Muse

In Greek mythology, the Muses (Greek Μοῦσαι, Mousai: from the Proto-Indo-European root *men- "think", from which mind and mental are also derived^[1]) are fifty goddesses or spiritual guides who embody the arts and inspire the creation process with their graces through remembered and improvised song and stage, writing, traditional music and dance. They were water nymphs, associated with the springs of Helicon and Pieris; from the latter they are sometimes called the Pierides. The Olympian system set Apollo as their leader, Apollon Mousagetes. Not only are they used in modern English to refer to an inspiration, as when one cites his/her own artistic muse, but also in the words "amuse" or "musing upon", which are rooted in their name.

According to Hesiod's Theogony (seventh century BC), they are the daughters of Zeus, king of the gods, and Mnemosyne, goddess of memory. For Alcman and Mimnermus, they were even more primordial, springing from Uranus and Gaia. Pausanias records a tradition of two generations of Muses; the first being daughters of Uranus and Gaia, the second of Zeus and Mnemosyne. Another, rarer genealogy is that they are daughters of Harmonia (the daughter of Aphrodite and Ares) which contradicts the myth in which they were dancing at the wedding of Harmonia and Cadmus.

Compare the Roman inspiring nymphs of springs, the Camenae, and also the apsara in the culture of classical India.

Muses in myth

According to Pausanias in the later second century AD^[2] there were but three original Muses: Aoide ("song" or "voice"), Melete ("practice" or "occasion") and Mneme ("memory"). Together, these three form the complete picture of the preconditions of poetic art in cult practice. In Delphi three Muses were worshipped as well, but with other names: Nete, Mesi, and Hypate, which are the names of the three chords of the ancient musical instrument, the lyre. Alternatively they were called Cephisso, Apollonis, and Borysthenis, whose names characterise them as daughters of Apollo. In later tradition, four Muses were recognised: Thelxinoe, Aoede, Arche, and Melete, said to be daughters of Zeus and Plusia (or of Uranus). One of the persons associated with the Muses was Pierus. By some he was called the father (by a Pimpleian nymph: called Antiope by Cicero) of a total of seven Muses, called Neilo, Tritone, Asopo, Heptapora, Achelois, Tipoplo, and Rhodia. [1]

Though taken together, the Muses form a complete picture of the subjects proper to poetic art, the association of specific muses with specific art forms is a later innovation. The muses were not assigned standardized divisions of poetry with which they are now identified until late Hellenistic times. The canonical nine Muses, with their fields of patronage, as established since the Renaissance, are:

• Calliope (Chief of the muses and muse of epic poetry)
• Euterpe (muse of lyric song)
• Clio (muse of history)
• Erato (muse of erotic poetry)
• Melpomene (muse of tragedy)
• Polyhymnia (muse of sacred song)
• Terpsichore (muse of dance)
• Thalia (muse of comedy and bucolic poetry)
• Urania (muse of astronomy)

Emblems of the Muses

In Roman, Renaissance and Neoclassical art, Muses depicted in sculptures or paintings are often distinguished by certain props or poses, as emblems, by which the viewer might identify them and recognize the art with which they had become bound.

Euterpe (music) carries a flute; Calliope (epic poetry) carries a writing tablet; Clio (history) carries a scroll and books; Erato (love poetry) is often seen with a lyre and a crown of roses; Melpomene (tragedy) is often seen with a tragic mask; Polyhymnia (sacred poetry) is often seen with a pensive expression; Terpsichore (dance) is often seen dancing and carrying a lyre; Thalia (comedy) is often seen with a comic mask; and Urania (astronomy) carries a staff pointed at a celestial globe.

The Muses judged the contest between Apollo and Marsyas. They also gathered the pieces of the dead body of Orpheus, son of Calliope, and buried them. They blinded Thamyris for his hubris in challenging them to a contest.

Function in society

Greek mousa is a common noun as well as a type of goddess: it literally means "song" or "poem". In Pindar, to "carry a mousa" is "to sing a song". The word is probably derived from the Indo-European root men-, which is also the source of Greek Mnemosyne, Latin Minerva, and English "mind", "mental" and "memory" (or alternatively from mont-, "mountain", due to their residence on Mount Helicon, which is less likely in meaning, but more likely linguistically).

The Muses were therefore both the embodiments and sponsors of performed metrical speech: mousike, whence "music", was "the art of the Muses". In the archaic period, before the wide-spread availability of books, this included nearly all of learning: the first Greek book on astronomy, by Thales, was set in dactylic hexameter, as were many works of pre-Socratic philosophy; both Plato and the Pythagoreans explicitly included philosophy as a sub-species of mousike^[3] Herodotus, whose primary medium of delivery was public recitation, named each one of the nine books of his Histories after a different Muse, invoked at the outset.

For poet and "law-giver" Solon^[4] the Muses were "the key to the good life"; since they brought both prosperity and friendship. Solon sought to perpetuate his political reforms by establishing recitations of his poetry—complete with invocations to his practical-minded Muses—by Athenian boys at festivals each year. It was believed that they would help inspire people to do their best.

Function in literature

The muses are typically invoked at or near the beginning of an epic poem or classical Greek hymn. They have served as aids to an author of prose, too, sometimes represented as the true speaker, for whom an author is only a mouthpiece.^[5] Originally, the invocation of the Muse was an indication that the speaker was working inside the poetic tradition, according to the established formulas. Five classic examples :

Homer, in Book I of The Odyssey:

"Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns

driven time and again off course, once he had plundered

the hallowed heights of Troy." (Robert Fagles translation, 1996)

Virgil, in Book I of the Aeneid:

O Muse! the causes and the crimes relate;

What goddess was provok'd, and whence her hate;

For what offense the Queen of Heav'n began

To persecute so brave, so just a man; [...]

(John Dryden translation, 1995)

Dante Alighieri, in Canto II of The Inferno:

O Muses, o high genius, aid me now!

O memory that engraved the things I saw,

Here shall your worth be manifest to all! (Anthony Esolen translation, 2002)

John Milton, opening of Book 1 of Paradise Lost:

Of Man’s first disobedience, and the fruit

Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste

Brought death into the World, and all our woe,

With loss of Eden, till one greater Man

Restore us, and regain the blissful Seat,

Sing, Heavenly Muse, [...]

William Shakespeare, Act 1, Prologue of Henry V:

Chorus: O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend

The brightest heaven of invention,

A kingdom for a stage, princes to act

And monarchs to behold the swelling scene!

Cults of the Muses

When Pythagoras arrived at Croton, his first advice to the Crotoniates was to build a shrine of the Muses at the center of the city, to promote civic harmony and learning.

Local cults of the Muses were often associated with springs or fountains. They were sometimes called Aganippids because of their association with a fountain called Aganippe. Other fountains, Hippocrene and Pirene, were also important haunts of the Muses. The Muses were also occasionally referred to as "Corycides", or "Corycian nymphs" after a cave on Mount Parnassos, called the Corycian Cave.

The Muses were especially venerated in Boeotia, near Helicon, and in Delphi and the Parnassus, where Apollo became known as Mousagetes "Muse-leader".

Muse-worship was also often associated with the hero-cults of poets: the tombs of Archilochus on Thasos and Hesiod and Thamyris in Boeotia, all played host to festivals, in which poetic recitations were accompanied by sacrifices to the Muses.

The Library of Alexandria and its circle of scholars were formed around a mousaion ("museum" or shrine of the Muses) close by the tomb of Alexander the Great.

Many Enlightenment figures sought to re-establish a "Cult of the Muses" in the eighteenth century. A famous Masonic lodge in pre-Revolutionary Paris was called Les Neuf Soeurs ("nine sisters", that is, the nine Muses), and was attended by Voltaire, Benjamin Franklin, Danton and other influential Enlightenment figures. One side-effect of this movement was the use of the word "museum" (originally, "cult place of the Muses") to refer to a place for the public display of knowledge.

The Muse-poet

The British poet Robert Graves popularised the concept of the Muse-poet in modern times based on pre-twelfth century traditions of the Celtic poets, on the tradition of the medieval troubadours who celebrated the concept of courtly love and the romantic poets.

"No Muse-poet grows conscious of the Muse except by experience of a woman in whom the Goddess is to some degree resident; just as no Apollonian poet can perform his proper function unless he lives under a monarchy or a quasi-monarchy. A Muse-poet falls in love, absolutely, and his true love is for him the embodiment of the Muse...

But the real, perpetually obsessed Muse-poet distinguishes between the Goddess as manifest in the supreme power, glory, wisdom and love of woman, and the individual woman whom the Goddess may make her instrument...

The Goddess abides; and perhaps he will again have knowledge of her through his experience of another woman...^[6]

The "Tenth Muse"

The poet Sappho of Lesbos was paid the compliment of being called "the tenth Muse" by Plato. Since Antiquity, the various women who have been called the "tenth muse" have had in common their more local reputations:

• Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, a Mexican poet, is well known in the Spanish literary world as the tenth muse
• Anne Bradstreet, a Puritan poet of New England, was honored with this title with the publishing of her poems in The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America...
• Gabriele D'Annunzio's 1920 Constitution for the Free State of Fiume was based around the nine muses, and invoked Energeia (energy) as "the tenth Muse".

Miscellany

• The lead character in Lady in the Water (2006) is very similar to a Muse, a modern depiction according to the private mythology of writer/director M. Night Shyamalan.
• Muses were seen as mystical beings in the WB's Charmed. Unseen to the human eye, they inspired whoever they surrounded.
• The word muse may be used figuratively, to denote someone who inspires an artist.
• St. Augustine of Hippo writes on the origin of the Legend of the Nine Muses in Book II, chapter 17 of his work "On Christian Doctrine", and elaborates on a refutation by Varro.[2]
• In New Orleans, nine streets are named after the Muses.
• Reduced in number to five, the muses appear as co-narrators of the Disney movie Hercules and its spin-off series.
• Calliope is identified as the youngest muse in the graphic novel The Sandman by Neil Gaiman.
• The Muses feature prominently in the musical film Xanadu starring Olivia Newton-John (as Terpsichore), Gene Kelly and Michael Beck; directed by Robert Greenwald. The other eight Muses are never mentioned by name, however.
• Boy treble Neil Pritchard acts as a muse to a young composer in Ronald Frame's novel The Lantern Bearers.
• French composer Jean-Philippe Rameau wrote a piece for harpsichord titled "L'Entretien des muses" (Conversation of the muses).
• In the Kevin Smith film, Dogma, Serendipity played by Salma Hayek is a Muse who is suffering from writer's block. She claims to have been responsible for nineteen of the top twenty grossing films of all time; the exception presumably being Home Alone from her description. She believed someone sold their soul to Satan in order to make that film a success.
• The 2000 comic book series The Tenth Muse posits a modern-day daughter of Zeus.
• In the 1998 movie Shakespeare in Love, Gwyneth Paltrow plays Viola De Lesseps, the muse to Joseph Fiennes's William Shakespeare, who is eventually inspired by her to write Twelfth Night.
• Madonna sings in one of her records named "Just Like A Prayer" the lyrics "Just like a Muse to me you are a mystery..."
• Several dormitory buildings at St. John's College in Santa Fe, NM are named after the Muses.

See also

• Muses in the ancient art
• Valley of the Muses

Notes

Calliope	Clio	Erato	Euterpe, left, with Urania
Melpomene	Polyhymnia	Terpsichore	Thalia
Urania

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