Dear List,
Recently a picture with goblets and cup-bearers
reached me, a theme VN often introduced in ADA, where we find direct
and indirect mentions to Ganymede and catamites, plus Anti-terran
servers named Bout or Bouteillan.
Cf. B.Boyd's annotations to ADA, for example: 79.04-05: operated by the
butler . . . as if it were some fancy variety of corkscrew: The
butler Bouteillan’s name (from Fr. bouteille, “bottle”) recalls the
origin of the word “butler” as the servant in charge of the household wines and
liquors.
I don't know if butlers and their
proliferating Bouteillans are more suggestive of Ganymede than of
the wine-deity, Bacchus/ Dionysus.
In ADA, Ganymede appears also by the references
to "catamites". Dyonysus is directly mentioned.
Vivian Darkbloom,
suggests a connection between Van and his rival Andrey Vinelander by mentioning
wine, vines and carte des vins as “cart de van”. The bouteiller (butler)
Bouteillan is often associated with wine and vines ( Bacchus or Dionysus).
During a burlesque
pantomime that took place soon after Marina, Van´s biological mother, had been
seduced by Demon between the two acts of a play: “At an invisible sign
of Dionysian origin, they all plunged into the violent dance called kurva or ‘ribbon boule’ in the
hilarious program whose howlers almost caused Veen (tingling, and light-loined,
and with Prince N.’s rose-red banknote in his pocket) to fall from his
seat”.(A,12).
I haven't yet found other mentions to this myth in VN's
other novels ( in Pale Fire, through his phrygian cap as with
the red-hiding-hood disguise, perhaps?)
I understood VN had stopped using images extracted
from Greek-mythology in his short-stories after the thirties, but in his
novels, such as ADA and in TT these references are quite
frequent.
I wonder if their occurrence is linked to the
suggestive power of their names and actions, after it gets transformed into
scientific or everyday words ( such as hymeneus=marriage, for example, as we
find in VN's translation of the French song ..."on dit que tu te marries, tu
sais que j"en vais mourir" in "Spring in Fialta", linking "hymen
and death evoked by the rythm...", cf. Stories, page 415)
Data obtaind
thru google-search:1.GANYMEDES was a
handsome, young Trojan prince who was carried off to heaven by Zeus, or his
eagle, to be the god's lover and cup-bearer of the gods. Ganymedes also received
a place amongst the stars as the constellation Aquarius, his ambrosial mixing
cup became the Krater, and the eagle Aquila. Ganymedes was frequently
represented as the god of homosexual love, and as such appears as a playmate of
the love-gods Eros (Love) and Hymenaios (Marital Love).When portrayed as the
cup-bearer of the gods he is shown pouring nectar from a jug. In sculpture and
mosaic art, on the other hand, Ganymedes usually appears with shepherd's crock
and a Phrygian cap. The boy's name was derived from the Greek words ganumai
"gladdening" and mêdon or medeôn, "prince" or "genitals." The name may have been
formed to contain a deliberate double-meaning. www.theoi.com/Ouranios/Ganymedes.html
2.wikipedia: For the etymology of his name, Robert
Graves' The Greek Myths offers ganyesthai + medea, "rejoicing in
virility."Ganymede was kidnapped by Zeus from Mount Ida in Phrygia, the setting
for more than one myth-element bearing on the early mythic history of
Troy.
When pederasty became common in Greece, it was consecrated by being
integrated into the myths, with many of the major deities becoming erastes and
taking eromenoi. One of the earliest of such myths was Homer's reference to
Ganymede in the Iliad; in Crete, where, Greek writers asserted, the love of boys
was first systematized and legislated, king Minos, the primitive law-giver, was
called the ravisher of Ganymede. Thus the name which once denoted the
good genius who bestowed the precious gift of water upon man was adopted to this
use in vulgar Latin under the form catamitus: in Rome the passive object of
homosexual desire was a catamite. The Latin word is a corruption of Greek
ganymedes but retains no strong mythological connotation in Latin: when
Ovid sketches the myth briefly (Metamorphoses x:152-161), "Ganymedes" retains
his familiar Greek name.