Venus And Anchises By William Blake Richmond (1889-90)

Slavic mythology from A to Z:

[A] - Alkonost and Sirin (Алконост и Сирин)

Alkonost in Russian legends is a bird of paradise with the head and hands of a girl. Legends say that Alkonost carries eggs to the depths of the sea in the middle of winter. Alkonost is singing so beautifully that the one who has heard it forgets about everything in the world.

In the medieval Russian legends, Sirin is definitely considered to be a bird of paradise, which sometimes flies to the earth and sings prophetic songs about future bliss, but sometimes these songs can be harmful to humans. Therefore, in some legends, Sirin acquires a negative value, so that it is even beginning to be considered a dark bird, the messenger of the underworld.

The Secret Reading List: Books mentioned in The Secret History

If you want to be as erudite and elite as the Classics Clique, you’d better add these books to your reading pile…

Specific prose/poetry/plays mentioned:

Untimely Meditations by Friedrich Nietzsche, Epigraph Republic, Book II by Plato, Epigraph Tom Swift by Victor Appleton, 6 Paradise Lost by John Milton, 8, 91 Goodbye, Columbus by Philip Roth, 33 The New Testament, 36 Agamemnon by Aeschylus, 40 Oresteia by Aeschylus, 40 Inferno by Dante, 41, 115 Poetics by Aristotle, 41 The Iliad by Homer, 41, 627 The Bacchae by Euripides, 42, 204 Parmenides by Plato, 67 The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott, 85 Rover Boys by Edward Stratemeyer, 85 Journey from Chester to London by Thomas Pennant, 85 The Club History of London by ?, 85 The Pirates of Penzance by W.S. Gilbert, 85 Bobbsey Twins by Laura Lee Hope, 85 Marino Faliero by Lord Byron, 85 The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot, 89 Sherlock Homes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 92, 622 Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert, 94 Mémoires by Duc de Saint-Simon, 103 Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray, 110 Othello by Shakespeare, 115 The World Book Encyclopedia, 117 Men of Thought and Deed by E. Tipton Chatsford Invisible Man by H.G. Wells Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up by J. M. Barrie, 180 The Divine Comedy by Dante, 184 Superman Comics, 417 The Upanishads, 441, 466 Perry Mason Novels by Erle Stanley Gardner, 442 With Rue my Heart is Laden by A.E. Housman, 466 Lycidas by John Milton, 466 The Charge of the Light Brigade by Alfred Lord Tennyson, 466 In Flanders Fields by John McCrae, 466 Corpus of Mycenaean Inscriptions from Knossos, 481 Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, 554 The Malcontent by John Marston, 615 The White Devil by John Webster, 615 The Broken Heart by John Ford, epilogue epigraph, 615 Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe, 616 The Revenger’s Tragedy by Cyril Tourneur, 616 Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens, 619

Authors mentioned:

J.R.R. Tolkien, 6 Ezra Pound, 16 T.S. Eliot, 16 Alfred Douglas, 18 Robert de Montesquiou, 18 Plato, 22, 36 Homer, 23, 36, 49, 509 Dante, 33 Virgil, 33 Plotinus, 37 Marie Corelli, 85 Shakespeare, 91, 615 Alexander Pope, 103 John Donne, 117 Rupert Brooke, 120 Edgar Allen Poe, 132, 200 Hegel, 139 Raymond Chandler, 153 Gregory of Tours, 481 Thomas Aquinas, 509 P.G. Wodehouse, 538 George Orwell, 576-7 Harold Acton, 577 Salman Rushdie, 582 Agatha Christie, 587 Proust, 612 John Webster, 615 Thomas Middleton, 615 Cyril Tourneur, 615 John Ford, 615 Christopher Marlowe, 615 Walter Raleigh, 615 Thomas Nashe, 615

NB: page numbers correspond to the Popular Penguin Edition.

Greek mythology from A to Z:

[H] - Hermaphroditus (Ἑρμαφρόδιτος) was the son of Hermes and Aphrodite. He was born as a boy, and was raised by naiad nymph on Mount Ida. When he reached the age of fifteen, he decided to explore further from his surroundings and eventually reached the forest of Caria near Halicarnassus. There, he met the nymph Salmacis in a pool, who was overcome with desire for the boy. However, she was rejected by him, who after thinking the nymph had left, undressed and entered the pool. Salmacis then suddenly appeared and wrapped herself around him. While he was trying to evade her, she asked the gods to be forever united with Hermaphroditus, and the gods listened to her wish. As a result, their bodies were blended into one and became a creature of two sexes.

Norse mythology from A to Z:

[B] - Baldr was favorite son of Óðinn and Frigg, Hermóðr brother, Nanna’s husband, Forseti’s father. The myth of the death of Baldr is a kind of introduction to the Scandinavian eschatological cycle - his death serves as foreboding of the destruction of the gods and the whole world (Ragnarok).

It is impossible to completely exclude the connection of the myth of Baldr with the cults of fertility and ancient oriental myths, and even more so Christian influences. At its core, the myth of Baldr is most likely a myth of the first death, complicated by the motives of military initiations (the names are characteristic: Baldr - lord, Höðr - fighter, Hermóðr - courageous). It is possible that Höðr is “the murderer by the hand” (handbani); Baldr - the hypostasis of Odin himself; in a certain sense, Loki - his “assassin advice” (ráðbani) is also Odin’s “counterpart”.

A very significant difference between the story of Baldr and other subjects of Scandinavian mythology, which received a narrative development, is that it depicts not a struggle with external forces, but a dramatic collision within the aces community. This is connected with the cult roots of the legend about Baldr, and with the fact that it was included in the tradition of the Scandinavian mythological epic at a later stage than other plots.

Greek mythology from A to Z:

[L] - Leto (Λητώ) was one of the Titanides, the goddess of motherhood and the mother of the twin gods Apollon and Artemis.

Greek mythology from A to Z:

[H] - Hecate (Ἑκάτη) is the goddess of magic and witchcraft. She was also closely associated to the spiritual world, ghosts, and the dead.

Iris is an ancient goddess who provides communication between the heavens and earth … Ben Harrison art 

Norse mythology from A to Z:

[A] - Angrboða is a Jǫtunn mentioned in the Vǫluspá. She is the mother of Fenrir, Hel and the Miðgarðsormr by Loki.

Medic in training with the centaur of disease control 🩹

Patroclus: *complaining to Automedon* my boyfriend is so fucking corny he asked me if I knew how to whistle so ofc I pursed my lips to whistle and then he kissed me???? Him and his dumb flirt tactics I love him