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Myth and Realism in Rita Dove's Bistro Styx
Myth and Realism in Rita Dove's Bistro Styx
The Bistro Styx is a poem from Rita Dove’s book Mother Love that retells the
classic Greek mythology of Demeter and Persephone with interesting analogies.
In the poem the mother Demeter is looking for her lost daughter Persephone
who has been kidnapped by the modernism of Paris, which can be seen as Hades.
Dove has masterfully added her own touch to the classic myth and given it a more
realistic ‘more than myth’ touch to the poem.
The poem is an allusion to the alienation between mothers and daughters in the
modern day society and how modernism has deceitfully blinded the poet’s own
daughter so much so that the poet seems to have lost her daughter forever. In this
way the Hades of modern civilization can be seen as much more dangerous than
mythical Hades as the mother seems helpless to recover her daughter, not even
for half the year as in the myth. Dove has masterfully fused the European
Mythology with contemporary American culture to provide us with a view into
the realities of the contemporary American family. Carolyne Wright mentions
about the refreshing take on the classical Greek myth and how Dove has
remained ingenious in making the myth in some ways, her own.
By personifying the poem into the myth of Demeter and Persephone, Dove
has been successful in translating the message of the myth by making us look
at the myth through the windows of a contemporary society which is very
cohesive and brilliant. Moreover, this also expresses how the principles that
governed the ancient societies are still prevalent.
However the beauty in Dove’s poem is that she can express the heart of the
matter without being too generic and that she can adopt a style according to the
necessity of the poem, as Pat Righelato mentions:
Rita Dove, Pulitzer Prize winner, former poet laureate of the United States,
is a writer who has always avoided categorization, opening doors between
otherwise distinct artistic spaces. Indeed, one of the ways she comes to
mind is in a doorway, securely in the old neighborhood, in family, in the
local and specific. Yet she has, from the beginning, stepped through
doorways, tested herself, and explored what is beyond as an international
poet at home in symposia in Berlin, Brazil, Israel, and South Africa, a
much-traveled cosmopolitan figure welcomed and admired in many
countries…
…It might seem surprising to link her most closely With Lowell and
Ashbery, but she is like them in that her poetry is, in its entirety, a critique
of American culture: like Lowell, she reveals history through the prism of
the family; like Ashbery, fascinated by the materiality of the painted
canvas, she accepts materialist culture as the medium of contemporary
existence. Like both, she seeks new Ways in which to express the
autobiographical.
Dove is not a mythical writer but she did not hesitate in making a myth the
edifice for her poems in Mother Love because doing so could help us relate to
the poems even more. Still, in doing so, Dove has produced a fine
contemporary myth similar to Joseph Campbell’s claim that modern myths
must be created as the present society and culture has outlived much of the
mythologies of the past.
We can sense the divide here that has been caused not just by generational
gap but also by race and culture. The daughter is reluctant in living life as an
honorable mother and seems far more satisfied in indulging in material
existence. Could we ask whether the luxury were designed specifically for
that purpose? To make a young Black daughter impervious to the sacrifices
her mother made? It is evident that these conditions were the designs of the
society and that to blind the daughter from seeing past the veils of lust and
tyranny in the end was an attempt to diminish the Black race. By taking over
the young Black daughters and luring them into the modern day trap of
materialism, the modern society was robbing the young Black women off
their shot at becoming a respectable mother.
Dove hence in Bistro Styx has set a mythical and a social viewpoint befitting
her present day society (modern society) and we can still find its relevance
today. Also the realistic tone in her writing style separates Bistro Styx from
being stereotyped as only mythical writing. The poem definitely has a fresh
take on how the modern day myths could sound like.