para o Professor José Pedro Serra
Held fast as the mythologems are in the form of sacred traditions, they are still in the nature of works of art. Various developments of the same ground-theme are possible side by side or in succession, just like the variations on a musical theme. [...] Mythology, like the severed head of Orpheus, goes on singing even in death and from afar. In its lifetime, among the peoples where it was indigenous, it was not only sung like a kind of music, it was also lived. Material though it was, for those peoples, its carrier, it was a form of expression, thought, and life. Thomas Mann, in his essay on Freud, has spoken with good reason of the "quotation-like life" of the men of mythological times and has illustrated this with images that could not be bettered. Archaic man, he said, stepped back a pace before doing anything, like the toreador posing himself for the death-stroke. He sought an example in the past, and into this he slipped as into a diving-bell in order to plunge, at once protected and distorted, into the problems of the present.
Karl Kerényi,
The Science of Mythology (com C. Jung), R.F.C. Hull (trad). Routledge: 2002
... heiliges Kreta!
The young bull roared with rage and shook his neck with fury
to uproot those virile hands that forced his tossing head,
but Krino, with the onrush of the wild bull's strength,
swung herself forcefully, upside-down, her feet in air,
in a swift backflip, then stood upright on his shining rump.
She clapped her hands high in the air, kicked the beast hard
with naked feet, turned a full somersault, and fell
into the ready arms of a swift Mountain Maid.
Then Krino smiled and wiped the sweat from her pale body.
[...]
But suddenly as the maiden raised her eyes to the sky,
her warm tears welled, then brimmed and tumbled down her cheeks
till all at once her heart dropped in the abyss, and vanished.
Her hands lost their firm grip, and her moist temples roared
—it was as though the bowstring snapped which held her spirit—
and as the maiden felt her end draw near, she broke
in bitter wild lament and on the bull's back swooned.
And the wild beast, as though it felt the maiden's swoon,
spread its hooves wide on earth, gathered its savage strength,
and ah, alas, tossed her lean body high in the air.
The crowd turned pale and their dry tongues stuck in their throats;
then, as a wild dove wounded in the sky falls tumbling,
crumpled and torn, so on the god's sharp double-ax
raised high on a marble column, Krino fell impaled,
and splattered the bronze cow with her warm brains and dripping blood.
Nikos Kazantzakis,
The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel, Canto VI 304-314 e 594-608. Kimon Friar (trad). Simon and Schuster: 1958
