Elysium
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In Greek mythology, Elysium (Greek: Ἠλύσια πεδία) was a section of the Underworld (the spelling Elysium is a Latinization of the Greek word Elysion). The Elysian fields, or sometimes Elysian plains, were the final resting place of the souls of the heroic and the virtuous. It is associated with the Christian Heaven.
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[edit] Etymology
Elysium is an obscure and mysterious name that evolved from a designation of a place or person struck by lightning, enelysion, enelysios.[1] Scholars have also suggested that Greek Elysion may instead derive from the Egyptian term ialu (older iaru), meaning "reeds," with specific reference to the "Reed fields" (Egyptian: sekhet iaru / ialu), a paradisaical land of plenty where the dead hoped to spend eternity. Biblical scholars have suggested that Elysion may derive from Elisha, who was, according to Genesis, a son of Yawan (Iouan, forefather of the Ionians) and one of the ancestors of the Greeks. Elisha may have been worshiped as a god by his earliest descendants.
[edit] In classical literature
Two Homeric passages in particular established for Greeks the nature of the Afterlife: the dreamed apparition of the dead Patroclus in the Iliad and the more daring boundary-breaking visit in Book 11 of the Odyssey. Greek traditions concerning funerary ritual were reticent, but the Homeric examples encouraged other heroic visits, in the myth cycles centered around Theseus and Heracles.[2]
The Elysian Fields lay on the western margin of the earth, by the encircling stream of Oceanus, and there the mortal relatives of the king of the gods were transported, without tasting death, to enjoy an immortality of bliss (Odyssey 4.563). Lesser spirits were not quite as fortunate: an eerie passage describes the twittering bat-like ghosts of Penelope's slain suitors, led by Hermes:
- "down the dank
- mouldering paths and past the Ocean's streams they went
- and past the White Rock and the Sun's Western Gates and past
- the Land of Dreams, and soon they reached the fields of asphodel
- where the dead, the burnt-out wraiths of mortals make their home"
(Odyssey 24.5-9, translation by Robert Fagles).
Hesiod refers to the Isles of the Blessed (makarôn nêsoi) in the Western Ocean (Works and Days). Pindar makes it a single island. Walter Burkert notes the connection with the motif of far-off Dilmun: "Thus Achilles is transported to the White Isle and becomes the Ruler of the Black Sea, and Diomedes becomes the divine lord of an Adriatic island."[3]
In Elysium were fields of the pale liliaceous asphodel, and poplars grew. There stood the gates that led to the house of Ais (in Attic dialect "Hades").
In Virgil's Aeneid, Aeneas, like Heracles and Odysseus before him, travels to the underworld. Virgil describes an encounter in Elysium between Aeneas and his father Anchises. Virgil's Elysium knows perpetual spring and shady groves, with its own sun and lit by its own stars: solemque suum, sua sidera norunt (Aeneid, 6.541).
[edit] In post-classical literature
Elysium was a pagan expression that passed into the usage of the Christian patristic writers as a synonym for paradise.
Some confuse Dante's idea of the Elysian Fields with Limbo—he described Limbo as the very upper level of hell, a place of peace that the unbaptized and the non-believers who lived virtuous lives go. It is a place of happiness, but it is closed off from God and thus remains as hell.
In the Renaissance, the heroic population of the Elysian Fields tended to outshine its formerly dreary pagan reputation; the Elysian Fields borrowed some of the bright allure of paradise. In Paris, the Champs-Élysées retain their name of the Elysian Fields, first applied in the late 16th century to a formerly rural outlier beyond the formal parterre gardens behind the royal French palace of the Tuileries.
After the Renaissance, as images of Valhalla entered the popular European imagination, an even cheerier Elysium evolved for some poets. Sometimes it is imagined as a place where heroes have continued their interests from their lives. Others suppose it is a location filled with feasting, sport, song; Joy is the "daughter of Elysium" in Friedrich Schiller's ode "To Joy".
When in William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night shipwrecked Viola is told "This is Illyria, lady.", "And what should I do in Illyria? My brother he is in Elysium." is her answer: "Elysium" for her and her first Elizabethan hearers simply means Paradise. Similarly, in Mozart's opera The Magic Flute, Elysium is mentioned in Act II during Papageno's solo while he describes what it would be like if he had his dream girl: "Des Lebens als Weiser mich freun, Und wie im Elysium sein." ("Enjoy life as a wiseman, And feel like I'm in Elysium.")
The New Orleans neighborhood of Elysian Fields in Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire is the declassé purgatory where Blanche Dubois lives with Stanley and Stella Kowalski. New Orleans' Elysian Fields provides the second act setting of Elmer Rice's The Adding Machine.
In the fiction of J. R. R. Tolkien, the Elysian Undying Lands, the home of the gods, elves, and a select few others, can only be reached by crossing the western sea, much as one would have to cross the stream of Oceanus to reach the Fortunate Isles.
In his poem Middlesex, John Betjeman describes how our heroine Elaine hurries "... Out into the outskirt's edges, Where a few surviving hedges Keep alive our lost Elysium - rural Middlesex again". The poem, considered by many to be one of his best, harks back to a time when the suburbs of modern London (Perivale and Harrow-on-the-Hill, for example) were fields and meadows, with all the pastoral imagery that they convey.
[edit] In science
- Elysium is the name given to a volcanic region of Mars and one of its volcanoes.
- Elysian is the name of an inter departmental multi-art form competition held at an Engineering College, Pune Institute of Computer Technology (PICT), in Pune, Maharashtra, India.
[edit] In Classical Music
- Elysium is referenced in the Shiller poem which inspired Beethoven's Ode to Joy (9th symphony, 4th movement)
Freude, schöner Götterfunken, Tochter aus Elysium, wir betreten feuertrunken, Himmlische, dein Heiligtum! Deine Zauber binden wieder, was die Mode streng geteilt: alle Menschen werden Brüder, wo dein sanfter Flügel weilt.
Appx. English Translation:
Joy, beautiful spark of the gods, Daughter of Elysium, Touched with fire, to the portal, Of thy radiant shrine, we come. Your sweet magic frees all others, Held in Custom's rigid rings. All men on earth become brothers, In the haven of your wings.
[edit] Notes
[edit] References
- Catholic Encyclopaedia
- Walter Burkert, Greek Religion, 1985.
- Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, 1948.
- Carl A.P. Ruck and Danny Staples, The World of Classical Myth, 1994.
- Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire,1947.
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| Christian: | Kingdom of God • Garden of Eden · Paradise • New Jerusalem • Pearly gates |
| Jewish: | Gan Eden • Olam Haba |
| Islamic: | Jannah • Sidrat al-Muntaha |
| Latter Day Saint: | Celestial kingdom • Terrestrial kingdom • Telestial kingdom • Spirit world |
| Ancient Greek: | Elysium • Empyrean • Hesperides |
| Celtic: | Tír na nÓg • Mag Mell |
| Norse: | Valhalla • Asgard |
| Egyptian: | Aaru |
| Indo-European: | Paradise • Svarga • The Summerland • Myth of Er • Fortunate Isles |
| Related concepts: | Nirvana • Millennialism • Utopianism • Golden Age • Arcadia • The guf • Well of souls |
