THE PILLAR OF HEAVEN

Evening Star, Issue 20055, 21 December 1928, Page 10

THE PILLAR OF HEAVEN

ETNA, THE WHITE MOTHER C? SICILY ■ Etna! Tlio name immediately conjures up dread visions of death, destruction, and boiling lava, and a llame and smoke-crowned cauldron winch ever and anon pours forth its wrath on the puny humans who have dared to trespass on the environs of its throne (writes “D.H.F.,” in the Melbourne ‘ Age 1 ). But if we can forget tor a moment this angry vision of “The Pillar of Heaven,”'as Pindar has termed it, wo realise some of the .fascination which this mountain has for those who corao under its spell. The Sicilian peasants arts pagans at heart in their regard 101 Etna. To them it is “The White Mother,” and its surpassing beauty is impressed on them all, even ou those who could not put their feelings into ■words. But there are few Etneans who have not a superstitious regard for their terrible and beautiful mother mountain. There is a legend among tho peasants of a ilaming, one-eyed demon who guards tho fires at tho heart ot tho mountain. Every ten years or so ho is overcome by weariness, and the result of his sudden slumber is an outburst at the vast cone of furious llame and boiling Hoods of lava. Then there is tho legend ol Polyphemus—one ot the Cyclops, a gigaiuic one-eyed monster. He dwelt in the mountain, where.ho forged thunderbolts for Vulcan, the god of tire. Tho name of Polyphemus is seldom.mentioned, probably because of superstition. It is related that a peasant, asked if lie had ever “heard of Polyphemus, replied cravely, “Not it is a name that has bad hide.” Aci Gastello, a picturesque hamlet by the shore ut tho loot of Etna, is tho scene of the old myth of the mountain boulders hurled by the enraged Cyclops at Ulysses when that daring wanderer escaped by putting out his captor’s ouo eye, and thus leaving him blind. The gigantic mountain—whose base circumference is more than 150 miles —not only dominates the lives of the peasants who till its. fertile slopes with one anxious eye always on the smokotufted'Summit;, it also plays a dominant part in Sicilian literature. Just as the peasants return alter each eruption to tho mountain wnosc fertility makes tho risk of death well worth while, so all Sicilian poetry, prose, legend, and song-has a background or has a silent influence on the Jives of the characters.- Etpal Allu■ion to it is the natural culmination of any emotional expressiom-as when in one of the famous Sicilian novelist Verga’s stories a dying peasant is about ta confess to a score of crimes, but suddenly with radiant face'points to the white and terrible splendour of Etna, and, sighing “La Mo*tagna, siplra back and dies without saying anything more. - . - In tho poetry of a modern Sicilian poet, Giovanni CesareOj we get such Tinea as these:—“o thou, who art whiter than foam of tho sea, come! The veil of Love awaits us 1 ihe azure shores quiver, fragrant; on the hill pastures the flocks hang still as flowers; from Etna, leaning vast against the sky, a breath of smoke I Or we turn from the modem singer to the songs of Theocritus, an. earlier Sicilian, who lived in the reign of Hiero, about 285 years n.c„ and who, perhaps, made these songs on an Etnean hillside pasture in the drowsy sunlight of some idyllic Italian afternoon. Theocritus puts into the mouth of Menalcas a song, of tho joys of the ihepherd’s life, which, opens: - Etna,

mother mine, I, 100, dwell in a beautiful cavern in the chamber of tho ruck, and, 10l ail the wealth have 1 that wo behold iu dreams; ewes in plenty and she goatsj abundant, their fleeces arc strewn beneath my head and feet.” As William Sharp, writing earlier in the century, has said, perhaps Theocritus, writing of Polyphemus iu Jus ‘Sixth idyll,’ had in mind not Polyphemus, liut Etna—tho true one-eyed Gvclops of Sicily—when ho wrote tho close of this idyl;.for, looking from the lemon-fragrant heights at the sea, deep in tho blue-lonian waters is outlined tho vast head'of Etna, with its forest beard, its rides of snow, its one eye browed with snow-white drifted smoko. “For, iu truth, 1 am nob so hideous as they say. But lately I was looking into the sea when all was calm; beautiful seemed my beard, beautiful my one eye, and the sea reflected the gleam of my teeth whiter than tho Parian, stone.” Theocritus may have thought of Etna as a one-eyed Cyclops; I prefer the Sicilian peasant idea of'tho mountain as ihe White Mother, a feminine rather than a masculine temperament is Etna’s surely! Rather a strange anomaly is the fact that Etna, dealer of death for thousands of years, with recorded eruptions dating back to 1693 n.c., should also bo the source of life-giving water. A hundred years ago, and probably to a lesser exteht to-day, Etna’s snow storehouse was tho principal source of supply of water and suow for Sicily apd Malta. But for this constant supply of suow from tho lofty volcano—called by some poetical Sicilians in this connection “ tho arch-priest of mountains,” because its shoulders are-always'covered with a white stole—life in Malta during the hot months would have been comfortless indeed. Many humorous stories could ho told of the confusion wrought in Malta by Idle non-arrival of the snow boat from Sicily. No banquet could bo called complete without snow-cooled wine to case the thirst of the parched guests, and many, a banquet, doubtless, was saved from failure by the opportune arrival of the snow boat. They are a deckled contrast, these two roles of Etna. At one moment domestic—a “drawer of water,” as we might almost term her, providing food also for the people whom she graciously permits to trespass on her good nature. At another moment—almost without warning—terrible, crowned in flames; so terrible that all must flee from her, but always, in repose or in anger, a gloriously beautiful arid majestic sight,> truly the “ White Mother ” and queen of her people.' And shall she not, like other queens of history, have the privilege of pouring forth her wrath on her worshipping, subservient subjects whene’er it please her to do so?