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Fw: [NABOKOV-L] Ganymede, cup-bearers, catamites
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Dear List,
Recently a picture with goblets and cup-bearers reached me, a theme VN often introduced in ADA, where we find direct and indirect mentions to Ganymede and catamites, plus Anti-terran servers named Bout or Bouteillan.
Cf. B.Boyd's annotations to ADA, for example: 79.04-05: operated by the butler . . . as if it were some fancy variety of corkscrew: The butler Bouteillan's name (from Fr. bouteille, "bottle") recalls the origin of the word "butler" as the servant in charge of the household wines and liquors.
I don't know if butlers and their proliferating Bouteillans are more suggestive of Ganymede than of the wine-deity, Bacchus/ Dionysus.
In ADA, Ganymede appears also by the references to "catamites". Dyonysus is directly mentioned.
Vivian Darkbloom, suggests a connection between Van and his rival Andrey Vinelander by mentioning wine, vines and carte des vins as "cart de van". The bouteiller (butler) Bouteillan is often associated with wine and vines ( Bacchus or Dionysus). During a burlesque pantomime that took place soon after Marina, Van´s biological mother, had been seduced by Demon between the two acts of a play: "At an invisible sign of Dionysian origin, they all plunged into the violent dance called kurva or 'ribbon boule' in the hilarious program whose howlers almost caused Veen (tingling, and light-loined, and with Prince N.'s rose-red banknote in his pocket) to fall from his seat".(A,12).
I haven't yet found other mentions to this myth in VN's other novels ( in Pale Fire, through his phrygian cap as with the red-hiding-hood disguise, perhaps?)
I understood VN had stopped using images extracted from Greek-mythology in his short-stories after the thirties, but in his novels, such as ADA and in TT these references are quite frequent.
I wonder if their occurrence is linked to the suggestive power of their names and actions, after it gets transformed into scientific or everyday words ( such as hymeneus=marriage, for example, as we find in VN's translation of the French song ..."on dit que tu te marries, tu sais que j"en vais mourir" in "Spring in Fialta", linking "hymen and death evoked by the rythm...", cf. Stories, page 415)
Data obtaind thru google-search:
1.GANYMEDES was a handsome, young Trojan prince who was carried off to heaven by Zeus, or his eagle, to be the god's lover and cup-bearer of the gods. Ganymedes also received a place amongst the stars as the constellation Aquarius, his ambrosial mixing cup became the Krater, and the eagle Aquila. Ganymedes was frequently represented as the god of homosexual love, and as such appears as a playmate of the love-gods Eros (Love) and Hymenaios (Marital Love).When portrayed as the cup-bearer of the gods he is shown pouring nectar from a jug. In sculpture and mosaic art, on the other hand, Ganymedes usually appears with shepherd's crock and a Phrygian cap. The boy's name was derived from the Greek words ganumai "gladdening" and mêdon or medeôn, "prince" or "genitals." The name may have been formed to contain a deliberate double-meaning. www.theoi.com/Ouranios/Ganymedes.html
2.wikipedia: For the etymology of his name, Robert Graves' The Greek Myths offers ganyesthai + medea, "rejoicing in virility."Ganymede was kidnapped by Zeus from Mount Ida in Phrygia, the setting for more than one myth-element bearing on the early mythic history of Troy.
When pederasty became common in Greece, it was consecrated by being integrated into the myths, with many of the major deities becoming erastes and taking eromenoi. One of the earliest of such myths was Homer's reference to Ganymede in the Iliad; in Crete, where, Greek writers asserted, the love of boys was first systematized and legislated, king Minos, the primitive law-giver, was called the ravisher of Ganymede. Thus the name which once denoted the good genius who bestowed the precious gift of water upon man was adopted to this use in vulgar Latin under the form catamitus: in Rome the passive object of homosexual desire was a catamite. The Latin word is a corruption of Greek ganymedes but retains no strong mythological connotation in Latin: when Ovid sketches the myth briefly (Metamorphoses x:152-161), "Ganymedes" retains his familiar Greek name.
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