Katabasis
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Katabasis, or catabasis, (from Greek κατὰ, "down" βαίνω "go") is a descent of some type, such as moving downhill, or the sinking of the winds or sun, a military retreat, or a trip to the underworld or a trip from the interior of a country down to the coast. There exist multiple related meanings in poetry, rhetoric, and modern psychology.
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A trip to the coast
The term katabasis can refer to a trip from the interior of a country down to the coast (for example, following a river), while the term anabasis refers to an expedition from a coastline up into the interior of a country.
This is the main meaning given for katabasis by the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) which it describes as "A going down; a military retreat, in allusion to that of the ten thousand Greeks under Xenophon, related by him in his Anabasis." and quote:
1837 DE QUINCEY Revolt Tartars Wks. 1862 IV. 112 The Russian anabasis and katabasis of Napoleon. 1899 Westm. Gaz. 17 May 4/1 Little space is devoted to the Anabasis; it is, as in the story of Xenophon, the Katabasis which fills the larger part. {{#if: OED - katabasis|– OED - katabasis{{#if:|, {{{3}}}}}{{#if:|, {{{4}}}}}
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In the opening of Plato's Republic, Socrates recounts "going down" to the port city of Piraeus, located South of his native Athens. Several scholars, most notably Allan Bloom, have read this first word, kateben ("I went down") as an allusion to Odysseus' journey into the underworld.
Arts
In poetry and rhetoric, the term katabasis refers to a "gradual descending" of emphasis on a theme within a sentence or paragraph, while anabasis refers to a gradual ascending in emphasis. John Freccero notes, "In the ancient world, [the] descent in search of understanding was known as katabasis", thus endowing mythic and poetic accounts of katabasis with a symbolic significance.
Modern psychology
In modern psychology, the term katabasis is also sometimes used to describe the depression some young men experience. Author Robert Bly proposes in his book Iron John: A Book About Men several reasons for the "catabasis phenomenon", amongst them the lack of Western initiation rites and the lack of strong father figures and role models.
Trip into the underworld
Katabasis is the epic convention of the hero's trip into the underworld. In Greek mythology, for example, Orpheus enters the underworld in order to bring Eurydice back to the world of the living.
Most katabases take place in a supernatural underworld, such as Hades or Hell — as in Nekyia, the 11th book of the Odyssey, which describes the descent of Odysseus to the underworld. However, katabasis can also refer to a journey through other dystopic areas, like those Odysseus encounters on his 10-year journey back from Troy to Ithaca. Pilar Serrano allows the term katabasis to encompass brief or chronic stays in the underworld, including those of Lazarus and Castor and Pollux. In this case, however, the katabasis must be followed by an anabasis in order to be considered a true katabasis instead of a death.
