Richibi’s Weblog

      “Deucalion and Pyrrha“ (1636) 

 

             Peter Paul Rubens

 

                 ___________

 

 

                                          for my mom and dad, my own

                                                   Deucalion and Pyrrha

 

 

at Cephysus‘ shrine, Deucalion and 

Pyrrha pray to the goddess of

Divine Justice

 

              O righteous Themis, if the Pow’rs above
              By pray’rs are bent to pity, and to love;
              If humane miseries can move their mind; 

 

humane, human

              If yet they can forgive, and yet be kind;
              Tell how we may restore, by second birth,
              Mankind, and people desolated Earth. 

 

the Pow’rs above are the deciding 

factors, can Jove, Neptune, the others, 

Deucalion asks, be moved by human[ ] 

miseries, can they forgive, can they 

restore…Mankind, people, people is

a verb here, the world again, the 

desolated, or desolate, the dismal, 

the forsaken, Earth

 

              Then thus the gracious Goddess, nodding, said;
              Depart, and with your vestments veil your head:
              And stooping lowly down, with losen’d zones,
              Throw each behind your backs, your mighty mother’s bones. 

 

losen’d zones, across wide areas

 

cover, veil, your heads, the goddess 

advises, stoop low, and throw your 

mother’s bones across wide areas, 

she instructs, however scandalously

              Amaz’d the pair, and mute with wonder stand,
              ‘Till Pyrrha first refus’d the dire command. 

 

Pyrrha is a counterpart for the Christian 

Eve here, contrary, defiant of Heaven, 

however eventually, Pyrrha, blameless, 

but which of the progenitresses came

first, which the chicken, which the egg, 

Eve or Pyrrha, is a question up for 

contemplation

 

              Forbid it Heav’n, said she, that I shou’d tear
              Those holy reliques from the sepulcher. 

 

surely, Pyrrha proclaims, Heav’n would 

never allow, Forbid it Heav’n, not to 

mention condone, that I should remove, 

tear, my mother’s bones, [t[hose holy 

reliques, relics, from their sepulcher, 

their grave, this would be profoundly 

unholy 

 

              They ponder’d the mysterious words again,
              For some new sense; and long they sought in vain:
              At length Deucalion clear’d his cloudy brow,
              And said, the dark Aenigma  

 

Aenigma, Sphinx, the oracle

 

                                                                will allow
              A meaning, which, if well I understand,
              From sacrilege will free the God’s command: 

 

if I can properly understand, decipher,

the meaning of the God’s command, 

Aenigma’s oracular words, however 

cryptic, in such a way, Deucalion 

declares, that our actions be not 

sacrilegious, nor offensive in any 

way to the gods, we may proceed,

he reasons

 

              This Earth our mighty mother is, the stones
              In her capacious body, are her bones: 

 

This Earth is our mighty mother, the

stones in her capacious body [ ] are 

her bones, no comma after body

 

the word order in each clause, note, has 

been reversed, instead of subject, verb,

object, we have object, verb, subject

 

but then, ever so felicitously, stones 

can rhyme with bones, and equally,

and as liltingly, we’re still in iambic 

pentameter

 

              These we must cast behind. With hope, and fear,
              The woman did the new solution hear:
              The man diffides in his own augury, 

 

diffide, distrust, augury, prediction,

Deucalion doubts, in other words,

his own calculations

              And doubts the Gods; yet both resolve to try. 

 

when my mom is up against a 

dilemma, she calls on my dad,

gone some over thirty years now,

come on, Daddy, let’s go, she 

says, and confronts the issue 

with transcendental, by very 

definition, conviction

 

see above

 

              Descending from the mount, they first unbind
              Their vests, and veil’d, they cast the stones behind:
              The stones (a miracle to mortal view,
              But long tradition makes it pass for true) 

 

what follows will seem miraculous

to mortals, Ovid says, but the story 

has been around for such a while,

which is to say by long tradition, 

that we let it pass for true

 

              Did first the rigour of their kind expel, 

 

the stones begin to lose, expel, their 

firmness, the rigour of their kind

              And suppled into softness, as they fell; 

 

suppled, became supple

              Then swell’d, and swelling, by degrees grew warm;
              And took the rudiments of human form. 

 

stones are being transformed, 

metamorphosized, into humans 

 

the Bible, if you’ll remember, would 

have it be clay

              Imperfect shapes: in marble such are seen,
              When the rude chizzel does the man begin; 

 

chizzel, chisel

              While yet the roughness of the stone remains,
              Without the rising muscles, and the veins. 

 

as the sculpture is being fashioned, 

certain parts of the human anatomy, 

the muscles, for instance, the veins, 

are not yet revealed, uncovered, 

discovered, extracted, by the 

chizzel, from under the roughness 

of the stone

 

think of Michelangelo, or Rodin,

sculpting

 

              The sappy parts, and next resembling juice, 

 

sappy, from sap, which, emanating 

from stones, would be next to, but 

not as limpid as, juice, or the liquid

required to create humans

              Were turn’d to moisture, for the body’s use:
              Supplying humours, blood, and nourishment; 

 

the circulatory, and notably viscous, 

system

              The rest, too solid to receive a bent,
              Converts to bones; and what was once a vein,
              Its former name and Nature did retain. 

 

veins, which hadn’t received enough 

sappy parts to become part of the

circulatory system, retained their 

name of vein, but as understood in

relation to rocks, geological veins, 

presumably replicated, in this story 

of the Creation, in human bones

              By help of pow’r divine, in little space, 

 

in little space, in no time at all

              What the man threw, assum’d a manly face;
              And what the wife, renew’d the female race. 

 

the stones that the man, Deucalion, 

threw became men, those that 

Pyrrha tossed became women 

 

              Hence we derive our nature; born to bear
              Laborious life; and harden’d into care.

 

we’ve inherited, through the labours 

of Deucalion and Pyrrha, our driven

nature, harden’d into, or conditioned, 

condemned, to care 

 

for better, I infer, or for worse 

 

 

R ! chard