Demeter and Persephone

"All that day they spent in perfect concord.

Great was the joy that lent each other's spirit,

Closely embracing, free from all their sorrow"

After viewing a number of images depicting Demeter and Persephone together, I found this one to be the most intriguing. It shows Demeter (right) and Persephone (left) after Persephone has returned to her mother from the underworld. She has just told her mother the story of how she was taken to the underworld, and how she was tricked into eating the pomegranate seeds. To represent her fate as the Queen of the Underworld Persephone is holding a pomegranate as she and her mother embrace and kiss. I really like this painting because it is a very different way of showing the two and the contrast between their lives.


Moving on, I found the etiological aspects of the text really interesting. Each culture has different explanations for why things are as they are. Often such explanations are incorporated into their myths and stories, as one is in the story of Persephone's abduction.

"He promised this--among the deathless beings.

And he consented that, as the year circled,

The girl would spend a third in misty darkness,

And two thirds with her mother and the other

Immortals. The goddess did not disobey."

In this passage the phenomena of seasons is explained. While Persephone is in the underworld with Hades it is winter, and when she emerges above ground to be with her mother spring begins and summer follows. As goddess of Agriculture, it is Demeter that controls the seasons according to whether she is with her beloved daughter. I find different culture's ideas about the orgin of, and reason for, the way things are very interesting. It was nice to see one from a Greek point of view in one of their well know myths.