In the Labyrinth

Katherine Ace: The Open Ended Metaphor

I am bringing an old post back because I wanted to review again the fabulous discussion on women's art, especially the work of Katherine Ace and the events that surround and shape the direction of women's lives. And re-reading it again, I still find it as fascinating and with much to offer as when we first tackled the subject. Please feel free to join this ongoing discussion in the comments below. 

 

The structure of fairy tales and traditional folklore rests on the use of repetition to pattern the images into metaphors providing an emotional experience of transformation for the audience in the oral traditions and for the reader following them in print. Storytellers use repetition to shape the story and emphasize important details in each section of the tale. It begins with an interdiction at the home of birth, a repeated request to do or not to do something, which is usually ignored by the third time. The middle section is a stripping away of identity and connection to the human world, with the protagonist becoming lost in the woods, the veld, the sky, and the sea. Swallowed up and sometimes ingested by the elements of nature and the fantastic.

Repetition helps to parallel the experience of the two separate moments: the repeated interdiction of "don't " becomes a new list in the middle of what must be done to survive. Feed the cat, oil the gate, and clean an old woman's eyes. But a price is paid, sometimes even a temporary death, as the old identity is stripped, and a new one is reformed in the fantastic world.  And the last section becomes the return home, often perilous, success dependent on how well nature has communicated the rules of survival and how well they are followed. If in accordance with nature, the protagonist returns, restored to a new identity, a new status, and a new purpose.

Each section of the narrative -- separation, initiation, return-- is patterned in a parallel fashion to the other. As in metaphor, there is a delightful tension between where it begins, where it meets with the impossible, and where it sublates the changes to become something new and unique. The dialectical journey in rites of passage, the death of the old identity, the reforming and re-emergence of a new identity, are combined into a single metaphor of transformation, revealed through images from the human world, the fantastic world, and the cache of inherited cultural archetypes in the narrative performance. 

All this is to explain, why I am so taken by the fairy tale art of Katherine Ace, who expresses her work with fairy tales in a very similar fashion -- painting the narrative with a series of visual metaphors folding in on themselves to express the unstable identities of the tales. She says this in her artist's statement: 

"The intersection of contraries fascinates me: ecstasy and agony; humor and tragedy; natural and constructed realities; experience and news. I find that I'm curious about the struggles of diversity vs. unity in human, animal and plant societies. I am captivated by complex issues that we all face, and yet experience personally, intimately. I am interested in the role of dark feelings, thoughts and states of mind in the process of transformation, l am drawn to fire beneath reserve."

And again here when she considers the evocative imagery in fairy tales that fuels her ideas as an artist:

"I am interested in complex story telling using cultural myths and histories that reach back into our collective and personal pasts. Figures and still life figures evolve as open ended metaphors for concepts and environments that are themselves also metaphors, and therefore fold - like fabric, time, or paint - back in on themselves. Like a poem, a painting is a surface. The depth is in the surface (oddly). It sort of dawns on you - like the way one remembers a dream sometimes, in fragments that float up all through the day, assembling themselves oddly, disturbingly..."

I find this description compelling -- for it is in the story tellers performance, or the writer of fairy tales to create the same tension between the surface of the tale, and the dream-like, metaphorical journeys as real and fantastic collide in the stories, and that it is the experience itself -- dreamlike and disturbing that holds our fascination with the tales. 

 The paintings from top to bottom: "The Juniper Tree," "The Frog King," "The Handless Maiden,"  "Six Swans," and "Many Furs."  (All my favorite tales!) For more information on Katherine Ace please visit her website.

I also found the collection of Sicilian Folktales collected by Laura Gonzenbach, translated into English. They are amazing and she was quite interesting.  

Excerpt from The Innamorati: Anna's Return

This is a complicated moment in the novel when several threads come together, all for the purpose of resolving Anna's terrifying possession. Having accepted the maenad's mask, and now in its spell, Anna throws herself into the bloody revels of the maenads following Bacchus. Two men with separate interests in Anna have been searching for her, one to offer love, the other the gift of redemption. And yet a third waits for her, the Tago -- a creature out of Etruscan folklore that represents the spirit of a child. But this is no easy rescue (are they ever?) for the maenads will not surrender their sister without a fight. 

In the dimming twilight, Anna stood on the bank of the river and scooped out handfuls of white clay embedded in the dark mud. She threw back the fawn's skin from her shoulders and smeared the wet clay on her arms, her legs, and her throat. Excitement threaded her veins. The night was fast approaching when they would begin the ritual of the hunt.

The ritual began by drinking wine until it overflowed the rims of their mouths and stained their white, clay-covered throats with crimson. The drowsy torpor that assailed the maenads during the day would be replaced with a fever born of the quickening breath of the wine and the sting of Bacchus s biting kiss. Then the drums would sound their slow ponderous beat, the leader would cry out her high-pitched ululations, and the hunt would begin.

Bacchus was generous to them, his divine hand guiding wild prey into their snares. Last night it had been a panther, his black velvet coat sleek as the shadows. The maenads followed the trail of his musky scent along the fringes of the dead oak forest until Bacchus lured him into the sacred olive grove. There they had quickly circled the beast, chanting and rattling their spears. The panther had raked the mask from the lead hunter with his steel-grey claws and torn deep furrows in her face. The screams of the fallen woman had joined in chorus with the panthers defiant squalls.

Anna stopped spreading the white clay on her arms. A strange mixture of emotions warred within her: elation and pleasure at the ecstasy of the hunt and horror at the memory of the mutilated panther and the dying woman, her true face drowned in blood. Her broken mask lay on the grass like the panther s legs and paws and tail when the maenads had torn it to pieces. Anna could still taste the raw flesh on her tongue, still smell the strong metallic odor of blood. With painful deliberation, she lifted a hand toward her masked face. If she could touch the unfamiliar face that curved so intimately over her own, these fearful images would stop.

Suddenly Bacchus was there. He caught her hand in his and placed it against his heart. His hairless chest was smooth, the skin warm and oiled. Through her fingertips, she could feel his heart rapping out an in¬vitation to the hunt. He grinned at her, his midnight eyes capturing the doubt in her eyes and banishing it. She tilted her head back and he bit her lower lip and sucked it hard, drawing blood. The taste of wine and his saliva trickled into her mouth with each thrust of his tongue. A fire erupted in her belly and spread its flames to her thighs and her breasts. He released her and was gone.

The solemn drums quickened their pace and the reed pipes played shrilly, calling the maenads together. The lead hunter raised high her thrysus and shook its dry rattles over the band. They waited restlessly as Bacchus held the bowl of wine above their heads. He gave it first to the leader of the hunt. Head tilted back, she gulped steadily until the wine dribbled down the sides of her chin. She lowered the bowl at last and, with a reluctant sigh, passed it to the next woman, who drank as deeply. And so the bowl passed from hand to hand, from mouth to mouth, and was never emptied.

Anna took the bowl between her white hands and closed her eyes as she inhaled the fragrant wine. Eagerly she tipped the wine down her throat. Like the god's kiss it scorched her lips like a mouthful of flames. Her lungs clamored for air, but still she drank, swallowing rapidly until she felt the wine fill the dark hollow of her belly. She gagged as wine bubbled over her tongue and gushed down the sides of her mouth. And only then did she pull the bowl away from her lips and pass it to the next woman. Read more >>>

Research Notes, Johnstone, Impro : Masks and Trance I, Trance States in Masks II, Rudlin Commedia Masks III

Excerpts from The Innamorati: Anna and the Masks , Anna Surrenders, Anna's Return

 

Photo credit: Didaskalia: Journal for Ancient Theater

Excerpt from The Innamorati: Erminia And Two Poets

This is was fun scene to write as it provided me a chance to get back at that wretched Orpheus after reading all the mythological shenanigans he did to harm the Sirens and get away with it. Well, only to a certain extent. There was that unfortunate incident with the maenads, but even from that Orpheus managed to bounce -- at least his head did, as it was placed on a pedestal and given the power of speech. Orpheus was to serve a long time as an oracle of sorts. Erminia arrives at the maze with the purpose of trying to convince the head of Orpheus to give the Sirens back their voices, even though she failed to remain silent for ten years. She finds herself escorted by Orpheus' servant Ipnos -- a bratty piece of work with three faces that all seem to talk at once. Ipnos has dragged the poet Lorenzo into the maze, very much against his will to meet with Orpheus. Lorenzo, once a brilliant poet, has turned to the law, rejecting all forms of metaphorical language because of the guilt he feels for having possibly murdered his beloved wife. I laughed through this whole scene. I couldn't help myself. Lorenzo is a stammering wreck trying to deny the existence of his fantastic companions, Orpheus the great poet is crude and rude, and Erminia for once knows how to hold her tongue and strike a bargain.

Ever since Ipnos had pulled him over the wall of the maze, Lorenzo had been trying to choose which face to confront when he spoke to the querulous servant. But it had been impossible. Whenever Lorenzo spoke to one face, it gazed elsewhere while the other two faces regarded him keenly. And when Lorenzo switched his attention to a different face, then that face would ignore him and he would discover that the first face was now taking an interest in the conversation. Ipnos was one man, Lorenzo told himself firmly. All Lorenzo had to do was figure out which face was the real one.

But Ipnos hadn't disturbed Lorenzo's peace of mind half as much as Erminia. She should not have captured his attention at all. After all, she was ugly, a single black brow across her forehead shading her eyes, her hair an unwashed mat of snarls.

But there was something in the scent of her that made Lorenzo light¬headed, something in the glance of her piercing blue eyes that made him feel vulnerable. Every time she spoke, his throat constricted with an unbearable sadness. Her voice tore through the seams of the lawyer's facade, threatening to expose the poet beneath.

 

 No. It was not a facade. It was the truth! He had studied law in Bologna. He was no longer a poet. That conceit had been drummed out of him seven years ago. He had no use for metaphor. Poetry had died with Cecilia and the lie she had made of their marriage. He stole a glance at the heavy-bodied woman beside him. If only he didn't have to hear her voice or travel in the wake of her scent, it would be easier.

"Was she beautiful?" asked Erminia, brushing her tangled hair out of her eyes.

"Who?" Lorenzo asked, staring at the ground beneath his feet as they walked in an effort to ignore the discomfort she caused him.

"Whoever she was that brought you to this state," answered Erminia. "It had to be a woman." Read More >>>

 

Notes From De Sirenibus Part I,  Notes From De Sirenibus Part II, Notes From De Sirenibus Part III, Notes From De Sirenibus Part IV

Excerpts From The Innamorati: Eminia the Siren I,  Erminia's Song II, Erminia and Two Poets III, Erminia's Embrace IV

Homeric Sirens II: Enchanters of All Mankind

I am trying to remember that moment in writing The Innamorati -- constructed mainly around the characters of the Commedia dell'Arte-- when I decided I needed the Siren Herminia to join the cast. I cannot now conceive of the novel without her -- but neither can I recall conceiving the necessity of her in the story either. The very ambiguity of her nature fills her with so many possibilities. She is the ultimate outsider, not a pilgrim, not human, but dependent on the company of humans on a pilgrimage. An incredibly dangerous and potentially destructive creature at home on the sea, she is a mute servant on land, serving a ten year stretch of silence. As a Siren her song is everything, but if she speaks one sound, she loses the opportunity to retrieve the voices of her sisters from Orpheus. And of course, her curse lies in her inability to deny the power of her nature. While the rest of the pilgrims stumble through the maze, Erminia is not subject to its magic and moves through it easily to arrive at her specific destination: the head of Orpheus holding forth on a pedestle in a hidden in a cave in the maze. And it is there she encounters the poet who is dead to his own words, bound up in knots -- and in a most unlike way, the siren must unbind his song inorder to free herself. Here are more notes from de Rachewiltz's  De Sirenibus  on the Homeric Siren and I see in them the ripples of Erminia's character come to life. 

Notes From De Sirenibus II:

 Connecting Circe and the Sirens further when Hermes warns Odysseus of her enchanting drugs. The Sirens' bewitching is definitely an act of magic, closely related to Circe's bewitching potions and is performed exclusively through the sweet melody of their singing."  Circe describes this danger as essentially a danger which threatens domesticity: "that man...has no prospect of coming home and delighting his wife and little children as they stand about greeting (XII, 42-43) The Sirens' song thus represents a danger to the mind and memory and therefore, social order. And a man without memory or social order is ineffect dying, becoming "boneheaps of men now rotted away, the skins shrivel upon them." (XII, 45-46) 

"The flowery meadows of the Sirens' island  evoking the meadow by the streams of Okeanos, the dwelling place of the dead." The island appears to be a permanent habitat of the Sirens, they are tied to it, since they do not attempt to move toward the beach, but direct their "sweet song" to Odysessus to draw him near to a "windless calm."  The Sirens occupy a place at the extreme end of nature-culture opposition, underscored by the "boneheaps of men now rotted away." The Sirens are death not mediated or ritually modified in any way by culture." Levi-Straussian -- their shriveled corpses "cooked" but not "eaten."  At least, Circe changes her victims into pigs which she does eat -- but the Sirens lay waste. 

"The concept of lashing, binding, knotting: "The emphasis on bondage and lashings is not without significance for the Sirens' name evokes binding enchantment. (Seirenes derived etymologically from "cord" (Greek) or "song" from Phoenecia -- it suggests Homer's audience would have seen the Sirens as "the binding ones." Again, the relationship to Circe -- mistress of knots (which she teaches Odysessus)...The song of the Sirens is a binding song -- deranging, maddening, will-destroying -- binding the mind and withering the victim. 

"The Sirens' song is murderous precisely to the extent that it tends to dissasociate the realm of language from the realm of action...And here we encounter the central enigma of the Sirens...an essential paradox...the perils of unhumanized, unacculturated Nature and at the same time the skills most valued in the social and sacred economies of Greek culture, those arts of language and of song, which the Sirens share with the bard...The Sirens could represent a concept of song as a natural power which has its source in nature -- not a human invention, but rather bound up with the deepest energies of the cosmos.

"Karoly Marot associates both Muses and Sirens with Ukranian water-queens which at night rise to the surface of the sea to sing. The notion of all songs as magic songs, and the role of the poet as listener..a divinely inspired mediator between the real, of the sacred and the human....they appear to be associated with the unmitigated forces of Nauter; on the other hand they seem to embody the seductive lures of Culture-- the pleasures of poetic artifice...the enchanting lies that sweet melodious language can lead us to mistake for truth." 

Notes From De Sirenibus Part I,  Notes From De Sirenibus Part II, Notes From De Sirenibus Part III, Notes From De Sirenibus Part IV

Excerpts From The Innamorati: Eminia the Siren I,  Erminia's Song II, Erminia and Two Poets III, Erminia's Embrace IV

Photograph: "Noyer le Passe. Embrasser l'avenir"  ("Drowing the Past, Embracing the Future") by Thanh-Nguyen

Excerpt from The Innamorati: Erminia's Song

This excerpt is taken from Chapter Eight in The Innamorati when Erminia finds herself in the piazza, watching a performance of the Commedia troupe, the Libertini. She is stunned by the magic of Anna Forseti's masks. And their power incite in her the longing to be fully the fantastic creature that she is, threatening to undo the vow of ten years of silence made to Orpheus, as a way of retrieving the voices of her sisters won by Orpheus in a match. But powerful creatures like Sirens can not hide for long behind a mask and in this intersection of theater, poetry, song, and fantastic masks, Erminia returns to herself with terrible consequences.

 

 ...Erminia tensed, as her foster brother Nicolo sidled next to her in the crowd, his breath hot in her ear. He pinched her hard, his rough nails trying to pierce her skin.

Tears welled in her eyes and bled into the tiny spaces between her skin and the rough surface of her mask. Erminia turned to face him and he was leering at her as if glad to see her tears. How small he is, she thought, and pathetic, like a mangy cur. What chance has he to know the ecstasy of sublime love? How easy it would be to bestow that blessing and that curse upon him.

Her briny tears weakened the outer shell of her mask andthe dirty skin split open in a jagged line from her breastbone to her cheek. She inhaled, parting her lips and the skin tore over her mouth, her nose, and her forehead, the radiance of her white skin blistering through the dissolving husk. Wind blew the tangled hair out of her face, and her eyes blazed sapphire.

Terror leapt into his face. He struggled to turn away but she grabbed him by the bosom of his shirt, and held him. Her eyes bore into the shallow well of his heart. Now will I sing for you! she thought, drunk with the dust of the masks' magic.

Sound boiled in her throat, filled the cavern of her mouth, pressed against her teeth. She tilted her head back and released one long note in a thin stream of blue light. Somewhere between the tines of her back¬bone she mourned her broken silence, her broken vow. But the flowing sound scraped the hard crust of loneliness from her skin like the sea tearing the mussels from the rocks.

Once freed, Erminia could no more swallow her voice into silence than she could stop the arms of the moon from pulling the sea every night to the shore. It had been wrong to hide it. Silence was a curse laid on a curse. Read more >>>

 

Notes From De Sirenibus Part I,  Notes From De Sirenibus Part II, Notes From De Sirenibus Part III, Notes From De Sirenibus Part IV

Excerpts From The Innamorati: Eminia the Siren I,  Erminia's Song II, Erminia and Two Poets III, Erminia's Embrace IV 

 

Photo by Spanish photographer Cristina Otero

Excerpt From The Innamorati: Erminia, the Siren

I am working on a series of posts on my research on the sirens -- all of which went into creating the character of Erminia, the siren in The Innamorati. I decided to provide something from the novel as an opportunity to see how the research transforms into character. So here is the chapter where she is introduced. 

Erminia picked her way carefully between the rocks and gnarled tree roots of the path as she made her way down a steep slope to the sea. Behind her, the hills rose into pleated crests lined with cedar, oak, and pine. The gorse bloomed bright yellow amid the green leaves in the dawn light. The sky was streaked pink, striped with scudding clouds chased by an ocean breeze. The last fingers of the night's mist clung to the trees.

She smiled, breathing in the fresh taste of the sea. She was tall, big-boned at the wrists, and heavyset across the shoulders. Her face was long and square, her black hair a matted tangle of curls and snagged twigs. Beneath dark eyebrows, her eyes were surprisingly light, shifting from grey to sapphire. Erminia moved confidently down the switchback trail, unafraid of the steep slope or the hazards it presented. Long muscles in her thighs bunched as each calloused heel dug into the path for balance until she reached a rocky coastline where boulders worn into smooth slabs tumbled into the water. Erminia stared hungrily at the waves churning and breaking over the rocks, casting plumes of white foam into the air.

She inhaled through her parted lips and held her breath. In that mouthful of sea-damp air, she tasted every shore the sea had touched. And from the taste of it, she exhaled visions of what had dipped into the water: the bitter olive pits tossed into the sea farther up the coast; the peppery trail of spices carried on a ship into Genoa; the fear-sweat of horses confined in the hold of another ship. With each breath Erminia took and released, something else materialized in the air her head: a canvas sail, torn and mended; a sailor's wool sweater rank with lanolin from the sheep; old wine bottles; the cast-off beak of an octopus; a basil-seasoned mussel shell. Read More>>>

 

Notes From De Sirenibus Part I,  Notes From De Sirenibus Part II, Notes From De Sirenibus Part III, Notes From De Sirenibus Part IV

Excerpts From The Innamorati: Eminia the Siren I,  Erminia's Song II, Erminia and Two Poets III, Erminia's Embrace IV

 

A Middle of the Night Meeting With the Commedia

I realized in the middle of the night that everything I had imagined about the plot structure of Three Sisters was insufficient unto the task. I had assumed I could move from one sister's narrative to another, forming discreet and somewhat separate interludes. But, I realized as I turned over on the pillow that If I stuck to that plan, the novel wouldn't have a wholeness about it -- it would lack an integration of ideas, themes, and characters. It would just be like transplanting three short stories into an artificial frame. I wouldn't be taking the extra step as a writer to make it mean something more than a reproduction of the fairy tale plots of the sisters. So who then to help me make the stories work together? I needed characters naturally endowed with the gift of storytelling and a nomadic way of life. Characters whose profession is to transform the local tale into art, and art into an evocative display of the universal human condition (along with some decent naughty jokes to spice it up).

And all at once, there were there. The Libertini, a Commedia dell' Arte troop (who livened up the pages of The Innamorati), appear sporadically in the early chapters of Three Sisters. And what woke me in the night, beside that nagging plot problem, was the realization that my intuitive brain had written them into the background, knowing before me that I would need them -- need their expertise at improvising, need their brilliant observations of human nature, need their mythic masks that speak through the actors with unvarnished voices. And...a wagon and a portable stage so as to be nimble enough to move across the different plots and localities of the sisters' tales. The Libertini might well be the ones to bring all the stories together. And there it was...enough of an answer to allow me to return to sleep, assured that my problems once realized, were also half solved.

But, now, in the light of day, I am a staggering around, trying to re-think the entire plot structure to give my performers a little more stage time so they can do their job of explaining it all to me. The next few days are going to be pretty interesting. But like Pulcinella below, this is how I do my best work at problem solving when it all proves too much.

  Art: French School, Scene of Commedia Actors, (ca 1580), Jan Miel, Commedia dell'Arte Actors on a Wagon in a Town Square (ca. 1650), Giambattista Tiepolo, Pulcinella asleep after a night of drinking (ca. 1755).