Philologist Hasan Huseynov about the first woman on earth, the vices of the mythological Pandora and misogyny in culture
In the ancient Greek myth, as in the narrative that took shape in the pre-literary era, a special device is built with the help of which anyone who rewrites or retells this myth must first give out his location in time and space. So we, retelling the content of the myth about Pandora, must determine the position of the narrator and his - my - audience. So why do we find it important at all to learn some of the details of the Pandora myth?
Unfortunately, we will not like the answer. We still live in an era of transition from patriarchy, from the so-called traditional values - the right of the strong, the domination of the mass man, the cult of the development and expansion of human presence in nature and space - to humanistic values, to respect for the weak, persecuted, poor and sick, to mutual respect not based on strength but based on humanity, to empowerment of the exiled.
And Pandora, if not the main one, then one of the main heroines of the entry into the world of our not yet finished and, fortunately, has not yet finished us yesterday.
John Flaxman / wikipedia.org
The Pandora myth
It is believed that the myth of Pandora is a very late processing of some oriental legends that made such a strong impression on Hesiod that he decided to inlay with the myth of Pandora the main legend of the Greeks - about the origin of the world. And he comes up with a tale of "beautiful evil," or κακὸν καλόν, embodied in Pandora.
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How does this innovation of Hesiod's, bordering on falsification, compare? Imagine that someone, intent on describing the problems of modern society, suddenly announces that the fashion industry and sex services are to blame: the fashion industry created mannequins, from which a deadly cult of super-skinny fashion models grew, and another learned how to produce inflatable rubber women for psychosomatic exercises rich men who are allegedly afraid of having connections with real women. Interesting, but not very convincing.
"Pandora Crowned by the Seasons." William Etty / wikimedia.org
Birth of Pandora
So Pandora was not born on her own. Like another woman familiar to us from Hebrew mythology, this woman was sculpted by the order of the supreme deity - specifically in order to seduce either the very first, or the most intelligent person, or a recently conquered deity.
God, who created Adam without a special plan, felt compelled to finalize the project. This is how the first woman, except for Lilith, arose - Eve. And the Greek Zeus was going to take revenge on the titan Prometheus for stealing fire for people (men) and ordered his gifted son Hephaestus to create a creature that would put boundaries on the almost endless possibilities of man.
He got his way thanks to two tricks. The first, the effectiveness of which was confirmed during the Trojan War, which forever interrupted the relationship between gods and people, is the incredible beauty of a woman. It must be remembered that Hephaestus was the husband of Aphrodite - jealous, but also appreciated by the most beautiful of the goddesses - his father's aunt. Therefore, Hephaestus, the grand-nephew of his wife, put into Pandora not only all his passion for Aphrodite, but all his jealousy for his wife.
Pandora's vices
The charm of Pandora, awakening an irresistible and unquenchable lust in a dull tribe of men, was copied in some way by the mother of Hephaestus, who knew how to distract the father of gods and people from any exciting business.
However, even this property would be tolerable and would not cost the world of men any special costs, if only the woman worked by Hephaestus followed certain rules. Instead, and unlike Elena the Beautiful, who hatched from an egg laid by Ice, Pandora was endowed with four vices: laziness, curiosity, jealousy, and vindictiveness.
Obviously, the fifth vice was a combination of vices, devoid of any harmony: we already see in this set quite typical male stereotypes that determined the attitude towards a woman as a subordinate biological subspecies - both despised, and desired, and dangerous, and in something very significant superior to the "senior subspecies", men.
The myth of Prometheus
While Prometheus was creating a person together with his brother Epimetheus, it was not possible to comply with some of the terms of the technical task. At first, Prometheus found only one way out: to show a working model, the test conditions had to be faked.
Gradually, all the weaknesses and illnesses, passions and fears that a human being had to overcome on their own, Prometheus hid in a deep pithos (barrel). Excessive daydreaming was also among the passions and misfortunes that should not have prevented a person from acting as a rational being. And Hephaestus put this tendency to dream of the unrealizable in his special storage. Only when the barrel began to overflow, Prometheus realized that due to internal resources a person would not pass acceptance, and decided to supply his brainchild with divine fire - the very instrument without which Zeus was not Zeus, and Hephaestus was Hephaestus.
Prometheus understood that Zeus would definitely come up with something to destroy his brainchild, since he himself, as a deity, could not be destroyed. Hesiod does not specify whether Prometheus knew exactly how Zeus would get his way, but the generally accepted and well-known version of the myth is the following message.
Prometheus and Pandora. Johann David Schubert / wikimedia.org
Prometheus tells Epimetheus not to accept any gifts from Zeus. Meanwhile, Zeus sends the freshly baked Pandora straight to Epimetheus and, moreover, accompanied by the god of couriers and merchants, Hermes. When Epimetheus, warned by Prometheus, refused to accept Pandora, Zeus, in a rage, ordered Hephaestus to chain Prometheus to one of the mountains in the area of the present Caucasian mineral waters, where the eagle tore the immortal liver of the titan, which grew every night again and again after every bird meal.
Another interesting detail that characterizes more Zeus than Prometheus. In order to intimidate Epimetheus and mislead the rest of the gods, Zeus accused Prometheus of wanting to get along with Athena herself, who apparently lured the titan into the mountains, but instead of Olympus, where he was expected, the titan ended up in the Caucasus. This plot twist is especially interesting: there could be no meeting of Athena and Prometheus, but the subtext of this gossip is the thought of the unsuccessful production of a perfect man, who so wanted to save the gods themselves.
And only after learning what trouble his ascetic brother got into, Epimetheus thought it best not to refuse the gift of Zeus and take Pandora as his wife.
Pandora's box is open
As it was said, the lazy but curious Pandora soon got to the pithos and was going to transfer from there to her pixida, or into a box that already bore her name by that time, at least something for further use. But, having opened the barrel, she released bugs of the stand-alone computer console "Man", performed by Prometheus, collected by Hephaestus. Only the intervention of Hermes allowed at least something to be left in the pixis, hermetically closing this box.
But nevertheless, many misfortunes that watched for a person and for the time being hidden in the pithos of Prometheus and in the pixis of Pandora - from madness and senile insensitivity to diseases and vices that young people cultivate thoughtlessly, and old people madly - burst out and since subside.
Pandora opens a box / wikimedia.org
The myth of Pandora as an anti-feminist parable
The writer and mythologist Robert Graves was sure that this whole story “is not a real myth, but an antifeminist parable, and it is possible that it was invented by Hesiod himself, albeit based on the story of Demophont and Phyllida. Pandora ("gifted by all") Graves identifies with the goddess of the earth Rhea, who under this name was worshiped in Athens and here and there. The pessimistic Hesiod accused Rhea of the fact that because of her man became mortal, suffered so much evil in life, and wives are so prone to adultery.
We can say that the myth of Pandora is a cunningly woven ideologeme of "a dangerous and thoughtless woman put into production without appropriate tests." In the scholias to Hesiod's poems about Pandora, there is a desire to reconcile the most primitive misogyny ideology with the first attempts at anthropological periodization of the universe.
According to this periodization, the first crop of people was taken in Attica, and the first person, Alalcomenius, immediately found himself in the retinue of Zeus and Hera, resolved their quarrels in every possible way and even raised Athena when she was a child.
We, however, remember that Athena was born immediately fully armed and completely adult from the head of her father. He, shortly before that, swallowed his beloved pregnant Metis for fear that their common son would overthrow Kronides. The first generation of people worshiped the father of Zeus, Cronus, although they did not make any sacrifices, they were vegetarians, lived happily, did not age and instead of death fell into a pleasant sleep. The golden generation still somehow accompanies humanity in happy dreams. His blessed representatives are considered lovers of truth and defenders of justice.
On the other hand, many archaists and conservatives are close to the intention of Hesiod the misogynist, and in later times, philosophers appear every now and then, one might say, living with the myth of Hesiod. Such is the famous German Pandorian philosopher - Arthur Schopenhauer.
Heroic epic
Hesiod and his scholiast call the people of the Silver Age "mama's sons", who are so accustomed to obeying women in everything that they became famous only for whining and quarrelsomeness, for which Zeus eventually wore them all out. Hesiod says nothing at all about the painful resemblance of the Silver Ages to the people of the so-called "Silver Ages" in imperial Rome and in tsarist Russia before the end of the latter. The Copper Generation that followed the Silver Generation was already skilled at using weapons, their belligerence became the source of their cruelty, and the Copper Generation was mowed down by the plague.
The fourth, so-called heroic, generation, which succeeded the people of the copper age, was the product of mixed alliances of gods and goddesses and mortal men and women. It is about them that the heroic epic tells. Military and political fame did not prevent them, however, before dying and leaving for the islands of the blessed, to be noted in numerous cases of murder of relatives, incest, kidnapping and so on.
The heroic age could not last long, because it was at the very beginning of it that Zeus ordered the creation of Pandora. Hermes, who accompanied Pandora to the hard-thinking Epimetheus, from the point of view of many researchers, is an allegory of the fundamental mistrust that only people and gods can feel towards each other, even such extremely close deceivers as Hermes and Pandora. Let's not forget that Hermes regularly brings Persephone to his mother from Hades, and then leads her back to the underworld. And Eurydice - first to Orpheus, and then - in the opposite direction - took Hermes-Psychopomp (that is, Equipping the Soul on the last journey).
Pandora. Dante Gabriel Rossetti / wikimedia.org
The tragedy of the people of the heroic age is also that they understood the strong erotic principle that was involuntarily laid in Pandora, which constantly needs interpretation. What is it - "Pandora"? And this is also the one for which even a rational person of the heroic age can "give everything." That is why Hermes also accompanies Pandora to Epimetheus. Erich Fromm discusses this function of the mysterious couple, who, like Sigmund Freud, criticized by him, foresaw the danger posed by the flat man of the next century.
Yes, all these generations will be replaced by iron men, whose main characteristic is no longer the criminal acts themselves, but the fierce collective lie of our century. That is why there is nothing surprising in the curiosity with which we wait for news about Pandora, the embodiment of double or even triple recursion. This curiosity is especially fueled by outbreaks of fiery misogyny that occasionally occur even in developed countries, remaining a sad norm for most countries on earth.
Hasan Huseynov, Doctor of Philology, Professor of the Higher School of Economics