Harpies: The Snatchers of Wind and Soul, Wings Between the Living and the Dead
Harpy — engraving by Matthaeus Merian after Jonstons, Naekeurige Beschryvingh van de Natuur , Amsterdam, 1660. The classic image: a woman's face and torso on the body of a bird of prey, swooping to snatch. Their name means snatchers — from the Greek harpazō , to seize, to snatch away, to take by force. And what the Harpies snatch is not just food, though in the earliest myths they torment the blind seer Phineus by stealing his every meal before he can eat it. What they truly snatch is more fundamental: they snatch people at the moment of unexpected death , the ones whose time comes suddenly, without warning, who vanish before they can be said goodbye to. They are the wind that takes you before you are ready. The Harpies move between mythology's two great symbolic territories — wind and death — because these were, in the ancient Greek imagination, profoundly connected. The wind was invisible, irresistible, unmerciful and unpredictable. Death, when it came suddenly, felt...