#protogonos

L’Inizio

Nasco dal bianco candore, bianche le ali, non conosco timore. Prest'osservo la Causa Prima: Protogono fiammeggiante dietro di lui il Cielo distante.

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The Beginning

I was born in white candor, white the wings, i know no fear. Soon i observe the First Cause: Flaming Prōtogónos behind him the distant Heaven.

Phanes/Protogonos/Eros the Elder

Personification of Creation and Primordial God of Creation, Generation of all Life, the Light, Divine Power, Fertility, Reproduction and Goodness

Zeus as simultaneously the beginning and the end is a riddle at the very core of the poem and the key to its ontological orientation. Orpheus’ initial description of Zeus’ ascent to the throne remains faithful to Hesiod. As in Hesiod, Zeus defeats his father Kronos and takes the crown. At this point he must solidify his rule. So far, so Hesiodic. However, to consolidate his rule, Zeus does not swallow the goddess Metis and combine intelligence and force in his single person. Rather, Zeus swallows the firstborn god Protogonos. The most plausible reconstruction of the surviving poetic fragments recounts how Zeus takes Protogonos into his hands and (13.4, 16.3–6) He [i.e. Zeus] swallowed down the reverend one [i.e. Protogonos], who was first born from the aither. . . . Protogonos the reverend one. And on him [i.e. Zeus] all The immortals grew, blessed gods and goddesses And rivers and lovely springs and everything else That had been born then [i.e. the original creation of Protogonos] and he himself was alone. …

As noted earlier, a great deal of scholarly debate hinges on whether Zeus swallows the phallus of Ouranos or the reverend Protogonos. However, despite this dispute, there is a broad consensus on the significance of this act. … As Edmonds puts it, whether Zeus swallows Protogonos or a phallus ‘in either case the idea is the same: Zeus incorporates within himself the generative principle, whether it is the hermaphroditic Phanes who generates the other gods by copulating with himself/herself or it is the generative member of the oldest god, Ouranos’. Despite the overall consensus on the meaning of the act, I am far from convinced that to swallow a phallus and to swallow the firstborn god Protogonos are actually equivalent acts. Although the idea that the phallus represents a generative principle is an association clearly made by the commentator, it is one weakly supported by the poem itself. Ouranos, it should be noted, in any interpretation is not the oldest god, but the son of Night (col. 14.6). In the narrative he probably mates with his sister Gaia, who in turn gives birth to Kronos and the other gods. In this respect, the phallus of Ouranos as a ‘principle of all generation’ has a partial claim at best. At worst it is an unclear metaphor, which although not literally responsible for the creation of everything, somehow stands in as a symbol for this act. It is also for these reasons a weak answer to the riddle of how Zeus achieves the status first, middle and last.

In contrast, Zeus achieving priority by swallowing the firstborn god Protogonos is a simpler, more profound and a more satisfying answer to the Orphic paradox. It might help clarify my point by reflecting on Hesiod’s description of Zeus’ encompassment of Metis. In Chapter 1, I argued that Hesiod’s poem can be read as a kind of riddle focusing on how Zeus can achieve stable power in an unstable world. The solution involved swallowing Metis, the personification of cunning intelligence. This was not a metaphorical eating of a female power, but the literal ingestion of a goddess and the capacities she personifies. This same transparency also applies to the poem of Orpheus. In both cases a problem arises concerning how Zeus can succeed where others failed. And in both cases, the poets utilize clear and unambiguous personifications to solve these problems. In neither account does Zeus swallow a metaphor, he swallows a god who is simultaneously an attribute, capacity and a word. Metis is cunning intelligence and Zeus absorbs this goddess into himself and takes on this power/word. Similarly, in the Derveni poem, Zeus can become first, middle and last because he swallows a god who is simultaneously a personification/power/word: Protogonos or priority. In other words, I argue that Zeus is first not because he eats a symbol that represents a creative power, but because he eats priority itself and by doing so literally unites first, middle and last. This marks a remarkable transformation of Hesiod’s poem.

Indeed, the Orphic Zeus’ answer to the problem of priority is not the imposition of a new relation on a previously chaotic cosmos as much as the closing of a circle and repetition of a process starting with Protogonos’ birth from Aither. This cyclical nature is emphasized in the poet’s insistence that Zeus not only swallows Protogonos, but that with him he simultaneously swallows all the gods, rivers, springs, and everything else that was born at that time. The poet’s use of the word προσφύω provides an important clue as to why Protogonos is so closely associated with the cosmos as a whole. West translates it as ‘become one with’ though notes that the meaning is more literally ‘grow towards’. In this respect, the poetic imagery of Zeus eating Protogonos is somewhat akin to a tree with diverse branches and roots growing backwards into a seed. That this idea is intended as more than a metaphor is made clear when the text specifically states that everything literally grows into Zeus until he becomes solitary (μοῦνος ἔγεντο). If everything grows into Zeus when he eats Protogonos, the implication is that the cosmos first grew out of Protogonos. Zeus, in this respect, by eating Protogonos, is not so much eating something separate from himself, but is eating his own roots and literally joining last to first, very much in the spirit of the ouroboros or the serpent that eats its own tail."

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Protogonos mp3 download

DOWNLOAD

Strange Geographie album:

Artist - Protogonos mp3

Album - Strange Geographie mp3

Year - 2003

Genre- Chill Out: Ambient

Tracks:

Lixivium

Amaranthine

Strange Geographie

Download Strange Geographie