Hello
everyone –
July
2019 marks the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing on the
Moon, and to celebrate this auspicious occasion, I’ll be sending forth a
three-part series (starting today) on Earth’s nearest neighbor in space – the
Moon! First up, we have some ancient poems and legends about our planet’s only
natural satellite.
LUNAR
POEMS FROM ANCIENT GREECE – INTRODUCTION
The annual cycle of the seasons and its effects on our natural surroundings are
recurring themes throughout world literature. The Orphic poets – a guild of
ancient Greek philosopher-bards named after their legendary founder, Orpheus –
celebrated the changing of the seasons, the wonders of the natural world, and
their lofty ideals in poetic chants, several dozen of which were preserved in
written form after centuries of oral transmission. In the poetic forms of their
prescientific age (ca. 1000-500 BCE), the Orphic poets chose to personify the
forces of Nature, the celestial orbs, and abstract ideals in order to explain
how and why the natural world and the human social order function in the ways
that they do.
The Homeric school of poetry, founded perhaps by Homer himself (fl. ca. 8th
century BCE), and carried forward by his disciples and successors for many
generations, also produced poems that celebrated heroic deeds and the
mysterious forces of Nature, many of which were personified as divine or
semidivine beings. In both of the following poems, we can learn how the ancient
Greeks perceived the Moon, not as a dead rock in space, but as a living entity
(or as a celestial orb ruled by a divine guardian – in this case, Artemis [in
Greek] or Diana [in Latin]).
Orphic
Hymn #8: TO THE MOON
(The
FUMIGATION from AROMATICS)
Hear,
divine queen, diffusing silver light,
Bull-horned
and wandering through the gloom of Night.
With
stars surrounded, and with circuit wide
Night’s
torch extending, through the heavens you ride:
Female
and Male with borrowed rays you shine,
And
now full-orbed, now tending to decline.
Mother
of ages, fruit-producing Moon,
Whose
amber orb makes Night’s reflected noon:
Lover
of horses, splendid, queen of Night,
All-seeing
power bedecked with starry light.
Lover
of vigilance, the foe of strife,
In
peace rejoicing, and a prudent life:
Fair
lamp of Night, its ornament and friend,
Who
gives to Nature’s works their destined end.
Queen
of the stars, all-wife Diana hail!
Decked
with a graceful robe and shining veil;
Come,
blessed, divine, prudent, starry, bright,
Come
lunar lamp with chaste and splendid light,
Shine
on these sacred rites with prosperous rays,
And
pleased accept your suppliant’s mystic praise.
Homeric
Hymn #32: TO THE MOON
[1] And next, sweet voiced Muses, daughters of Zeus, well-skilled in song, tell
of the long-winged Moon. From her immortal head a radiance is shown from heaven
and embraces earth; and great is the beauty that arises [5] from her shining
light. The air, unlit before, glows with the light of her golden crown, and her
rays beam clear, whensoever the bright Moon having bathed her lovely body in
the waters of Ocean, and donned her far-gleaming raiment, and yoked her
strong-necked, shining team, [10] drives on her long-maned horses at full
speed, at eventime in the mid-month: then her great orbit is full and then her
beams shine brightest as she increases. So she is a sure token and a sign to
mortals.
[15] Once [Zeus] the son of Cronos was joined with her in love; and she
conceived and bore a daughter Pandia, exceedingly lovely amongst the immortals.
Hail, white-armed divine, bright Moon, mild, bright-tressed queen! And now I
will leave you and sing the glories of men half-divine, whose deeds minstrels,
[20] the servants of the Muses, celebrate with lovely lips.
Chinese
Stories: Houyi and Chang’e
According to legend, Chang'e and her husband Houyi were immortals living in
heaven. One day, the ten sons of the Jade Emperor transformed into ten suns,
causing the earth to scorch. Having failed to order his sons to stop ruining
the earth, the Jade Emperor summoned Houyi for help. Houyi, using his legendary
archery skills, shot down nine of the sons, but spared one son to be the sun.
The Jade Emperor was obviously not pleased with Houyi's solution to save the
earth: nine of his sons were dead. As punishment, the Jade Emperor banished
Houyi and Chang'e to live as mere mortals on earth.
Seeing that Chang'e felt extremely miserable over her loss of immortality,
Houyi decided to journey on a long, perilous quest to find the pill of
immortality so that the couple could be immortals again. At the end of his
quest he met the Queen Mother of the West who agreed to give him the pill, but
warned him that each person would only need half the pill to become immortal.
Houyi
brought the pill home and stored it in a case. He warned Chang'e not to open
the case and then left home for a while. Like Pandora in Greek mythology,
Chang'e became too curious: she opened up the case and found the pill just as
Houyi was returning home. Nervous that Houyi would catch her discovering the
contents of the case, she accidentally swallowed the entire pill. She started
to float into the sky because of the overdose. Although Houyi wanted to shoot
her down in order to prevent her from floating further, he could not bear to aim
the arrow at her. Chang'e kept on floating until she landed on the moon.
While she became lonely on the moon without her husband, she did have company.
A jade rabbit, who manufactured elixirs, as well as the woodcutter Wu Gang,
also lived on the moon.
This story was adapted in 2003 into a Chinese TV period drama titled Moon
Fairy, starring Singapore actors Fann Wong and Christopher Lee. Chang'e
appears in Wu Cheng'en's novel Journey to the West and also TV
adaptations of the novel. Her story was slightly changed in that she did not go
to the moon on her first try but went to the heavens instead. She would later
be rewarded by being allowed to live on the moon after an incident which
involved her and Zhu Bajie. China's chairman, Mao Zedong, mentions Chang'e in
his most famous poem, about his murdered wife Yang Kaihui. The legend of Lady
Chang-O plays a prominent role in Amy Tan's children's book, The Moon
Lady, retold from her more adult novel The Joy Luck Club.
The moon goddess was mentioned in the conversation between Houston Capcom and Apollo
11 crew just before the first moon landing:
- Houston:
Among the large headlines concerning Apollo this morning there's one
asking that you watch for a lovely girl with a big rabbit. An ancient
legend says a beautiful Chinese girl called Chang-o has been living there
for 4000 years. It seems she was banished to the moon because she stole
the pill for immortality from her husband. You might also look for her
companion, a large Chinese rabbit, who is easy to spot since he is only
standing on his hind feet in the shade of a cinnamon tree. The name of the
rabbit is not recorded.
- Collins:
Okay, we'll keep a close eye for the bunny girl.
In
2007, China launched its first lunar probe, named Chang'e 1 in
the goddess' honor.
From
medieval Japan comes the Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, also known as
the Tale of the Moon Princess. You can find a version of this
classic proto-science-fiction story here:
Until
next week – keep looking up! J
Rob
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