Ariadne's clew
Mar. 3rd, 2003 01:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
truepennyIn the same entry which I mentioned in my previous post Teresa Nielsen Hayden wants to know, what's up with Daedalus and thread?
I can't answer that one, but it did start me off on a chain of associations that ended up somewhere interesting (at least to me), so I'm going to inflict it on y'all.
So, Daedalus. (And I want you people to appreciate the fact that I'm using standard English transliteration, instead of my preferred method which would make him Daidalos.) An artificer, who is associated not only with thread, but with one of the most famous cautionary tales regarding hubris, that quintessential booby-trap of Greek thought. The story of Icarus is all about hubris and its rewards. Daedalus is constantly being hoist by his own petards, constantly so entranced by his own cleverness that he brings about his own destruction, as in the story of the conch shell. And the other thread with which Daedalus is associated, the thread which defeats his labyrinth, was of course Ariadne's, who herself does not reap joy and fulfillment from her cleverness, as she is abandoned by Theseus on an island somewhere between Crete and Athens. (Somehow, I'm not sure Dionysus counts as a net gain in this scenario.)
The other character in Greek mythology who has this flaw of excessive self-esteem due to cleverness is Arachne. The weaver. (This far, I've got a tenuous connection with TNH's original question about thread, but the next link in the chain is going to lose it.) Arachne, like Daedalus, is so pleased with her own cleverness that she forgets to keep her head down, forgets to be polite to the gods. (This is also the mistake made by Marsyas the satyr.) Weaving, like Daedalus's various artifices, is a human technology which the Greeks seem to have felt threatened to impinge on the (metaphorical) precincts of the gods. It isn't humanity's place to go about being too clever. (Sisyphus is also punished for being a smartass.) It makes the gods jealous.
Which leads me to my final link in the chain: Prometheus. Who is punished for all eternity because he gave fire to humans. Now, there are all kinds of ways to read "fire" in that myth, but even on the most literal level, Prometheus's gift enables human beings to develop metal-working technology and kiln-fired pottery, lets them cook their food instead of eating it raw ... lets them, in other words, begin to be clever. (And if you read "fire" more metaphorically--creativity, curiosity, etc.--then its effects are even more obviously the first step along the road that leads us to Daedalus and Arachne.)
Odysseus was the cleverest among the Greeks at Troy, but never the happiest. And the other leaders tended to look at him just slightly askance. Cleverness was suspect in the culture which produced Greek mythology, and extremely clever people in the myths always come to grief and always deserve it.
Which still doesn't explain the thread thing. Although there's another thread connection, now that I think about it, with the Fates: Clotho, Lachesis, Atropos, who spin, measure, and cut the threads of life. So that, too, has ominous associations and the taint of Forces Beyond Humanity's Comprehension.
(I keep having to remind myself that no matter how much I love the Dalemark Quartet, the things Diana Wynne Jones does with weaving and godhood cannot actually by cited in support of an argument about ancient Greece.)
Spinning and weaving are mysteries in Greek mythology--probably not Mysteries in the Eleusinian sense, but definitely things, like Daedalus's mechanical marvels (the labyrinth, the wings, the cow in which Pasiphae hides to slake her lust for the bull) and Odysseus's Trojan Horse, which are ever so slightly god-like. And the last thing you want, as a human being trapped in Greek mythology, is to be like the gods.
I can't answer that one, but it did start me off on a chain of associations that ended up somewhere interesting (at least to me), so I'm going to inflict it on y'all.
So, Daedalus. (And I want you people to appreciate the fact that I'm using standard English transliteration, instead of my preferred method which would make him Daidalos.) An artificer, who is associated not only with thread, but with one of the most famous cautionary tales regarding hubris, that quintessential booby-trap of Greek thought. The story of Icarus is all about hubris and its rewards. Daedalus is constantly being hoist by his own petards, constantly so entranced by his own cleverness that he brings about his own destruction, as in the story of the conch shell. And the other thread with which Daedalus is associated, the thread which defeats his labyrinth, was of course Ariadne's, who herself does not reap joy and fulfillment from her cleverness, as she is abandoned by Theseus on an island somewhere between Crete and Athens. (Somehow, I'm not sure Dionysus counts as a net gain in this scenario.)
The other character in Greek mythology who has this flaw of excessive self-esteem due to cleverness is Arachne. The weaver. (This far, I've got a tenuous connection with TNH's original question about thread, but the next link in the chain is going to lose it.) Arachne, like Daedalus, is so pleased with her own cleverness that she forgets to keep her head down, forgets to be polite to the gods. (This is also the mistake made by Marsyas the satyr.) Weaving, like Daedalus's various artifices, is a human technology which the Greeks seem to have felt threatened to impinge on the (metaphorical) precincts of the gods. It isn't humanity's place to go about being too clever. (Sisyphus is also punished for being a smartass.) It makes the gods jealous.
Which leads me to my final link in the chain: Prometheus. Who is punished for all eternity because he gave fire to humans. Now, there are all kinds of ways to read "fire" in that myth, but even on the most literal level, Prometheus's gift enables human beings to develop metal-working technology and kiln-fired pottery, lets them cook their food instead of eating it raw ... lets them, in other words, begin to be clever. (And if you read "fire" more metaphorically--creativity, curiosity, etc.--then its effects are even more obviously the first step along the road that leads us to Daedalus and Arachne.)
Odysseus was the cleverest among the Greeks at Troy, but never the happiest. And the other leaders tended to look at him just slightly askance. Cleverness was suspect in the culture which produced Greek mythology, and extremely clever people in the myths always come to grief and always deserve it.
Which still doesn't explain the thread thing. Although there's another thread connection, now that I think about it, with the Fates: Clotho, Lachesis, Atropos, who spin, measure, and cut the threads of life. So that, too, has ominous associations and the taint of Forces Beyond Humanity's Comprehension.
(I keep having to remind myself that no matter how much I love the Dalemark Quartet, the things Diana Wynne Jones does with weaving and godhood cannot actually by cited in support of an argument about ancient Greece.)
Spinning and weaving are mysteries in Greek mythology--probably not Mysteries in the Eleusinian sense, but definitely things, like Daedalus's mechanical marvels (the labyrinth, the wings, the cow in which Pasiphae hides to slake her lust for the bull) and Odysseus's Trojan Horse, which are ever so slightly god-like. And the last thing you want, as a human being trapped in Greek mythology, is to be like the gods.
