Removing the Veil From Page 38

     The passage on page 38 is filled with myths within myths combined with speculation about said myths. After reading the paragraph, rereading it and reading it again, I became obsessed with figuring out every aspect of these few hundred words. My focus last week was on the myth of Arachne and Athena. In an attempt to find clarity, I read the section out of Ovid Metamorphoses. With another reference guiding me through the myth, I felt as though I found order to the chaos on page 38. Arachne was doomed before the competition started by committing hubris. Her fate as a spider sealed the moment she opened her mouth and challenged Athena.

     Ahh, good, I am beginning to make sense of this, putting the pieces together--order. 

     Feeling good about my discovery, I wanted to dig deeper. I wanted to see if Frederick Turner had anything to say about Ovid or this myth in general. I began reading his blogs--not the easiest task but extremely rewarding--and could not find anything about Arachne, Athena or Ovid. On my third or fourth blog I found a passage from Values and Strange Attractors.

"One of our most subtly paralyzing dualisms is the apparently harmless one between order and disorder.  The idea of artistic liberation, under which we have labored for so many years, is especially prone to the corruptions of this dualism.  For instance, if order means predictability, and predictability means predetermination, and predetermination means compulsion, and compulsion means unfreedom, the only way we can be free is if we are disordered.  The failed artistic hopes of the last two centuries have been founded upon a deep discomfort with the idea of order, and what are taken to be its close relatives: hierarchy, foundationalism, norms, and essences–even with value itself, if value is conceived of as being anything other than momentary individual preference."

     After reading this, I looked at the passage on page 38 in a new way. I focused on the first and last lines. "Was it then that Dionysus seduced Erigone? We don't know...Erigone, then, was deceived and seduced by that powerful fruit. Other authors tell us that Dionysus and Erigone had a child: his name was Staphylus, 'bunch of grapes,' but this was also the name of the child other writers attribute to Dionysus and Ariadne." I traded order for freedom and found value. These myths are nothing but shadows, for shadows are reflections of the reality they represent. The version we hear is chosen in the moment with individual preference by whatever author we are reading. However, in The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony, Calasso frees our minds to choose which myth we want to believe by telling multiple versions of the same story. In doing so, Calasso offers an apocalypse, he offers us the freedom to remove the veil and think for ourselves.

St. John at Patmos: the receiving of an apocalyptic vision.