Persephone

Laurence Binyon on myth

Persephone by Laurence Binyon

Laurence Binyon’s poem is a straightforward retelling of the mythic story. Persephone, a fair creature, is carried off to the underworld by Hades, the aftermath of some grubby deal. Although Zeus had given Persephone to Hades in bargain, Hades abducted her anyway, stealing her from a fragrant garden where she was contemplating flora, sun and sky.

Now a new deal is made, or rather offered, by Hades.

You can be here, it’s true, away from the sun, he says to her. You shall never see the sun again, nor smell the scented air, not see the Earth in all its fine phases as the years turn and move about. But you shall be my queen, here, queen of hell. An endless and ever-growing dominion. And is that not worth losing something? Is that not worth forsaking earthly existence, above-ground living, the old way you spent your days?

This Persephone cannot accept. No deal was made that she bought or signed. Nothing was ever done with her want or her permission.

Is this not savagery? she says. Is this not monstrous evil, an act of wickedness without cause? To steal me away is an act of barbaric cruelty. To cut off a life — and not a mortal life but a life undying — and to force it to reside here is more than is just. And it’s more than I can bear.

They discuss this for some time.

Above their domain, upon the Earth inhabited by men, Demeter, mother of Persephone, scours existence for her lost daughter. She’s goddess of agriculture, goddess of plentiful harvests and full bushels, and now her duties go undone.

Does she neglect them in the frenzied search? Or is she, vain and wrathful as the gods can be, punishing humanity for something beyond the ken of man? Making mankind suffer for what Hades has done, and what Hades makes all men suffer in their turn.

Binyon does not say.

But all of this is happening. The consequences bitter and endless. Mankind sickening, weakening, starving. Our species losing the bitter war against poverty and privation. All because Hades wanted what he may not have.

In the underworld itself, Persephone and Hades still argue. She tells him that depriving her of what she had was murder, and worse than that, it was an endless crime. To cease her seeing of the sky, her enjoyment of the world. For ever. It is so cruel. It is so cruel.

While Hades tries, quite plaintively, to win her round.

After all, he has forever to make his case. What’s done is done. And what has gone wrong may not yet be made right.

Unless something quite different comes about. A new deal is struck, with Zeus himself underwriting. Only then may an emissary of the living and the gods descend the steep path into hell and bring Persephone home. And how likely is that all to happen?

And yet, unlikely though it be, it is Hermes, messenger, who arrives from the overworld. He is bearing just such a deal, a deal from the king of the gods.

Persephone is saved, retrieved, stolen back.

Rejoicing, jubilations.

But there are conditions. As Persephone returns to the overworld, it’s made clear to her this deal in which she has an interest. She can return, see the world above ground, greet her mother Demeter whose neglect of her duties to mankind can not staunch. She may smell the scented air, gaze upon green fields and flowers, look at the great white-blue of cloud and sky. But there’s a twist. She may be liberated, but she is not liberated for all time. No, Persephone must return. She must return for half of all time. Her spell outside hell will be but a sojourn. A holiday, vain respite. And she must go back. She must always go back in the end.

When Persephone emerges, she sees all she had lost and thought lost for good. She sees the world as a great garden from which she was carried off.

But the sight is not a good one, not one of unmixed good. For she knows that though her time in the light and in the air is fine — is better than what she feared she’d forever face — she knows also that she must yet return.

Her pity builds for those who have only one destination in life, an inevitable fate that cannot be bargained with or argued away. For they cannot return to life and the world she sees, once their time has come and the ferryman must be paid.

Poor unhappy souls, Persephone says, to know this in advance. How short their hours are, how little their time.

But come, she says to the gods, her fellows.

There is still time for our delight. There is still a moment for happiness, for love, for contentment still to arrive.

Though I must too soon return, let us make what we can of what we have. The air is sweet; the flowers bloom. And happiness on Earth still reigns. Let us spend each our days as we always would, and banish thoughts of where I have been, and where I must once more go.