The Descent
I. The hourThe Descent
Tonight the sun crosses the equator and starts heading south. Equinox means equal night, which is nearly true: Berlin is eleven minutes short of it. From here the dark gets the bigger half, and keeps taking more until December.
US Naval Observatory. Berlin, 22 to 23 September 2026: sunset 19:05, sunrise 06:54. It is eleven minutes because the sun is a disc, not a point, and the air bends its light over the horizon.
Night bore Sleep and Death. In the Iliad the two of them carry a body home together.Hesiod, Theogony 211–212; Homer, Iliad 16.666–683.I would rather be a paid servant in a poor man’s house and be above ground than king of kings among the dead.Achilles. Homer, Odyssey 11.488–491. Tr. Butler.dug the trench a cubit each way … a drink-offering to all the dead, first with honey and milk, then with wineHomer, Odyssey 11.24–28. Tr. Butler.So the year is on its way down. There is an old line that this is fine, because the way down and the way up are the same road. So we go down early, on purpose, and take our own light.
The old line is Heraclitus, fr. 69 in Fairbanks (Diels B60).
κατάβασιςa going downHades and Dionysos are the same, to whomever they go mad and share the revel.Heraclitus fr. 127 in Fairbanks (Diels B15).Nature loves to hide.Heraclitus fr. 10 in Fairbanks (Diels B123).An army is burning its way through Attica and Athens has been emptied. Two men look over at the road to Eleusis and see the dust of a big crowd, and hear the shout people make at the festival. Nobody is on the road. They decide a god is walking it.
Herodotus 8.65, in 480 BC. One of the two men told the story himself, and named the other as his witness.
Ἴακχοςthe shout, and the god it becameWhat else is Wisdom? … To stand from fear set free, to breathe and waitEuripides, Bacchae 877–880. Tr. Murray.Demeter’s daughter is taken and nobody will tell her anything. She walks for nine days with a burning torch in each hand. On the tenth morning Hekate comes down the road with a torch of her own and tells her the one honest thing: I heard her, I didn’t see who. Which is why there is a light in your hand.
Homeric Hymn to Demeter 19–53. Afterwards Hekate stays with the girl, walking ahead of her and behind her (440). Tr. Evelyn-White.
the narcissus, which Earth made to grow … to be a snare for the bloom-like girlHomeric Hymn to Demeter 8–10. Tr. Evelyn-White.Dream not thou that force is powerTeiresias. Euripides, Bacchae 310–312. Tr. Murray.You are at the bottom. Three cards are lying face down. Hold your light on one until it turns over.
A small machine that listens and says things back. What you type stays on this page and is gone when you close the tab. Built after ELIZA, 1966.
A man called Lucius was let into the mysteries of Isis and promised not to tell anybody what he saw. Then he wrote down one sentence anyway. About midnight I saw the Sun shine.
Apuleius, The Golden Ass 11.23. Tr. William Adlington.
We go down for the old stories and bring them back up to you. You brought the light. Oh, that’s so cathartic.¹
¹ Aristotle, Poetics 1449b.