La donna è mobile
Qual piuma al vento,
Muta d'accento — e di pensiero.
Sempre un amabile,
Leggiadro viso,
In pianto o in riso, — è menzognero.
È sempre misero
Chi a lei s'affida,
Chi le confida — mal cauto il cuore!
Chi a lei s'affida,
Chi le confida — mal cauto il cuore!
--The Duke of Mantua in Verdi's Rigoletto.
(Woman is fickle
Like a feather in the wind,
She changes her voice — and her mind.
Always sweet,
Lovely face,
In tears or in laughter — a liar.
Always miserable
Is he who trusts her,
He who confides in her — his unwary heart!)
* * *
In time of departures, thinking of arrivals.
Anticipating, musing, imagining.
Because the moment of arrival -- home, or somewhere that creates ties between you and a place you may come to call 'home' -- is so much more heartening and full of promise, despite everything.
Yet all these comings and goings, as well as the comments from friends on my unabated willingness to keep in transit, return me to the thought ever so often. The archetypal image of Man's mobility and Woman's immobility, and how this crucially configures the sexual relations between them in departure and arrival.
Travel is eroticised through and through.
He travels far and wide -- and he arrives, conquers, penetrates a stable female ground: home, an island, a walled garden, an interior, bounded space.
Security.
He departs again -- or desires to, because she keeps him within, confines, devours him, Calypso-like, Circe-like.
Captivity, fear.
"She wants you to be her prisoner,
She wishes to have your body
For herself, not even your heart
To be free."
"Surely," he answered,
I agree, I've no objections.
I want to be her prisoner."
"And so you'll be, by this hand
I lay on your shoulder"
......................
And so she led him off,
Worrying him a bit . . . and giving him hints
Of the prison he was going to.
What lover escapes his prison?
She was right, calling it a prison:
Whoever's in love is no longer free.
--Chretien de Troyes, Ywain: The Knight of the Lion (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), pp. 59-60.
Double standards, the usual story. Bah.
But what if she is the one who travels unbounded? The established order is disrupted, reversed, moral suspicion arises -- hers is the nightflight of the witch, fantasy travel.
Danger, fear.
Wherever she arrives, she is not welcomed.
And thus the journey continues.
Like a feather in the wind,
She changes her voice — and her mind.
Always sweet,
Lovely face,
In tears or in laughter — a liar.
Always miserable
Is he who trusts her,
He who confides in her — his unwary heart!)
* * *
In time of departures, thinking of arrivals.
Anticipating, musing, imagining.
Because the moment of arrival -- home, or somewhere that creates ties between you and a place you may come to call 'home' -- is so much more heartening and full of promise, despite everything.
Yet all these comings and goings, as well as the comments from friends on my unabated willingness to keep in transit, return me to the thought ever so often. The archetypal image of Man's mobility and Woman's immobility, and how this crucially configures the sexual relations between them in departure and arrival.
Travel is eroticised through and through.
He travels far and wide -- and he arrives, conquers, penetrates a stable female ground: home, an island, a walled garden, an interior, bounded space.
Security.
He departs again -- or desires to, because she keeps him within, confines, devours him, Calypso-like, Circe-like.
Captivity, fear.
 |
| Arnold Böcklin, Odysseus und Kalypso, 1883. |
"She wants you to be her prisoner,
She wishes to have your body
For herself, not even your heart
To be free."
"Surely," he answered,
I agree, I've no objections.
I want to be her prisoner."
"And so you'll be, by this hand
I lay on your shoulder"
......................
And so she led him off,
Worrying him a bit . . . and giving him hints
Of the prison he was going to.
What lover escapes his prison?
She was right, calling it a prison:
Whoever's in love is no longer free.
--Chretien de Troyes, Ywain: The Knight of the Lion (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), pp. 59-60.
Double standards, the usual story. Bah.
But what if she is the one who travels unbounded? The established order is disrupted, reversed, moral suspicion arises -- hers is the nightflight of the witch, fantasy travel.
Danger, fear.
Wherever she arrives, she is not welcomed.
And thus the journey continues.
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