Persephone: her mythical return to Sicily di Federica Mazzara Afar the flowers of Enna from this drear Dire fruit, which, tasted once, must thrall me here. Dante Gabriel Rossetti The focus of this study is the myth of Demeter and Persephone, and, in particular, lesser-known aspects of this mythological tale related to its setting in Sicily. Persephone was the daughter of Demeter, the goddess of fertility. The myth tells about her rape by Hades, Lord of the Dead, who took her with him to the Underworld, where she was to be his wife. The rape takes place while Persephone is gathering flowers with her playmates. The rest of the myth tells about the desperate search of Demeter for her daughter and the agreement, in the end, with Hades to have Persephone live half of each year aboveground (Spring) and the other half (Winter) in the underworld. The first chapter of this work, that as a whole I will define as a “mythological journey”, deals generally with mythology. I refer to some authoritative scholars of mythology, such as Kerényi, Jung and Vernant, in order to underline its elusive nature and especially what, in my opinion, is its most important value, in other words, its continuing relevance in a modern context. As Kerényi affirms, the act of telling is what assures the survival of mythology, and I hope that this study too can help to maintain this tradition. The second chapter addresses the classical sources that have preserved the myth of Persephone and Demeter over time. These are the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, which is considered to be the first written record of this myth, Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Fasti, and Claudian’s The 1 Rape of Proserpine. The aim of this second chapter is to show how from Ovid on a new tradition is pursued, a tradition that can be considered “Sicilian” and that has led to a different characterisation of themyth of Persephone, especially insofar as the setting is concerned. In order to sustain this thesis, I refer to the most authoritative source for it, Diodorus of Sicily, whose analysis is central in the third chapter of this text. The study of the classical sources, in other words, will bring to the fore some signs of what I develop later on and that deserve to be mentioned in tracing the path from the very beginning of this mythological journey. In the third chapter, my aim is to make the reader aware of the existence of this Sicilian tradition analysed in critical writings. These critics include Martorana, who in his Il Riso di Demetra analyses the myth of Persephone supporting the thesis of Diodorus, according to which the origin of the myth is Sicilian and not Greek, since the two goddesses, Demeter and Core, made their first appearance there. As a result, the setting of this myth started to be located in the Sicilian city of Enna, by the Lake of Pergusa, which has been identified with the site where therape of Persephone took place. Martorana further theorises that Persephone was originally an indigenous Sicilian deity of a spontaneous nature, who at that primordial time was not in a relation of interdependence with her mother Demeter, but rather was anindependent goddess. The rest of the myth, according to Martorana, therefore, was developed by the Greeks who must have absorbed the indigenous religious gods. According to this daring view, the Greek Persephone is the result of an incorporative process by the Greeks, which occurred after their arrival in Sicily. This explains the different characterisation of the myth depending on the tradition followed. In a Greek context there is a more elaborate mythology around Persephone that is probably due to the initiating nature of the myth. I refer to the cult of the Eleusinian Mysteries that is also integrated in this myth. In the Sicilian tradition, on the other hand, the mythology of Persephone is, one might say, more “humble”, due to the fact that it has been associated with simpler concepts. The analysis then turns to Corradini’s work Enna: Storia e Mitologia attraverso le Fonti Classiche, and several descriptions of this 2 charming place depicted by many writers in their literary works, among them Cicero’s The Verrine Orations, where the direct relationship between Persephone and Demeter with the island of Sicily becomes more evident. The fourth and last chapter closes the cycle of this writing with reference to the modern and updated versions of this myth. I will take into account some modern literary examples, in this case belonging to the theatrical genre, trying to single out in these texts the Sicilian tradition. In particular the description of the places that, as I will try to demonstrate, seem perfectly to continue Diodorus’s description. I focus my attention on Goethe’s monodrama Proserpina, on Mary Shelley’s Proserpine, on Robert Bridges’s Demeter, A Mask, and finally on the most Sicilian of all, Rosso di San Secondo’s Il Ratto di Proserpina, where the myth of Persephone is revised in modern key. In my opinion the latter represents somehow the return of Persephone to her own dimension, that indigenous Sicilian phase when she was the deity of an uncorrupted Eden that found a suitable setting in that mythical island for many known as Sicily. 3 An introduction to mythology Writing about myth and mythology (in this case I refer to Greek mythology) is a very difficult undertaking; due both to the complexity of the topic and to the impossibility of defining with precision such an elusive subject.Before starting the treatment of this topic we should, in fact, assume that when we deal with mythology we have not to look for explanations or for a unique interpretation that would reduce somehow the infinite material that is mythology. Instead, we should accept what K. Kerényi affirms rightly in his analysis of myth1, that we have just to listento the myth without wondering about its true origin that goes beyond what mortal minds can reach. Another definition of myth comes from Jean Pierre Vernant, who in his work The Universe, The Gods and the Myth2, explains that a myth is a kind of tale that comes from the mists of time and that existed even before a narrator would starts telling it. This to say, that the mythical tale derives neither from a personal invention nor from the creative fantasy, but rather from an act of mnemonic transmission. In order to clarify this concept I borrow again Kerényi’s words that explain perfectly the starting assumption, in dealing with mythology: The stuff of mythology is composed of something that is greater than the story-teller and than all human beings -“as they are now”, said Homer - but always as something visible, perceptible or, at least, capable of being expressed in images, and never as the Godhead in abstracto, or even as the Godhead in concreto, if the latter is to be regarded as 3 unimaginable. Taking for granted that the mythological material is undefinable and unfathomable, I would rather concentrate on one of the basic aspects of the myth that concerns its being always valid and applicable: “Mythology [...] 1 Jung C. G., Kerényi K., Introduction to a Science of Mythology: The Myth of the Divine Child and the Mysteries of Eleusis, London, Routledge-Kegan Paul, 1970. 2 Vernant J. P., l’Universo, gli dei e gli Uomini, il racconto del mito, Torino, Einaudi, 2000, p. 5. 3 Kerényi K., The Gods of the Greeks, London, Thames and Hidson, 1951, p. 3. 4 goes on singing even in death and from afar. In its lifetime, among the peoples where it was indigenous, it was not only sung like a kind of music, it was also lived”4. Today what remains is the possibility to live the effects of such mythology: we tell again and again those mythical tales of which an unchangeable pattern, common to all its variations, remains. In this regard, Vernant has spoken of the “vitality of myths”, referring to “the way they constantly become charged with new meanings and absorb commentaries, glosses and new interpretations that open them up to new dimensions of reality yet to be explored or rediscovered”5. The Greek word mythologìa, as Kerényi again helps us understand, “contains the sense not only of “stories” (mythoi), but also of “telling” (legein): a form of narration that originally was also echo-awakening, [...]”6. It is the “act” of telling, therefore, that assures the survival of the mythological world. Telling myths always requires some “changes”, some variations that the narrator chooses on the basis of some circumstances, his public or his personal preferences; therefore, where he can, he adds or modifies what considers necessary.7 But this does not threaten the preservation of the myths. Vernant in his work Myth and Society in Ancient Greece affirms: “If the myths can vary in this way fromone version to another without damaging the balance of the general system it must be because what matters is not the way the story is told, which can vary from one account to another, but rather the mental categories as a whole and by the intellectual organisation which underlines all the various versions”8. The subjectivity in telling mythologycannot be avoided, but it must be restrained through a fidelity to the tradition that each narrator inherits. In my study of the myth of Persephone and Demeter I will rely on to the deep analysis that Jung and Kerényi together have expounded in their 4 Jung C. G., Kerényi K., Introduction to a Science of Mythology, Cit., p.