Mythistorema - Triceratops Home

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JOURNAL OF THE HELLENIC DIASPORA
to that of poem "10," in which the protagonists live by the shore, longing
for the sea but unable to realize the journey. Here, however, the fate
of the protagonist is even more tragic as he is chained to a rock with
the sea in front of him. In addition, the sea, which symbolizes the inexhaustible
love, is deadly for him because it hides the monster which is
about to devour him.
21
Poem "21," along with "22" and "23," illuminates the connection
between the epigraph of Mythistorema ("Si j'ai du goat, c'est n'est
gueres/Que pour la terre et les pierres") and the whole sequence, by
emphasizing the poet's belief in tradition. The symbolic journey of love
cannot be realized since the protagonist accepts his gradual death—the
decline of the senses—as just, because of the hubris he has committed.
The poem can be seen as a spiritual return of the protagonist to the past,
establishing a communication with the ancient dead.
Poem "21" should be considered as a continuation of the idea partly
developed in poem "18," in which the protagonist regretted the waste of
love and reproached himself for it, although the later poem takes a very
different turn.
The sinking into stone presented in poem "18" turns into agony in
poem "20"
These stones which are sinking into the years, how far will they
drag me with them?
But here in "21" there is a certain compensation. In "22" there is a
search for identity, a process of losing and finding again a road, and
only in "23" is there a longing to "rise just a little higher," a frail dream
which, however, considering the way Mythistorema ends, seems not to be
realized.
The sinking into stone in poem "18" and also in this poem is a
gradual death—a "dying upright on our feet," as we are "Made one in
the brotherhood of stone." However, the protagonist here says that he
forgot his suffering, his unhappiness, for a while; he was able to go
beyond his personal drama and express an acceptance of his fate and of
the laws of justice that govern life and death. The expression "We forgot
ourselves" is crucial in this poem because it implies that the protagonist
forgot his solipsistic world and could perceive the just order of things
in the universe. Seferis does not mean this here in the Christian sense—
denying this life for a life after death—but in the pagan classical Greek
conception, according to which life is a precious gift that can be lost
irrevocably if one violates the laws of nature that keep the world in