Hypermnestra didn't kill her husband on their wedding night. Her 49 sisters did kill theirs.
In Greek mythology, the Danaïdes (/dəˈneɪ.ɪdiːz/; Greek: Δαναΐδες), also Danaides or Danaids, were the fifty daughters of Danaus. In the Metamorphoses,[1] Ovid refers to them as the Belides after their grandfather Belus. They were to marry the 50 sons of Danaus' twin brother Aegyptus, a mythical king of Egypt. In the most common version of the myth, all but one of them killed their husbands on their wedding night, and are condemned to spend eternity carrying water in a sieve or perforated device. In the classical tradition, they came to represent the futility of a repetitive task that can never be completed (see also Sisyphus).
This year in the Senate one man from one of the fifty states did not kill his lady justice. 49 states killed theirs. He voted to keep her alive. The good Mitt of the Utah Romney clan honored his natural father but defied the maddened ruler languishing in his kingly seat at head of government.
Danaus did not want his daughters to go ahead with the marriages and he fled with them in the first boat to Argos, which is located in Greece near the ancient city of Mycenae.
Danaus agreed to the marriage of his daughters only after Aegyptus came to Argos with his fifty sons in order to protect the local population, the Argives, from any battles. The daughters were ordered by their father to kill their husbands on the first night of their weddings and this they all did with the exception of one, Hypermnestra, who spared her husband Lynceus because he respected her desire to remain a virgin. Danaus was angered that his daughter refused to do as he ordered and took her to the Argives courts. Lynceus killed Danaus as revenge for the death of his brothers and he and Hypermnestra started the Danaid Dynasty of rulers in Argos. (ibid)
The grotesque fealty of women and men to persons and ideas both unseemly and unkind is discouraging and depressing.
Myths, one might say, are patterns of human experience deeply embedded in the neurological network reaching into the beyond-conscious-awareness shared by all beings in this appearing cosmos.
For most of us, dreams represent the hidden door into the mythological dimension of existence. For some, such as artists and poets, unseen unrepresented narratives are unearthed and manifested in their attentive skill of expression.
Uncovering the hidden is the work of telling truth. 'Telling truth' is a phrase suggesting the desire, if you will, of truth to tell itself into appearance. Heidegger notes that there is a curiosity about the unveiling process, that there is a simultaneous concealing that accompanies unconcealing. The unhidden and the hidden coincide in the instance of revelation and concealment.
What does this mean?
It means that truth, like life, is a blinking appearance / disappearance.
It departs as it arises. There is no holding it, keeping it. There is also no unholding it, discarding it.
Some, curiously, doubt there is a crisis around the coronavirus. Some think there is no virus. I cannot account for such skepticism or, perhaps, denial of fact. I do know there are many deaths, many families experiencing deep loss, many health workers exhausted and devastated by the burden and emotional toll.
Telling truth requires attentiveness and awareness. We're not always attentive nor aware. We miss so much.
Hypermnestra wanted to remain a virgin. Her husband heard her, and lived. To be a virgin is to affirm the inviolate nature of integrity. It transcends sex and sexuality. Perhaps Madonna, in 1st century and 20th century, grasped the notion; and perhaps, in ways beyond our understanding, remained or became virgins.
Perhaps celibacy is a practice blinking between the relative and the whole. Which is where we, all of us, traverse, as with the interim and the eternal.
I sorrow for those experiencing loss. I understand those who know fear and trembling about the dangers surrounding them. I nod to those angry and resentful that their lives are disrupted.
I look at those carrying water for deranged leaders and wonder how they will die, of thirst, desiccated and arid, for want of life-giving water from life-affirming flowing streams.
As it rains this Tuesday.
