Gorgon : Homer spoke of a single Gorgon – a monster of the underworld. The Greek poet Hesiod increased the number to three – Sthens (the Mighty), Euryale (the Ear Springer), & Medusa (the Queen). Attic tradition regarded the Gorgon as a monster produced by Ge, the goddess Earth, to aid her sons against the gods.
... Seriphos. There Danaë was received and honoured by the King. When Perseus had grown to manhood the King, wishing to marry Danaë, decided to send him to his death and to that end ordered him to slay the Gorgon Medusa in the wild, unknown and snowy North and bring to him her head the sight of which turned men to stone. Perseus, aided by Athene, the Goddess of Wisdom, who gave him the divine sword Herpe, winged... This galley shattered on the sharp-toothed rocks I fly to succour. You are grown dear to me, You smiling weeping human faces, brightly Who move, who live, not like those stony masks And Gorgon visions of that monstrous world Beyond the snows. I would not lose you now In the dead surges of the inhuman flood. He descends out of sight. Iolaus enters with Cireas, Dercetes and soldiers... King of Tyre: priest Polydaon, Possess thy usual chair. POLYDAON Well, King of Syria, Shall I have justice? Wilt thou be the King Over a peopled country? or must I loose The snake-haired Gorgon-eyed Erinnyes To hunt thee with the clamorous whips of Hell Blood-dripping? CEPHEUS Be content. Cepheus gives nought But justice from his mighty seat. Thou shalt Have justice. Page 370 ...
... my clear-eyed delight, Eunice, And I shall not be lonely any more. I have not been so happy since you came From Egypt. But, O heaven! what followed that? Will now no stark calamity arise With Gorgon head to turn us into stone Venging this glimpse of joy? Torn by your scourges I fear you, gods, too much to trust your smile. Nicanor enters. NICANOR Antiochus comes. TIMOCLES ...
... There had perhaps been a time when she was not elderly, but the boldest flight of metaphor would never have imaged her as young. The slanders of her enemies drew a frightful picture of the low-class Gorgon: they compared her chin to a penknife, her lips to a pair of icicles: her smile was a perpetual reminder of vinegar, her voice was like frost against the teeth. The sobriety of history merely records ...
... Savitri, p. 28. Page 237 passage like the following which describes the Goddess of Night: A strong and fallen goddess without hope, Obscured, deformed by some dire Gorgon spell, As might a harlot empress in a bouge, Nude, unashamed, exulting she upraised Her evil face of perilous beauty and charm And, drawing panic to a shuddering kiss Twixt ...
... denied, While alien masters held her house of pride. And now behold her! Terrible and fair With the eternal ivy in her hair, Armed with the clamorous thunder, how she stands Like Pallas' self, the Gorgon in her hands. True that her puissance will be easily past, The vision ended; she herself has cast Her fate behind her: yet the work not vain Since that which once has been may be again, And she ...
... Poseidon-like submerges with his sea All barriers, and the checks that men oppose But make him fret and spume against the sky. Who shall withstand him? not the gnawing flame Nor toothed rocks nor gorgon-fronted piles Nor metal bars; thro' all he walks unharmed. But lo where on the forest's lip there dawns My noonstar in the garish paths of day. He should not see you, sweet. Prithee, go in. ...
... Now Ignorance, Falsehood, Error, Ego walk in its thick shadow and the Satanic votaries proclaim: "Evil, be thou my God." Life in that gloom with her perilous charm and beauty lies cursed under the Gorgon spell. There Aswapati felt that his body was licked by the hostile Power and he suffered fear. But this had to Page – 56 be borne. He endures and with his bare spirit masters her ...
... cities of dream-life. There Life displayed to the spectator soul The shadow depths of her strange miracle. A strong and fallen goddess without hope, Obscured, deformed by some dire Gorgon spell, As might a harlot empress in a bouge, Nude, unashamed, exulting she upraised Her evil face of perilous beauty and charm And, drawing panic to a shuddering kiss Twixt ...
... complicated monsters, head and tail - Scorpion, and Asp, and Amphisbaena dire, Cerastes horned, Hydras, and Ellops drear, And Dipsas (not so thick swarmed once the soil Bedropt with blood of Gorgon, or the isle Ophiusa); but still greatest he the midst, Now Dragon grown, larger than whom the Sun Engendered in the Pythian vale on slime, Huge Python... 34 To return ...
... spirits commingling Stir the seed in their genitals— Like a babe never to be born that leaps up crying, A voice crying in the wilderness.... The head of Satan is curled Close, crisp, like the Gorgon; They are the serpents of the spirit Curled like the hair of the chaste body, Emblem of the God who is not creative, Who has not made the heavens and the earth, Nor from an Adam of dust Took ...
... turning their faces away ) O Lord! Aphrodite ( turning back ) O Father, Pray, hasten and send forth your heavenly hosts; All hell is surging up against your Will: All horrors, gorgon-heads, and Furies dire, And Stygian glooms, and - oh! I could not bear The ugly sights... ( She covers her eyes and half-swoons ) Zeus Why, Child, where hast thou ...
... the gods. Gorgons: In the western-lost extremities of the earth, says Aeschilus, "dwell monsters abhorred by mortals, with locks of serpents whom none looked upon without perishing." They were the Gorgons, three sisters out of whom Medusa alone was mortal. Perseus, in his quest, had to kill Medusa which he did with the help of Athene. Later on, Athene fixed the Gorgon's head at the center ...
... lion's head, a goat's body and a serpent's tail — and as if this combination were not enough, its mouth breathes fire. Milton has a line in which several mythological monsters run cheek by jowl: Gorgons and hydras and chimeras dire. Sri Aurobindo has made the chimeras even queerer than they usually are: he has given them wings — with, I think, a purpose. He uses the word "chimera" for something ...
... life dies, death lives, and Nature breeds, Perverse, all monstrous, all prodigious things, Abominable, inutterable, and worse Than fables yet have feigned, or fear conceived, Gorgons, and Hydras, and Chimaeras dire. 10 Nor is the music of recurrence suitable only to high-pitched poetry in Milton's mouth. It is equally apt when the utterance is quietly firm, as in the ...
... the vices - of mankind were personified as a deity, usually in human form and animating power. Every craft, profession and art had its divinity and in addition, there were demons, harpies, furies, gorgons, sirens, nymphs almost as numerous as the mortals of Earth.” (Will Durant, History of Civilizations - Vol II) This animism, which corresponds to the subtle perception that no plan of existence is ...
... compass that, Since what you call light is dark night to the wise? JAGAI ( showing him his fist ) We are come to teach you that — and you shall learn Which is God's gleam and which the Gorgon's gloom, So that — what else, Madhai? You are not helpful. MADHAI You are wrong, for look — ( he suddenly spits on Sri Chaitanya's face and gives an exultant guffaw ) — my ...
... Polydaon recognises and salutes in the end. There is an anti-climax too. When Phineas and his soldiers make a last attempt to contain Perseus, they are all turned to stone by the power of the Gorgon's Head that the sungod brings into play: ...those swift charging warriors stiffened To stone or stiffening, in the very posture of onset, sword uplifted, shield advanced, Knee crooked ...
... if one did not exist. Kant is said to have refuted Anselm's logic but I don't think he could touch the question: "What makes us conceive of anything like God at all?" Imagination can conjure up Gorgons and hydras and chimeras dire because they are made of elements known separately and can be put together in our minds but God is not a composite construction in our thought: He transcends all that ...
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