Dionysos & Aphrodite- some modern literary recreations

Louis Icart, Chansons de Bilitis, 1949

I have written a great deal recently about the French author Pierre Louys. I first encountered his work when I was researching my two books on the Greek classical deities, Aphrodite and Dionysos (respectively, Aphrodite- Goddess of Modern Love and Dance, Love & Ecstasy– The Modern Cult of Dionysos/ Bacchus– published by Green Magic Publishing in 2021 and 2022).

As their titles suggest, these two books are just as concerned with our reactions to and understanding of Aphrodite and Dionysos today as they are to outline their cults in classical times. I demonstrate how the two deities have pervaded our culture- through literature, art, music, theatre and our world view- since the late nineteenth century. The writing of Pierre Louys, I argue, made no small contribution to this, as- although he set about recreating the worship of these gods in a partially imaginary ancient world- he was speaking to contemporary problems and preoccupations. Having encountered what are probably the two most significant and famous books by Louys, I proceeded then to read the rest of his output. He wrote other recreations of ancient mythology, but he also transferred his attention to the modern world in which he lived, creating utopias and other fictional settings in which to put his ideas into practice. 

In Les Chansons de Bilitis (Songs of Bilitis, 1894), Louys sought to articulate the worship of Aphrodite/ Astarte/ Venus and of Dionysos as living faiths which formed the backdrop for everyday lives and everyday ways of approaching the world. By this means, he was able to express his own views on morality and lifestyles in an oblique manner from behind a façade of fiction and past societies. In the world of Bilitis, Pan and the nymphs are alive and present in her home in Pamphylia and she contacts Aphrodite directly and physically in the branches of trees (songs 1 & 24). When Bilitis moves to Mytilene, she meets her first love, a girl called Mnasidika, who wears on a necklace a little statuette of Astarte, the goddess who acts as her guardian and is “the Most Amorous One.” 

Later, on Cyprus, the island home of the goddess, Bilitis dedicates herself more fully to her cult. Astarte/ Aphrodite is dual in many ways (virgin and mother, fire and foam of the seas); she is the one who unites “the multiple species of savage beasts and the sexes in the forest.” Bilitis becomes a maenad, ecstatically praising Dionysos through orgies in which “they offered you again the love you cast within them.” This line, with the verb ‘jeter‘ (to throw or fling), suggests to me a measure of randomness and variability in the results of the god’s actions. Some translators prefer the verb ‘pour,’ which indicates something more specific; ‘cast’ instead admits differences between individuals- or, in other words, varying preferences. Some of the maenads may prefer men, others women, some, both; Dionysos himself is portrayed as bisexual in the Greek sources and I think it’s clear from all of his work- especially his earliest books- that Louys celebrated the relaxed pansexuality of the ancient world (as he perceived it, anyway). In Bilitis’ account of the bacchic celebration, the moon is rising; it is the white body of Aphrodite whose light trembles on the sea “a thousand tiny lips of light- the pure sex or the smile of Kypris Philommeides.” Hesiod named Aphrodite Philommeides (genital-loving) because she is said to have sprung from the severed member of Uranus. Louys plays on this ambiguity of meaning in his choice of words- “mille petites lèvres de lumière.;” obviously, both could be appropriate to a goddess of love. When the moon sets, the priestesses of Astarte make love together- a secret female rite dedicated to the Mother of the World, the untiring and irresistible lover (songs 92-97). To the Venus/ Aphrodite of Louys’ books, all love is acceptable: in song 102, ‘The Torn Robe,’ a girl is cross when a man steps on and rips her dress at the back: “my yellow dress is all torn and if I walk the streets like this they’ll take me for a poor girl who serves inverted Venus”- this is the Venus Aversa, whom I have described previously; the speaker is concerned that walking round with her bottom exposed may give the wrong idea to some.

Louys returned to these themes in his next novel, Aphrodite (1896), which is set in and around the temple of the goddess in Ptolemaic Alexandria. The shrine is surrounded by the booths of courtesans whose work is devoted to the goddess; if they give birth to girl children, the infants are immediately married symbolically to Dionysos “for virginity displeases Aphrodite.” They are then dedicated to training in the temple’s famous school to learn “all the erotic arts.” This education continues until such time as they feel they are ready to serve the goddess themselves- “because desire is an order of the goddess who must not be thwarted” (here I understand an implication that both the timing and the manner of honouring the goddess of love are indicated). In Alexandria too, the goddess is worshipped by priestesses in orgiastic rites, but she also receives more humble and ordinary offerings and prayers from the faithful. These gifts may be flowers and clothing, but they can be acts of love and even the bodies of the faithful, whilst the prayers may reflect the worshippers’ own concerns- as when the two flute players Rhodis and Myrtocleia ask Aphrodite to accept offerings “from our joined hands if it be true that the gentle Adonis alone does not satisfy you and that an embrace still gentler delays, at times, your slumber” (Aphrodite, Book 2, chapters 1 & 6).

Lastly, in his poetry collection Stanzas, Louys composed a song in praise of Aphrodite:

“O goddess in our arms so tender and so small,
Goddess with a heart of flesh, even weaker than us,
Aphrodite by whom all Eve is Aphrodite
And is adored by a man at her knees,

You alone survive after the twilight
of great Olympians submerged by the night.
A whole world collapsed on the tomb of Hercules;
O Beauty! you come back from the past that is running away.

As you were born in the Hellenic light,
You raise the sea, you redden the rosehip;
The whirling universe is intoxicated by your breath
And the breast of a child takes you in whole.

As you were born from the senses of Praxiteles,
Every lover is divine, and I doubt, in his eyes,
Whether Heaven makes you a woman or makes her immortal,
Whether you descend to man or be reborn for the Gods.”

He sees the goddess enduring, simply because love, desire and motherhood are constants of human existence.

Through his sympathetic treatments, especially in Bilitis, Louys helped to establish a modern lesbian identity. As an author, meanwhile, whilst no longer pursuing the pseudo-classical theme so assiduously, Louys continued to work out the same kinds of issues in fictional contemporary settings. The same ideas remained central to his later prose and poetry: he continued (by demonstration rather than by dogmatic declaration) to assert the diversity and equality of love and passion. Removed from imaginary ancient societies, the later stories no longer justified reference to the pagan deities and, shorn of the context of their presence, we may seem to be confronted with unrestrained indulgence of the obsessions and fantasies of Pierre Louys. However, the absence of mention of the old divinities does not mean that Louys had forgotten the world view he had formulated around them. His thesis still seemed to be that the ancient gods and peoples did not discriminate (in both senses of the word) and that modern societies might do well to learn this again from them.

Georges Barbier, from Chansons de Bilitis, 1922