‘Apollo, Mnemosyne, and Poetry’: A Chapter from James Sale’s Gods, Heroes and Us

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Apollo, Mnemosyne, and Poetry

Chapter 9 from Gods, Heroes and Us (Bruges Group, May, 2025)

by James Sale

Our last chapter discussed the imperative for distinguishing between Truth (Veritas) and Falsehood (Mendacium), and how in our modern, digital era this is becoming increasingly difficult. Also, we talked about a shift from the individual hero to the more collective effort to resist falsehood; falsehood, which is also, of course, another name for evil. For to spell it out again, and to use the metaphor that we had in the original myth, falsehood has no feet, and so falls over; which is another way of saying, it generates disorder—to use Yeats’ expression , ‘… things fall apart; the centre cannot hold…’ It acts against the very cohesion of the cosmos; it defies Zeus.

It is because this is so that we need to return to a god whom we have already encountered in chapter 2: Apollo. Apollo is the god par excellence whose maxims advocate civility, restraint, moderation, order and … truth. Why? Well, for one thing Apollo is the god of the sun, and so god of light; and light is always not only physical light in ancient texts, but the light of illumination—of knowledge and insight and prophecy: an understanding of the deep things of the dark where light probes, penetrates, and prevails.

It should be no surprise to learn, then, that not only is Apollo god of light, but he is also god of healing—light that heals and enables growth—and god of poetry and the arts. And this is important for our discussion in the last chapter: how do we overcome Mendacium or falsehood? Clearly, there is no easy answer, but one strand towards an answer is understanding the importance of the arts, but in particular of poetry in our culture generally and in our education system specifically. Poetry—and alongside it, myth— is one massive antidote to Mendacium.

Before looking at this in more detail, what exactly is the relationship between Apollo and poetry? Apollo, in Greek mythology, is deeply connected with poetry as he is regarded as the god of music, poetry, and the arts, among other things. His association with poetry primarily comes from his role as a patron of the Muses, who are the goddesses of artistic inspiration, including epic poetry, lyric poetry, and music. Apollo was often depicted with a lyre, symbolizing his influence over both music and the harmonious nature of poetic expression.

There are several layers to Apollo’s connection with poetry. First, is the generally accepted fact that he was the leader (and patron) of the Muses. Who were the Muses? These were the immortal beings—nine of them—who inspired artists, poets, musicians in nine areas of the artistic domains:

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1. Calliope – Muse of epic poetry.
2. Clio – Muse of history.
3. Erato – Muse of love poetry.
4. Euterpe – Muse of music and lyric poetry.
5. Melpomene – Muse of tragedy.
6. Polyhymnia – Muse of sacred hymns and poetry.
7. Terpsichore – Muse of dance.
8. Thalia – Muse of comedy.
9. Urania – Muse of astronomy.

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Calliope, muse of epic poetry (considered the greatest of the nine domains) is the leader within the Nine, but Apollo is the leader of the Nine. It is instructive to reflect on the origins of the Muses: they were begotten in the nine nights of love-making between Zeus and Mnemosyne, the Titaness of memory.
Two things need comment here: first, memory is involved in all artistic acts. We cannot forget the past. As G.K. Chesterton noted, “The boldest plans for the future invoke the authority of the past.” The stupidest— and modernist—idea (expressed in Ezra Pound’s dictum: “Make it new”) is that we can erase the past and build everything new and shining and perfect from scratch; this really is an idea for the birds, as well as being an aspect of that general drive for utopia that infects all minds that accept it. But just as important is the notion that the Muses were begotten: in other words, through sexual acts. That there were nine nights of lovemaking indicates the level of arousal and passion that Zeus and Memory experienced towards each other! So not a one-night stand then. Keep in mind here, too, that the coupling of Zeus with the Titaness (remember the Titans from Chapter 1?) is the joining of the old order with the new so that a yet more new order can be produced—and critically, one that displays more beauty.

If all that weren’t enough, Apollo’s interest in poetry is extensive: Apollo’s instrument is the lyre, which is not just a symbol of music but also of lyric poetry, which in ancient Greece was often sung to musical accompaniment. Poets and bards looked to Apollo for inspiration in creating works that were melodious and expressive. Further, at the Oracle of Delphi, as the god of prophecy and the sun, Apollo had an association with truth and enlightenment, central themes in poetic expression. Poets often sought to reveal truths about human nature and the world, much as Apollo’s oracle would reveal divine truths. This aspect also aligns with poetry’s power to convey wisdom, vision, and insight, drawing a parallel between the clarity of prophecy and the clarity poetry can bring to complex emotions and ideas. Apollo was also the patron of poetic competitions in ancient Greece, most notably at the Pythian Games, held in his honour at Delphi. These contests included not just athletic competitions but also artistic events, where poets, musicians, and performers would compete for Apollo’s favour.

Finally, as we’ve already intimated, Apollo is often seen as the leader of the Muses, who are the goddesses of different artistic domains, including poetry. The relationship between Apollo and the Muses underscores his role as the god who inspires poets and artists, guiding them to create works of beauty, harmony, and truth. In essence, Apollo’s connection to poetry is deeply intertwined with his broader role as a god of arts, prophecy, and enlightenment, highlighting poetry’s power to both inspire and communicate deeper truths.

So, inspire and communicate deeper truths—the opposite of Mendacium. Let’s look at this issue, then, in a little more detail. And first, consider what literature—and poetry particularly—should be. To understand that, we need to use traditional writings naturally! To keep it simple, I would say that poetry has to represent the good, the true and most importantly of all, the beautiful. Philosophical and religious texts can be good and true, but it is the special quality of literature—of poetry—to be beautiful. The reason for the beauty is, of course, form: form is where we have structure and order, and this impresses itself upon our senses.

However, it is important to deflate one implication of this which the modern mind just loves to deduce and mock: namely, that wanting beauty means wanting the saccharine, the bland and the non-challenging types of writing; a kind of literature that is the equivalent to an old-fashioned Disney film—no sex, no real violence, and no issues that might tax us; in other words, sugary versions of pure nostalgia and escapism. But any consideration of, say, the great traditional and even sacred (for example, The Psalms) texts such as Homer or Dante or Shakespeare would utterly refute this. But unlike modern and postmodern texts, which simply revel in sex, violence, horror, perversion and revulsion for their own sakes—and for the sake of being real and realistic—the classics frame these things so that they are—despite the horrors of life, especially modern life—still good, true, and beautiful.

Homer is full of violence, but it is profound and true to human nature; and alongside it go other qualities, such as when at last the anger of Achilles is satisfied, and with his enemy, king Priam, both men mourn together and suffer their respective losses. Through this their common and shared humanity is established. Dante explores sex, violence and revulsion and more besides, but always in the context of the first line of his poem: Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita—“in the middle of OUR life,” not just his. We are journeying to heaven with him, and this provides an overarching meaning to all the troubles we experience on Earth. And as for Shakespeare, where to begin? So many works—but who matches Macbeth in ambition, treachery and violence? How deep, though, the depiction of all this; and how inevitable its outcome, demonstrating—though with some degree of ambiguity which, for example, Polanski’s film version evinces—goodness in its triumph over evil. One genius aspect of this triumph is of course the fact of how evil defeats itself, although seemingly invincible.

Now this is all very well, but why should we have such great classics on our school and university curricula? What does goodness, truth and beauty mean in that context? Aren’t these words just abstractions? They are, but their substance seems to me entirely practical, for it leads me to conclude that a study of the great classics—inspired by Apollo—provides us with three overarching benefits. These are:

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1. Role models of greatness
2. Deeper understandings of ourselves and others
3. Appreciation of form—hence beauty

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Let’s briefly consider each of these three Apollonian benefits.

First, role models of greatness. It says in the Bible that “without vision the people perish.” This applies to all levels of society: at a family level, community level, with our schools and colleges, with our institutions and businesses, and at government level. We have all experienced that sickening sense of drift and chaos that occurs where there is no vision; and where does vision come from? Great men and great women who galvanise those around them. But where does their vision come from? From role models of greatness: either in real life—for example, a great mother, a great father, a great teacher and so on—or from great books and great literature.

It would be blindingly too obvious to cite all the great men and women whom the Bible has inspired to provide vision to their contemporaries—there are so many. But take Mother Teresa or take Martin Luther King—they were great, they had a vision, and they were inspired by what they read in the Bible.
In the same way, others have been inspired by poetry: Alexander was inspired by Homer. Almost the greatest miracle that Alexander could conceive of was that Homer might return from the dead; and he based his whole life on imitating Achilles, the great Homeric hero. You might say, ‘But that’s not great— Alexander was not a man of peace.’ But that is us imposing our values on him: at the time, everyone knew that he was great, they named him ‘the Great’, and for all that, with all the evil in him (Dante assigned him to a river of blood in Canto 12 of his Inferno), he had certain qualities we all can admire: his courage was simply legendary. Like Achilles—his hero—he was fearless. Courage is timeless—and in poetry we can experience it perfected.

But if that seems a step too far: take Winston Churchill, the great British war leader in World War II. His great role model was his own ancestor, John Marlborough, Duke of Blenheim, who won the Battle of Blenheim (1704) in the early Eighteenth century, and so prevented the European continent being dominated by France for a century (till the rise of Napoleon). So far so historical. But who inspired Marlborough? Marlborough claimed that Shakespeare was essential to his education and ideas-they inspired him, especially the History plays. But who inspired Shakespeare? Step forward the great Roman writer Plutarch. And if at this suggestion you want to say, Plutarch isn’t a poet, but an historian, keep in mind the Nine Muses we mentioned earlier, including astronomy, comedy, dance, eloquence, epic, history, music, amatory poetry, and tragedy. Homer was epic (Calliope); Plutarch history (Clio)!

Finally, on the topic of role models: this is not something just about the noteworthies of yesteryear. Watch young people wanting to be Harry Potter; watch old and young adults at Star Wars conventions identifying with their heroes. Part of our selfconcept is the ‘ideal self’—the person we aspire to be. Literature gives us great models we can emulate; and poetry gives us the very greatest models (aside from religious personages). The corollary of this is: if the literature does not promote goodness, truth and beauty, what does it encourage? And the answer is obvious: corruption, mendacity and ugliness. Does that sound familiar?

Does that sound a lot like modern art and poetry? As Allan Bloom expressed it, “Failure of culture is now culture.”

The second wonder of studying and reading the great classics is the way it enables us to understand ourselves more deeply, as well as others. This should be clear anyway from what we have already said about Marlborough learning from Shakespeare who learnt from Plutarch. But what did he learn? Essentially, he learnt about statesmanship (because that interested him; others, of course, will learn other things). What is statesmanship? It is about conducting the business of a government and shaping its policies whilst being a wise, skilful, and respected political leader. If that doesn’t require a profound understanding of human nature—of self and of others—it’s difficult to imagine what would count!

Furthermore, to understand ourselves we need to remember G.K. Chesterton’s admonishment: “Every man has forgotten who he is. One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star.” Perseus cannot face his greatest fear (none of us can!). Who/What is his greatest fear? Why, Medusa, the Gorgon, of course! But the goddess Athene, the goddess of wisdom, instructs him how he can face her: by using his polished shield as a mirror—we approach reality through reflection. In literary terms, we approach it through metaphor (which is why Aristotle said the mastery of metaphor was a sign of genius); and so metaphor—poetry—is for approaching our self that we have forgotten and cannot find because, as St. Francis of Assisi allegedly observed: “What you are looking for is what is looking.” The eye—the I—which sees everything, cannot see itself, except by reflection. Thus, literature, poetry and theatre especially, provides us with just that reflection: we get to see ourselves as we truly are.

Finally, in this all too brief overview, the appreciation of form. The deployment of form(s) and its appreciation is on the one hand a skill and knowledge set. Shakespeare writes blank verse; we not only see it on the page, but we hear it on stage or in our minds as we read. But on the other hand, it is much more than that. Dante’s The Divine Comedy is possibly, in the non-religious domain, the greatest and most successfully structured poem ever written: the numerology involved in the 100 cantos is astonishing, but then so is, at the micro-level, the actual form of terza rima itself: 3-line stanzas representing a profound tribute to the triune God whom we will encounter in the final canto of the sequence.  The rhyming scheme of the poem is simply awesome in its power, complexity and sustained brilliance and beauty. Short lyricists may be compared to 100 or even 800-meter runners; and longer formal poems may be compared to 1,500 to 10,000-meter performances; but Dante’s Comedy is the Marathon of them all— that sustained, long run that draws on the very deepest levels of the human spirit and soul. It is perhaps no coincidence that in making this comparison we know that the very first Marathon runner (Pheidippides) completed his task for Greece, and then promptly died; it seems this more or less happened to Dante—having finished the Comedy for Italy and the Italian language, he too died very soon after. Heroic, or what?

If it’s not clear already, then let me be more explicit: the beauty that we want—that our souls want—is to be found in form. Without form, there is no beauty; there is randomness, there is chaos, there is subjective whim, there is ego, and there is ugliness. Does this sound too subjective, or just an opinion? Consider then Eric Hedin’s recent comment: “Oftentimes we hear it said that beauty is only ‘in the eye of the beholder’. But [Thomas] Dubay maintains that ‘both science and theology agree on the objectivity of beauty.’” In its characteristics of simplicity and elegance, beauty not only appeals to our minds, but also helps us identify scientific theories that correspond to reality. Physicist Paul Davies has said, “It is widely believed among scientists that beauty is a reliable guide to truth”. The great architect and inventor, R. Buckminster Fuller, attested to it too: “When I’m working on a problem, I never think about beauty, I think only how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.”

The poet John Keats—naturally as a poet might!—reached this conclusion without any research two centuries before. In his poem, Ode on a Grecian Urn, he concluded, “Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty.—that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.” And he also said , “The excellence of every Art is its intensity, making all disagreeables evaporate, from their being in close relationship with Beauty and Truth.” Beauty is not some idle luxury—it is itself creative and the source of creativity in others who experience it; and perhaps the final word on this is from Joachim-Ernst Berendt, “…one needs rhythms and meters to reach heavenly goals. Of Brahma it is said: ‘he meditated a hundred thousand years and the result of his meditation was the creation of sound and music.’”

If we are to live, as the Bible enjoins us to do, we need to reestablish a new vision of the great Tradition and the living poetry without which our citizens are immersed in mendacious ugliness, and cut off from the vital springs of creativity that alone can renew us.

What is poetry’s unique power in fostering human connection to memory, to the past, and ultimately, to truth? Memory, embodied by Mnemosyne, the mother of the Muses, is far more than mere recollection. It is a bridge between generations, ideas, and values—an essential conduit for maintaining societal order and resisting chaos. As discussed earlier, Apollo stands at the crossroads of light, truth, and poetry, casting away the shadows of falsehood. Mnemosyne complements him by ensuring that humanity remembers its origins, its stories, and, critically, its purpose.

Consider, for a moment, the ancients who gathered around fires to listen to poets recite epics—these were not mere entertainment. They were a method of engraving collective memory into the hearts of those who listened. It was through poetry, through the rhythm of verse and meter, that civilizations remembered who they were. The Iliad, for instance, was not just a story of war; it was a reflection on honour, rage, loss, and reconciliation. The Odyssey, too, served as a testament to the journey of life, the wandering soul returning home. Without these narratives rooted in the memory of past glories, societies would lose their moorings, drifting away from the shores of understanding and truth.

In this sense, Mnemosyne’s role becomes clear: she is not merely the goddess of memory, but the guardian of cultural continuity. Without her, the works of the Muses would dissipate into oblivion, unmoored from context, significance, and depth. Her union with Zeus was not just a creative act; it was a vital coupling that allowed the wisdom of the past to be transmitted into the future. And Apollo, by leading the Muses, ensures that this memory is not static but dynamic—continually refreshed, renewed, and brought into the light for all to see.

But in our current age, where truth is so often distorted and fragmented, we must ask: what is the modern equivalent of this transmission of memory? Is it still poetry? In many ways, yes. Poetry today, though often side-lined, continues to serve as a vessel for deep reflection, offering not just beauty, but a profound engagement with the world’s enduring truths. Whether it be in the works of Edwin Muir, J.R.R. Tolkien, Joseph Salemi, Joseph Sale (yes, full disclosure: my son, a brilliant poet), Angela Alaimo O’Donnell or Andrew Benson Brown, poetry captures what is timeless, echoing Mnemosyne’s role in preserving the essence of humanity.

Yet there is a struggle. Poetry is under threat in the modern world, its relevance questioned, its place in education diminished. In times past, poetry was central to learning—both as a form of intellectual exercise and as a moral compass. Today, however, with education often focused on the pragmatic, the technical, and the material, poetry is relegated to a niche discipline. This, in itself, is a kind of Mendacium—a falsehood that claims poetry is no longer necessary. But if we neglect it, we lose an essential tool for grappling with truth, memory, and ultimately, ourselves.

This brings us back to Apollo and his relationship with truth. Poetry, under Apollo’s guidance, is not just art for art’s sake. It is a disciplined practice, an effort to bring order to chaos, to give form to the formless. In the same way that Apollo’s light dispels darkness, poetry sheds light on the complexities of human experience. It is not only a reflection of truth but an act of creation, building something where before there was nothing but uncertainty and shadow.

And here lies the key: if we abandon poetry, we abandon a critical means of fighting Mendacium. Without poetry’s beauty, its structure, and its capacity to resonate with the soul, we become susceptible to the disorder and fragmentation that falsehood brings. Apollo, as god of both light and poetry, reminds us that truth is not always self-evident—it must be pursued, crafted, and brought into the light, just as the poet painstakingly crafts verses to reflect the deepest aspects of human existence.

In conclusion, poetry, as guided by Apollo and begotten by Mnemosyne, is more than just an artistic endeavour. It is a means of survival—culturally, spiritually, and intellectually. In resisting the spread of falsehood in our time, we would do well to remember the lessons of the ancients: that truth is often complex, multifaceted, and elusive. But through poetry, we are given a path— a way to navigate the uncertainties of life and connect with the deeper truths that bind us to one another, across time and space. As long as poetry endures, Mendacium will never fully prevail, for poetry is a testament to the enduring power of truth, memory, and the human spirit.

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James Sale has had over 50 books published, most recently, “Mapping Motivation for Top Performing Teams” (Routledge, 2021). He has been nominated by The Hong Kong Review for the 2022 Pushcart Prize for poetry, has won first prize in The Society of Classical Poets 2017 annual competition, and performed in New York in 2019. He is a regular contributor to The Epoch Times. His most recent poetry collection is “StairWell.” For more information about the author, and about his Dante project, visit https://englishcantos.home.blog. To subscribe to his brief, free and monthly poetry newsletter, contact him at [email protected]