46 pages • 1 hour read
Theresa Hak Kyung ChaDictee
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1982A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 9-10Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 9 Summary: “Terpsichore Choral Dance”
The chapter begins with a series of Chinese characters numbered 1-10 with no translation or context provided. The text on the right hand side describes a moment while the narrator sits in a congregation and is arrested by the thought that magnolias bloom white even on tree branches that look dead. The text shifts to describe the process of a seed growing: Before it can emerge from the depths, the seed grows its root in a deep silence for a long period of time that seems to exist outside of time itself. The process requires much waiting and long period of darkness in a place where “no access is given to sight” (156). During the period of anticipation, the narrator describes an eclipse as a pearl-like light, or a “nacreous” (157) light, that creates its own light and “its own larger time” (157). The narrator describes the root growing deeper and deeper as sound begins to emerge, and with sound, time begins.
There is a mysterious object that the narrator holds and moves around the palm, and gradually it is revealed that this pearl is the entire earth itself. The narrator makes the seasons occur with the movements of the object in the palm through the cardinal directions. Then “a silver pool of liquid” (158) is added to the stone and sound begins, even broken language. The being holding the Earth, which is described as a “dark […] blue-black stone upon which moisture settles evenly, flawlessly” (159), pleads for mercy and leniency on the planet and the stone comes alive. Suddenly, the earth is a place that is no longer in darkness, a place where there is vision and life. The earth is compared to a firefly that lights up and darkens again in a repetitive pattern. Slowly, names and words emerge, and then letters. Dramatic, vivid colors emerge, and the color “red as never been” (160) particularly embodies the transformation of earth and the knowledge that is created from bloodshed. Speech is broken and the human body is broken too, with all of its parts being dissolved back into the earth. The body becomes a site of ruin and seems inseparable from the earth itself, with the body compared to a column that has become stone. Water floods the stone, and the silences become speech, which eventually develop into song and voice. The blood-red color emerges again in the stone, and the single voice becomes many voices that resound among the ruins.
Chapter 10 Summary: “Polymnia Sacred Poetry”
The chapter begins with a photo of a landscape with unidentified ruins. A woman remembers a well where she drank water when she was a young girl. She remembers that she has walked very far on an extremely hot day to get to the well She is exhausted, and sees a young woman at the well expertly filling two buckets with water. She rests for a moment in the shade and closes her eyes. The narrative shifts to the woman’s perspective: The child speaks, and the woman does not understand her. The child watches the woman putting the water in the buckets, and the woman gives the child a bowl of water to drink from. The young girl quickly drinks the water, and the young woman smiles at her. The woman asks her what she is doing so far from home. The young girl tells the young woman that she walked very far to find medicine for her mother, who is ill. The woman gave the girl many herbs that will help to treat the mother’s illness. She gives her a basket that has 10 pockets: The first nine contain medicine for her mother to take according to her instructions, and the tenth pocket is a gift for the young girl. She also gives the child the bowl and says she must give her mother the medicines inside the bowl. She instructs the young girl to run straight back home without stopping and bows to her. The young girl leaves and turns around to see the woman at the well, but the woman has already disappeared.
The diagram numbered 1-10 lists the elements of the universe inspired by Taoist cosmology, an ancient Chinese philosophical system. The tenth and final part of the cosmology, “a circle within a circle, a series of concentric circles” (175) is repeated on the following page. The next page includes a poetic epigram concerning the relationship between words and memory, comparing the way that words last by transferring meanings between people to a “ruin” that stands and shows the passage of time through its transformations (177). The final paragraph of the book describes a child asking her mother to be lifted up to see through a window. As the child looks through the dim window, the scene outside is described as a between time that is either dusk or dawn, and the child gazes at the trees and stone homes in the quiet scene. As the child continues to gaze, the scene becomes less and less visual and more melodic, describing the sounds of bells, ropes, and the scraping of wood as the child asks the mother to keep looking through the window.
Chapters 9-10 Analysis
In “Terpsichore Choral Dance” and “Polymnia Sacred Poetry,” Cha extends the narrative of Persephone and Demeter by interweaving Chinese spiritual traditions and Korean myths with Greek mythology and personal contemplations. Cha deepens the connection between the myths she is retelling and shows how the act of writing the book is a personal “rite,” as Cha is excavating history to resurrect the stories of these women, which have been either forgotten or distorted.
“Terpsichore Choral Dance” follows a rhythm in which a singular voice begins; the song reaches its climax with a description of many voices joining together in a thunderous sound. The progression from singularity toward multiplicity is shown through the growth of a flower, which is transformed into a symbol of the individual voice becoming many-voiced, blooming with life and energy in the final paragraph of the chapter. This is also appropriate as Persephone is the goddess of spring; the transformation from separation and individuality toward a communal rite is the necessary ritual for Persephone to return to her mother Demeter, and for the earth to be fruitful and nourishing again.
Inspired by Demeter’s meeting with Keleos’s daughter at the Maiden’s Well in “Hymn to Demeter,” Cha writes the story of a child who goes to a well and meets an older woman who gives her medicine to take to her ill mother. In the story of Demeter’s meeting, Demeter disguises herself as an old woman and meets three young women who are the daughters of Keleos. They welcome Demeter into their home, not knowing that she is a goddess. The mother makes Demeter laugh, which fills her with happiness for the first time since Persephone’s disappearance. Demeter hatches a scheme to make the mother’s infant son immortal to steal a soul from Hades in vengeance for his capture of Persephone in the underworld. However, the mother catches Demeter one night placing her infant into a flame, which is part of the ritual of making a human immortal, and is frightened and angry: Demeter reveals herself to be a goddess and punishes the family for being impertinent to the gods by forcing them to worship her in the Eleusinian cult.
This is the genesis of the cult that performs the rites that are crucial to Demeter and Persephone’s reunion each year, as they worship Demeter and she awaits her daughters return from the underworld. However, the story that Cha writes also parallels the story of Princess Pari, a Korean myth of the first shaman. In the myth, Princess Pari is the seventh child of King Ogu. She is disowned because the King wanted a son after having six daughters. In his anger, he puts her in a chest and she is placed in the ocean. However, a group of monks discovers the chest. They see the King’s seal on the chest, so they know that she is his disowned daughter who was put to death. They hide her in the monastery and raise her without telling her she is the king’s daughter. One day a man arrives and commands that she be brought to King Ogu: Her father is dying and needs his daughter’s help. She traverses the underworld to bring him medicines to heal him. Like Persephone, Pari marries an underworld being. Princess Pari is known as the first shaman in Korean spirituality because she went between the lands of the living and the dead. Cha changes a key facet of the story: The child saves her mother instead of her father. In addition, the savior is a woman at the well, similar to the goddess who is disguised in the story of Demeter.
By weaving together the story of Demeter meeting Keleos’s daughters (which led to the creation of the Eleusinian mysteries) and the famous Korean shaman myth of Princess Pari, Cha creates her own unique mythology. The mystery is located in the appearance and disappearance of the woman who acts as a savior to the young girl by offering her water, medicines for her mother, and a gift. The gift is the tenth bag, which is symbolically connected to the image of the concentric circles that are the tenth element of the universe: The image of the circles containing each other infinitely suggests the sense of wholeness and eternity achieved by the reunions of mothers and daughters, broken languages, and divided nations.
