Inspiration and Inclusion

Here is a list of the quotes that inspired me in compiling the power point presentation the third to go offered:) Although in the end we were the fourth but that is trivial. Also let it be known that this is not necessarily my idea of all of the quotes of importance found in Calasso, and remember not all of them are from the mouth of Calasso. Just as there was extensive editing in the videos and pictures that were used, I had a lot of editing with the quotes I wanted to incorporate as well.


“Imitation is the most dangerous of activities for world order, because it tends to break down boundaries” (358)

“For centuries people have spoken of the Greek myths as of something to be rediscovered, reawoken.” (280)

“The truth is it is the myths that are still out there waiting to wake us and be seen by us, like a tree waiting to greet our newly opened eyes” (280)

“It was exactly what had been missing from life, what life had been waiting for: intoxication"(36)

“This is Dionysus. He arrives, unexpected, and possesses” (44)

“Then Dionysus explained that this new drink was perhaps even more powerful than the bread Demeter had revealed to other farmers, because it could both wake a man up and put him to sleep, dissolve the pains that afflicted the heart and make them liquid and fleeting” (38)

“Dionysus is not a useful god who helps weave or knot things together, but a god who loosens and unties” (45)

“The perennial virginity young Artemis demanded as a first gift from her father Zeus is the indomitable sign of detachment” (52)

“Mythical figures live many lives, die many deaths, and in this they differ from the characters we find in novels, who can never go beyond the single gesture” (22)

“But in each of these lives and deaths all the others are present, and we can hear their echo” (22)

“Only when we become aware of a sudden consistency between incompatibles can we say we have crossed the threshold of myth” (22)

“If it is history we want, then it is a history of conflict.
And the conflict begins with the abduction of a girl, or with the sacrifice of a girl.
And the one is continually becoming the other” (7)

“‘To abduct women…is considered the action of scoundrels, but to worry about abducted women is the reaction of fools” (8)

“The wise man does not give a moment’s thought to the women who have been abducted, because it is clear that, had they not wanted to be abducted, they would not have been” (8)

“Zeus is never ridiculous, because his dignity is of no concern to him” (377)

“Now, when Zeus chose to tread the earth, his usual manifestation was through rape” (53)

“Rape is at once possessing and possession” (53)

“During the age of the heroes the passing of time took its rhythm from the succession of divine rapes” (355)

“to seduce also means ‘to destroy’ in Greek: phtheirin” (20)

“narcissi, ‘that wondrous, radiant flower, awesome to the sight of gods and mortals alike” (4)

“’The craziest type of people are those who scorn what they have around them and look elsewhere / vainly searching for what cannot exist” (59)

“Stories never live alone: they are the branches of a family that we have to trace back, and forward” (10)

“Which is why, they say, Athenian boys have such small, lean buttocks” (15)

“With the heroes, man takes his first step beyond the necessary: into the realm of risk, defiance, shrewdness, deceit, art” (70)

“In the beginning, the hero’s intelligence is intermittent and limited to his role as a slayer of monsters” (324)

“But when he manages to break the frame of this role, without abandoning it, when he learns to be a traitor, a liar, a seducer, a traveler, a castaway, a narrator, then the hero becomes Odysseus, and then, to his first vocation of slaying everything, he can add a new one: understanding everything” (324)

“Whenever their lives were set aflame, through desire or suffering, or even reflection, the Homeric heroes knew that a god was at work” (93)

“If the hero is alone and can count on nothing but his own strength, he will never be able to enter this kingdom [where divine force is supreme]” (62)

“He needs a woman’s help…He doesn’t even realize that it is they who possess the wisdom he lacks” (62)

“The heroic gesture of women is betrayal: its influence on the course of events is just as great as the slaying of monsters” (69)

“The effects of woman’s betrayal are more subtle and less immediate perhaps, but equally devastating” (69)

“After Odysseus, our life without heroes begins; stories are no longer exemplary but are repeated and recounted. What happens is mere history” (349)

“Zeus wanted the death of the heroes to be a new death. What had death meant until now? Being covered once again by the earth” (358)

“But with the heroes, death coincided with the evocation of glory. Glory was something you could breathe now” (359)

“Who could be more hospitable than the king of the dead? His is the inn that closes its doors to no one, at no hour of the day or night” (76)

“Such are the stories of which mythology is woven: they tell how mortal mind and body are still subject to the divine, even when they are no longer seeking it out, even when the ritual approaches to the divine have become confused” (53-4)

“’This is the work of the gods: they brought about the ruin of men so that others might have song in the future” (359)

“For every step, the footprint was already there” (383)

“These things never happened, but are always”

We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.
T. S. Eliot