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Brittany Kuhn

Anita Kruber and Imen Cozzo Ayari

LT 919-AU

Adonis as Primordial Child or Kore: Who Gets the Reader Closer toMyth?

Venus and Adonis: the original star-crossed lovers of

mythology, destined to be forever separated by tragic

circumstances. Adonis, a young man in his physical prime, is

adored by the goddess of love herself, and while following a

trail scented by his dogs, Adonis is killed by a boar, the very

animal Venus warned him to avoid. In her grief, Venus brings

Adonis back to life but as an anemone, a red flower that dies and

is reborn every year.1 It is a story of unrequited love and

tragic loss, mourning and memorial. One would think a romantic

poet such as Shakespeare would allow the two lovers to continue

in wedded bliss, allowing Adonis to be deified and made immortal

so that he could live with Venus forever. But not so. In fact,

Shakespeare’s Adonis is more repelled by Venus’ affections than

he is in Ovid’s poem. Why does Shakespeare take Ovid’s relatively

short version of the myth and write over 1100 lines just to have 1 Ovid, “Book X,” in Metamorphoses: A New Verse Translation, trans. David Raeburn (London: Penguin Books, 2004), lines 705-737.

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it end in the same manner? What does Shakespeare give Adonis that

Ovid does not?

To understand that, we have to understand the purpose of

mythology through the archetypes by which it is constructed.

According to Carl Kerényi, mythology is the ability to understand

what is through what was. Not in the same sense as scientific

curiosity, where man is determined to find the origins of his

universe, but more in the context of helping contemporary man

progress successfully through the daily motions and dramas of his

everyday life.2 Participants of myth use it to step into the

primordial past so that they can see their futures and define

their identities; they must see who they were before they can see

who they can become.3 Thus, the gods and goddesses of mythology

represent spiritual ideals, paradoxes that allow man to exist in

this way through myth. Kerényi even identifies two major

archetypes of the divine in Greek mythology that represent this

paradoxical attribute: the primordial child and the Kore. The

primordial child is both begotten and begetter; the Kore is both

2 Carl Kerényi, “Prolegomena,” in Science of Mythology: Essays on the Myth of the Divine Childand the Mysteries of Eleusis. (London: Routledge, 2002), trans. R. F. C. Hull, 7-8. 3 Kerényi, “Prolegomena,” 23.

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mother and daughter to herself. In each archetype, origins and

ancestors exist in tandem, such as they do in all humankind.4

But no children are created in “Venus and Adonis,” no

daughters to replace the mothers, no sons to become creators.

Some might say that’s because the myth is just a simple allegory

for the origin of the anemone, but to believe that would be to

rob the myth of its cosmic and human elements.5 No, this myth is

more than a symbol. Venus and Adonis must hold the places of the

primordial child and the Kore, but who is who? The person who

occupies each position determines how the myth plays out. In the

origin manifestation of the myth, and subsequently in Ovid’s

treatment of it, an argument could be made that Adonis is the

Primoridial Child and Venus his Kore.

In the earliest forms of this myth, Tammuz (the original

name of Adonis) is the youthful lover and sometime spouse of

Ishtar, the embodiment of all that is ‘mother’— reproduction,

adoration, cultivation. Tammuz isn’t murdered tragically; he can

only survive in this world for a short period of time before

4 Kerényi, “Prolegomena,” 13.5 Carl Kerényi, “Primordial Child in Primordial Times,” in Science of Mythology: Essays on the Myth of the Divine Child and the Mysteries of Eleusis. (London: Routledge, 2002), trans. R. F. C. Hull, 62.

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passing into the other world, at which point Ishtar leaves to

find him, taking her reproductive energies with her. The world

mourns his death and her absence; everything dies, flora nor

fauna reproduce, and what we know as winter commences. But when

she comes back to this world with him, the world rejoices and all

life begins to live again.6 He is never changed, always the same

as when he left. It is heavily implied that the carnal

consummation of their love is the catalyst for the plants and

animals reproducing again.

Ovid continues this transformative theme in his poem about

the two lovers, except that Tammuz/Adonis is the one who is

reborn instead of the world. Ovid also gives more background into

Adonis’ origins, which suggest that he may, in fact, be the

Primordial Child. The origin stories of those such as Zeus,

Dionysus, Hermes, Apollo, and even some from other cultures, like

the Voguls’ Man Who Looks at the World or the Finnish Kullervo,

contain enough similar elements that Adonis’ story seems to fit.

For example, the primordial child must be abandoned and exposed

to extraordinary dangers which force him to overcome. Zeus was

6 Sir James Frazier, Adonis: A Study in the History of Oriental Religion (1914; repri., London: Watts, 1932), 5-7.

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abandoned and immediately devoured; Dionysus was alone and ripped

to shreds. The Man Who Looks at the World was abandoned to live

with his abusive aunt and uncle. Within months of Kullervo’s

birth, he was cast through a series of trials meant to kill him

but survived each one through extraordinary skill.7 In each of

these events, the world becomes better for the strife of the

child-god. A new aspect of the world is born, be it strength in

the face of conflict, resurrection from the darkness of death,

for “in the image of the Primordial Child the world tells of its

own childhood, and of everything that sunrise and the birth of a

child mean for, and say about, the world.”8 Although Adonis was

abandoned by his father and mother, he faced no extraordinary

consequences for it. He was not persecuted; he was not made to

prove himself. In fact, his remarkable beauty, the only

extraordinary thing about him, allowed him to stay relatively

safe in the adoration and protection of Venus and Persephone.9

Because he faced no conflict to overcome, his story gives us no

story of the world, no aspect with which to step back into and

7 Kerényi, “Primordial Child in Primordial Times,” 38-45.8 Kerényi, “Primordial Child in Primordial Times,” 62.9 Frazier, 8.

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experience. Although a minor element, as not all the stories

immediately put child-gods at risk, it starts the list of many

ways Adonis is marked further and further away from the status of

primordial child.

A primordial child incorporates the paradox of both one who

was begotten and, later, one who begets. As begotten, a child-

god’s parents are important to his origins, especially in those

cases where at least one parent is a god. The father, in most

cases, is portrayed as the enemy of the child-god, as with Zeus

and Kronos, or oftentimes absent entirely, as with Zeus and

Dionysus or Hermes and Pan. Kullervo is fatherless due to the

fratricide committed by his uncle, whose position of authority

afterwards makes him something of a fatherly enemy.10 Here,

again, does Adonis’ myth fail. Cinyras was absent from Adonis’

life, but not out of malice or some supernatural end. Myrrha

wasn’t given time to explain that she was with child before

Cinyras cast her out; his absence is simply out of ignorance of

Adonis’ existence. Furthermore, Cinyras was a mortal king,

tricked by the wits of his daughter and her nurse; he did not

10 Kerényi, “Primordial Child in Primordial Times,” 38, 48-50.

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willingly father Adonis nor was he a god, like the fathers of

other primordial children. Adonis cannot become the begetter as

he was begotten by a mortal man who is both his father and

grandfather. Adonis’ ancestral line must end with him as it is

too tangled to adequately be carried on.

Looking then at the mother of the primordial child, Adonis’

story might fit more readily. The child-god’s mother both exists

but does not exist; she gives birth to the child-god but either

does so in a less-than-traditional manner or does not stay long

after the birth. Dionysus’ mother was already dead when he was

born. Apollo’s was exiled and persecuted for Apollo’s defense

against Tityos. The Man Who Looks at the World has two versions

where both of these instances are true: in one, his mother

lowered him to earth in a cradle from heaven, and in the other,

he was born from his mother’s broken ribs after she fell to

earth.11 Ovid’s poem seems to redeem Adonis in this way. He

describes Myrrha carried Adonis to term, but overcome with shame

at her indiscretions, asked the gods to transform her as

punishment instead of letting her die. And so they do; Myrrha

11 Kerényi, “Primordial Child in Primordial Times,” 39-43.

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becomes a tree, while still carrying the baby Adonis. He breaks

through from the trunk, born from a mother who is not, in

physical terms, his mother any longer.12 However, Myrrha is not

divine, either, and Adonis suffers the same fate with her as he

does with Cinyras; since Myrrha is both his mother and his

sister, his role as begetter become tangled in his past. In this

way, Ovid’s treatment of Adonis’ parentage completely fails him

as those of a primordial child.

But these are just the origins; the attributes of the gods

may better define them. The primordial child is forever in the

physical prime of his life, bearded yet youthful, readily able to

handle whatever dangers lie ahead, no matter how soon in life

they take place. Zeus, Apollo, and Dionysus are inseparable from

their bearded visages, even when depicted early on. Kullervo only

takes three days after his birth to break free from his cradle

and is already knee-high and plotting revenge at three months.13

In this way, Ovid allows Adonis to fit the primordial child

profile. Because his early years are spent going back and forth

between Venus and Persephone, Ovid glosses over Adonis’ childhood

12 Ovid, “Book X,” lines 480-515.13 Kerényi, “Primordial Child in Primordial Times,”36-37, 48.

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in favor of his connection to Venus, choosing to suffice the

reader with “He was soon a youth, then a man, and now more

handsome than ever”14 as an explanation of the years.

The primordial child is also almost always solitary and

nurtured by the beasts and plants of the primitive world, where

he probably feels more at home than he does with others. They can

be brought out directly from Mother Nature, born of an egg, born

of a water plant.15 Since fire, water, wind, and earth are often

an “organic part”16 of the primordial child, he must be connected

with some aspect of these boundless forms in order to represent

the “non-being that came before being and the life that came

afterwards; of the original condition of which every symbol says

something different and new, a primal source of mythologems.”17

Here, also, Adonis seems to fit quite well. He enjoyed being

solitary and hunting wild beasts all day.18 But he was not

connected to the boundless elements in the same way that Apollo

is connected to water or Zeus is connected to caves and

14 Ovid, “Book X,” line 522.15 Kerényi, “Primordial Child in Primordial Times,” 39-40, 60, 6416 Kerényi, “Primordial Child in Primordial Times,” 70.17 Kerényi, “Primordial Child in Primordial Times,” 70.18 Ovid, “Book X,” line 5

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springs.19 Yes, Adonis was born from a tree, but said tree was a

woman first, still mortal, still finite. And rather than

incorporate the boundless element of nature, he succumbs to the

primal nature of its inhabitants, his death definitively marking

him as not a primordial child.

If Ovid does not set up Adonis as the primordial child, then

that leaves only Venus to take up the mantle. To imagine any

other goddess in this concept would seem ludicrous, but Venus

seems to be a special case, where her origin story sounds like

one more appropriate for the caliber of god like Zeus or Dionysus

than for a goddess of love. According to her myth, she was

birthed from the submerged phallus of Uranos, which Kronos cut

off and threw into the sea. The resulting waves created foam,

which formed Venus, and the wind carried her from the water to an

island. Venus is exceptional even for a primordial child as hers

is one of the few origin stories where “begetting and birth are

identical, as also the begetter and the begotten. The phallus is

the child, and the child—Aphrodite [also known as Venus]—an

eternal stimulus to further procreation.”20 Her narrative allows

19 Kerényi, “Primordial Child in Primordial Times,” 67, 85.20 Kerényi, “Primordial Child in Primordial Times,” 76.

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those listening to the myth to step all the way back to the

beginnings of the world, when even the Titans are young. Before

Venus has even landed on solid ground, she satisfies those

elements of the primordial child that make her the begetter and

begotten, born of a boundless element and the procreative energy

of the heavens.

In this way do Venus’ parents also meet the qualifications

of the primordial child: her father abandons her in disgust (as

she is simply his lost organ), and although many consider Venus

her own mother, it was the water that formed her, birthed her

from the foam, nurtured her, then presented her to the world in

grown form. Yet, as water, it cannot be her mother in the classic

sense; it is and yet is not. Her relatively short childhood is

spent in solitude on the ocean, floating on a shell amidst the

primitive worlds of the ocean and sky. She continues to prefer

those primitive, boundless worlds of water and air, creating

sacred islands in the ocean and riding her chariot through the

sky. Acts so well-known, so expected of her that it makes her

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abandonment of them for Adonis so telling of her attraction to

him.21

Unlike other child-gods, Venus does not have to overcome

some immediate danger after her birth because she already has. If

all other primordial children and their mythological dramas are

microcosms of different aspects of the humanity,22 then the drama

of Venus’ very birth is a microcosm of the nature of the world

itself. Her emergence as the loving feminine from the most

masculine symbol defines how the cosmos work: all that is

destroyed can create in the same way that Venus is created from

the destruction of Uranos. Oftentimes, as is seen with the other

primordial children, one must destroy in order to make way for

some new, more beautiful creation.

Considering Venus is the Primordial Child by virtue of her

own established origins and she is defined by Ovid as the seducer

of Adonis, it could be said that Adonis is actually the Kore of

the myth. He does share ritualistic similarities with Demeter,

the mother archetype. In both myths, it is their absences to and

subsequent returns from the underworld that bring about a return

21 Ovid, “Book X,” lines 530-532.22 Kerényi, “Prolegomena,” 13.

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of the earth’s fruitfulness.23 They are both equated with the

grain and corn; their myths evoked by the simple threshing of

each in preparation for the autumnal harvest and winter stores.24

They both were worshipped by cults consisting only of women: in

the tradition of Tammuz/Adonis, women mourned his return in the

fashion of a mother mourning the passing of a lost child25; in

the Demeter cults, the women mimic the fasting of Demeter when

she went into the underworld to resemble the search of the lost

daughter.26

As the representative of the maiden Kore, Persephone becomes

the falling seeds, a symbol with the potential for rebirth. This

image was so strong that even the Greeks saw in sowing the grain

a reminder of Persephone’s rape, as it is symbolically her seed

which must be spread.27 Tammuz/Adonis share similarities in these

ritual acts, as well. Like Persephone, he is gone either a third

or half the year, depending on the festival and his return marks

the return of plant life in this world. As the spirit of all 23 Frazier, 6; Carl Kerényi, “Kore,” in Science of Mythology: Essays on the Myth of the Divine Child and the Mysteries of Eleusis. (London: Routledge, 2002), trans. R. F. C. Hull, 134.24 Frazier, 130-132; Kerényi, “Kore,” 135-138.25 Frazier, 126-127.26 Kerényi, “Kore,” 140.27 Kerényi, “Kore,” 136-140.

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plant life, Tammuz/Adonis can be both sown seed and mown grain;

he can both die and be reborn the following year. 28

But it is Shakespeare’s treatment of the myth that truly

gives Adonis a chance to tell his story and engage in the full

Kore experience, to take his rightful place next to Persephone

and Leto as victims of a lustful goddess. Shakespeare doesn’t

seek to redeem Venus by giving Adonis to her; he wants to punish

her even more. She may be the embodiment of the female psyche,

but in Shakespeare’s world, she represents all that can go wrong

when a lustful deity fixates on a mortal being and Adonis, like

Persephone before him, is the consequence of that lust.

Shakespeare begins his treatment of Venus as seducer by

having her fully embody the primordial child in conjunction with

the Kore; she is “sick-thoughted”29 and overcome with desire that

by line 7, she already begun to woo him. Where Ovid describes her

as a love-sick girl, throwing off her normal passions of water

and obsessions with beauty to trudge through the woods with the

object of her affection,30 Shakespeare really set her up as

28 Frazier, 130-134.29 Shakespeare, line 530 Ovid, “Book X,” lines 533-535.

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seducer by going a step further and makes her downright

predatory:

Being so enrag’d, desire doth lend her forceCourageously to pluck him from his horse.

Over one arm the lusty courser’s reinUnder her other was the tender boy,Who blush’d and pouted in a dull disdain,With leaden appetite, unapt to toy;

She red and hot as coals of glowing fireHe red for shame, but frosty in desire.31

She literally plucks him from his horse and carries him to an

open field where she pins him down and kisses all over him. She

is even described as a famished eagle who, although tired from a

long hunt, victoriously feeds on Adonis’ panting breath as its

captured prey.32

Although this could be incorrectly taken as Shakespeare’s

disdain for strong women, Venus’ sudden attack on Adonis is all

part of the cycle of the Kore. In order to truly die and be

reborn again through motherhood, the Kore must be pursued, robbed

of freedom, raped, lost, revenged, restored, and, finally,

reborn.33 For the myth to have a proper rape, Adonis must be

31 Shakespeare, lines 29-36.32 Shakespeare, lines 55-63.33 Kerényi, “Kore,” 146.

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resistant. Ovid’s myth doesn’t even give Adonis a voice to say

whether he wants Venus or not; as Persephone before him, Ovid

makes Adonis a passive being which everything happens to: Venus

falls in love with him, the boar strikes him, Venus transforms

him.34 If Adonis’ myth is one of rebirth, Ovid gives him no life

from which to be reborn.

Shakespeare brings the sense of loss present in both the

rituals of Adonis and the Kore myth back to the Adonis myth by

allowing the reader to get the full Kore experience so that

Adonis’ death is a tragic event. He sets this up by making Venus’

pursuit of Adonis so fervent she resorts to blabbering in a way

unbecoming of a divinity. She spends 30 lines complaining about

how Adonis must be crazy if he doesn’t the goddess that’s so

desirable even Ares has courted her unsuccessfully. 100 lines

later, she chastises Adonis for not doing a man’s natural duty by

spreading his seed in as many women as he can. Here Shakespeare

plays with the idea of Adonis not playing the male part in this

myth by having Venus accuse him of being an unnatural stone and

not of woman born. Shakespeare then has Venus become so

34 Ovid, “Book X,” lines 533-535.

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frustrated at Adonis’ apathy that she resorts to throwing a

tantrum and offering her body for any depraved sexual pleasure

Adonis desires.35

The pursuit is so sexually charged that even Adonis’ own

horse falls prey when a wild mare arrives. He begins to properly

court her, reminding the reader of what should be happening

between two lovers.36 The staggering incongruity of the scene

highlights that this romance is not normal by any means; the

players are representatives of something bigger, something

mythical. There can be no happy ending like the horses’.

Shakespeare also uses the horse’s flight as a ploy to move

to the next stage of the Kore cycle: robbed of freedom. Once the

horse is gone, Adonis is left abandoned and helpless to Venus’

wiles. He puts her off for a while, accusing her of trying to

break him while he’s still innocent:

Who wears a garment shapeless and unfinish’d?Who plucks the bud before on leaf put forth?If springing things be any jot diminish’d,They wither in their prime, prove nothing worth;

The colt that’s back’d and burden’d being youngLoseth his pride, and never waxeth strong.37

35 Shakespeare, lines 28-240.36 Shakespeare, lines 259-324.37 Shakespeare, lines 415-420.

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Even though he cannot leave, Adonis still has his inner

freedom, and to truly be the Kore, Venus must take even that. As

a last resort, Venus feigns a sudden faint in the hot sun. Being

the virginal Kore, Adonis naïvely wants to save her and tries

many ways to wake her before finally kissing her. It is this

passive acceptance of the seducer’s methods that ultimately trap

him. He again appeals to Venus that he is too young, but too

late: “Her lips are conquerors, his lips obey […] He now obeys,

and now no more resisteth,/While she takes all she can, not all

she listeth.”38

It is this moment that Shakespeare allows Adonis the

opportunity to become a true Kore, by visualizing the third stage

of the Kore myth: the virginal rape. Whether Adonis willingly

submitted to Venus’ advances or not, it is rape in the same way

it was rape with Nemesis and Zeus. In both instances, the Kore

attempted to escape the persistent seducer, and in both

instances, the Kore submitted not through a softening of the will

by love but through a breaking of it by violence.39

38 Shakespeare, lines 549-564.39 Kerényi, “Kore,” 144.

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In traditional Kore myths, the rape would have produced

within the Kore a child, the product of the seducer and the

maiden. This product is necessary as it leads to the eventual

rebirth, but since Adonis is a man and cannot conceive in that

one moment the way a woman can, Shakespeare has to make Adonis’

rape even more violating. One instance, one rape is not enough.

Shakespeare has Venus become insatiable, attempting the rape

again only 30 lines later. The fact that she is almost successful

shows how Adonis has already slipped into the next stage of the

Kore myth: failure to understand. 40

A failure to understand is less about making sense of the

situation and more about coming to terms with what has happened

and why. Adonis still doesn’t gather why Venus is obsessed with

him. He listens as she warns him against the boar, but with an

air of confusion and wonder. Shakespeare has Adonis retake his

dignity once Venus begins to suggest he lay down next to her

again. At this point, he progresses to the next stage of the Kore

cycle: wrath and revenge.

40 Shakespeare, lines 589-612.

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Shakespeare truly allows Adonis to proclaim himself as the

unwilling victim here. When Venus tries to steal another kiss,

Adonis steps away and begins a 50 line diatribe about why she is

wrong for taking him as she did. He accuses her of being a fake,

less than a goddess, or if a goddess, the goddess of something so

fleeting and despicable as lust41:

Call it not, love, for Love to heaven is fled,Since sweating Lust on earth usurp’d his name;

[…]

Love comforteth like sunshine after rain,But Lust’s effect is tempest after sun;Love’s gentle spring doth always fresh remain,Lust’s winter comes ere summer half be done.

Love surfeits not, Lust like a glutton dies;Love is all truth, Lust full of forged lies.

More I could tell, but more I dare not say;The text is old, the orator too green.Therefore, in sadness, now I will away;My face is full of shame, my heart of teen:42

Unlike some other traditional Kore myths, Shakespeare allows

Adonis to keep his dignity and leave before Venus has a chance to

refute or hold him back.

Rather than follow Adonis, though, Shakespeare stays focused

on Venus. This allows Adonis the opportunity to be a normal

41 Shakespeare, lines 793-808.42 Shakespeare, lines 793-808.

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teenage boy for just a little longer before his transformation,

the one that is budding inside him. Shakespeare also gets a

chance to fully showcase the effects of lustful obsession on a

supposed goddess. Again, Shakespeare does not have her take to

the skies like the content goddess of Ovid’s myth; no, she stays

within nature, stays within Adonis’s realm, in the hopes that he

returns for her love. She, in the style of Orpheus before her,

sings all night about the woes of love, which Shakespeare

comments “end without audience, and are never done.”43

What Shakespeare also does here is create dramatic tension

by having Venus become the lovesick girl she was in Ovid’s myth,

for the reader, if he or she be familiar with the myth at all,

knows of Adonis impending death and rebirth as the anemone. Not

only would focusing on Adonis have given the reader little in the

way of suspense and surprise; it would have made the reader miss

the crucial moment when Venus hears his wounded cry. As a woman

in pain, Adonis must in agony so that Venus may suffer at his

passing.

43 Shakespeare, lines 817-864.

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And suffer she does. As soon as she hears Adonis’ dogs,

Venus knows what has happened; she runs to him but nature itself

holds her back. Each dog she comes across looks worse than the

last, gathering her fear into a state of panic so pronounced she

beseeches Death before even knowing Adonis’ fate. 44 Shakespeare

gives Adonis over 100 lines while Venus rants and raves against

even the possibility of Adonis’ death. The moment she comes to

the conclusion that she must just be panicking for no reason and

apologizes for her actions is the moment she finds Adonis.

In traditional Kore myths, the rape is transformative in-

and-of itself. As Frobenius quotes in his book:

The man is the same after his first love as he was before.

[…] His life and body are always the same. The woman

conceives. As a mother she is another person than the woman

without child. She carries the fruit of the night for nine

months in her body. Something grows. Something grows into

her life that never again departs from it. She is a mother.

44 Shakespeare, lines 907-924.

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[…] All this the man does not know […] Before every love she

is maiden, after every love she is a mother.45

But Adonis is not a woman. He cannot stay alive and conceive

of a union between him and Venus. As true to his origins myth,

there must be a transformation, a rebirth in relation to Adonis.

Ovid has Venus turn him into an anemone.46 Shakespeare, in line

with the tragedy of the Kore, gives control of Adonis’

transformation back to him, for the transformation has already

begun by the time Venus arrives, the blood spilt so widely that

it seems even the plants are bleeding with him. Shakespeare has

Venus mourn in the style of the Tammuz/Adonis cults, ranting and

raving at the heavens for the loss of her lover. But it is a

short-lived dirge, as less than 50 lines later, Adonis’ body has

already dissolved into the beautiful purple-red anemone of myth.

True to the selfishness and egocentricity of the gods, all Venus

can do is pluck the flower and place it between her breasts, a

sign that even in death, Venus cannot allow Adonis his freedom.

45 Leo Frobenius, Der Kopf als Schicksal, (1924): 88, quoted in Kerényi, “Kore,” 120.46 Ovid, “Book X,” lines 725-737.

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Although Adonis’ form as anemone is not a true rebirth in

the same vein as the traditional Kore myths such as Persephone or

Nemesis or Europa, Shakespeare’s version at least brings the

reader closer to the mythical state of mind than Ovid’s. No

longer is the myth about Venus’ divine transformation of Adonis;

no longer is Adonis a passive recipient to his Fate.

Shakespeare, through using the tragic stages and circumstances of

the Kore cycle, gives Adonis the dignity and divinity of the Kore

by allowing him the power to transform and create a new life

mythically. What could be more tragic and more powerful than

allowing a man the chance to experience the miracle that is

motherhood?

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Bibliography

Ovid, “Book X.” In Metamorphoses: A New Verse Translation, trans. David Raeburn, lines 470-737. London: Penguin Books, 2004.

Frazier, Sir James. Adonis: A Study in the History of Oriental Religion. 1914. Reprint, London: Watts, 1932.

Frobenius, Leo. Der Kopf als Schicksal. (1924): 88. Quoted in Kerényi,Carl. “Kore.” In Science of Mythology: Essays on the Myth of the Divine Child and the Mysteries of Eleusis. Translated by R. F. C. Hull. London: Routledge, 2002.

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