The wedding of Cadmus and Harmony was the last occasion on which the gods of Olympus sat down with the men for a feast. What happened before then, for immemorial years, and after that, for a few generations, forms the immense tree of Greek myth.
In the Wedding of Cadmus and Harmony a breath of wind returns to move the branches of that tree. As an ancient writer wrote, «these things never happened, but they are always». Telling the, intertwining them down to the smallest detail, imposes some questions, which are also «always»: why did the gods of Olympus take on a human figure, and why that figure? Why are their stories so scandalous, and mysterious? What is a simulacrum? Why was the age of heroes short, convulsive and unrepeatable? What is Zeus threatened by?
Maybe the myth is a narrative that can only be understood by narrating. Perhaps the most immediate way to think of the myth is to tell its fairy tales again. A thin, clean light, here invests them all and shows them in their multiple connections, like a vast and very light network that is resting on the world.
https://www.adelphi.it/libro/9788845918926
Lara Fiorani University College London Roberto Calasso - Deconstructing mythology A reading of Le nozze di Cadmo e Armonia . PDF
