. . . . . . . . First let
His mind be clouded by a slight disorder
For, conscious of his manhood he will never
Wear women's garb; insane, he's sure to wear it.
Pentheus, recognising in Dionysus the foe of a more spiritual conception
of the law, the _effeminate stranger_ who had driven the women to
madness, is torn to pieces by the frenzied bacchantes who fall upon him,
led by Agave, his mother, and sacrificed to the _bull-god_ Dionysus. At
the conclusion of this strange and profound epos, Agave recovers her
senses and curses the acts which she has committed in her madness ...
women submit to the new spiritual dispensation. We realise now why Hera,
the tutelary goddess of the newly introduced monogamous system, hated
Dionysus and attempted to kill him before he was born.
The subject treated in the beautiful myth of Orpheus is the
relationship between the primitive sexual impulse and its
individualisation on a single personality. For seven months Orpheus
bewails the death of Eurydice and regards all other living creatures
with indifference.
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