Drinking from the Blood-Pit: Meditations on Flittering Shadows

By Kostas Myrsiades

Drinking from the Blood-Pit is a work of creative nonfiction, which uses Odysseuss descent to the underworld (Od.10.490-95) as a unifying theme for each of the fourteen pieces included. Each piece is based on a Homeric theme and/or episode that stresses the lessons culled from reading Homers Iliad and Odyssey on the authors journey from childhood to adulthood. The title of each story indicates the Homeric myth or episode used and is accompanied by a short epigraph from either the Iliad or Odyssey.

The fourteen works are divided into three sections: childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. The first part, childhood (four stories), describes growing up on the island of Samos, Greece, during the Nazi occupation and the Greek Civil War that followed. The second section, adolescence (four stories), continues the authors odyssey to the United States, attempting to deal with a new language and becoming acclimated to a foreign culture. The third part, adulthood (six stories), returns the author to his native land as a student of Greek culture struggling to study the censored works of Greek poets under the military government of 19671974.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: May 18, 2017
• ISBN: 9781543425093

Book preview

Drinking from the

Blood-Pit

Meditations on Flittering Shadows

Kostas Myrsiades

Copyright © 2017 by Kostas Myrsiades.

ISBN:                Softcover                978-1-5434-2510-9

                           eBook                     978-1-5434-2509-3

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Rev. date: 05/18/2017

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Dedication

Drinking From The Blood-Pit

CHILDHOOD

Ithaka

Eating The Cyclops’ Eye

The Elysian Fields

The Scar

ADOLESCENCE

The Sirens Beckon

Sing, Goddess The Anger

Kalypso At The Orpheum Matinee

A Suppliant

ADULTHOOD

A Singer Of Tales

Thersites

Seeking Demodokos

Aristeia

Rendezvous With The Kouros

Dionysus Returns

To

my people:

those gone

those present

and those yet to come

to hold in life what really counts

DRINKING FROM THE BLOOD-PIT

Dig a pit of about a cubit in each direction,

and pour it full of drink offerings for all the dead, first

honey mixed with milk, then a second pouring of sweet wine,

and third, water, and over all then sprinkle white barley

(Od.10.517-19; tr. Richmond Lattimore)

After so many years, past the single-eyed giant and the singing sea-whores only the final lap remains,

. . . yet another journey beckons you

to Hades and dread Persephone in the depths below

to consult the soul of the Theban soothsayer Teresias

the blind seer whose mind remains undarkened

for to him alone Persephone has granted everlasting vision

while the rest of the dead remain but flittering shadows.

(Od.10.490-95; tr. Kostas Myrsiades)

I descend to the dreaded land below, for the past lies only through Hadesland. There the ghost of the blind prophet will bring forth those flittering shadows his mind has harbored since he left the island so many years ago.

I anchored

below the setting of the sun

past the cape of dogs that howl

seeking the other life beyond the statues.

On the dark side of the sun

I dug the votive pit

and there gushed the murky blood from slashed and bleating ewes.

Slowly,

slowly they came,

thin and thirsty forms

to drink of the somber blood,

but I kept from the gurgling pit the driving apparitions

until the old man’s faint image bent toward the blood and spoke,

"remember

you were once a child

who never was

in a place

you create from memories

that might have been.

Only your thoughts

revive that time

which does not exist

and which will never be."

CHILDHOOD

ITHAKA

When you start out for Ithaka,

pray the road be long,

full of adventures, full of insights.

Laistrygonians and Cyclopes,

wrathful Poseidon, you need not fear,

for they will never cross your path,

if your thoughts remain lofty, if a rare

emotion takes hold of your soul and body.

You will not encounter wild Poseidon,

the Laestrygonians and the Cyclopes,

if you do not carry them within your soul,

if your soul does not raise them before you.

Hope that the road be long

and many the summer mornings

when with pleasure, with joy

you sail into harbors for the first time,

to stop at Phoenician markets

to acquire fine merchandise,

mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,

sensual perfumes of every type,

as many of these perfumes as you can gather;

and sail to many Egyptian cities,

to hear and learn from those with knowledge.

Always keep Ithaka in mind.

Arriving is your goal.

But do not hurry the journey at all.

Better for it to last many years;

to arrive on the island old,

wealthy with all you gained on the way,

not expecting Ithaka to give you riches.

Ithaka gave you the beautiful journey.

Without her you would never have set out.

She has nothing more to give.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka has not deceived you.

Wise as you will have become, full of experience,

you will have understood what Ithakas mean.

(C.P. Cavafy, Ithaka; tr. Kostas Myrsiades)

The wood nymphs were there from the beginning, having arrived on the island probably as early as 2500 BCE. when it was still part of the great land block known as the Aegean Continent, later to break up, sink into the sea, and emerge as the part I lived on. Dionysus¹ arrived later unexpectedly while chasing those single-breasted women who had spurned his attentions. It was by accident that they sought refuge on the island whereupon the god with the help of my ancestors caught and killed them all. As a reward for their assistance, Dionysus taught the islanders how to cultivate the grapevine, which they have been doing ever since. He, however, had nothing to do with the island’s name. That honor was claimed by Aghaios, the island’s first king and son of Apollo (or was he perhaps Poseidon’s?) and the nymph Astypalaia, who had migrated there from Sami on the Ionian island of Cephalonia. But only a minority claimed he had named the island after his birthplace; others insisted it was named after his first-born son, Samos. Nevertheless, one cannot neglect the fact that there was also a Saos, son of the Olympian god Hermes and his wife Rhene, for whom the island could have been named.

The Phoenician mariners who first inhabited the island in 1600 BCE insisted the island derived its name from their word sama meaning high land or protrusion. Others were later to argue the name derived from the word psamo and samo which in the Ionian dialect meant high ground and sandy beach respectively. Although the Ionians had arrived after the Phoenicians, they too could have given the island its name. However, between the Phoenicians and the Ionians there were other groups: Carians, Leleges, and Pelasgians, followed later by an assortment of Greeks, Romans, Turks and a horde of other nationalities who had their own names for the island. Among its many names were Anthemis, Anthemousa, and Melanthimos after the island’s many flowers; Dryousa after the word drys for oak, Fyllas or Fyllis after fyllon for leaf; Kyparissia for the many cypress trees on the island; Parthenia after the river Parthenios, known also as Imvrassos, the birthplace of the goddess Hera; and Stephani from the word stephani (wreath) named after the island’s shape. It seems, however, that the name Samos endured the longest, having survived since the 12th century BCE.

Samos was home to the great philosopher and mathematician Pythagoras and the great tyrant Polycrates, responsible for the island’s golden age which propelled it into a world power in the 5th century BCE. He was also responsible for the great 6700 meter wall almost 5 meters wide and 5 meters high surrounding his capital city, as well as the engineering feat of the Efpalinian tunnel, an aqueduct of 1034 meters drilled through a mountain to provide his capital with water. Other great men were also associated with the island: Homer, for example, spent a winter there and bequeathed his epic poems the Iliad and the Odyssey to his Samian relative Creophilos. Herodotus was known to have taken refuge on Samos, and Socrates, Thucydides, Sophocles, St. Paul, and Pericles had at least visited on occasion. The poet Ibycos chose Samos as his center for inspiration while Antony and Cleopatra used it as their personal playground for 12 years.

No one, however, had a claim on the island more than the goddess Hera, the wife of Olympian Zeus. Hera, the patroness and protector of Samos, worshiped there since prehistoric times, was born under a willow tree on the banks of the river Imvrassos, on the southeastern part of the island. She bathed in this river daily and by this river she had to wed Zeus to cover her shame. Zeus had courted Hera on several unsuccessful attempts. Frustrated, he decided to trick her. Taking the form of a disheveled cuckoo, he played on her sympathy, and when she picked up the bird and laid it on her breast to keep it warm, he resumed his normal form and raped her. No wonder they constantly clashed, and why on several occasions, she attempted to get even for the shame he had caused her. Take for example the time she drugged him and bound him to a couch. But Briareus² of the 100 hands untied the knots, and Zeus punished her by hanging her from the sky with golden chains. Her weeping so annoyed him, however, that he released her soon thereafter and continued their turbulent marriage.

It was