The Ouroboros Occlusion: Centrifugality as Metaphor for Myth

The cyclicality inscribed about classical myth—a medium which simultaneously reconciles homogenous continuity and disembodied strife—emerges in both the visuospatial and thematic reworkings of antiquity through dually engaging with annularity of physical and archetypal nature. Such circularity, in relation to reception, enables the conception of modern reworkings from the influences of an epic totality, mirroring the rhapsodic oral traditions which ‘wove’ together the hymns and epics of antiquity by extending both backwards and forwards. By virtue of its simultaneously-cyclical—and linear—modes of convergence, myth operates as a vehicle for the opposing dualisms which underlie an epic cycle: the bidirectionality of progress and regression lie within the recurrent nature of history; the mother and daughter occupy inverse poles of a dichotomy which is sustained through the circularity of death and conception. The two planes of movement—both linear and circular—have found utility in the malleability of epic as semiotic representations of convergence and divergence, gaining prominence in the cyclical traditions explored by the former poet laureate Rita Dove’s Mother Love and scholar Robert Hayden’s “Richard Hunt’s Arachne.” Within the classicized works of Dove and Hayden lie the competing notions of centripetality and centrifugality—which, being paired with the opposing motions of ascent and descent, grant a discordant quality to the torsion brought by the simultaneous inward and outward movements accompanying the circular motion. Propelled by the concurrent resistance to and acquiescence towards cyclicality, Dove and Hayden enfranchise numerous dimensions of movement to cohere classical antiquity to the feminine archetypes prominent in modernity.

The circularity explored by Rita Dove’s Mother Love—most prominently her final crown of sonnets—functions as an amalgamation of the continuities facilitated by Dove throughout her collection: the mother and daughter, the latter of whom soon assumes the identity of the former; the annual turn of seasons, whose origins are articulated in the Homeric hymn. However, when paired with the directionality provided by the notions of ascent and descent, the additional axis of motion furthers the subject’s convergence towards—or divergence from—their origin. The disjunction between mother and daughter—which acts contrary to the notion of continued cyclicality—is ironically represented through the simile of an ascendant spiral of smoke in Dove’s “The Bistro Styx.” In describing Persephone’s countenance, Demeter recalls the smokestacks of Paris, with “each sooty issue / wobbling skyward in an ecstatic oracular spiral” (Dove, 42). In attributing an upward “spiral[ing]” motion to her daughter’s disposition, Demeter seems to indicate Persephone’s increasingly ungovernable nature, as she exits—and further distances—herself from her mother’s earthly domain to travel “skyward,” in vertical motion along an opposing axis. Interpolated amidst the upward “spiral[ing]” lies movement inscribing a circular plane—a shape which, by virtue of its continuity, returns those who travel along its edges to their origin. The reconciliation between Persephone’s divergence from her mother’s earth-bound realm and circular convergence towards her origin suggests a dual resistance and fulfillment of the previously-established continuity between mother and daughter.

In characterizing the maiden’s departure along a vertical axis of motion, Dove draws a likeness to the “Homeric Hymn to Demeter,” in which the mother-daughter relationship is described by the psychiatrist Carl Jung—an advocate for the archetypal theory and the collective unconscious—to “extend the feminine consciousness both upwards and downwards” (Foley, 119). Opposing dualisms, Jung argues, as maintained through the assignment of an ‘older and younger,’ ‘stronger and weaker’ identity to either mother or daughter, construct a linear dimension which typifies the psyche. Further exemplified by Dove’s dedication—“FOR / my mother / TO / my daughter”—preceding her novel, Jung argues with regard to the Homeric Hymn that, “every woman extends backwards into her mother and forwards into her daughter,” invoking a notion of circular perpetuity which spans across generations (Dove, vii; Foley, 119). The figurative ‘immortality’ granted to the female psyche constructs the Jungian “archetype of woman’s fate,” with the circularity of the female narrative removing the woman “from her isolation and restor[ing] her to wholeness” as part of a collective (Foley, 119). Such notions extend to modernity, enabling women to occupy the dimensionality created by intersecting mythical planes (cyclicality and linearity), and likewise retains its constancy throughout Dove’s collection.

Through further invocations of centripetality and descent in her later poems, “Political” and “Her Island,” Dove establishes a dually-physical and semiotic continuity whose expanse permeates into modernity. In the former—a depiction of “hell’s circles” accompanies Demeter as she “keeps digging / towards that darkest miracle, / the hope of finding her child unmolested,” narrating the mother’s descent within the confines of annularity (Dove, 55). Utility of the present perfect verb, “keeps,” suggests a continuity which extends along the vertical axis of downward motion, whereas “hell’s circles” impose a constricting visual representation which renders the mother’s search for her daughter a cyclical futility comparable to that of “hell.” Contrary to the downward motion executed by Demeter, Dove’s crown of sonnets—”Her Island”—exhibits a centripetal force converging inwards in search of Persephone: the object of centermost import to Demeter. As the narrator—presumed to be Demeter in modernity—circles the site of Persephone’s disappearance, she describes Lake Pergusa to be “one perfect oval / hemmed all around by reeds / at the center of the physical world. We turn inland…” (Dove, 74). In connoting an “inland” convergence towards the island’s center, Dove suggests that Lake Pergusa—and by extension, Persephone—are situated at not only the “center of the physical world,” but also that of her mother. In the Demeter figure’s repeated circling of the lake (“twice, first one way, then back”), her inability to traverse its boundaried edges leaves her in centripetal motion, circling the lake in asymptotic fashion yet unable to harness the inward, or “inland” motion which may lead her to the daughter (Dove, 75).

In parallel to the circular fluidity characterizing Dove’s mother-daughter dualism, Robert Hayden’s “Richard Hunt’s Arachne” utilizes the homogeneity of enjambment and centrifugal depictions of transformation to illuminate the recurrent lack of autonomy faced by women. In voicing Arachne’s “godly vivisection,” Hayden describes her “goggling terror fleeing powerless to flee / Arachne not yet arachnid and no longer woman”—a purposeful lack of punctuation embodying the maiden’s palpable loss of identity as discordant juxtapositions contest the linearity of Arachne’s narrative (Hayden, lines 9-10). A simultaneous resistance to and acquiescence towards a jarred cyclicality are explored as language occupying opposite ends of a dualism—“fleeing” and “powerless to flee;” “Arachne” and “not yet arachnid”—construct a circularity by virtue of repetition and annular language. The conflict accompanying Arachne’s transitory state is further compounded by her terror, as recounted by the literary scholar Wilburn Williams in his reflections on Hayden’s anthology, Angle of Ascent. Arguing that a singular narrative is insufficient in adequately capturing the “violent juxtaposition of concepts of motion and stasis, the human and the animal, birth and death,” accompanying Arachne’s totality, Williams leaves readership to regard the poem’s closure: “in the moment’s centrifuge of dying / becoming” (Williams, 745; Hayden, lines 12-13). Enjambment accompanying present participles—“dying” and “becoming”—suggest a transitory homogeneity between the two states, as the suffix “-ing” suggests an ongoing process extending both backward and forward in time. In the perpetuity implied by the actions of “dying” and “becoming,” Hayden’s final stanza mirrors the cyclicality exhibited in Dove’s dedication: “FOR / my mother / TO / my daughter.” Analogous to the way in which a daughter later assumes the identity of the mother, Arachne is entrenched in a liminality in which she undergoes transformation from woman to arachnid. In ascribing a “centrifug[al]” force to her transformation, the inevitability of cyclicality is paired with the notion of outward-facing resistance, as a centrifuge’s vectors of motion diverge from its center. Such strife—ironically represented by a circular, homogeneous motion—associates Arachne’s autonomy to counteraction, granting an individualistic quality to the canon of woman.

Notions of circularity in classical reworkings—as they relate to the simultaneous resistance and acquiescence of the cycles undertaken by women—are mobilized by Rita Dove and Robert Hayden to conceive multiple dimensions of mobility within a work. In employing a multitude of linearities, planes, and axes of movement, the retellings of antiquity allude to the collective consciousness of women and their subsequent ownership of narrative.