The arrow of love.
牽牛織女 (견우직녀) means The love of the Cowherd and the Weaver — a devotion that endures long separation.. erotic means Of or relating to sexual love and desire.. East Asian idiom and Western myth mirror the same human truth.
The Meeting
Eros, the Greek god of love, could make anyone fall in love with a golden arrow, while in East Asia the Cowherd and the Weaver sang of a love of separation, allowed to meet but one day a year, on the seventh night of the seventh moon. One was a small god who romanticized love; the other a constellation legend that shaped love out of longing. Yet both pointed to the same truth — love is not a matter handled by humans, but by the cosmos.
Western Myth — Eros, Who Shoots the Arrow of Love
Eros (Ἔρως, the Roman Cupid) is the Greek god of love. But his form changed greatly with the ages. In Hesiod's Theogony, Eros appears alongside Chaos as one of the very first gods of the cosmos, a primordial force that binds all things together — not a small Cupid but a vast cosmic principle. In later eras, however, Eros grew steadily younger, and by the Hellenistic age he settled into the form we know — a winged boy with a bow and two kinds of arrows. The golden arrow makes one fall in love; the leaden arrow makes one refuse love. In the tale of Apollo and Daphne, Eros, mocked by Apollo, shoots a golden arrow into Apollo and a leaden one into Daphne, and so the tragedy begins. The most beautiful of all Eros stories is Apuleius's "Cupid and Psyche" — Eros loves the mortal woman Psyche, but the jealousy of his mother Aphrodite parts them, and only after Psyche endures countless trials are they reunited. The word erotic entered English in the 1620s and settled into the meaning "relating to sexual love." Yet the Greek erotikos meant not mere sexual love but "deep attraction and yearning" — in Plato's Symposium, Socrates defines Eros as "a spiritual longing for beauty and truth."
It is striking how far the modern sense of erotic has narrowed from its original Greek meaning. For Plato, Eros was the power of love by which the philosopher pursues truth; in modern English it has come to denote merely sexual desire. It is the same trajectory by which Eros shrank from a vast cosmic principle into a little Cupid. The word for love grows narrower with every age.
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Oxford English Dictionary"erotic" etymology entry.
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Etymonlineerotic word origin.
Eastern Legend — The Cowherd and the Weaver, Who Meet Once a Year
The Cowherd and the Weaver (Gyeonu-Jingnyeo, 牽牛織女) is the oldest and best-loved love story of East Asia. Its origin already appears in the Datong ode of the Minor Odes in the Book of Songs — the astronomical observation that the star Vega (the Weaver) and the star Altair (the Cowherd) stand apart across the Milky Way, later expanded into a love story. Its fullest form runs thus: Jingnyeo (織女), the granddaughter of the Jade Emperor, was a celestial maiden who wove at the loom. She was diligent but lonely. One day she saw, across the Milky Way, a young man named Gyeonu (牽牛) tending his oxen, and fell in love. They married, but once in love, Jingnyeo grew idle at her weaving and Gyeonu neglected his oxen. The enraged Jade Emperor tore them apart and set them at opposite ends of the Milky Way, permitting them to meet but a single day each year — the seventh day of the seventh lunar month. On that day crows and magpies fly up to build a bridge (the Ojakgyo, 烏鵲橋), and upon it the Cowherd and the Weaver meet. And so it is said that if rain falls on the seventh night of the seventh moon, it is the tears of the Cowherd and the Weaver. This legend has spread across Korea, China, Japan, and Vietnam, and in Japan it is celebrated grandly each year as the Tanabata (七夕) festival.
If Eros is "the power that ignites love," the Cowherd and the Weaver are "the patience that endures love." In Western myth, one struck by Eros's arrow falls in love at once; but the Eastern Cowherd and Weaver long for each other 364 days and meet only one. The West painted love as an explosion, the East as a waiting. Moreover, the reason the Cowherd and Weaver were punished was that "love made them forget their proper work" — the Eastern view of love held that love and responsibility must be kept in balance.
Where the Mirrors Meet — Where the Two Myths Converge
Both share the common theme of "the arrow of love."
Erotic, from Greek myth, and the Cowherd and Weaver, from East Asian tradition, capture the same human truth.
Both still live in everyday speech. Erotic endures in English; the Cowherd and Weaver endure in Korean.
Yet their modes of expression differ. The West transmitted this wisdom through a mythic character; the East, through the combination of written characters.
Mnemonic — One Line to Take Home
- ✓ erotic = from Eros. Of or relating to sexual love and desire.
- ✓ 牽牛織女 = the love of the Cowherd and the Weaver. A devotion that endures long separation.
- ✓ Remember it in one stroke: "Erotic and the Cowherd and Weaver — two different civilizations telling the same story."
"Myth does not die. It still lives and breathes today, in erotic and in the Cowherd and the Weaver."
