Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben is the rare writer whose ideas and
works have a broad appeal across many fields, and his devoted fans are
not just philosophers, but readers of political and legal theory,
sociology, and literary criticism as well. Agamben's intuition and
meditation are fascinating, and not least when he turns his critical eye
to the mysteries and contradictions of early religion.
The Unspeakable Girl: The Myth and Mystery of Kore is a book of three
richly detailed treatments of the myth of Kore. Kore, also called
Persephone, and referred to poetically by the Greeks as "the unspeakable
girl," was the daughter of Demeter and Zeus who was abducted by Hades
and made queen of the netherworld. Kore and her story gave rise to a
mysterious cult at Eleusis, the site of the well where Demeter mourned
her lost daughter. This book opens with an innovative and insightful
essay that focuses on the mysterious indeterminacy of the figure of
Kore/Persephone--at once a woman and a girl, a virgin and a mother--as
well as the attendant divisions of speech and silence, the sacred and
the profane, the animal and the human, and the mortal and the divine.
Here, tracing these dichotomies, Agamben is in top form, able to
articulate paradoxes that in another writer's hands might be ineffable.
In the second and third parts of the book the reader is treated to a
series of beautiful paintings by acclaimed artist Monica Ferrando, as
well as her translation of crucial Greek and Latin source materials. As
a whole, The Unspeakable Girl will not only be welcomed by Agamben's
many readers across the disciplines, but also by enthusiasts of
classical mythology in general.
