PARNASSUS ON THE NET - The Name Explained
Ancient Greece was , in many ways, the prime cultural influence on the development of Western Civilization, European and American.. Not a day goes by that Americans and Europeans, and by extension, the rest of the world, is not affected by the ideas and customs, and even the language of the ancient Greeks and their deities.
Ancient Greeks were polytheists (many gods) and believed in a very
complicated set of gods and other super-natural creatures who were responsible
for or interested in all the aspects of the Universe. The Greeks believed that
this pantheon (all gods) interacted directly with man in any number of
ways. Unlike the deities of most other religions the Greek pantheon had very
human-like vices, virtues, family feuds, desires and physical appetites. Among
the supernatural creatures in the Greek pantheon were a group of nine muses who
were believed to live on the slope of Parnassus a mountain in
Greece with two summits, near Delphi the home of the Delphic Oracle who was
supposed to be able to interpret events, foresee the future and commune with the
gods, who were believed to live on Mount Olympus.
During the Classical period in ancient Greece one of the summits of Mount
Parnassus was consecrated to the god Apollo and to the Muses the other was
consecrated to the god Dionysus (Bacchus), god of Wine and pleasure..
The Muses were the nine daughters of the greatest god, Zeus (Jupiter) and Mnemosyne,
goddess of Memory. The muses were renown for supplying inspiration to humans in the
following fields of the arts. The muses were: Clio (History), Urania
(Astronomy), Melpomene (Tragedy), Thalia (Comedy), Terpsichore (Dance), Calliope
(Epic Poetry), Erato (Love Poetry), Polyymnia (Songs of the Gods), Euterpe
(Lyric Poetry) and their Olympian buddies, the Graces: Aglaia (Splendor),
Euphrosyne (Mirth), Thalia (Good Cheer), and Athene (goddess of Athens and
patroness of arts and crafts), Dionysus (god of wine), Hebe (goddess of youth),
Eris (goddess of discord), Nemesis (avenger of the wronged), and of course Eros
(god of love, in particular erotic and romantic love.). The Muses lived on Mt.
Olympus at Helicon.
Thus, Parnassus is the home of the muses who foster the arts and literature. Not
so long ago, when our Greek and Roman heritage was much more honored in public
education, Olympus the home of the Greek Gods, Delphi, the home of the Greek
Oracle of the Gods, and Parnassus, home of the Muses were names every school
child in the U.S. could at least identify. "Climbing Parnassus" was a phrase
used to mean pursuing a career as a poet, as a musician; or, as a composer, as
an artist, or as a writer of literature. For most of the past 2000 years any
educated person in Europe, Canada, or the United States would know all or
most of the information in the previous paragraphs by the time they were a young
teenager. This was true up through at least the first third of the 20th century.
Even today a large segment of educated Europe and the Americas, as well as
many in the rest of the world know about the muses and Parnassus.
But, as liberal and cultural education has deteriorated in Europe and, even
more so, in the U.S. --due to a number of factors--fewer and fewer people in the
West have a
basic grounding in the cultural heritage of Western Civilization, or even their
own country. Today Olympus often remains in the public consciousness, if at all,
as the word from which the "Olympics" sports event is derived; Oracle and Delphi
are known only as software database companies; and Parnassus has fallen from the
public conscious altogether, perhaps because there was no Muse of television or
video games?
When we first got into bookselling in the early 70s practically every used book seller and many of our
customers were familiar with and had read two books by Christopher Morley:
Parnassus on Wheels and The Haunted Bookshop; or, Parnassus at Home
These books told the tales of a wonderful used book dealer and his traveling
book shop, and his stationary book shop.
We chose the name of our on-line store, Parnassus on the Net, serene in the
knowledge that all book sellers and most avid book lovers would immediately
recognize the allusion to the Greek Muses and to the most famous book about a
book seller. But, the best laid schemes o' mice an' men Gang aft a-gley.
We had underestimated the extent of the effects of an education system
newly hostile to in-depth studying of our European cultural heritage. We had
also underestimated the ravages wrought by the
general modern ignorance of anything not absolutely new and/or pop-culturally
oriented. These twin abominations have rendered our bookish and culturally grounded name incomprehensible,
even to many fellow book sellers and book lovers. 'Tis true, 'tis pity, pity
'tis, 'tis true.
It gives one pause when one realizes that any middle school boy or girl from any
decent school in all of Western Europe over the entire last 2000 years of
Western Civilization and in any U. S. public school in the past 200 years would
have recognized the "Parnassus" reference in our name. Yet today, I am confident
that not one in a hundred high school students could confidently describe the
significance of the words Olympus, Delphi, and Parnassus in the Western cultural and literary
heritage.
Even our tag line: "Pamper Your Muse" becomes incomprehensible in the face of
almost universal ignorance of our Greek and Roman literary and cultural
heritage. While everyone knows what "pamper" means, few are those with an
intimate knowledge of the word "muse," despite
Olivia
Newton-John's and
Sharon Stone's
valiant attempts to reverse the trend. The damage done, in just the past 30
years, to a
cultural heritage of over two thousand years is really
quite remarkable. Much English, American, and European literature is in the process of
becoming incomprehensible because the Western institutions of mass education are
in, for the most part, the hands of those who are have ceased
to treasure the cultural history and the cultural references on which an
understanding of our literary and artistic heritage is based.
This sudden and very violent destruction of cross-generational cultural transmission in the
school systems is very sad and, we believe, very dangerous. It took Western
Civilization over 2000 years to rise above the ignorance and barbarism that had
dominated the Earth since the beginnings of mankind's history. The concept that
men had individual rights and have the right to self government and free
expression is not something that was easily won nor universal, even today.
Witness the barbarism prevalent in so many countries, still today. How can we,
the West--the cradle of individual liberty, democracy, and freedom, defend
Western Civilization if we don't know the nitty gritty detail of its history and
how it came about, don't teach it to our children, and do not understand the ideas, cultural achievements, books and
works of art that made it great because we are not even taught about them and
don't even know about them. Scary stuff, I wish intelligent people on the
Internet would get as worked up about things such as this as they do about spam!
But, miracles aside, we hope that at Parnassus on the Net you will find some of
the best written works to be had. And, we hope you enjoy our site.
If you are interested we have another site, a magazine site, http://GazetteOfTheArts.com devoted to surveying modern popular culture and preserving our cultural heritage by making some of it available and accessible on the Internet. We also intend our Arts Gazette to be fun.
Last, but not least we are also a publishing company with a number of books in the fields of Science Fiction, Horror, Mystery/Detective, Literature, Poetry, Biography, Reference, Children's Books, and Belles Lettres. You may find the books we publish at:
O, WERE I on Parnassus hill,
Or had o’ Helicon my fill,
That I might catch poetic skill,
To sing how dear I love thee!
But Nith maun be my Muse’s well,
My Muse maun be thy bonie sel’,
On Corsincon I’ll glowr and spell,
And write how dear I love thee.
—Robert Burns
Best,
Jim and Lynne Rock
Parnassus on the Net