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Comment
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Karen
Unregistered User
(9/19/01 3:25:23 pm)
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Ears
This is a rather self-serving post- I'm working on a conference paper at the moment and I have an idea in the back of my head about Athena popping out of Zeus' ear and the way this might relate to a trickster theme and then, further down the track, how this might prefigure or comment upon the process of story-telling/literary reception itself. I'm wondering about the folklore of ears- does anyone know any good stories about ears? Is there a folklore of ears? Do some stories represent their own transmission in such a literal fashion?
K
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Kerrie
Registered User
(9/19/01 4:34:59 pm)
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Re: Ears?
I may be wrong, but I thought I remember Athena either coming from a split in Zeus's head or from his thigh. I thought that (head) was why she was related to wisdom. Anyone else remembeeeer this?
Dandelion wishes,
Kerrie
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Laura
Registered User
(9/19/01 5:19:13 pm)
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Athena
Yep Kerrie, you're right. Athena sprang from Zeus' skull, which Hephaestus obligingly cracked open to relieve his headache. :-) Dionysus was born out of Zeus' thigh. I don't recall reading a version where she came from the ear -- doesn't mean there isn't one ...
Laura
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Kamui
Unregistered User
(9/19/01 6:53:33 pm)
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Re: Ears
I remember the children's book "Why Mosquitos Buzz in People's Ears."
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Karen
Unregistered User
(9/20/01 12:20:40 pm)
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Damn it!
Thanks, Kerry- I don't know why I muddled that- probably because I was thinking of all that iconography of the Virgin Mary being impregnated in the ear and I wanted it to match neatly- it still sort of does....
Thanks,
Karen.
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Kerrie
Registered User
(9/20/01 5:07:48 pm)
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Re: Damn it!
Wow, I never heard that story about the Virgin Mary! Really? What book or art is it in? Reasoning behind belief?
Kerrie
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Kamui
Unregistered User
(9/20/01 6:09:02 pm)
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Re: Damn it!
Yeah, I want to hear this Virgin Mary story, too. It's news to me. . .
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Midori
Unregistered User
(9/20/01 6:23:59 pm)
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Mary
Bernard of Clairvaux, the mystic wrote that the Holy Spirit entered Mary's ear as the spoken word of God. The word passed downward through her heart and became dense and filled her womb.
I have to say, I've always been partial to the mystics. They have a way with images.
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Karen
Unregistered User
(9/21/01 2:34:58 pm)
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That story
Well, there are a lot of visual and textual sources of this idea, mostly Catholic. You can see the chain of thought- Mary becomes pregnant when the angel Gabriel comes and announces it to her- therefore her pregnancy must have something to do with the faculty of hearing. In the early church, the breath of the Holy Ghost was supposed to have entered her ear- this was actually held to be true by many of the church Fathers, including Pope Felix. In some pictures the dove enters the Virgin's ear- it does so in a painting by Filippo Lippi in the covent of San Marco in Florence. Most paintings show the dove actually emananting from God the Father's mouth- eg- Simone Martini's The Annunciation.. Apparently, there's a particularly interesting stained glass windown in the Pistoia Cathedral which depicts rays of light bearing an embryo in the direction of Mary's head. Mystics who have written on the subject include St Augustine and St Agoband- and Bernard of Clairvaux, as Midori notes.
There's also this hymn attributed to either St Thomas Becket or St Bonaventure:
Gaude, Virgo, mater Christi,
Quae per aurem conceptisti,
Gabriele nuntio.
Gaude, quia Deo plena,
Peperisti sine pena
Cum pudoris lilio
(Polishing my extremely rusty Latin:
Rejoice, Virgin, Mother of Christ,
Who conceived through the ear,
after Gabriel made his announcement.
Rejoice, because you
became pregnant by God without sin,
with short-lived shame).
So, you see, this is really quite a clean story after all!
Karen (tireless in the pursuit of obscure knowledge).
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Midori
Unregistered User
(9/21/01 5:20:38 pm)
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connection
Karen,
It would also seem to make a certain sense if read in context with the gospels--particularly John, the most mystical and certainly metaphorical of the four. "In the beginning was the Word..." It seems consistent to imagine the conception of Christ in Mary as related to sound and the Word. And of course it preserves the dogma of virginity.
But oh my goodness, thanks for all those other references. Very cool.
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Kamui
Unregistered User
(9/21/01 7:49:39 pm)
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Re: connection
Oh, yes, my mother had the verse from the Gospel John hanging on a banner in our hallway: "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of Grace and Truth."
Strange way to grow up, I suppose. Banners all over the house like that. But the Virgin Mary-Ear story gives it an interesting angle.
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janeyolen
Unregistered User
(9/23/01 2:16:45 am)
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Midas ears
there is also a Midas varient in which the king has donkey ears and only the barber knows. The barber is sworn to secrecy though he is so filled with the secret he has to tell someone. So he whispers it to the reed bed. And soon the entire world knows!
Jane
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catja1
Registered User
(9/28/01 2:57:29 pm)
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Re: Midas ears
You might want to check out all the ear imagery in Hamlet, just for a literary comparison; King Hamlet was murdered with poison dropped into his ear, people are constantly spying on each other, et cetera. I've also heard convincing Hamlet-as-trickster arguments.
Catja
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