![]() ![]() ![]() For millennia across Europe, Persia, and Asia, in Buddhist, Islamic, Judaic, and Christian traditions, pomegranates have been invoked as a symbol of fertility and sometimes smashed in bridal chambers to encourage the birth of many children. ![]() ![]() “The voice is paler than the lips it leaves,” says Demeter in Edith Wharton’s retelling, her joy fading to confusion.Īccording to Jewish lore, the pomegranate contains 613 seeds, one for each mitzvah. A married girl who hears and speaks of a world Demeter can’t understand. Her mother, the harvest goddess Demeter-having been flattened by grief, having refused to let new crops grow until her daughter returns, having starved mortals until the gods fear no one will survive to leave offerings, having, in another version of the myth, convinced Zeus to make Hades give Persephone back-welcomes home a changed girl, wizened and spooky, uneasy in her mother’s empire of green. Persephone has seen the dead, married their king, eaten three or four or seven seeds of his pomegranate. The fleshy, multicolored fruits, pretentious and insolent. In one version of this mythic reunion, Yannis Ritsos writes:Īnd my name was strange and my friends were strange strange the upper light with the square, pure white When Persephone returns to her mother, the underworld is still on her. ![]()
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