This essay was written in preparation for the "Helen's Dress", an e-Residency from Vamvakou, Greece.
Chasing The Trail Of Acanthus
We find ourselves in troubled times, with ecological destruction threatening many life forms, including humans. Hope can be a scarce resource, as the meaning behind this devastation is unfathomable. In troubled times, art can show a way out, a way away, not by entertaining people, but by storytelling and mythtending. When mundane meaning-making fails, mythological stories can lend insight from a different viewpoint and offer guidance as we strive to find adequate responses to current crises. Yet, the narrative threads did get confused, knotted, abused for everyday problems and political interests, we only have piecemeal left. Writing means learning, and every day, there are more pieces, hints, and insights found. Every text also changes the author. And every day there are more questions. In troubled times, conspiration theories are growing, overgrowing common ground, overgrowing prohibitions of scientific disciplines and narrow channels of thought. I want to create my own conspiration theory, drawing upon the latin meaning of spirare, which means to breath, to live, to be excited, fragrant, inspired and animated, conspiare means all this, together. Donna J. Haraway calls this effort SF, and SF describes my position in researching, painting, questioning.
“SF is a sign for science fiction, speculative feminism, science fantasy, speculative fabulation, science fact, and also, string figures. Playing games of string figures is about giving and receiving patterns, dropping threads and failing but sometimes finding something that works, something consequential and maybe even beautiful, that wasn’t there before, of relaying connections that matter, of telling stories in hand upon hand, digit upon digit, attachment site upon attachment site, to craft conditions for finite flourishing on terra, on earth.”
With these threads, torn so often, I weave, stich, braid and knot together stories, myths, plants, the cosmos, all in one, interconnected, entangled, confusing, connecting and conspiratorial. It's not a red thread, at least not only, but a lot of threads, yellow, blue, green, and grey, lined up one by one to tell a story from the point of view of a female artist; curious, undisciplined, erratic and always questioning. A story constructed of footnotes, subordinate clauses, random notes, fragments and incidental observations, the footnotes of the footnotes.
Tracing the meaning and story of acanthus started with quite simple question: Walking near the Temple of Zeus in Athens with Loukia Richards and some fellow artists, we saw a beautiful Acanthus plant. Talking about plants and their symbolic meanings, the question came up, if I know more about some specific meaning of it. I didn't. In fact, in most books Acanthus does not show up as a prominent medical plant, and I never really went far with investigations. So, as far as I knew then, in Mediterranean countries Acanthus symbolizes immortality in the broadest sense. Satisfied with this superficial explanation, I could have stopped there. But something startling was with this question, so I did not forget it. I had to follow this thread, whereever it would lead me. And it took me to places I never expected. It turns out that an essay about Acanthus talks about the cosmos, about the connections of people, gods and plants, about life and death, and eternal life. It talks about ancient baskets and patriarchy, and about how myths live on, have been handed down in patterns and ornaments, and are made disappear. As Donna J. Haraway says:
“It matters what thoughts think thoughts. It matters what knowledges know knowledges. It matters what relations relate relations. It matters what worlds world worlds. It matters what stories tell stories.”
The term ornament is loaded with conflicted and often negative meanings. It is associated with excessiveness, frivolity, and superficiality; with pretentious and uneconomis stuff. Adolf Loos joined ornament and crime to a unity hard to seperate. Ornaments are everywhere, but generations of art historians and archaeologists hardly noticed them and the knowledge about them is only marginal.
The verdict on Greek ornaments was made by Owen Jones' Grammar of Ornament in 1856, stating that Greek ornament "was meaningless, purely decorative, never representative." Even though that was totally wrong it affected the common view for a long time and it is the outermost counterpoint to my following considerations. There are other tracks and threads to follow.
What does ornament mean? It comes from the Latin word ornamentum, rooted in ornare, which in a modern interpretation means "to confer grace upon some object of ceremony". The term ornament, by most accounts, originated inside the ancient Greek term cosmos, which meant something like universe, order and adornment. In such a translation, ornament is implicated with concepts so vast that at first it may seem impossible to distangle it from an inventory of all things. Cosmos was set in contrast to chaos, preceding the emergence of the world as we know it. I found the most beautiful explanation of the term in The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville, written in the seventh century, the last days of Plato’s Academy, in a chapter entitled The Cosmos And Its Parts:
“(...) the Greeks adopted a term for world (...) derived from ornament, on account of the diversity of elements and the beauty of the heavenly bodies. They call it Kosmos, which means ornament, for with our bodily eyes we see nothing more beautiful than the world.”
Far away from being meaningless, ornament in Isidore’s light manifests the visible activity of the cosmos, a poetic tapestry of things in eternal motion which both constitute and locate us within an immense world-at-large. Ornaments can structure images, spaces, and social relationships. Ornament’s expressions of expansive nature, entangled with the holder’s contained and mundane expressions of earthly construction, complete a vision of the entire world in which the holder is situated. Ornament and its holder are united as players in a cosmic narrative. There are and never where any humans without ornaments. All ritual processions, mythological figures, attributes, and images contribute to the iconographic heritage of ornaments. This layer of communication goes far deeper and reaches out far longer than any language or writing. Demetri Porphyrios argues that
“Ornament, like language, is originally bound up entirely with myth. It is only much later that it achieves its purely representational, purely aesthetic role, only as the magic circle with which mythical consciousness surrounds it is broken.”
Acanthus mollis near the Temple of Zeus, Athens 2019
As a valid form of communication, ornament connects us and the world, our beginnings and our future. It is meaningful, talking, creating and mediating order. It cannot and is not invented by an individual or an artist, just as little as a language, but builds on the community.
“(...) natural forms whether they are plant or animal in origin cannot just be turned into ornament on an artist’s or craftsman’s say-so. Natural forms will only pass into a repertory of ornament when they have been isolated, blessed, or cursed by ritual.”
Joseph Rykwert spotted this as a main problem in the Art-Nouveau-movement, resulting in only a short lifespan for the new design ornaments. However beautiful and elegant they are, they have to root as deep as culture. And because of these deep roots, existing if we know about them or not, there is much more information and communication to bridge the millennia. So, quite in the sense of Rykwert, I propose to look again at some monuments that display Acanthus in various combinations, and
“to see if some texts and indirect witnesses in antiquity cannot help me to find out if, as I suspect, something richer and more dramatic might not lurk behind or below the innocent surface of the all-too-often repeated ornament.”
So what has this all to do with the famous Acanthus ornament, the most important feature of the Corinthian column? As one of the most popular and widely used ornaments, I would like to follow its tendrils back to the roots, the invention of the Corinthian column with the use of Acanthus leaves as the most prominent novelty.
About Kore
I would like to follow the tendrils of Acanthus back to the roots, the invention of the Corinthian column with the Acanthus leaves as the most prominent novelty.
The First Column: Temple of Apollo Epikourios, Bassae (400 BC)
The earliest Corinthian column was found in the remoteness of Arcadia, located in the Temple of Apollo Epikourios at Bassae, near the ancient city of Phigaleia. Now it is lost, maybe in an unopened box in the vast archives of the British Museum, in some dusty corner, maybe secretly sold to some private collection, undetected and forgotten. Only drawings like those of C.R. Cockerell remain. The temple itself has some unique architectural peculiarities, amongst them the very unusual north-south orientation and the first use of all three architectural orders in one building. It is Doric on the exterior, but houses an Ionic colonnade on the interior, as well as the earliest known use of the Corinthian order in a single free-standing column centered at the back of the sanctuary.
The Corinthian column was placed at a very particular spot in the interior, it would typically have been the position of a cult statue, so the column may itself have been some kind of aniconic cult image, an object of veneration. But even though in the center of the temple, it seems not to be a representation of the sun god Apollo, who revolves around it in the course of the year. At winter solstice, when light starts again to prevail over darkness, the Corinthian column is illuminated from the young sun, and again highlighted by the sun at its position at summer solstice. Antonios Thodis reconstructs these effects very precisely in his study On the Corinthian Column at the Temple of Apollo Epikourios at Bassae. Solar effects of this elaboration and precision are rare, but can this explain the uniqueness of the Corinthian column?
“The Corinthian capital itself presents the Acanthus leaves, vegetation, at its vigorous moment topped by an anthemion. Apollo Epikourios at Bassae therefore guarantees and safeguards in its interior the powers of spring, its beauty and abundance, the agon of opposites, and the cosmic and divine order that sustains the continuation of generations within the cycles of life, the drama of mortal life: human finitude prevails within the agon of cosmic cycles of decay and renewal.”
The Roman architectural theorist Vitruvius made clear that columns are developed anthropomorphic, the Doric column representing the man, with its counterpart the Ionic as a female column, and the Corinthian representing the slender young girl. Could this mean that in the center of this temple dedicated to Apollo is the representation of a young girl?
The Invention of the Corinthian Column According to Vitruvius
Lets have a closer look at Vitruvius’ famous anectote explaining the invention of the Acanthus ornament and the Corinthian column.
“Now the third type, which is called Corinthian, imitates the slenderness of a young girl, because young girls, on account of the tenderness of their age, can be seen to have even more slender limbs and obtain even more charming effects when they adorn themselves. It is said that the invention of this type of capital occurred in the following manner. A young Corinthian girl of citizen rank, already of marriageable age, was struck down by disease and passed away. ”
Roland Fréart de Chambray: The Invention of the Corinthian Order, 1650
Who is this dead girl? Vitruvius calls her only kore, which means marriageable young woman, maiden, or daughter. It is a second name for Persephone, titling her by the function of Demeter’s daughter. For Rykwert the Corinthian column was nothing less than a personification of Kore as Persephone herself. But Persephone is always related to her mother Demeter. Vitruvius replaces the mother with a mourning nurse, a touching story of a servant's or slave’s intimate connection to her dead protegé. Does he deliberately not mention the mother? Is he trying to lure the reader onto a wrong track to loosen and obscure the connections to the old goddess of vegetation? It matters what stories tell stories. At this point, I loose trust to his narration and want to go off track, to find hints about this other story that the narration covers up.
Connections emerge and as I continue to explore interpretations of the Demeter-Persephone myth, I begin to discover new old storylines, interwoven, matted, and told away; considered unimportant from a superficial point of view. Connections, that through slight retellings become visible.
It is a story of rape, abduction and betrayal. Demeter was raped by her brother Zeus, thus fathering Persephone. Later, Zeus gave his brother Hades permission to abduct and rape his daughter. Like countless women to this day, the girl disappeared without a trace, leaving the mother in desperate search for her in whole Arcadia. It was Helios / Apollo, who had watched the crime and told Demeter what had happened. Furious, she caused the earth to become barren, starving gods and men alike. Is a sheer coincidence that not far from the Temple of Apollo Epikourios at Bassae is the cave where Demeter hid herself during her mourning?
At least for a few months a year, she forced the return of her daughter Persephone, who was now Queen of the Underworld. Taking the perspective of the greater goddess archetype, their myth tells of the struggle for sovereignty, the brutally enforced male takeover. As a great goddess of the earth, Demeter had some resemblance to Gaia, mistress of the living and the dead. She was most likely a double deity, always mother and daughter at the same time, regularly renewing herself. This doubling seems incomprehensible to mythologists and patriarchal aesthetes, Giorgio Agamben gives a good example of this:
“Kerényi quotes an inscription from Delos below, in which the Eleusinian deities, Demeter (the woman) and Kore (the daughter), are paradoxically identified with each other: kai kores / kai gynaikos, girl and woman at the same time. Amazingly, however, he interprets this correspondence to the effect that “man must die, but lives on in his descendants”.”
A woman must die, but lives on in her descendants, and her ancestors live on in her. An unbroken chain from the past to the future, a connection that is far less abstract for women than for men. The rupture in the world view is fundamental. Mother and daughter, alternating cyclically, go in and out of the underworld. The underworld is not a terminus, but a place of rest and renewal. But there is no longer any escape from the underworld of Hades, and while Kore is still moving back and forth between the spheres, maintaining a cyclical world view, the life of the mortals has developed into a dark one-way street.
Demeter was a ruler, like all those rulers we only know from fairy tales, and whom we are no longer able to perceive as such. They were told away. Remember: In the old days, to become a king, you had to do something special, and to marry the princess. It didn't matter who a man was or where he came from. Oedipus became king because he could solve the riddle and married the queen. Creon had to marry his son to Antigone, the princess, to secure his son's succession to the throne. Menelaus had to marry Helen, Kore's sister from another mother, to become King of Sparta. So how do you take control of the earth? It is best to marry the queen or the princess. If men fail to gain the women's consent, kidnapping and rape enforce it. Demeter can maintain some freedom, but when Persephone marries Hades she becomes queen in the realm that has always been hers.
“How does the name Persephone fit on this figure? It actually means the strangler, the one who brings ruin through death, how does this fit on Kore, the tender, the lovely Demeter child? (...) Cursing, punishing crimes worthy of death is her business, and the gruesome Erinys are her servants.”
The scary girl, the unspeakable girl, as Agamben calls her, whose name you don't say out loud, whose anger you don't want to challenge, because it can't be appeased. Not far below the surface lies a story of female resistance and anger that could only be suppressed by force.
Divide and conquer. Demeter is not any longer a great goddess of the whole earth, only the thin layer of vegetation remains hers. Persephone becomes a stranger, a temporary guest on earth, but also in the underworld. At the transition from matrilocal to patrilocal culture, kidnapping and rape become a legitimate wedding ritual. In Arcadia Demeter was known under two titles, Melaina, the black, and Erinus, the angry. Does this surprise anyone? Not all women could be silenced, and not all female voices could be kept silent.
“And korai are called the Erinys, the terrible deities of revenge (...) It is very significant that the insatiable rage and vengeance (...) is embodied by girls.”
If Vitruvius speaks of the nurse and not of the mother, he neglects the bond between mother and daughter, Demeter and Kore/Persephone. This connection was systematically broken at the turn to patriarchal societies. No more mothers, just vessels that carry the seeds, nurses, strangers.
“The woman you call the mother of the child
is not the parent, just a nurse to the seed,
the new-sown seed that grows and swells inside her.
The man is the source of life—the one who mounts.
she, like a stranger for a stranger, keeps
the shoot alive unless god hurts the roots. ”
The deeply grieving Demeter, the mother, whose emotions are so strong that she can bring the daughter back from the underworld, becomes a servant. Even in this small, inconspicuous text by Vitruvius there is a deeply misogynic core. Housewives, servants, possessions, that's what women should be. In the best case, women were integrated into the husband's household, were responsible for the internal affairs of housekeeping, in the worst case they were prisoners against their will and without the right to object. A final journey into the underworld, from which there was no real return, from which one could not get out unchanged.
“The loss of the daughter to the mother, the mother to the daughter, is the essential female tragedy.”
Can I trust these thoughts, these connections? Different translations and ethymological fantasies, vague sources, lost or destroyed artifacts, traces that lead to nowhere. Can I trust my own conclusions, insights, my own knowledge? Narrators who know exactly the purpose of their stories. The winner makes history, the noise of those (his)stories hides the central story of the violent submission of women. This is SF in the truest sense of Donna J. Haraway, "science fiction, speculative feminism, science fantasy, speculative fabulation, science fact, and also, string figures."
Like in playing string figures, by taking over the string I produce a new figure. I keep pulling and rolling it up. I am led back to Vitruvius' narration and the basket, kalathos, that seems to be only a minor feature, just a container for a few old, superfluous toys, sentimental memorabilia, unimportant for the great invention of the Corinthian column. But let's move on and find more pieces of the big mythological puzzle.
“After her burial, her nurse collected the few little things in which the girl had delighted during her life, and gathering them all in a basket, placed this basket on top of the grave, so that the offering might last there a little longer, she covered the basket with a roof tile. This basket, supposedly, happened to have been put down on top of an acanthus root. ”
This basket of a specific shape, with a wider mouth that tapers toward the base, usually without a lid or handles, was most often made of willow rods, only later also of clay. It was associated with the female realm, the storage of carded wool in preparation for spinning, but could also be used to hold food, children’s toys, or flowers. The basket turns out to be deeply connected with the realm of Persephone and Demeter, again. In the fatal moment of abduction Persephone is often shown with a kalathos flower basket. It became a symbolic object in Greek religion, and kalathoi were often carried in processions by women who worshipped Demeter and her daughter.
“Miniature kalathoi (kalathiskoi) are known from other Demeter sanctuaries, but nowhere have they been found in such abundance as on Acrocorinth. Many hundreds have survived intact, and all shapes and sizes are represented. (...) I seems as if every person who climbed up to the santuary in the Classical period carried a little clay basket to dedicate.”
Maybe there is a closer relation to some corinthian sanctuary, and this is the reason the column is called Corinthian?
“By springtime therefore, the acanthus root, which had been pressed down in the middle all the while by the weight of the basket, began to send out leaves and tendrils, and its tendrils, as they grew up along the side of the basket, turned outward; when they met the obstacle of the corners of the roof tile, first they began to curl over at the ends and finally they were induced to create coils at the edges. ”
Now we have to talk about the plant, which does not make things easier: The Acanthus of today might not be the Acanthus of Greek antiqity. Today Acanthus is a genus of about thirty species of flowering plants in the family of Acanthaceae, native to tropical and warm temperate regions, with the highest species diversity in the Mediterranean Basin and Asia. The two principal species are Acanthus spinosus and Acanthus mollis.
“One may conjecture that the akanthos, especially its flower which was “brilliant,” as the symbol of the solar Apollo dictated the use of the new capital.”
The word Acanthus comes from the Greek ake, which means point, thorn and anthos, flower, which accurately describes the thorny, deeply serrated and scalloped leaves as thorny flower. Can the pointed thorns be seen as a reference to the rays of the sun? As an ornament it has been simplified and modified in broad variety, and sometimes the plant and the ornament are little related. It is thought that the Greeks, in order to produce a perfect leaf, formalised the plant according to their own ideas of the perfect leaf. As far as this, everything seems to be very easy. But there are problems: Even though the name Acanthus has been used since ancient times, its use has changed. Today, plants that were previously called Acanthus are known under completely different names, not even widely related. Before the standardization and systematization of plant names by Linné in 1753 there were no uniform names, and plants were systematized according to various criteria. So, it is nearly impossible to find coherent plant names throughout the Antiquity or Middle Ages.
One of the most accurate botanical descriptions from the ancient world is De Materia Medica, written by the Greek physician Pedanios Dioscorides in the 1st-century AC. A later copy, the so called Vienna Dioscurides from early 6th-century shows a beautiful illustration of Acanthus as it is commonly known. Acanthus has an extensive history of medicinal uses in many cultures, but in modern times the medicinal use of the plant has been forgotten.
Today, it is best known as a decorative perennial garden plant with the second name Bear's Breeches, a name that is still also used for the genus of Heracleum from the family of Apiaceae. As long as only the foliage of this umbellifer is visible, they are easy to confound. It is also related to celery and/or parsley, both important plants in the ancient Greek funeral cult. Back then, both were very different: Native to the Mediterranean and Middle East, with thin stalks, bitter flavor, strong smell and dark color it struck ancient Greeks as chthonic, associated with the underworld and death.
The plants are:
Acanthus mollis - Acanthus spinosus, bear’s breeches
Heracleum sosnowskyi - Heracleum giganteum, bear’s breeches
Petroselinum crispum, parsley
Apium graveolens, celery
These are some of the plants that reach into the inspiration space of the acanthus ornament, however different they are. I call it inspiration space because the individual plants were neither considered identical nor were they confused with each other, but they could cover individual aspects of the symbolic realm. Dark, bitter, thorny, sprouting, particularly strong in spring, undemanding, perennial, strongly serrated leaves.
That celery and Acanthus were considered to be closely related is shown in an edition of De Materia Medica from 1537, which shows two illustrations of acanthus: Acanthus hortensis, the garden-acanthus, and sylvestris, the Acanthus of the forests. Both are referred to as Brancha ursina, bear’s breeches. The garden version is clearly an umbellifer. It is unlikely that this is a form of Heracleum, since these are mostly poisonous and sometimes extremely phototoxical, not something you would like to have in the garden. So it may be celery or parsley.
The pinax of Persephone and Hades shows Hades with a flowering stem, which could be an umbellifer, maybe celery. In order to get a really valid interpretation of the plant here, a far more extensive study of the ancient plant representations is needed, so I can only consider the possibility.
Vitruvius is very specific in an author's attribution to the invention of the novel capital: it was Callimachus, the ingenious sculptor, who did not put the novel combination together, but noticed it while passing by. The invention of the Corinthian capital happened more accidentally than as an artistic product. Unfortunately, little is preserved from the works of Callimachus, and none of them resemble the Acanthus capital. I want to leave the discussion about the authorship of Callimachus to others and try to follow the traces of Acanthus elsewhere.
Dancing with Apollo
The Second Column: The Dancer's Column, Delphi (300 BC)
The Dancer's or Acanthus Column in Delphi is a breathtaking monumental artwork, even in the only partially restored state in which it is. The fragments of this 13-15 metres high column were discovered in 1894 close to the Temple of Apollo. Made up of five drums and a capital decorated with Acanthus leaves, it is topped by a group of three dancing girls with kalathoi on their heads. It is most likely that the whole ensemble supported a colossal bronze tripod with its feet standing on top of the column and framing the heads of the dancers. An omphalos with rich ornamentation crowned the tripod.
This superposition of female figures over an Acanthus shaft is reminding on Vitruvius’ remark, that the Corinthian column imitated the gracefulness of a young girl. Where can this connection be better understood than here? All the parts mentioned so far come together here: Acanthus leaves, a column that sprouts with overwhelming energy, girls, baskets and Apollo.
Three young girls with short chitons and kalathoi on their heads are kalathiskos dancers. The work basket of women is also the headdress of female deities, a flaring crown, symbolizing fertility, rich harvest and abundance. Also, these dances were only performed by females and have been connected to the cults of Athena, Dionysus, Apollo, Demeter, and Aphrodite. The exact purpose and sequences of this dance are still unknown, it seems probable that the kalathiskos dance was part of a fertility cult or a marriage ritual. G.W. Elderkin believes it was a dance about the tripod with the purpose of calling Apollo to return from the north, the land of the Hyperboreans, where he did spend the winter months.
As unique as the Dancer’s column is, was it really the only one of its kind? It turns out that the Delphi column is not just a singular form, but a pattern that was available and could also be varied. Again, there are more new questions than old ones can be answered, but it is the questions that bring progress.
The Third Column: Acanthus Column, Corinth
In the course of excavations, foundations of several Acanthus columns were found in Corinth, which so far could not be assigned to any specific structure or context. They are very similar to the Acanthus shaft from Delphi, five drums with leaves, also parts of figures of girls, which may have have crowned the pillars. So far they have received little attention, there is no dating or further academic work, but the trail leads back to Corinth. Does it suggest a reason for the name Corinthian for the Acanthus capital?
“The temple of Apollo at Corinth occupied a commanding position while tradition said that Briareus awarded its acropolis to Helios whence Corinth was known as the City of the Sun. This coincidence makes significant the discovery there of an Acanthus shaft and of a fragmentary column, half Acanthus and half Caryatid (?). ”
What are these giant shoots about? Because there is so little material, I follow my eyes and impressions. Even on photos, a rousing, overwhelming energy emanates from these artifacts. A joyful force rises from the earth, explosively powerful growth, from one day to the next, spring. Shoot, sprout, offspring - maybe that's a clue.
“The Greek word kore (male koros) does not refer to a certain age. It is derived from a root that denotes the vital force, the drive that grows and that makes the animals and plants grow.”
There is no word that can adequately describe this vital force, at least not in English or German. Perhaps there was a Greek term: Kore, the force that causes plants to push up from the earth overnight. Acanthus, the symbol of phyto-morphic immortality through the regenerative power of living nature. Life goes on. Everything dies, everyone dies. Life goes on. In the context, however, death appears as a very general principle of nature, only as the other side of becoming, not just for the existence of plants, but for existence in general. This idea is dramatically different, and so difficult to understand for monotheistic and individualistic people who strive for individual immortality and rebirth. This is not a reference to life emerging from a grave, not rejuvenation or some reference to the immortality of the soul, but a clear reference to life emerging from the Earth.
In order to get a better impression of this force I am looking for more material, and there is more. On a vase painting of Persephone and Hades in the center of the underworld again I find the Acanthus column. The front columns consist of five compressed Acanthus clusters towered over by Kore, the girl.
Let’s follow this lead further spread: the combination of Acanthus and a girl. It turns out that this combination is extremely widespread in tombs and urns, from Apulia to Anatolia. The same vital energy can be experienced even without the shaft of the column. Elaborate blossoming tendrils emerging from an Acanthus calyx surrounding the head of a girl appear in frequent variations on hundreds of vessels that were almost always uncovered in mortuary contexts. It is noteworthy that the female figure is not identified as Kore or Persephone, although that would be obvious. Sometimes she is called Aphrodite or Eileithyia, far more often, is not inquired more precisely. Do not think too much about the girls, their position is crystal clear: they are only adornment, staffage, accessories, they have no power and no meaning. Once again it shows: It matters what stories tell stories.
And how about Apollo? What position does he have? In a short passage, Bachofen explains the relationship between Kore and Apollo. However, it quickly becomes clear that even the discoverer of matriarchal structures is deeply caught up in ideas of male superiority and necessary domination. Hierarchical thinking subordinates the feminine to the masculine, the earth to the sky, the dark to the light, the older to the younger. He cannot help thinking that a vital, feminine earth force must be subordinated to the rule of the sun god.
“It is unmistakable that the idea of the mystery, which has the rejuvenation of the deceased life, at all times the most excruciating question of the human spirit, as its essential content, was originally linked to Kore, the daughter, but that all later richer developments beyond the mystical part of the religion have been brought about by the addition of male deities of a solar nature. So Apollo, the Uranian power of the light of male nature, joins Kore, the very telluric daughter. (...) This makes the relationship between the shining god of light and the native Demeter daughter completely clear. Both are carriers of the otherworldly hope of the Mysteries, but both in completely different, deeper and higher conceptions. (...) Uranian rebirth leaves the more humble purely telluric rejuvenation behind, in it the shine of Apollonian appearance darkens Kore’s more serious figure. ”
Men do not feel safe in the cycle of nature, but is threatened by - female - darkness. Absolutist fantasies of power and immortality light up. Despite his sensitivity, Bachofen could not interpret the myth differently or tell it differently, and yet I owe the reference to a connection between Kore and Apollo to him. We have to re-evaluate history, science, every expression of a patriarchal culture that needs to be shaken up. There is Kore, and there is Apollo. What if the relationship between the earthbound Kore and the sunbound Apollo were on an equal footing? What if not only the powers of the sun were needed to create the abundance of spring, of life, and of harvest, but also those of the earth?
Furthermore, Kore and Apollo have similarities. Both of them were cyclical deities, coming and going are central characteristics for them. Not only alternate day and night, but also the energy of Apollo, which changes with the seasons and is dependent on them, is based on the idea of his a departure to distant regions. With this insight I can return to Bassae and the first Corinthian column. Even if it makes sense to interpret the central pillar as Apollonian, I would like to suggest a different reading. The single pillar as an abstract embodiment of the Kore as a vital force, which the Apollo temple takes in centrally.
“The Corinthian order perhaps borrowed its akanthos capital from the akanthos shaft of the solar Apollo. Then the earliest known appearance of the capital in the temple of Apollo at Phigaleia would be quite appropriate. (...) If the Phigaleians thought of their Apollo Epikourios as the Hyperborean whose periodical return from the gloomy north brought light and vegetation to mankind then the old explanation of the unusual orientation of his temple may be true.”
The prototype of the Corinthian order appears in a remote, but highly sacred area, and from there it conquers continents and millennia. As decoration, as an ornamental accessory, an alternative narrative accompanied the palaces and churches, unnoticed, hidden by visibility, a blind passenger. And yet she speaks. As an evocation of Kore, nature’s vital, regenerative powers sprouting through temples’ roofs, even as fragments re-emerging from the Earth in excavations, Acanthus leaves and tendrils effectively embody the very essence of life. Isn’t it this vital force that we need so urgently to release us of the crises of Anthropocene?
So many questions remain unanswered, only become apparent in the moment by engaging with a certain the topic. Shouldn’t we find out more about the threads that link Kore to Apollo, Persephone, Demeter, Aphrodite, Hades and Zeus? Taking over string figures, inventing new figures, explore old variations, forming new knots, breaking old knots. And how about chronology? I would love to create a catalogue of all those leaves, tendrils girls and flowering meadows, so I can clearly see how this text is woven over the centuries. In this sense, this is only a beginning. In this sense, this text ends at its beginning.
Literature
Giorgio Agamben, Monica Ferrando: Das unsagbare Mädchen. Mythos und Mysterium der Kore. Frankfurt 2012
Johann Jakob Bachofen: Das lykische Volk und seine Bedeutung für die Entwicklung des Alterthums. Freiburg 1862
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