DiPasquale's "Neptune" at Virginia Beach

Paul DiPasquale (1952 - ), "Neptune", 2005, colossal bronze sculpture and base, Virginia Beach, VA, oceanfront and 31st Street. —  OGCMAPoseidon2.0011_DiPasquale.

Poseidon the Earthshaker commanded the earth beneath the Greeks' feet and he also ruled the seas. Odysseus ran afoul of Poseidon's pervasive dominion and suffered prolonged absence from home for a decade. Not until he should establish the god's cult in some land so far abroad that it knew no seafaring would Poseidon allow Odysseus to rest from toils.

Now on the New World's east coastline, the god himself looks inland. A contemporary Richmond sculptor with a propitiously Italianate surname perched in 2005 a colossal bronze image of the classical sea-god atop a reef-like base at ocean's edge in Virginia Beach. One message imbued in this sculpture, according to reports from the artist, is a divine rebuke for us to take better care the ocean from which the god emerges so sternly.*

The primary plaque on the base's front informs the visitor of civic "visionary" accomplishments that led to the creation of Virginia Beach in the 1960s and 1970s, "today the most populous city in the Commonwealth of Virginia". The visitor — indeed, "citizens and visitors from across the world" — might turn away from the huge bronze momentarily and consider the lengthy string of multi-storey hotels that lining the strand formidably right where Neptune's eyes are gazing. A separate plaque place on a nearby stele informs that the visitor of the bronze's creator.

Chairmen of the annual September
Neptune Festival commemorated as
Kings of Neptune by VB Chamber of Commerce

DiPasquale's Neptune stands over 34 feet in height (measured from sand to trident's top). That measurement makes this, reportedly, the largest bronze Neptune in the world. The logistics of creating such a massive work make for an interesting story in themselves. The artist's ingenuity, however, deserves attention: the municipal contest for the commission originally stipulated that entries be limited to 15-feet in height. DiPasquale's creation itself meets that requirement, but poised atop its base, the colossus achieves extra monumentality.

DiPasquale is a sculptor to be reckoned with. He has achieved notoriety over the last decade and trained in two stints at the American Academy in Rome. His important Arthur Ashe bronze stands monumentally in the tennis great's (and the sculptor's) hometown of Richmond. A 7-foot maquette of the "Neptune" stands in the entrance of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts E. Clairborne and Lora Robins Sculpture Garden since 2018.


A thematically related usage of Neptune in a civic monument stands in a square in land-locked Durham, England. See Poseidon2.0010_Durham.


* J. Eurice (2005) "Neptune Rising: creating the iconic statue" in Virginia Beach Travel Guide (accessed 25 June 2020)

Titian's Poesie soon to be reunited

Titian, "Diana and Actaeon" (1556-59),
National Gallery & National Gallery of Scotland, NG 6611

Titian (Tiziano Vecellio, 1488/90-1576), the great Venetian painter, famously sought a lucrative commission from King Philip II of Spain. A suite of paintings (created 1556-1560) was submitted to attract the king's approval, each inspired by classical mythological narratives Titian derived from Latin poets. Especially Ovid's Metamorphoses, but also other classical Latin texts, take on new life and new meanings in the mature conception of Titian's masterpieces. The septuagenarian artist's fixation on the importance of graphic narrative has long invited comparison with Ovid's narrative mastery, and that same fixation justifies Titian's calling the suite his Poesie (poetry).

    The British National Gallery and its sibling National Gallery of Scotland own a portion of the Poesie suite, paintings to be considered discreetly from the several other Titians owned there and beyond. The Spring of 2020 will find the National Gallery teaming with the Wallace Collection, the Prado, and Boston's Gardner Museum to reunite the six-painting suite for the first time since the 16th Century. The exhibition, Titian: Love Desire Death will run from 16 March until 14 June 2020.

Titian, "Diana and Callisto" (1556-59),
National Gallery & National Gallery of Scotland, NG6616

The ramp-up to the Exhibition involves a short series of brief broadcasts on Facebook Live called "Uniting Titian's 'poesie'". The first installment aired on 20 January 2020, and one per day will show throughout the week at 6:15 GMT. Fortunately, the links on Facebook allow viewers to watch the recorded broadcasts later. Follow this link to catch up after the initial showing.

Of course there are many other Titians to encounter, even within the same museums where the Poesie paintings reside. But the exceptional opportunity to see this suite of paintings together at once is sort of a reason to plan a trip to London this spring!




Paintings in the poesie are
Diana and Actaeon (1556-1559), Actaeon1.0033_Titian
Diana and Callisto (1556-1559), Callisto1.0022_Titian
Venus and Adonis (1554), Adonis1.0032.1_Titian
Danaë (1554-1556), Danaë1.0008.2a3_TitianWellington
Rape of Europa (1560-1562), Europa1.0028_Titian
Perseus and Andromeda (1554-1556), PerseusAndromeda1.0015_Titian

Erasmus did some (Herculean) Heavy Lifting

The Renaissance portraitist Hans Holbein worked in 1523 a contemporary image of Erasmus of Rotterdam, still today one of the most important humanist thinkers. One of our contemporaries says that Holbein's Erasmus "arguably is the most important portrait in England. It's where portraiture actually begins." I like the painting for Holbein's learned inclusion of the Labors of Heracles.

Hans Holbein the Younger, "Erasmus"
(1523) National Gallery L658

Although the British National Gallery, which owns the portrait, has not made the painting available for reproduction, digital images of it are publicly available on the internet. The Wikimedia version I include here (at left) is color "enhanced", washed out, a far cry from the rich detail you can see in the segment of the portrait the Gallery does share (visit nationalgallery.org.uk). Indeed, the NatGal's site is additionally worth visiting because of the lucid instruction by Prof David Starkey (cited above) who contextualizes Holbein's contribution to portraiture.

Erasmus had published in 1506 a compendium of essays — Renaissance equivalents of mythmatters blogposts? — called the Adages or actually the Adagiorum chiliades tres ("the three thousand adagios"). The term "adagio" from Italian ad agio "at ease" implies something written or done in a leisurely manner. A musical piece or technically demanding ballet movement that ends up looking easy but was actually torturously hard to achieve is an adagio. Even though the Adagia are sometimes now called his "Proverbs", Erasmus published a set of three thousand sayings that come out easy, whose acquisition, however, was really really hard.

Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam was a scholar of great consequence in the restoration of classical learning to Europe and the West. In the generation after the Fall of Constantinople, Erasmus took up residence in Venice because, among other things, that city at the top of the Adriatic was the cultural crossroads where speakers and scholars of Greek could and did meet up with scholars who wanted to learn whatever Ancient Greek thinking could be reborn in their new age. Erasmus learned Greek and advocated for writing and thinking in Latin as Cicero had done a millennium-and-a-half earlier.

The heavy lifting of the intellectual Renaissance was assumed largely by Erasmus and his peers. The humanist printer Aldus Manutius virtually invented the publication of Greek literature with Erasmus inspiring the efforts to forge ahead. It was Aldus who first published the Adagia in 1506 and then again in an expanded revision in 1508. Some wag once called Erasmus' Adagia the world's biggest bedside book. It spans actually seven volumes of the Toronto Collected Works (1982-2017).

If you were wondering, for instance, where the expression "She has eyes in the back of her head!" came from, you might find Erasmus' contribution worth your while. It's Adag. 3.3.41:

In occipitio oculos gerit — Ὄπισθεν κεφαλῆς ὄμματα ἔχει, He has eyes in the back of his head. Used of cunning and wary people [... like Mrs Dotson, my 6th grade teacher! RTM], and those whom it is by no means easy to deceive. Men of this sort are called by Perseus Januses: 'What a Janus you are! No stork can peck you from behind.' And Homer demands of a prince the he should have 'eyes before and behind.' Plautus in Aulularia: 'She has eyes in back of her head as well.' (Cited entire from Toronto edition.)

Erasmus could ... and did! ... go on in this vein for scores and dozens of scores of exempla, each one manifesting his mining of Latin and Greek literature and each one bringing to the surface some evidence of once ancient wisdom. This is what I mean by the heavy lifting of the Renaissance.

Holbein's portrait of Erasmus perches the scholar's hands on the rich leather volume. It bears the inscription ΗΡΑΚΛΕΙΟΙ ΠΟΝΟΙ ("The Labors of Heracles"). Erasmus himself equated the work of collecting proverbs from ancient texts with "Herculean Labor." The scholarly investigation of ancient adages is painstaking and not always well received.

All this time I need hardly say that any pleasure to be derived from compilations of this kind is entirely confined to the reader; nothing comes the writer's way except the unpopular and unvarying toil of collecting, of sweeping together, explaining, and translating. Yet pleasure, as Aristotle has truly said, is the one thing which makes it possible for us to remain at work for long spells of time. ... In this task [change] has not been 'twice-served cabbage,' as the Greek proverb has it; I have had to repeat the same things three thousand times — what does an adage mean, what was its original, and for what purpose was it suitable — so that never was there a context more suitable than this for that hackneyed Greek adage 'the twirling of the pestle.'

Erasmus concludes that paragraph, which forms about three percent of his essay on the adage "The Labors of Hercules", with a rumination on "the conditions in which I labor and the demands I have to meet! — On every single adage I must content the leisured reader, give the hungry man what he needs, and satisfy the disdainful." (Adage. 3.1.1) To get to his point, i.e. to expand upon the Labors of Hercules generally, Erasmus fills a fifteen-page essay with references to Catullus, Vergil, Ovid, Aristotle, Chrysippus, Clearchus, Didymus..."and other men as well of whom not the smallest fragment has come down to us." Toward its conclusion he summarizes: "I have been fearing for some time that my readers may find it a Herculean task to read through the discourse of inordinate length into which I have been drawn by an adage which has proved a task for Hercules. And so, I will make an end, but after adding a further point — that when this was first published I had surpassed all the labors of Hercules...."

By the time of Holbein's portrait, Erasmus' life-long labor of the Adagia properly filled a considerably larger volume than the elegant tome Holbein slips under the scholar's hands in the portrait. Even if the Paris edition had included only a couple hundred adages, the collection numbered over four thousand proverbs at the time of Erasmus' death. By any accounting, the intellectual gravity of Erasmus' scholarly accomplishment is monumental. Thus, the portraitist chooses wisely to tinge the humanist's hands with a little ink and to perch them on top of such a weighty accomplishment.

One subtle touch remains to be noted in the Erasmus portrait. Holbein uses the painting itself to comment with subtle irony on the magnitude of his own work. The fore-edge inscription Holbein paints on the book shelved above and behind Erasmus' head an original, learned (if imperfect) elegiac couplet in unpunctuated Latin:

Ille ego Ioannes Holbein non facile ullus 

  tam michi mimus erit quam michi momus erit.

This translates into something like this: "The famous Johannes Holbein, painted this. It seems more likely that somebody will copy my work than malign it." The wit at the heart of the boast spins blithely in the erudite wordplay that pits mimus (Lat. "imitator") against momus (Grk. μῶμος "reproach"). μωμήσεταί τις μᾶλλον ἢ μιμήσεται — "Somebody will more likely malign this than copy it" — is itself an adage of considerable background. Holbein the Elder used it in Latin, borrowed from Erasmus, a decade earlier: "Carpet aliquis citius quam imitabitur," is ascribed to Greek painters originally, according to Erasmus Adag. 2.2.84 and treated separately, s.v. "momo satisfacere" at Adag. 1.5.74.  All this learning goes back prodigiously to Erasmus, the sitter and subject of Holbein's portrait.

—— RTM

OGCMA references
    HeraclesLabors2.0001_Holbein
    HeraclesLabors1.0015_Erasmus

The piece is informed by J. Mähly (1868), "Miscellen," Jahrbuch des Vereins von Altertumsfreunden im Rheinlande, 44:269-70, and by
H. Vredeveld (2013) "'Lend a Voice': The Humanistic Portrait Epigraph in the Age of Erasmus and Dürer," Renaissance Quarterly 66.2: 549-50. doi:10.1086/671585.

Medusa and the affair with Poseidon

What was the nature of Medusa’s involvement with Poseidon? Perseus beheaded Medusa and weaponized her head. That bothers me. It also has long rankled me that in the myth Medusa was transformed from a lovely young woman into a hideous monster. But right now I am more bothered that an encyclopedic source I normally trust reports that Medusa’s transformation was

H. Goodhue Hosmer "Medusa" (1854)
Detroit Institute of Arts

punishment by Athena in her temple for “allowing Poseidon to violate her” there. This authority conflicts with my view. I have long held that Poseidon forced himself upon the girl, a virginal acolyte of a vindictive goddess. Why have I been thinking that? 

     What do the classical sources say about Medusa’s involvement in her relations with Poseidon? Did she really allow Poseidon to violate her? Did she or did he transgress the sanctity of Athena’s temple? Wherever the inquiry leads, I will still be irked that the lovely girl is hideously transformed, that her sudden death is so brutal, and especially that her mutilated body is weaponized by Perseus.

     Ovid’s Metamorphosesis the where the confusion might be resolved. That remarkable poem, written in the meridian of western mythological time (ca. 8 BCE), digested mountains of Greek mythographical peculiarity into one compendium for subsequent generations. When Rome’s descendant cultures forgot to read Greek, Rome’s uncrowned laureate poet continued to be read in accessible 

B. Cellini, "Perseus" (1546-54)
Loggia dei Lanzi, Florence

Latin. The Metamorphoses’ result has become canonical. The text has directed the narratives about the gods’ interactions for centuries now. What Ovid says about, say, Medusa and her disposition is going to matter. His text certainly lies behind this summary by Graves: “The Gorgons were … all once beautiful. But one night Medusa lay with Poseidon, and Athene, enraged that they had bedded in one of her own temples, changed her …” (Greek Myths: s.v. “33. The Children of the Sea”). I will not be distracted by Graves’ minor accreted detail that the intercourse happened at night. Graves’ reliance upon Ovid’s canonicity is what matters at the moment.

      Ovid’s account does attribute Medusa’s metamorphosis to Athena’s — well, to Minerva’srage. It says precious little about Medusa’s role in the Neptune affair. Using the verb vitiarehe says that Medusa was violated; but he introduces some uncertainty by reporting the act indirectly (dicitur)— “Neptune is said to have violated her…” Upon close reading, Ovid’s text certainly does not say that Medusa allowed the god to violate her.

L.-H. Marqueste, "Perseus and Medusa"
Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen

      Ovid leaves unsaid what role Medusa might have played in fateful relations with Neptune. Ovid’s tacit ambivalence comes at the mid-point of his lengthy Perseus narrative in Metamorphoses4.610-5.209. Perseus, at this mid-point (4.790-803) is regaling the wedding feast, Cepheus’ guests, with the tale of how he had come to rescue Andromeda. He ends his story abruptly (ante expectatum tacuit). One of the guests eggs him on to tell how Medusa alone of her sisters had come to have those snakey tresses. Perseus tells that Medusa once had had many suitors and the most glorious hair. “The sea-god is said to have violated her in the temple of Minerva; Jupiter’s daughter averted her eyes and covered her chaste face with her aegis; then, so as to prevent this act from going unpunished, the goddess changed the Gorgon’s hair into poisonous snakes. Even now, she wears those snakes, which she created, on the front of her chest, so as to devastate her foes with dread.”

     The Latin I translate, for the record, goes like this:

   ante expectatum tacuit tamen; excipit unus / ex numero procerum quaerens, cur sola sororum

   gesserit alternos inmixtos crinibus angues. / hospes ait: ‘quoniam scitaris digna relatu,

   accipe quaesiti causam. Clarissima forma / multorumque fuit spes invidiosa procorum

   illa, neque in tota conspectior ulla capillis / pars fuit; inveni, qui se vidisse referret.

   hanc pelagi rector templo vitiasse Minervae / dicitur: aversa est et castos aegide vultus

   nata Iovis texit, neve hoc inpune fuisset, / Gorgoneum crinem turpes mutavit in hydros.  [angues.

   Nunc quoque, ut attonitos formidine terreat hostes, / pectore in adverso, quos fecit, sustinet

Ovid fails in this passage to specify that Medusa might have shared some of the blame. But he doesn't exonerate her either. I guess I had always been reading the nuance into the passage. Whether Medusa had enticed Neptune, yielded willingly to advances, or succumbed to the sea-god’s lust, Ovid leaves for the reader to infer. Clearly, though, the girl alone takes the brunt of all the goddess’ ashamed raged, and no punishment is directed at Neptune. In a mytho-theology where condign punishment is rarely measured, Ovid’s readers may likely be justified in reading Neptune’s guilt and Medusa’s innocence between these lines.

     Michael Simpson’s Apollodorus(p. 87, ad2.4.2 fn.11) observes that Ovid makes Medusa creative, both in life as in death. Her petrifying gaze made her a sculptor. Along those roads leading to the Gorgon’s home, Perseus had seen many simulacra. And at the fiasco in Phineus’ hall when Perseus used Medusa's head to stay his new enemies, many a new statue was created by her severed head. Whether or not this can have played with great subtlety into Ovid’s redemption of Medusa’s shame, it is intriguing to see Ovid regarding Medusa the artisan, like Arachne, who would be despised by the jealous Minerva for any cause.

     The Metamorphoses account has held more lasting sway than Hesiod’s Theogony on the matter of Medusa’s involvement with Poseidon. The archaic didactic poem covers the creation of the Cosmos and sometimes dabbles in nuanced details, often unsatisfactorily. Theogony270-329 treat among other genealogies the ancestry and descendants of Medusa. Several lines of descent crisscross inside the passage. When his focus passes over Medusa herself, Hesiod says precious little about the girl’s relations with Poseidon. I read Theogony as a treatise that justifies patriarchy’s suppression of the matriarchal, the imposition of order in the world. This poet’s business is hardly about such fine details as whether or not the girl resisted a god’s advances. 

Hesiod does mention that Medusa alone of three sisters was mortal and ill-fated: Σθεννώ τ᾿ Εὐρυάλητε Μέδουσά τε λυγρὰ παθοῦσα· / ἡ μὲν ἔηνθηντή,  αἱδ᾿ ἀθάνατοι καὶ ἀγήρῳ, / αἱ δύο· (276-78). The classical tri-colon style — the third element is spatially as long as the first two combined — emphasizes Medusa’s misfortune. Hesiod’s next detail seems to linger a bit too long on the other sisters’ immortality, doubling up gratuitously on their immortality by the enjambed repetition. Medusa’s exceptionality seems to hinge unsaid on her having slept with a god. Cause and effect seem implied: She was mortal: Poseidon had lain beside her in a flowery meadow. 

     τῇ δὲ μιῇ παρελέξατο Κυαναχαίτης / ἐν μαλακῷ λειμῶνι καὶ ἄνθεσιν εἰαρινοῖσι.  (278-79) The peculiarity of Hesiod’s oral style lavishes more detail on the meadow’s plushness than upon the girl’s attitude. Did that intercourse render the daughter of Phorcys mortal? Hesiod fails to clarify. 

     It may be fair to unpack here what little information Hesiod provides. Poseidon is the verb’s grammatical subject. The verb tense, the aorist, suggests that the encounter was a singular act, not a repeated or habitual affair. The verb’s middle voice may possibly imply that the god engaged the activity for his own interests; but this observation may represent philological overreach! I think the poet’s judgment of Medusa lies in his tight sequencing of events. What is certain is that Hesiod’s text jumps immediately from verdant meadow to the death-blow.

     τῆς ὅτε δὴ Περσεὺς κεφαλὴν ἀπεδειροτόμησεν, /  ἐξέθορε Χρυσάωρ τε μέγας καὶ Πήγασος ἵππος. (280-81) Hesiod’s predicate for the girl’s beheading — to sunder head from neck — might surpass Homeric battle savagery. (Cf. Il. 18.336, 23.22; Od.11.35, where the verb occurs before Hesiod.) Hesiod’s Medusa is vilified by her monstrosity; she acquires the monstrosity by the bedding of Poseidon. She dies pregnant and bears her offspring posthumously. And her progeny in Hesiod’s account includes some of the most frightful monsters ever seen in her Cosmos.

     Apollodorus observes that “[Perseus] flew to Ocean and found the Gorgons, Stheno, Euryale, and Medusa, asleep. Medusa alone was mortal, and it was for this reason that Perseus went after her head.” ((2.4.2, Simpson’s trans.) Then, after the decapitation, Apollodorus describes the birth of Pegasus and Chrysaor who “leaped forth from the Gorgon. She gave birth to these by Poseidon.” Apollodorus is matter-of-fact. No details of the mating, nothing on either location nor consent, are given. Not much later in the text (2.4.3), Apollodorus justifies Medusa’s punishment — the beheading, not her serpentinization — by attributing it to divine jealousy. Athena fixed Medusa’s head on her shield, and he adds that “some say that Medusa was beheaded because of Athena, for she wished to be considered as beautiful as the goddess.” 

     A final thought: Chris Columbus' cinematic adaptation of Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson works with the Medusa myth. Auntie Em, played by Uma Thurman, hisses at Percy, "Son of Poseidon, I used to date your Daddy!" Did we know that Medusa and Poseidon were "in a relationship", actually? Ovid's report suggests that the violation might have happened on one occasion. Hesiod's aorist verb suggests that the meadowing happened (probably just once). And in Apollodorus no intercourse with Poseidon, but divine jealousy effected the change.
     At the end of this rumination, I am left to my own prejudgments. I think that my “authoritative” source — OK, it's J.D. Reid's OGCMA — where the revisiting inquiry began, has overstated Medusa’s involvement in the Poseidon affair. I have yet to find in the classical sources any indication that Medusa allowed the god to violate her in Athena’s temple. Of course, other authors have added that detail to the myth ad lib. I suspect the bothersome detail to be a modern accretion, though. But that’s how myths work. 

Uma Thurman plays Medusa in C. Columbus (dir.)
Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief (2010)

—— RTM 

#ogcma.byu.edu    Medusa Perseus  Ovid Metamorphoses Hesiod Theogony

http://ogcma.byu.edu/Medusa1.0000_Reid.htm

Riordan's Perseus vs. Columbus' cinematic adaptation

A stub idea to be updated and expanded.

Rick Riordan's Aunty Em is a modernized Medusa. And Percy perpetrates her decapitation in an adapted mode, updated to the narrative moment.

    To be clear, Riordan's Percy sees his serpentine foe in a "green gazing ball" procured by Annabeth from among the merchandise in Aunty Em's Garden Gnome Emporium. The Emporium is described as one of those roadside businesses that sell garden gnomes and other cement statuary you might put in your garden. And Aunty Em, it turns out, has been petrifying her clientele for years. Her gaze might turn Percy and Annabeth into similar statuary, if they aren't careful. However, Annabeth has the wherewithal to turn Percy instead into a hero and rid their world of yet one more mythological villain.  (PJ:LT 168-185)
    Medusa's gaze, if you didn't know, turns people into stone. It has done for ages. And gazing balls for ages have been amusing folks with convectional views of their world. If you knew a menacing snake was creeping up on you from behind, you might see its reflection in a gazing ball. The gazing ball would serve the same function as the shield that Perseus used in classical myth. Athena gave that to the hero so that he could track Medusa's moves without technically looking at her or catching her stony gaze.

    Chris Columbus adapted the Riordan novel in the film Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief (2010), screenplay by Craig Titley. [photo from IMDB courtesy of Fox Film Corp] Things play out a little differently in the cinematic adaptation. One key difference is the film's showing the fateful moment of the decapitation from the spectator's POV. Medusa stands stone-still gazing at the reflection of Percy approaching in the moment before her own decapitation. The script really climaxed in Medusa's statement "Son of Poseidon, I used to date your Daddy." [YouTube link: https://youtu.be/K-Y4q2m9OFE] Percy's ingenious use of the shiny back of an iPhone is more than just gratuitous product placement. Ownership of the gag — one-upping Riordan — belongs perhaps to Columbus, perhaps to Titley. But it's certainly part of the cinematic adaptation and not Riordan's doing.

Why this all matters:
   Analysis of Riordan's adaptation should deal with the text that Riordan wrote. That adaptation of the Medusa/Perseus myth is distinct from Columbus' cinematic adaptation of Riordan's text. Without passing judgment on the relative merits of either — each is very clever —adaptation of Perseus/Medusa, the present post strives merely to document my belief that analysis should distinguish between Riordan's gazing-ball and Columbus' iPhone as adaptations of the shield Perseus traditionally uses to survive.
   Those who would write about such adaptations need to distinguish cleanly between the phased adaptations, i.e. myth-novel-cinema, and not conflate them. This is not always easily done.

Osamu Tezuka Apollo

O. Tezuka, Apollo's Song (1970/2007)

Osamu Tezuka adapts the myth of Daphne and Apollo within his manga Apollo's Song (1970). While the whole story's narrative arc is reminiscent of Orpheus and Eurydice, Apollo and Athena are acknowledged overtly but Orpheus is not. The protagonist twice receives oracular instructions from Athena at the story's beginning and end; and Apollo is referenced at two key moments in Shogo's salvation narrative. 

       Tezuka was one of the most creative and most instrumental practitioners of Japanese manga. Topics and narrative modes applied in his graphic novels manifest astonishing diversity throughout the 20th Century, from the rise of Hitler until the artist's death in 1989. Originally serialized in Japanese as Aporo No Uta in Shukan Shonen Kingu, Shonen Gahosha, Apollo's Song was translated into English in 2007. 

       It's hard to surmise from reading Apollo's Song that the artist is not aware of the Orpheus myth. The protagonist is fated to cyclical love and loss, ever closer to attaining real love. The cover art suggests the famous moment in Camus' Orfeo Negro (1960) when Orpheus ascends to the favelas with the limp corpse of Eurydice in his arms. Shogo grapples with his love for Hiromi throughout and ultimately achieves unity with her only in experiencing a hellish death to be with her. Shogo and the Hiromi surrogates perish recurrently and experience resurrection in new stories. Themes of joint suicide, questions about why violence so often interferes with love, lovers who lose their beloved, and human search for the meaning of true love crisscross Tezuka's tale.

O. Tezuka, Apollo's Song (1970/2007)

        Athena is never clearly identified by name in Apollo's Song. Her identity is, however, unmistakable. Phidias' classical masterpiece of Athena Parthenos, ensconced in the naos of the Parthenon (the iconic sculpture portrayed in mirror image in English translation) — speaks an oracle to Shogo in Chapter 1 (of 5). Her utterance is as the Divine would speak: "Thou shalt love one woman again and again, but before the two are united in love, one shall perish. Even in death, thou shalt be reborn, to undergo yet another trial of love." (1.41) Then, the manga's final scene, its epilogue centers on Shogo's return to the unnamed Parthenos to learn that "Thou shalt see [Hiromi] again soon. In every era, in every world, she shall await thee." As Hiromi rises naked from behind Athena's panoply and exits the Parthenon into the light where Shogo has gone, Tezuka's omniscient narrator instructs that "Nature divides us into male and female... We come together and create offspring for posterity..." (2.254-57) Athena, the virginal goddess, therefore directs both Shogo's fate and the eternal prospects of human procreation. In her management of a hero's sexual destiny, Tezuka's mythmaking has contrived a remarkable new role for Athena Parthenos.

Pursuit in water, Apollo's Song 2.205

traditional Apollo's Song 2.203

       Apollo's treatment in Apollo's Song is more overt and at first glance less novel. Late in the final chapter, Hiromi confides in her doctoral advisor, Dr. Enoki (2.199), that she is beginning to have feelings for Shogo and that she is aware of his infatuation with her. The Doctor advises her to "become a laurel tree." Hiromi fails to see the connection. The Doctor then helps her to learn "the Greek myth about the girl Daphne." He explains the myth of Daphne and Apollo along the lines of Ovid's Metamorphoses 1, the western classic ending in a Bernini visual; but, subtle divergences from Ovid are intriguing. Much of the pursuit occurs in water, for instance, recalling the manga's recurrent instruction on reproductive biology, sperm swimming upstream. Tezuka's adaptation explains how the god Apollo pursued and came to hold the object of his lust, how the daughter of Peneus lost her identity at the end of a frightened flight. Dr. Enoki summarizes, "Miss Watari, I'm telling you to become a laurel tree because if you continue to allow Shogo's feelings for you to intensify, he will eventually fall into despair." (209)

Shogo as fallen Icarus, Apollo's Song 1.239

       Apollo is first acknowledged mid-way through the manga. The first acknowledgement in a novel titled for him is rather obscure. "Apollo" is the only word in the principle frame that fills 1.239. Shogo has collapsed, exhausted by Hiromi's sternly regimented training him for a marathon. In an bout of training that one expects will likely result in sexual intercourse, the fleet Hiromi eludes Shogo for many laps around a small lake. As Shogo's physical fatigue darkens his mind, Tezuka in nearly every frame includes a glimpse of Hiromi's running legs and backside clothed explicitly in Shogo's underwear. (1.227-38) Hubris brings Shogo down in the end. He falls flat on his face on the strand. Icarus. And his only utterance rises to the top of the frame — "Apollo..."  Next frames find Hiromi now willingly removing her clothing over the collapsed boy, now that he poses "no threat" to her safety.  Hiromi is his coach. For now, Hiromi is fully in control. Over 200 pages later Dr. Enoki coaches her to play Daphne and relinquish control.

Lefty Athena, Apollo's Song 1.23; the
Japanese original mirrors this, with
Nike extended in the right hand.

       Tezuka's broader narrative in this manga treats the development of Shogo from sociopath to lover. Much is at work in Tezuka's highly original narrative, the whole stands very interestingly as a reception of Orpheus, with Shogo's love and loss of Hiromi never further than arm's reach from the plight of Eurydice and Orpheus. Yet, it is never closer than arm's reach, either. Tezuka's work is hardly a pastiche of the Eurydice narrative, nor is it a mindless pastiche of any classical myth.  The overt acknowledgements of the roles of Athena and Apollo secure Tezuka's manga as a worthwhile narrative for exploring adaptation of classical mythology. The most fruitful analysis will approach the reason why Tezuka names the narrative framed by rumination on "the endless drama" of human procreation "Apollo's Song".

Osamu Tezuka, story of Daphne and Apollo told within Apollo's Song, manga, graphic novel 1970 and 2007 — originally serialized in Japanese as Aporo No Uta in Shukan Shonen Kingu, Shonen Gahosha, and translated by Camillia Nieh — New York, Vertical. 

Hiromi is advised by the Doctor on 2.199 that the only way to avoid Shogo's infatuation with her — "Then become a laurel tree.... Do[n't] you know the Greek myth about the girl Daphne?" The narrative then unfolds along the lines of Ovid's telling, but with subtle divergences worth exploring. 

  Tezuka's greater narrative in this manga treats the development of Shogo from sociopath to lover. The whole stands very interestingly as an adaptation or reception of the myth of Orpheus, with Shogo's love and loss of Hiromi never further than arm's reach from the plight of Eurydice and Orpheus. Yet, Tezuka's work is hardly a pastiche of the Eurydice narrative. 

#ogcma.byu.edu   Athena Apollo Orpheus Eurydice
http://ogcma.byu.edu/Daphne2.0003_Tezuka.htm

Haskell Coffin's Nike

W. Haskell Coffin idealized the appearance of victory as America entered the Great War, as he had done in a wide range of illustrations published in and on American magazines over the first quarter of the 20th Century. He applied his idealized American woman in an image of Nike for a campaign to support the sale of war bonds. A pair of important posters by Coffin helped boost national response to America's entry into the Great War. His "Joan of Arc Saved France," included recently in an exhibition at the BYU Museum of Art ("For Home and Country: Posters and Propaganda from the Great War," curated by K. Hartvigsen) may be better known than Coffin's winged Nike in "Share in the Victory". Coffin's Nike is remarkable for his artistic application.
   Iconographically, Coffin's Nike is clearly derived from classical models. The winged figure is draped in a flowing chiton held over her left shoulder leaving her right should bare, precisely as the Winged Nike of Samothrace (Louvre).

The Louvre Nike's drapery is carved to suggest much finer weight fabric, as it blows back so blithely as to show the navel and other anatomical features of the form beneath the carved cloth. Coffin's Nike has a full, if not voluptuous, figure beneath her clothing, even if the overall impression is rather modest. Likewise, the drapery coming forward in three pleats over the left hip on Coffin's Nike is contrived precisely the same as her Samothracian forebear. Both Nikai stride forward with their right foot, unlike another similar Nike at Olympia. Coffin's model for the poster is certainly the sculpture in the Louvre.
   The attributes held by Coffin's Nike, a palm frond and a longsword, are an interesting invention. Of course the Nike of Samothrace lacks head and both arms; aside from the wings growing naturally from her shoulders, whatever attributes she held in her hands are missing.  She might have held something aloft in one or both of her hands. Since the Louvre Nike's arms are completely missing, it is hard to determine their disposition. The Winged Nike from Olympia, holds her left arm high and her right arm low, as does Coffin's. Her hands missing also, it is unknown whether the Olympia Nike held anything; but her gesture may suggest her pointing, like a herald, to the heavens and to the earth asa messenger might. Classical Nikai often extend laurel wreaths over the head of conquering heroes; thus, for Coffin's Nike to be wearing one herself diverges somewhat from classical iconography. The palm frond extended in her left hand recalls Thomas Brock's Victoria Monument (1901) opposite Buckingham Palace which extends a palm frond in one hand (left) and a wreath in the other.
   Secondary depictions of Phidias' great sculptures indicate that Nikai playing minor roles were preparing to crown victors. A coin stamped at Ellis shows the colossal Zeus sculpture at Olympia extended in his right hand a Nike who held out a laurel wreath. Similarly, the Varvakeion replica of the Phidias' Athena Parthenos likewise held emblems to crown victorious Athens. This Athena is emerging from the battle, not heading toward it. Coffin's decision for his Nike to offer the extended sword seems unprecedented in depictions of Nikai. She enters the fray. Whereas Nike typically comes after the battle has been waged and won, Coffin's new conception offers simultaneously both clean-clad (i.e. easy?) victory and the emblem of peace.
   Coffin's conception of Nike is a youthful American beauty. The blue eyes and rosy cheeks feature regularly in the artist's other portrayals of young women on magazine covers such as Redbook, Metropolitan Magazine, and The Saturday Evening Post. His Nike's short bobbed hair further diverges strongly from classical iconography, a feature tending the image more toward strong young women of contemporary US culture than toward a divinity from Ancient Greece. Portraying a strong, lovely girl who might live next door Coffins aims his message at men and women alike. Both women and men can contribute equally to the cause this Nike represents.

— OGCMA.BYU.edu/Nike2.0010_Coffin.htm