As we changed, the votives did, too

"One of the most exciting archaeological discoveries ever made was the finding of the marble korai or maidens. Most of these charming statuettes, with their demure archaic smiles, old-fashioned robe-styling, and delicate Ionian-type workmanship were found lying in a pit on the Acropolis near the N.W. corner of the Erectheum where they had been buried as part of the debris after the Persian sack. Others lay scattered about in the rubble with traces of the original paint-work still fresh upon them.

"Their purpose and provenance is disputed. The custom of dedicating statues of simular offerings to deities was widespread, and characteristic of the archaic era in Greece, as is known from the large number discovered in temple ruins. Some considered that the statues were intended to represent her (Athena’s) worshippers or even the goddess herself. But the discovery of an inscription recording the offering of a maiden by a fisherman to Poseidon, suggests that they were merely standard offerings and intended to represent no one in particular. The proximity of the pit, where the majority of the statuettes were found, to the sit of the Old Temple, together with their late sixth-century style, is strong evidence that they were dedicated there. Certainly there could have been no more charming way of honoring the goddess in her new home than by arranging with a sculptor to provide statuettes in keeping with the worshipper’s state and means."

-- John Pollard, Seers Shrines and Sirens: The Greek Religious Revolution in the Sixth Century BC


CACHE OF THE KORAI

Oct. 26

Upwelled vault
of forever smiling
maidens, we’ll never know
for sure whose bent knees
sent you forth to heaven,
but the evidence I haul
to here is ratified
from the gut, just
as wise Metis holds
her balance-pans
on a throne in the
belly of dread Zeus.
I see these small plain
statuettes of virgin alms
arriving from
the dark borders
of an earlier soul
where commerce
sufficed for devotion,
the tit-for-tat
of buying safe
passage. One korai
bore an inscription
to Poseidon with
a plea for fishtail
booty: religion
as the archaic hedge
fund of survival’s
temple. Then came
the age when She
arrived to claim the
grounds, armed
with forceful rhetoric
& the cunning plow;
shining wise Athena,
bearer of the Gorgon’s
skin which she
wore as the
aegis of Athens'
brightest future,
clawing a smarter
way to heaven.
The korai’s name
and nature
thus changed,
their maiden
faces turned up
to the winged
heart in a devotion
grown classical.
Received thus
by her, their faces
shined with the
a simple art of
soul so clean
and sensible
that the very
prayers which
almed were the
sure foundations
of the new
temple complex.
They became
the votives of
a selfless gift,
missives to her
mythic style,
stepping virginal
and sun-bright
above the awful
tides of history
for just a moment,
the way every
artist has a
youthful flush
when all is said
dead-on, in
perfect harmony
with her sky father
and wet mother
in the belly of
immortal scale
before it all
gets dumped
into the furrow
of the grave.
I here hold
a korai up
from that cache,
the wide-eyed
virgins with
a demurely
dancing smile:
she is the
bridal bridge
between the old
and new parts of
the this song,
hinges of a temple
door which swings
between salt
chaismus and
blue refrain.
I lift her lost heart
up to my God’s
great desire,
votive of my
own dark song.
May we both
be consumed
in her vestal fire.

***


PROCESSION OF THE VIRGIN

Ranier Maria Rilke

transl. Edward Snow

Ghent

Out of all the towers wave on wave of
surging metal flings itself in such masses
as if down below in the streets’ mold
a shining day would arise from bronze ore,

along whose rim, hammered and embossed,
there’d be seen the brightly-knotted train
of nimble girls and brand-new boys,
and how its waves drove and pulsed and sustained,
held down by the uncertain weight
of the banners and stemmed by hindrances
invisible like the hand of God;

and over there suddenly almost swept away
by the upsurge of the startled censers,
which, all seven taking flight, as if in terror
pull at their silver chains.

The scarp of onlookers hems the track
in which the whole thing falters and lurches and rolls:
the Oncoming, the Chryselephantine,
out of which baldachins rear up to balconies,
swaying in the fringework of gold.

And they recognize over all the white,
carried high and dressed in Spanish garb,

the old statue with the small hot face
and the child perched on the hand
and kneel down, the more he nears and nears,
in his crown naively growing obsolete,
and still woodenly holding out his blessing
from the grandly gesturing brocade.

But then as he comes moving past
the kneelers, who gaze shyly from below,
he seems to command his bearers
with a quick uplifting of his eyebrows,
haughty, indignant, and decisive:
so that they start, stand, and ponder
and at last hesitantly proceed. She, though, takes

into herself the steps of that whole flood
and goes, alone, as on familiar paths
toward the thunderous pealings of the wide-open cathedral
on a hundred shoulders with womanly aplomb.


Chryselephantine. Rilke “explained” the word in a letter of 25 July 1907: “Made out of gold (chysos, Greek) and ivory (elephas), and used of the statues of Phidias, which according to the texts were made of these things: here the expression should help to evoke suddenly, at a stroke, the white-gold aspect of the procession.”