Gates of horn and ivory

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The gates of horn and ivory are, in the earliest recorded instances of the use of the image, the portals through which dreams, true or false, come.

Contents

[edit] In the Odyssey

The earliest appearance of the image is in the Odyssey, book 19, lines 560-569. There Penelope, who has just recounted a dream that seems to signify that her husband Odysseus is about to return, expresses her conviction that the dream is false. She says:

Stranger, dreams verily are baffling and unclear of meaning, and in no wise do they find fulfilment in all things for men. For two are the gates of shadowy dreams, and one is fashioned of horn and one of ivory. Those dreams that pass through the gate of sawn ivory deceive men, bringing words that find no fulfilment. But those that come forth through the gate of polished horn bring true issues to pass, when any mortal sees them. But in my case it was not from thence, methinks, that my strange dream came.[1]

The translator of the Loeb Classical Library edition of the Odyssey comments:

The play upon the words κέρας, "horn", and κραίνω, "fulfil", and upon ἐλέφας, "ivory", and ἐλεφαίρομαι, "deceive", cannot be preserved in English.[2]

[edit] In the Aeneid

Virgil borrowed the image of the two gates in lines 893-898 of Book 6 of his Aeneid, describing that of horn as the passageway for true shadows[3] and that of ivory as that through which the Manes in the underworld send false dreams up to the living.[4] Through the latter gate Virgil makes his hero Aeneas, accompanied by the Cumaean Sibyl, return from his visit to the underworld, where he has met, among others, his dead father Anchises:

Two gates the silent house of Sleep adorn;
Of polish'd ivory this, that of transparent horn:
True visions thro' transparent horn arise;
Thro' polish'd ivory pass deluding lies.
Of various things discoursing as he pass'd,
Anchises hither bends his steps at last.
Then, thro' the gate of iv'ry, he dismiss'd
His valiant offspring and divining guest.[5]

Why Virgil has Aeneas return through the ivory gate (whence pass deluding lies)[6] and not through that of horn is uncertain. One theory is that it refers to the time of night at which he returned.[7] Jorge Luis Borges suggested that Virgil meant that what we call reality is not in fact such.[8]

[edit] Other uses

The gates of horn and ivory also appear in Neil Gaiman's comic book series The Sandman; Robert Holdstock's novel Gate of Ivory, Gate of Horn, as part of his Mythago Wood fantasy cycle; and in a short story by E. M. Forster, The Other Side of the Hedge. In the Holdstock novel, the main character grapples with a traumatic event that has two very different manifestations, one true and one false. The reference from Forster comes when the main character of the story observes the two gates; The Other Side of the Hedge is usually read as a metaphor of death and Heaven.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Translation from the Loeb Classical Library edition. The original text is:
    Ξειν’, ἦ τοι μὲν ὄνειροι ἀμήχανοι ἀκριτόμυθοι
    γίγνοντ’, οὐδέ τι πάντα τελείεται ἀνθρώποισι.
    δοιαὶ γάρ τε πύλαι ἀμενηνῶν εἰσὶν ὀνείρων·
    αἱ μὲν γὰρ κεράεσσι τετεύχαται, αἱ δ' ἐλέφαντι,
    τῶν οἳ μέν κ’ ἔλθωσι διὰ πριστοῦ ἐλέφαντος,
    οἵ ῥ’ ἐλεφαίρονται, ἔπε’ ἀκράαντα φέροντες·
    οἱ δὲ διὰ ξεστῶν κεράων ἔλθωσι θύραζε,
    οἵ ῥ’ ἔτυμα κραίνουσι, βροτῶν ὅτε κέν τις ἴδηται.
    ἀλλ’ ἐμοὶ οὐκ ἐντεῦθεν ὀΐομαι αἰνὸν ὄνειρον
    ἐλθέμεν·
  2. ^ Homer: The Odyssey, II (The Loeb Classical Library. First printed 1919; Reprinted 1925, 1928, 1931, 1940, 1942, 1946, 1953, 1960, 1966, 1975, 1980; American ISBN 0-674-99117-6; British ISBN 0-434-99105-8), p. 269
  3. ^ In the original, "veris umbris", but translated by Dryden as "true visions"
  4. ^ altera candenti perfecta nitens elephanto,
    sed falsa ad caelum mittunt insomnia Manes.
  5. ^ The [http://classics.mit.edu/Virgil/aeneid.6.vi.html translation here given is by John Dryden (cf. [http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Aeneid/Book_VI?match=la Wikisource). The original text is:
    Sunt geminae Somni portae, quarum altera fertur
    cornea, qua veris facilis datur exitus umbris;
    altera candenti perfecta nitens elephanto,
    sed falsa ad caelum mittunt insomnia Manes.
    his ubi tum natum Anchises unaque Sibyllam
    prosequitur dictis portaque emittit eburna ...
  6. ^ "falsa insomnia" (literally, false dreams)
  7. ^ Nicholas Reed, The Gates of Sleep in Aeneid 6, The Classical Quarterly, New Series, Vol. 23, No. 2 (Nov., 1973), pp. 311-315
  8. ^ Nightmares