sovay | Memery

Whatever you're reading right now, what does it make you think of?

Line 81 of Euripides' Helen, spoken by the Greek Teukros to the woman he does not know is Helen -- for all Greece hates the daughter of Zeus, μισεῖ γὰρ Ἑλλὰς πᾶσα τὴν Διὸς κόρην -- touched off an Imagist flash in my brain . . .

All Greece hates
the still eyes in the white face,
the lustre as of olives
where she stands,
and the white hands.

All Greece reviles
the wan face when she smiles,
hating it deeper still
when it grows wan and white,
remembering past enchantments
and past ills.

Greece sees, unmoved,
God's daughter, born of love,
the beauty of cool feet
and slenderest knees,
could love indeed the maid,
only if she were laid,
white ash amid funereal cypresses.
(H.D., "Helen")

. . . and now I'm slightly more inclined to read Helen in Egypt than to continue with the actual Helen in Egypt I have here, conversing anonymous with Aias' brother beside the Nile. So, join the the club. Think tangentially. Give me your free associations!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Currently finished doing dramaturgy for a play about Savitri, a character from the Mahabharata (and a very cool play it was too, you would have really liked it!)

She holds his death inside her
lotus-petal lungs and muscle spreading
at the sage's feet. Her pearl mind, pure as
the prayer-beads of water down the reed devises
the only word she knows when Yama, virtue-bright
nooses his prana

please.

I'm working on a longer poem about her. This is pretty rough.

This is sort of a random tangent but the first thing that came to mind was Aristophenes line about Alcibiades that Athens "loves, and hates, and cannot do without him." I dont' know if this is what you meant but its what first sprang to mind when I read it.

I, of course, am thinking about the varient texts of this that we read in Babcock's textual criticism class last year...
"the still eyes in the white face" reminds me somehow of Edward Gorey's works. Or maybe something like Gorey crossed with Alma-Tadema (sp?) Which would be a weird combination.
The clock on this computer reminds me I'm spending too much time reading this, instead of Order and Exclusion.

Edward Gorey crossed with Alma-Tadema would be terrific: beautifully rendered classical scenes with creepy Victorian storylines. I would so hang those on my wall . . .

"The still eyes in the white face" most immediately reminds me of Gollum and the moon. Which is creepy, because he's so not like Helen of Troy.

H. D.'s Helen is much more comprehensible (IMO) in "Helen" than in _Helen in Egypt_ but the longer work lets you relieve the frustration by slamming it shut. (In my case, that wasn't enough so I wrote the poem I wished _Helen_ had been, too.)

marymary
http://www.pantoum.org

I actually liked Helen in Egypt, although it has to be taken in small doses and I carefully ignore the prose abstracts at the head of each section. For all its repetition, I think some of its language is beautiful:

Did her eyes slant in the old way?
was she Greek or Egyptian?
had some Phoenician sailor wrought her?

was she oak-wood or cedar?
had she been cut from an awkward block
of ship-wood at the ship-builders,

and afterwards riveted there,
or had the prow itself been shaped
to her mermaid body,

curved to her mermaid hair?
was there a dash of paint
in the beginning, in the garment-fold,

did the blue afterwards wear away?
did they re-touch her arms, her shoulders?
did anyone touch her ever?

Had she other zealot and lover,
or did he alone worship her?
did she wear a girdle of sea-weed

or a painted crown? how often
did her high breasts meet the spray,
how often dive down?
(Eidolon 3.4)

. . . or the closing lines:

But what could Paris know of the sea,
its beat and long reverberation,
its booming and delicate echo,

its ripple that spells a charm
on the sand, the rock-lichen,
the sea-moss, the sand,

and again and again, the sand . . .

Lines like those, for me, make the whole recursive tangle worthwhile. It's all scattered throughout; so I keep reading.

What was your Helen poem?

I agree with you about the language; my stamina for the abstract is probably less than yours.

> What was your Helen poem?

I really liked the idea of her leaving Troy with Achilles and doing something else with her life, it seemed to make her less of a pawn, so I sort of ran with that. She ended up being a dancer (salsa, but it's my one anachronism ever and I love it). I called it "Ellen in Egypt" and the first line goes "I had to change my name and cut my hair". (I'm happy to send you a copy if you're interested, but I'm still shopping it around to lit mags so don't want to post it.)

marymary
http://www.pantoum.org

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re: _Helen in Egypt_

Re: _Helen in Egypt_

Re: _Helen in Egypt_