The Long Journey Home

May 30, 1994
Heavily footnoted and broad in scope, this collection begins by examining the inconsistencies of the earliest versions of the Demeter and Persephone myth by Homer and Ovid. By cross-referencing classic and modern thought with literary, cultic and agrarian views, Downing ( The Goddess ) allows the ``various interpretations to contradict, complement, complicate, and ultimately enrich one another.'' Among the issues debated are Demeter's true character and motivations (nurturing, selfless mother vs. obsessed neurotic); the ``necessity'' of Persephone's rape (a commonplace cruelty vs. her own desires of womanhood); maidenhood vs. menopause; homosexual vs. heterosexual love; the secrets of the Eleusinian mysteries and the Thesmophoria; and life vs. death/renewal. Despite centuries of gender bias in the myth's retelling and translations, Downing and her contributors reclaim the myth as their own: ``We hoped that the discovery of a prepatriarchal world,'' the editor posits, ``might help us imagine forward to a postpatriarchal one.'' Standout contributions include ``Learning From My Mother Dying'' by Carol P. Christ, poetry by Alma Luz Villanueva and Herta Rosenblatt and John Daughters's wickedly funny ``Hades Speaks.''