Plot
The Titans are a pantheon of gods who ruled prior to the Olympians, and are now destined to fall. They include Saturn (king of the gods), Ops (his wife), Thea (his sister), Enceladus (god of war), Oceanus (god of the sea), Hyperion (the god of the sun) and Clymene (a young goddess). The poem opens with Saturn bemoaning the loss of his power, which is being overtaken by Jupiter. Thea leads him to a place where the other Titans sit, similarly miserable, and they discuss whether they should fight back against their conquest by the new gods (the Olympians). Oceanus declares that he is willing to surrender his power to Neptune (the new god of the sea) because Neptune is more beautiful (this is worth bearing in mind in relation to the Romantic idea that beauty is paramount). Clymene describes first hearing the music of Apollo, which she found beautiful to the point of pain (another Romantic idea). Finally, Enceladus makes a speech encouraging the Titans to fight.
Meanwhile Hyperion's palace is described, and we first see Hyperion himself, the only Titan who is still powerful. He is addressed by Uranus (old god of the sky, father of Saturn), who encourages him to go to where Saturn and the other Titans are. We leave the Titans with the arrival of Hyperion, and the scene changes to Apollo (the new sun god, also god of music, civilisation and culture) weeping on the beach. Here Mnemosyne (goddess of memory) encounters him and he explains to her the cause of his tears: he is aware of his divine potential, but as yet unable to fulfill it. By looking into Mnemosyne's eyes he receives knowledge which transforms him fully into a god. The poem breaks off at this point, in mid-line, with the word "celestial".
Read more about this topic: Hyperion (poem)
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“The plot was most interesting. It belonged to no particular age, people, or country, and was perhaps the more delightful on that account, as nobody’s previous information could afford the remotest glimmering of what would ever come of it.”
—Charles Dickens (1812–1870)
“James’s great gift, of course, was his ability to tell a plot in shimmering detail with such delicacy of treatment and such fine aloofness—that is, reluctance to engage in any direct grappling with what, in the play or story, had actually “taken place”Mthat his listeners often did not, in the end, know what had, to put it in another way, “gone on.””
—James Thurber (1894–1961)
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—Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)