Wednesday, October 06, 2004
I learned about the Venus of Willendorf today from the art appreciation textbook chapter about art formed through the earth. This marks the fourth (4th) time the Venus of Willendorf has appeared in my classes. First Mrs. Norwood introduced the image during our senior year reading of Beowulf (I do not recall how it was relevant to the story). Then during my community college stint the human sexuality professor brought up the plump little statue during a slide lecture. This semester in classical mythology the Venus famously provided the primary example of feminine deity prominence occurring before men discovered they played a role in reproduction (after which point rational human societies collapsed).
Anyhow, the post title refers to a hilarious poem exerpt in which the Egyptian (or maybe she is Sumerian) fertility goddess, Inanna, begs the question. A mortal king, of course, boldly and ably answers her prayer. He probably wanted to shut her up, as she repeats the plea in several lines.
Hopefully next semester or next fall I will have time to enroll in the comparative mythology course (I think I am required to take it for the Classics major). I would enjoy learning more about how world mythologies interrelate. Also, they all contain many an amusing sexual tale. On that note, several people in my mythology class do not understand that the Greeks regularly had sex between males (female-female was less common) and did not evaluate themselves in terms of "homosexual" and "heterosexual". I suppose the concept does not prove difficult for me to comprehend because I am inherently skeptical enough of religious and other institutional (governmental) doctrines of our society that demonize male-male sexual behavior. Boys ought to have "bosom buddies", too.
[Lauree Frances Keith concluded this diatribe at 11:01 PM]