angels and their role is that of messengers, or oracles. According to the Old Testament, Gabriel is the archangel who announced to Mary that she was bearing Jesus. In Islam, Gabriel (Jibra’il) is one of four archangels whose duty it is to deliver God’s messages to prophets. We also have “pagan” angels.
The Wish to Fly
The wish to fly has led to the invention of aircrafts. Humans can now fly to the moon. However, this post is not about the history of aviation. It is about the wish to fly as expressed in Greco-Roman mythology. Not that such a wish begins with Greco-Roman mythology but that Greco-Roman mythology tells the story of Pegasus and Icarusand, by the same token, that of their entourage: Bellerophon, who rode Pegasus, Daedalus, who crafted wings for Icarus, not to mention Medusa and Chimera, female monsters.
Pegasus is the son of Poseidon, a god, and the Gorgon Medusa, a monster
Medusa was slain by Perseus
Pegasus, a winged horse, was tamed by Bellerophon
Bellerophon, a slayer of monsters, tamed Pegasus
Pegasus helped Bellerophon kill the Chimera, also a monster
There are many winged creatures in Greek mythology, but the most famous are PegasusandIcarus.
Pegasus,[1]is a winged horse who “carrie[d] the thunder and lightning of Zeus [Jupiter].”[2] He is the son of Poseidon,[3] the “god of the sea, earthquakes, storms, and horses.” (See Poseidon, Wikipedia.) His mother, however, is Medusa,[4] a mortal Gorgon and a monster. She had living venomous snakes in place of hair. The coupling of gods and mortals sometimes led to the birth of “monsters.”
Medusa was killed by Perseus, who, like Bellerophon, was also a slayer of monsters. In order to destroy Medusa, Perseus was provided with “winged sandals, Hades‘ cap of invisibility and a sickle.” As mentioned above, Hades is the god of the Underworld, but he is also capable of making himself invisible, another one of mankind’s wishes.
Pegasus was born from the blood flowing from the severed head of Medusa, his mother. A lesser sibling, Chysaor, was also born from the blood pouring out of Medusa’s head. Both were Poseidon’s offsprings. (See Gorgon, Wikipedia, and Gorgo/ Medusa, the Oxford Classical Dictionary.)
Perseus, bronze sculpture by Benvenuto Cellini, 1545–54 (Photo credit: Art Resource, NY, and the Encyclopaedia Britannica)
Bellerophon and Chimera
Pegasus was tamed byBellerophon, who slayed monsters. In fact, Pegasus helped Bellerophon killChimera, a female and mortal sibling of Cerberus/ Kerberos (GR), the three-headed dog who guarded the entrance to the Underworld.
Bellerophon’s story
Bellerophon was falsely accused of trying to rape Anteia (later called Stheneboea). Anteia’s husband, Proetus, sent him to Iobates, king of Lycia and Anteia’s father. Bellerophon was to deliver a sealed letter in which Proetus was requesting that Iobates kill the bearer of the letter, Bellerophon.
Convinced that Bellerophon would not survive what seemed an impossible mission, Iobates asked him to slay Chimera. He also asked him to fight the Solymi and the Amazons. With the help of Pegasus, Bellerophon performed the tasks assigned to him successfully. Iobates therefore married him to his daughter.
Bellerophon died when he flew Pegasus to Olympus, home of the twelve Olympians. Flying to Olympus was hubris, or “extreme pride and self-confidence,” on the part of Bellorophon. (See Hubris, Wikipedia.) The gods of antiquity always punished hubris. Pegasus, a zoomorphic being, did not perish because he was born a winged creature. No god would punish him for being what he was. After Bellerophon’s death, Pegasus became a constellation and was made a symbol of immortality in Latin Mythology.
“In late antiquity Pegasus’s soaring flight was interpreted as an allegory of the soul’s immortality; in modern times it has been regarded as a symbol of poetic inspiration.”[5]
Daedalus and Icarus by Charles Le Brun (1619–1690), c. 1645, (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Master craftsman Daedalus had a son named Icarus. Daedalus had built the labyrinth inside which the Minotaur, part bull, part man, was held. Daedalus crafted wings for his son Icarus who wanted to fly, which was hubris. Icarus defiantly flew so close to the sun, the god Helios, that the wax used to attach wings to his body melted. He therefore fell to his death into the sea of Icarus, named after him. Mere mortals cannot fly.
Daedalus had accompanied Icarus, but managed to land in Sicily and he became an Etruscan, ancient Italy, celebrity. His image appears on a gold coin or seal called a bulla. However, there are divergent accounts of Daedalus’ fate. Greek historians differ. According to one account, Daedalus became jealous of Talos, his nephew and apprentice, who invented the saw, thereby surpassing his mentor, Daedalus.
Daedalus was known as the best craftsman. Talos’ invention therefore aroused Daedalus’ jealousy. So envious was Daedalus that he pushed Talos off the Acropolis. The goddess Athena saved Talos by turning him into a partridge, a metamorphosis. Talos acquired a new name, Perdix (partridge orune perdrix [FR]). As for Daedalus, he left Athens. (See Daedalus, Wikipedia.)
Conclusion
Pegasus could fly. He was a beautiful white and winged horse. But in Greek mythology, one does not defy the gods with impunity. Bellerophon tried to fly Pegasus to mount Olympus, attracting the wrath of the gods. He therefore fell to his death. For his part, Icarus soared so high that the sun, Helios, melted the wax that kept his wings attached to his body. So he too fell to his death.
The story of Pegasus is an interesting case of zoomorphism. Only his wings differentiate Pegasus from a horse. Similarly, only their wings differentiate angels from human beings. However, Chimera combined many features and was viewed as a monster. She was in fact grotesque but not in the same way as gargoyles and the large number of figures ornamenting misericords. TheMedieval Bestiaryis its own world. Or is it the other way around? Greco-Roman Mythology is its own world?
I should note that:
“Chimera, or chimère, in architecture, is a term loosely used for any grotesque, fantastic, or imaginary beast used in decoration.”[6]
Zoomorphism is a complex subject. For instance, we have yet to discuss shapeshifting beings: lycanthropy or the werewolf(le loup-garou), a dual incarnation with a human literary counterpart, Robert Louis Stevenson‘s Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.
The Chimera of Arezzo, bronze, Etruscan, 5th century BCE; in the Museo Archeologico, Florence. (Photo credit: Scala/Art Resource, New York & Britannica)
Sources and Resources
Robert Graves, The Golden Fleece (London: Cassell, 1944)
Edith Hamilton, Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes (Little, Brown & Company, 1942)
You will find below, among related articles, a post that tells about the origin of Saint Valentine’s Day. It’s the final and rather amusing post in a short series of posts on St Valentine’s Day. We’ve discussed the Lupercalia, pastorals, préciosité, pancakes, etc., and all these posts are related to Valentine’s Day.
For Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1343 – 25 October 1400), the 14th of February was the day when birds mated. It’s a lovely legend. Othon III de Grandson devoted a third of his poems on stories surrounding St Valentine’s Day.
Moreover, Chaucer was familiar with the French courtly love tradition as he had translated, but not in its entirety, the Roman de la Rose, by Guillaume de Lorris, who wrote the first 4058 lines circa 1230. The poem was completed by Jean de Meun who composed an additional 17,724 lines. Chaucer’s Romaunt of the Rose is included in his Legend of Good Women, a poem.
The six tapestries of The Lady and the Unicorn are also associated with Valentine’s day and Chaucer. They were commissioned by Jean le Viste, described as a “powerful nobleman at the court of Charles VII” (22 February 1403 – 22 July 1461). (See The Lady and the Unicorn, Wikipedia.) The tapestries belong, in part, to the courtly love tradition. Only a virgin could capture a unicorn, which suggests platonic love. However, the horn of the unicorn is a phallic symbol.
As for cards, the first was written by a saint and martyr. According to Britannica, “[f]ormal messages, or valentines, appeared in the 1500s, and by the late 1700s commercially printed cards were being used.”[i] They became popular in the 19th century.
With respect to Charles d’Orléans, he was taken prisoner at the Battle of Agincourt, on 25 October 1415, and spent twenty-four years in England. After he returned to France, he helped disseminate Othon III de Grandson’s Valentine stories in courtly circles.
We have several incunables (books printed between 1450 and 1501) combining the printed text and illuminations. They cannot be shown in this blog if it is to posted on or near 14 February 2013. Chaucer’s Tales of Canterbury is an incunable, printed by William Caxton, a fascinating gentleman. But the Ellesmere Chaucer is a famous illuminated manuscript, housed in the Huntington Library, in San Marino, California. (See Ellesmere Chaucer, Wikipedia.)
