His Wife
With Ariadne the nature of the Dionysiac woman is exalted to marvelous heights. She is the perfect image of the beauty which, when it is touched by its lover, gives life immortality. And yet, it is a beauty which must pass down a road whose unavoidable termini are sorrow and death.
She is explicitly called the wife of Dionysus. And just as Semele, as mother, may share immortality with the god, so may Ariadne, as loved one - born mortal though she is. For Dionysus' sake, Zeus, as Hesiod says, gave her eternal life and eternal youth. And thus she rides in the chariot of Dionysus toward heaven.
That she is abducted and must experience terrible sorrow is the content of all her legends. In the version of the story which has become the best known, she is abducted from Crete by Theseus and is falsely deserted on the lonely beach of an island. But in the midst of her broken-hearted laments suddenly the enraptured voices of the Bacchic rout are heard, and Dionysus appears, to raise her up to be the queen of his realm.
But she is the queen of the Dionysiac women. She alone is worthy to stand at the side of Dionysus and to become the only one who is raised by him into immortality. This is the reason she wears the crown which the god, in his love, later transported into heaven.
Ariadne is a mortal Aphrodite. It belongs to the nature of the Dionysiac that life and death, mortality and eternity are mixed up with one another in a miraculous way in those who are near to the god. He, himself, is, after all, the child of a mortal mother, and just as he must endure suffering and death, so the women with whom he is most intimately associated reach a state of glory only by passing through deep sorrow.
And here the god "who comes," the god whose epiphany suddenly transforms the world, the deliverer and comforter, reveals himself to her in the most wonderful fashion. Shrouded with suffering, she is startled by the exultant shouts of his chorus and wakes, at his bidding, to bliss in his arms.
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