Corina

 

The name Corina comes from the ancient Greek name Κοριννα (Korinna), which was derived from κορη (kore) "maiden".

In then ancient Greece the word Kore was used to describe a young unmarried woman, a maiden.

The cultural revival of Greece that makes itself most visible in the so-called Archaic Period (c. 700-480 BCE) includes many statues of elegantly dressed young women. Generally referred to as Kore, that is "maidens," archaeologists and art historians alike are puzzled over what or who they represent.

       A stock number of poses are repeated over a period of two hundred years or more. Such consistency over a long period of time would suggest that these figures had special trans-temporal significance. All stand bolt upright, their bodies covered from head to toe in finely styled clothing.

       The earliest examples show a woman standing with one hand held palm-in, fingers extended to her chest, looking very much like some American school child ready to pledge allegiance to the flag. As in the American custom, the gesture would appear to carry some ritual significance.

       In later examples, with elbow still held to the side, the open hand is extended out before her. This gesture could be interpreted as her presenting an offering, or perhaps, like the hand-to-the chest, some prayerful attitude. However, the hand could be extended in order to accept an offering.

       The other hand is usually shown at her side, in many cases grasping her skirts and pulling them slightly up, as if she were about to mount a stair . Artistically the gesture does interesting visual things with the drapery creating linear patterns and cascading folds. The gesture, though, one feels was not merely some aesthetic motif but had some other, more serious meaning.

       Who are these women whose similar poses and gestures link them together? The word kore, or maiden, used to identify these women means virgin, although one should bear in mind that virgin in ancient Greece seems to have meant unmarried rather than denoting an intact maidenhead.

       The words 'virgin' and 'maiden' tend to conjure up in the modern male imagination the image of an unsullied, nubile, young woman, delightfully innocent of the ways of sex. A maiden's body is the stuff of male fantasy. Maidenly innocence also connotes a certain empty-headedness, a vapid intellectuality. This might predispose one to view these women as little more than as some well-dressed early Greek type of sex object.

       This is belied, however, by the faces of these women which reveal not gentle innocence but a singular self-awareness, confidence, and pride of a kind that one would not expect of women in ancient Greek society, and in fact is quickly lost, as we shall see, after 500 BCE when male-centred "democracy" effectively eliminates women from positions of power.

        The faces and postures of the Kore figures strongly suggest women who recognize their own power , or perhaps recognize themselves as representatives of a female power which, in the Archaic period, Greek society still acknowledged. The power they feel or embody may be that of some ancient female Mother goddess.

       These women stand as the final visual embodiment of ancient female forces. Hereafter, it will be conceived in male terms and female power will be understood to reside only in woman's sexuality, or in her lack thereof in the form of a virgin.

 

Kore(the maiden) was an epithet of the goddess Persephone.Kore was the maiden aspect of Persephone, an young innocent goddess of spring, the partenogenetic daughter of Demeter, the goddess of agriculture.

 

Kore, the maiden, was abducted (at the suggestion of Zeus) and raped by Hades and forced to be his wife. In the myth of Persephone, young Kore was plucking flowers in a field when Hades, her uncle and god of the Underworld, abducted her to be his Queen in the dark world below. The goddess, Hecate, strongly associated with the dark side of the moon and with witchcraft - was the only one to witness Kore’s abduction. She hears Persephone’s cries but does nothing, herself, to help and, furthermore, does not seek help from others.

 

Kore was extremely unhappy in the darkness of the Underworld. She also missed her mother, Demeter, terribly, as they had such a close mother-daughter bond. Kore was ultimately allowed to rejoin her mother, who had arranged Persephone’s release. However, Persephone was obligated to return each Fall to spend four months of each year in the underworld as consort to Hades because she had eaten four pomegranates. It is thought that Kore as ‘maiden’, Demeter as ‘mother’ and Hecate as ‘wise crone’ represent, in more ancient times, the three-fold nature of Persephone in the various life cycles of a woman.

 

Corinna was the name of a Greek lyric poet of the 5th century BC

 

Corinna(Κοριννα) was a poet from Tanagra in Boeotia, in ancient Greece. Very little of her work has survived to the present, and even the century she lived in is disputed, but she is traditionally an elder contemporary of Pindar (c.520-c.440 BCE).

Several legends connect them: she instructed him in composition. She told him he didn't mention mythological figures enough in one poem, and in his next he overdid. Her reply, that one should sow by handfuls, not by the whole sack, became proverbial. She beat him in poetry competitions five times.

Corinna wrote lyric poetry in her native Boeotian dialect, and this presents the dating problem. Before 1906 only fragments of hers were known, quoted in much later writers to illustrate metrical points. But in that year a papyrus in Berlin was found to have large parts of two works by her. These manuscripts incorporated major changes in the Boeotian dialect known to have taken place since her traditional date: so either she was considerably later than thought, or her works had been rewritten in modernized spelling a couple of hundred years after her death.

That she was a woman contributed to her subsequent neglect. As with Sappho, ill-natured stories clung to her. One, which I can no longer find my source for so I'm going by memory, is that critics accused her of using her beauty to sway the judges when she beat Pindar.

Here is an example of her style. The translation is by L.R. Palmer.

tân de pé:do:n trîs men ekhi
Deus pateír, pánto:n basiléus,
trîs de pónto: gâme médo:n
Potidáo:n, tân de douîn
Phûbos léktra kratoúni,
tan d' ían Mé:as agathos
pês Hermâs. hoúto: gar Éro:s
ke: Koúpris pithétan, tio:s
en dómo:s bántas krouphádan
kó:ras enní' helésthe:.

Of the daughters Father Zeus, the King of all, has three
And three were wed by Poseidon, ruler of the sea,
Of two Phoebus has mastery of their bed,
One, Hermes, goodly son of Maia (possesses)
. For thus did Eros and the Cyprian persuade them,
Going secretly into your house, to take the nine girls.

Ovid used the name Corinna for the heroine of many of his love poems, the Amores. This Corinna is unlikely to have really lived; it seems she is Ovid's poetical creation, loosely based on a Greek poet of the same name; or generalised motif of female Roman mistresses. The name Corinna may also have been a typically Ovidian pun based on the Greek word for "maiden", "kore".