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TITLEPAGE & FOREWORD



THE DISASTROUS LOVE AFFAIR OF MOON AND MARS

CELESTIAL SEX,
EARTHLY DESTRUCTION,
AND DRAMATIC SUBLIMATION
IN HOMER'S ODYSSEY:

by
ALFRED DE GRAZIA

Metron Publications
Princeton, New Jersey

Notes on the printed version of this book:

This book was processed by the Princeton University Computing Centre, using the processing language called Script. Photocomposition, cover make-up, lay-out and printing were accomplished by the Princeton University Printing Services. The typeface employed throughout is Caledonia.

The photograph on the front and back covers displays a marble male figure, glancing to the skies and playing the harp; it is of pre-Homeric Aegean origins and now possessed by the Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York.

ISBN: 0-940-268-09-4
Copyright 1984 by Alfred de Grazia
All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America
Limited first edition.

Address:
Metron Publications,
P. O. Box 1213,
Princeton, N. J.
08542, U. S. A.


To Immanuel Velikovsky (1895-1979)

"Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another."
Proverbs, IV, 27.17



FOREWORD

In this book, I extract a dreamy bedroom comedy from Homer's Odyssey, analyze it as a dramatic form of myth, detect that it might have a real astronomical origin, seek this origin in world-wide disasters, and assert that an unconscious parallel occurs between astronomical events and artistic production.

The narrative is well suited to readers of venturesome tastes, who may have a passing acquaintanceship with the history of the theater and ancient Greece, with psychoanalysis, with mythology and the ideas of catastrophism and astronomy.

The work was written and offered for publication over a decade ago. Well-founded criticism from several British experts on mythology, particularly Peter James, Malcolm Lowery, Brian Moore and Martin Sieff, led me to withhold the manuscript, despite the encouragement coming from other quarters to publish it. I have indeed held it, to near the end of the Quantavolution Series, and release it now, benefited, I believe, by the amendments that my friends induced.

Thanks on this occasion go also to professor William Mullen of St. John's College, whose advice extended from greek poetic meter to the full ancient oecumene; to Eugene Vanderpool of Athens, Greece, who was consistently sympathetic; to Dr. Elizabeth Chesley-Baity, who discussed with me the archaeo-astronomical anthropology of dances, fire-rites, ballgames, and sword ceremonies; to the late Dr. Zvi Rix of Israel, whose enchanting letters on problems of mythology kept the book and its author warm over the years of its hibernation; to George English for his editorial advice and Jungian interpretations; to my colleague, Professor Cyrus Gordon, for his appreciations of the values in my approach; to the late Professor Livio C. Stecchini, whose absence from the scene of ancient history and science is sorely felt; and to Dr. Jay Lefer who responded keenly to the questions here raised in the field of psychiatry. Finally, I would acknowledge the inspiration afforded by my friend, the late Immanuel Velikovsky, who designated the Greek gods as sky-bodies threatening the Earth.




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