Ananke (mythology)
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In Greek mythology, Ananke, also spelled Anangke, Anance, or Anagke (Ancient Greek: Ἀνάγκη, from the common noun ἀνάγκη, "force, constraint, necessity"), was the personification of destiny, necessity and fate, depicted as holding a spindle. She marks the beginning of the cosmos, along with Chronos. She was seen as the most powerful dictator of all fate and circumstance which meant that mortals, as well as the Gods, respected her and paid homage. Considered as the mother of the Fates according to one version, she is the only one to have control over their decisions.[1]
According to the ancient Greek traveller Pausanias, there was a temple in ancient Corinth where the goddesses Ananke and Bia (meaning violence or violent haste) were worshipped together in the same shrine. Her Roman counterpart was Necessitas ("necessity").[2]
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Etymology [edit]
The goddess,"Ananke" is derived from the common Ancient Greek noun ἀνάγκη, (Ionic αναγκαίη : anankaiê) meaning force, constraint or necessity. Homer uses the word meaning necessity ( αναγκαίη πολεμίζειν, "ιt is necessary to fight") or force (ἐξ ἀνάγκης, "by force" ).[3] In Ancient Greek literature the word is also used meaning fate or destiny, ( ανάγκη δαιμόνων, "fate by the daemons or by the gods"), and by extension compulsion or torture by a superior.[4] The word is often personified in poetry, as Simonides does: "Even the gods don’t fight against ananke".[5]
In the philosophical sense it means necessity, logical necessity,[6] or laws of nature[7]
Ananke in literature [edit]
The word "Ananke" is featured in Victor Hugo's novel The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, written upon a wall of Notre-Dame by the hand of Dom Claude Frollo. In his Toute la Lyre, Hugo also mentions Ananke as a symbol of love. She is also the title of a science fiction short story by Stanisław Lem, in the series of the Tales of Pirx the Pilot. Ananke, used in the meaning of force and obsession, is the key to the solution of a disastrous spaceship accident.
There is reference to Ananke early in John Banville's novel The Infinities. In explaining how the gods fashioned humans so that they would procreate, the narrator (Hermes) says that the gods gave humans lust, "Eros and Ananke working hand in hand". Norbert Wiener, in his book Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, presents Ananke as the personification of scientific determinism, contrasted with Tyche as the personification of quantum indeterminacy, in the often-quoted sentence: "The chance of the quantum theoretician is not the ethical freedom of the Augustinian, and Tyche is as relentless a mistress as Ananke."
In Kelly McCullough's Ravirn series, Ananke is a prominent figure in all the books under the guise of Necessity. In Philip K. Dick's novel VALIS, Ananke is mentioned as "blind necessity-or blind chance, according to some experts...blind chance: chaos, in other words". Described alongside the term 'Noos' as the overwhelming chaos which reason, Noos, tries to constrain.
Freud in "Civilization and Its Discontents" (W.W. Norton, New York: 1961; pg. 104) said: "We can only be satisfied, therefore, if we assert that the process of civilization is a modification which the vital process experiences under the influence of a task that is set it by Eros and instigated by Ananke -- by the exigencies of reality; and that this task is one of uniting separate individuals into a community bound together by libidinal ties."
See also [edit]
References [edit]
- ^ (Portuguese) Abril Cultural (1973). Editora Victor CivitaDicionário de Mitologia Greco-Romana. Editora Victor Civita. p. 134. OCLC 45781956
- ^
Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Necessitas". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. - ^ Iliad 4.300 , Odyssey 4.557 : Lidell, Scott: A Greek English Lexicon ανάγκη
- ^ E.Ph.1000, Xenophon Hiero 9.4
- ^ Simonides Fr. 4.20 Diehl : C.M.Bowra , The Greek experience .W.P Publishing company, Cleveland and New York p.61
- ^ Aristotle, Metaph.1026.b28, 1064.b33 : Lidell, Scott: A Greek English Lexicon ανάγκη
- ^ Xenophon, Memorabilia 1.11.1 : Lidell, Scott: A Greek English Lexicon ανάγκη
External links [edit]
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