introduces his book on Dionysos by saying that his first insight into the god of wine came to him in a vineyard—he was looking at the grapevine itself and what he saw was “the image of indestructible life.” The temples are abandoned, but the vine still grows over the fallen walls. To explain the image, Kerényi distinguishes between two terms for “life” in Greek,
bios
and
zoë. Bios
is limited life, characterized life, life that dies.
Zoë
is the life that endures; it is the thread that runs through
bios-life
and is not broken when the particular perishes. (In this century we call it “the gene pool.”) Dionysos is a god of
zoë
-life.
In his earliest Minoan forms, Dionysos is associated with honey and with honey beer or mead. Both honey and grape juice became images of this god because they ferment: “A natural phenomenon inspired a myth
of zoë,”
writes Kerényi, “astatement concerning life which shows its indestructibility… even in decay.” When honey ferments, what has rotted not only comes back to life—bubbles up—but its “spirit” survives. Moreover, when the fermented liquid is drunk, the spirit comes to life in a new body. Drinking the mead is the sacrament of reconstituting the god.
The association of Dionysos with honey came very early; wine soon replaced mead as the spirit drink, but the essentials of the image remained the same. In later centuries Greek celebrants of Dionysos would sing of the dismemberment of their god as they crushed the grapes through the winepresses.
Dionysos is a god who is broken into a higher life. He returns from his dismemberment as strong as or stronger than before, the wine being the essence of the grapes and more powerful. The Tsimshian tribes called the fragments of a copper given away at a mortuary potlatch “the bones of the dead.” They stand for what does not decay even though the body decays. To dismember the copper after the death of the chief and then to declare the pieces, or the reassembled copper, to be of increased value, is to declare that human life participates in
zoë
-life and that the spirit grows even though, or perhaps because, the body dies. * In terms of the gift: the spirit of the gift increases because the body of the gift is consumed. When a copper is exchanged for blankets, the increase comes as a sort of investment, but when coppers are broken, it comes simply through consumption. People feel the gift is worth more just because it has been used up. Boas, when he discusses the potlatch, lumps feasting and the breaking ofcoppers together in the same paragraph; both are “eating the gift” as much as the destruction of property.
But I should stop here, for I have already strayed back toward explaining the increase of gifts by way of natural metaphors. Not that it is incorrect to speak in this manner; inorganic gifts do become the vehicles of
zoë
-life when we choose to invest it in them. * But there is a different sort of investment—one that can be described without invoking the gods of vegetable life—in the exchange of a copper as Boas has recorded it for us. To begin with, each time the copper passes from one group to another, more blankets are heaped into it, so to speak. The increase is not mysterious or metaphorical: each man really adds to the copper’s worth as it comes toward him. But it is important to remember that the investment is itself a gift, so the increase is both concrete (blankets) and social or emotional (the spirit of generosity). At each transaction the concrete increase (the “adornment”) is a witness to the increase in feeling. In this way, though people may remember it in terms of blankets, the copper becomes enriched with social feeling, with generosity, liberality, goodwill.
Coppers make a good example here because there is concrete increase to manifest the feeling, but that is not necessary. The mere passage of the gift, the act of donation, contains the feeling, and therefore the passage
bios
and
zoë. Bios
is limited life, characterized life, life that dies.
Zoë
is the life that endures; it is the thread that runs through
bios-life
and is not broken when the particular perishes. (In this century we call it “the gene pool.”) Dionysos is a god of
zoë
-life.
In his earliest Minoan forms, Dionysos is associated with honey and with honey beer or mead. Both honey and grape juice became images of this god because they ferment: “A natural phenomenon inspired a myth
of zoë,”
writes Kerényi, “astatement concerning life which shows its indestructibility… even in decay.” When honey ferments, what has rotted not only comes back to life—bubbles up—but its “spirit” survives. Moreover, when the fermented liquid is drunk, the spirit comes to life in a new body. Drinking the mead is the sacrament of reconstituting the god.
The association of Dionysos with honey came very early; wine soon replaced mead as the spirit drink, but the essentials of the image remained the same. In later centuries Greek celebrants of Dionysos would sing of the dismemberment of their god as they crushed the grapes through the winepresses.
Dionysos is a god who is broken into a higher life. He returns from his dismemberment as strong as or stronger than before, the wine being the essence of the grapes and more powerful. The Tsimshian tribes called the fragments of a copper given away at a mortuary potlatch “the bones of the dead.” They stand for what does not decay even though the body decays. To dismember the copper after the death of the chief and then to declare the pieces, or the reassembled copper, to be of increased value, is to declare that human life participates in
zoë
-life and that the spirit grows even though, or perhaps because, the body dies. * In terms of the gift: the spirit of the gift increases because the body of the gift is consumed. When a copper is exchanged for blankets, the increase comes as a sort of investment, but when coppers are broken, it comes simply through consumption. People feel the gift is worth more just because it has been used up. Boas, when he discusses the potlatch, lumps feasting and the breaking ofcoppers together in the same paragraph; both are “eating the gift” as much as the destruction of property.
But I should stop here, for I have already strayed back toward explaining the increase of gifts by way of natural metaphors. Not that it is incorrect to speak in this manner; inorganic gifts do become the vehicles of
zoë
-life when we choose to invest it in them. * But there is a different sort of investment—one that can be described without invoking the gods of vegetable life—in the exchange of a copper as Boas has recorded it for us. To begin with, each time the copper passes from one group to another, more blankets are heaped into it, so to speak. The increase is not mysterious or metaphorical: each man really adds to the copper’s worth as it comes toward him. But it is important to remember that the investment is itself a gift, so the increase is both concrete (blankets) and social or emotional (the spirit of generosity). At each transaction the concrete increase (the “adornment”) is a witness to the increase in feeling. In this way, though people may remember it in terms of blankets, the copper becomes enriched with social feeling, with generosity, liberality, goodwill.
Coppers make a good example here because there is concrete increase to manifest the feeling, but that is not necessary. The mere passage of the gift, the act of donation, contains the feeling, and therefore the passage
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