V-2nd - Chapter 11: Those kids

[David Morris]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sparagmos

Sparagmos (Ancient Greek: σπαραγμός) refers to an ancient Dionysian
ritual in which a living animal, or sometimes even a human being,
would be sacrificed by being dismembered, by the tearing apart of
limbs from the body. Sparagmos was frequently followed by omophagia
(the eating of the raw flesh of the one dismembered). It is associated
with the Maenads or Bacchantes, followers of Dionysus, and the
Dionysian Mysteries.

Examples of sparagmos appear in Euripides's play The Bacchae, which
concerns Dionysus and the Maenads. At one point guards sent to control
the Maenads witness them pulling a live bull to pieces with their
hands. Later, Dionysus lures his cousin, king Pentheus, into a forest
after he bans worship of the god where he was attacked by Maenads,
including his own mother Agave. The reference of his mother tearing
apart his limbs is sparagmos. Similarly, Medea is said to have killed
and dismembered her brother whilst fleeing with Jason and the stolen
fleece in order to delay their pursuers (who would be forced to
collect the remains of the prince). The Italian film director Pier
Paolo Pasolini staged a sparagmos ritual as part of a long sequence
near the beginning of his film Medea (1969), before dramatising the
episode in which Medea kills her brother in a similar way. In
Tennessee Williams's play Suddenly, Last Summer, Sebastian Venable is
killed in an episode of sparagmos and omophagia.

According to some myths, Orpheus notably met this fate at the hands of
the Thracian women. Interpreting the ritual through the lens of the
Freudian Oedipus complex, Catherine Maxwell identifies sparagmos as a
form of castration, particularly in the case of Orpheus.[1]



On Mon, Dec 6, 2010 at 8:14 AM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
> V might be considered the Anti-Orpheus, who was most famously
> dismembered.  Orpheus figures prominently in GR as well...
>
> On Sun, Dec 5, 2010 at 7:09 PM, Bekah <bekah0176 at sbcglobal.net> wrote
>> V.'s metamorphosis is taken up far less subtly in the later historical episodes through the depiction of her "obsession with bodily incorporating little bits of inert matter" (488).   [...]   Ultimately, in her most shadowy guise of all, V. returns to Maim, where she appears during World War II as a mysterious figure known simply as the Bad Priest.   There the full extent of her obsession with replacing body parts with artificial ones is revealed when what's left of her dying body is effectively disassembled by a band of little children whose own insensitivity to suffering is of no small account.
>