Nymphs - Kay - Fifth Hour

According to Greek mythology, a nymph is a member of a large class of female nature sprits. These nymphs were often accompanied by gods or goddesses. Nymphs were said to have lived on mountains, in groves, by springs, brooks, and rivers, in valleys and cool ghettoes. These creatures of ancient Greek mythology are magical, seductive, and sometimes even scary. However that is simply what they are: a very realistic mythology.

Every tale and story has to have a source of some kind. You can’t imagine a whole new color because you have not seen it before. The same goes with a creature. You can’t imagine a nymph if you have not seen it before. In a poem called the Rusalka, meaning The Water Nympy, by A. S. Pushkin, (1819), a monk sees a nude lady in the water and is seduced by her. The monks disappears, the eeriness of the lake, and the naked lady always lingering by it could not simply be coincidence. One can only conclude that the lady is a nymph with great powers to be beautiful and conniving enough to seduces a monk.

On the other had, in ancient Greece both women and nature were considered outside of civilization. The connection could easily be made that the two belong together. If a woman was wondering around nude in the wilderness, decorating herself only minutely with natures greenery and wonders, a drunken man could easily take her for some sort of nature god. She would seduce the man for her own sexual pleasure and then once he believed she was a “god of nature” he would be wrapped around her little finger for the rest of his life. This makes sense because this would be her way to be in control, instead of being cast out of society.

In my opinion, nymphs were somewhat like ancient prostitutes that instead of charging money, they enslaved the men. This would easily explain why men disappeared. I believe that the tales came back from drunken men that had wondered into the forest seeing women and hallucinating their beauty. The stories became fun to tell and over time exaggerated to conclude with the stories of nymphs that we have today, such as Lady in the Water.

Reference Sheet:

Nymphs, Date Retrieved: April 7, 2009, http://www.paleothea.com/Nymphs.html
Art History Club, Date Retrieved: April 7, 2009, http://www.arthistoryclub.com/art_history/Nymph
Russian Crafts, Date Retrieved: April 8, 2009, http://russian-crafts.com/russian-folk-tales/rusalka-the-water-nymph-.html
Figure 1: Deviant Art, Date Retrieved: April 7, 2009, http://aselclub.deviantart.com/