LEANDER AND HERO – STAR CROSSED LOVERS! #BLOGCHATTERA2Z
Leander or Leandros (Lion Man) was a young leader from
Abydos. One day, he attended a festival where he came across the modest and
beautiful Hero, who was a priestess of the goddess Aphrodite, and hence, lived in
chastity. Leander fell in love with her at first sight. He used his charm and
his wiles to make her respond to his advances.
As Hero lived in Sestos, there was a whole sea, the
Hellespont, which separated Europe from Asia, and the lovers as well. Every
night, Leander would swim across the sea, guided only by a lamp that Hero would
keep alight on the top of her tower. Thus, a whole summer went by with the
lovers falling even more deeply in love.
One stormy night, Leander set out as usual, making his
way across the Hellespont. However, the wind blew gustily, the night was dark
and ominous, and the light guarded so fiercely by Hero went out. Leander
struggled in the darkness, trying to find his way through the tumultuous waves,
but finally, he lost his bearings and drowned.
‘The Double Heroides’ attributed to Ovid, the Roman poet,
speaks of an exchange of letters between the lovers where Leander is unable to
swim across the sea due to inclement weather. However, Hero urges him to do so,
leading to the fatal consequences.
In Sir Walter Raleigh’s poem – ‘The Ocean’s Love to
Cynthia’, there is a reference to Hero falling asleep and the lamp going out.
In another poem by Alfred Tennyson, Leander gets across
to Hero’s tower, and she begs him not to leave till morning when the sea is
calm again.
“Thou shalt not wander hence tonight, I’ll stay thee with
my kisses.”
When Hero heard of Leander’s drowning, she was
heartbroken. She threw herself off her tower, and fell to her death, hoping to
meet her lover in the afterlife. Both their bodies washed up on shore together,
and were buried in a deep embrace in one grave.
Hero finding Leander drowned - Picryl
John Donne, the poet, summed up the story in a single
poignant couplet:
“Both robbed of air, we both lie in one ground,
Both whom one fire had burned, one water drowned.”
The sad story of Leander and Hero has been the subject throughout
the realms of art, music and literature, a heartbreaking tale of love, gained
and lost.
Trivia:
The earliest reference to the myth was by Musaeus, a Greek
poet in the 4th or 5th century BC.
Routledge
Shakespeare was fond of referring to the saga of Hero and
Leander. Their names come up in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Much Ado About
Nothing, Othello, Romeo and Juliet and As You Like it.
Christopher Marlowe wrote the poem titled ‘Hero and Leander’
but stopped it at the point they fell in love. The poem was completed by George
Chapman after Marlowe’s death.
Internet Archive
Art:
The painting titled ‘The Last Watch of Hero’ by Fredric
Leighton
Picryl
Such a heartfelt story, no wonder why it was referred in Romeo & Juliet.
ReplyDeleteThe way you captured Leander and Hero as star-crossed lovers really brings out the quiet intensity of their devotion; love guided by light, yet undone by fate. It lingers with a sense of beauty and inevitability.
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