/lit/ - Literature

The most stimulating aspect of Hades as a figure that I've found in my attempts to distinguish him, is his relationship with Persephone. This aspect concerns the heart of Hades, whether he is ultimately a empathetic and romantic figure, or a cold, covetous and inhumanly authoritarian one.

I could diverge onto the figure of Persephone for pages upon pages, but I want to focus here on Hades. The name of their myth paints a stong picture, the Rape of Persephone. I assume most of us know that this is a result of the transition of languages, the original word used being harpazo, which carries no connotation or rape or sexual violence, but instead has a meaning more akin to rapture, defined as the act of being carried off to another place by a powerful force, often painted as supernatural, or a overwhelming emotion. It has the connotation of being seized by force or violence, but not as an act of rape. The aspect of rape didn't first appear until much later in Roman writings.

In any case, there are two ways I see of portraying Hades in this myth, one as this frightful, frigid God of greed and material wealth who coveted Persephones beauty and stole her from the earth, where she became the withered, hideous and dreadful Goddess of the Dead when removed from her mother and her home, or at the opposite end, we can see Hades as this lonely, sympathetic figure with a warm heart beneath his cold surface who fell in love with Persephone, not out of greed or covetousness, but because he saw something in her that touched him and wanted to share his kingdom with her, where Persephone isn't corrupted by Hades but rather is empowered, drawing strength from accepting her station, stepping into her role as the powerful and radiant Queen of the Dead, guiding and initiating lost souls into their new life in the Underworld.

I see the image of Hades as a sympathetic figure painted more, having demonstrated empathy in his myths, as when Orpheus brought tears to his eyes with the song of his wife. One aspect that is still foggy to me though is whether or not he stole Persephone away with Zeus's permission, or if they met and mutually fell in love and she agreed to go with him, using the abduction as a scapegoat for her overbearing mother. I'm still trying to piece together the full conception of how the events in this myth took place

>>7037241
Surely somebody here has detailed knowledge of what occurred with both Hades and Persephone when he first took her to the Underworld and the events that preceded it, if and how they met before her descent.

>>7037352
Yeah. But tl;dr

>>7037352
He raped his little sister, Persephone.

>>7037355
It doesn't take as long as it might seem.

>>7037241
>>7037074
For fuck's sake, you're treating this like there's some sort of underlying, true Hades for you to get an image of. The Hades of one myth can't be said to be the Hades of another. There is no multi-faceted personality there, they're two separate, barely related personalities that serve a purpose only for that particular telling of that particular myth.

>>7037382
"True" might not be the right word, but I'm looking to construct within my mind the most complete and complex vision of Hades that I can that incorporates all of these disparate aspects into one unified figure.

I'd also just like to hear other people's thoughts in regards to Hades and other mythological figures in general, which takes they find interesting and any deeper meaning they might understand about them

>>7037359
Is that the interpretation that you prefer out of all of them? Obviously it's the most familiar conception of the myth, but is there any reason in particular you think it works symbolically?

>>7037412
It's not possible to incorporate the disparate aspects because they're essentially incompatible. If all aspects of a mythological character happen to be compatible, it's either random happenstance, or that the character has so few myths in which they're involved, from such a specific area and time that they've not propagated.
Greeks and Romans both would incorporate Gods from the places they conquered or visited into their own pantheons, as best they fit.
Take Ancient City A (ACA) and Ancient City B (ACB). Both have fertility goddesses based around the idea of water. In ACA, they have a wellspring, so their goddess is associated with things that sit still, calm, peaceful; a hearth goddess. In ACB, they have a huge rushing river, so their fertility goddess is associated with travel, change, perhaps with the tides: a lunar goddess. One city conquers the other, both goddesses are merged, given the same name. The myths told about the new goddess will be incompatible. They're only the same on the surface, the further you dig into their stories, the less alike they'll be.

>>7037453
I'm well aware of this anon, as I referenced in my first post. That doesn't mean that I can't create a fuller conception of Hades as a figure. I'm in a way taking what I'm discovering and transforming it into something new. I'm looking at all of this in the context of detached mythological allegories, not in terms of historicity.

You're forgetting that I've already done what you're saying is impossible in certain aspects of these myths

I've begun to take to the idea that Hades and Poseidon should be viewed as the two shades of Zeus, the Spock and Bones to Zeus's Captain Kirk. In the same way that Spock and Bones are the aspects of logic and wisdom respectively standing on Kirks shoulders, Hades and Poseidon are the shadow aspects of Zeus, Hades representing Zeus's unconscious dread of the mortality of the world he rules and the immense burden he carries of beings it's judge, and Poseidon is the primal nature of Zeus's psyche, his capacity to be an uncaring force of nature driven by his whims and desires without thought.

They are in a way the manifestations of Zeus in the realms outside of Olympus, making his presence known across all creation.

>>7037682
You could further expand that into all of the Gods being manifestations of Zeus's psyche, and all of the Goddesses manifestations of Heras.

>>7037074
well if you put it that way, Hades is actually pretty cool hehe XD

>>7037923
They're all cool anon. That's why we remember them

>>7037430
>>7037359
He's trolling you m8. He reusing one of our good old meme about Catcher in the Rye

>He raped his little sister, Phoebe.
is always posted, often several times in the same thread

As for you post, idk, I like these posts >>7037682
>>7037887

All the Gods being schizophrenic representations haunting a single Godhood. Sounds interesting.

>>7037241
>When Hades asked his brother Zeus for a living woman, he upset the simple world order that had pertained hitherto: life abounded, was marked and scarred by raiding gods, then consigned to an empty, inert, incorporeal afterlife. Zeus wouldn’t have his mortal mistresses vanish. He would possess them, then abandon them. But Hades wanted Kore as his bride, wanted to have a living person sitting on the throne beside him. We could say that with this demand death aimed to inflict a further outrage on the earth above. But it is precisely now, in its insolence, that death deceives itself. With the abduction of Persephone, death acquires a body, acquires body: in the kingdom of the shades, there is now at least one body, and the body of a flourishing young girl at that.

>. . . But now, along with Kore’s body, Eros penetrated the kingdom of the dead. The slender-ankled Persephone was the supple arrow Aprhrodite ordered Eros to let fly at Hades . . .

>When Persephone took her place on Hades’ throne and her scented face peeped out from behind the spiky beard of her partner, when Persephone bit into the pomegranate that grew in the shadow gardens, death underwent a transformation every bit as radical as that which life had undergone when it had been deprived of the girl. The two kingdoms were thrown off balance, each opening up to the other. Hades imposed an absence on earth, imposed a situation where every presence was now enveloped in a far greater cloak of absence. Persephone imposed blood on the dead: not, as in the past, the dark blood of sacrifice, not the blood the dead used to drink so thirstily, but the invisible blood that went on pulsing in her white arms, the blood of someone who is still entirely alive, even in the palace of death.