Longfellow's Hades

My aunt was a weirdo: she talked to trees, walked around the house naked and used to read me “The Metamorphoses” by Ovid and “The Song of Hiawatha” by Longfellow as a bedtime story. “Oom-ta-ta, oom-ta-ta”, - dactyl waltzed, pages rustled and I came down dactylic stairs into my personal Hades of dreams. Beavers are in the Styx! Bison hide in reeds from mosquitos. Herds of wild mustangs graze on the Elysium fields. Red-skinned young ladies with asphodels in plaits listen to the story of Orpheus and Eurydice that the magic Willow tells them. Everybody's happy but Charon: Hiawatha* takes Minnehaha** out in his boat. But where is the son of Rhea and Cronus and his wife Persephone? “Lookee, lookee, - Olympus laughs, - who rules the netherworld now. Henry Longfellow!” Time passed. I grew up. Other rhymes obsessed me. But every night, having slipped past three-headed Mishe-nama***, I go down into Longfellow’s Hades in search of my late aunt. * The main character of “The Song of Hiawatha”. ** Hiawatha’s ladylove. *** The character of “The Song of Hiawatha”, the king of fishes.