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 directions 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 in with 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 as well as for the reader following them in print. Story tellers use repetition to shape the story and for emphasis on 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 usually by the third time is ignored. The middle section is a stripping away of identity and connection to the human world, the protagonist becoming lost in the woods, the veld, the sky, 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, clean the eyes of an old woman. 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 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.  

Working on the Reissue of The Flight of Michael McBride.

As the work on Hannah's Garden is getting finalized this month for release in November, I have also begun the work of re-issuing The Flight of Michael Michael, which will be published by Leaping Hart Press. Set in the late 1870s, the novel is an unusual pairing of Irish fantasy and and the iconic American cattle ride. What better way for a not yet hero to undergo a rite of passage? Here's an excerpt from the novel, where Michael discovers that he sees more things in the world than an ordinary man...terrifying creatures hunting him for reasons he doesn't understand. Here's an excerpt from Chapter Three:

"...There was no carriage standing before him, but as he turned to look behind him, Michael tensed. There, waiting on a black horse, was the man in the red cap. Only now Michael saw it wasn’t a cap, but long red hair slicked down close to the sides of the man’s narrow face. Surrounding the man were other mounted horsemen spread across the street, their spears and axes held upright. On the pommels of their saddles were skulls tied together, festooned with red and green ribbons and the glint of twirling gold coins. In the shadows of the building, the horsemen’s faces were a deep mottled brown, their bodies thick and strong like carved oak. But in the open street, the sunlight drenched the armor and the warriors shone transparent as a sheet of gold rain. They were attended by wraiths whose pale gray faces wore masks of misery and who stared at Michael out of haunted eyes. Hands soft as dust clung to the bridles and held the mounts steady. Shadowed substance and shining light, they appeared to Michael at once solid and threatening as a closing storm and as vaporous as a misty dream. The man with the long red hair nodded at Michael.

"Red Cap. That’s what the tiny stick creatures had called him. And Michael recognized him at once. The man was hunting him, and this time he’d brought an army.

"A crow cawed loudly overhead and the horsemen shifted in their saddles, their eyes trained upward toward the sound. Out of the blue sky, a huge black crow flapped wide her wings, driving a black shadow over the street beneath her gliding body. The horsemen stirred, clutching the reigns as their mounts became restive. The wraiths bowed their heads into the deep valleys of their bony shoulders. Red Cap broke away from the line of waiting horsemen to confront the crow. He pulled his long bow from a case in his saddle and knocked a long arrow of yew, its red fletch a streak of blood."

A Return to Zizola and Giano

And brief excerpt from The Prologue of As Yet Un-Named Book Two: The Continuing Adventures of Zizola and her Servant Giano, the Terrible Tales and Fortunes of Fleeing Brides, The Curse of Animal Husbands, and A Dead Mother In Law Who Won't Let Go. 

 

It was easy enough to find the old trickster, Zizola thought as she approached the grove of laurel and myrtle trees that presided over a shade-filled glen carpeted in long sweet grass and wild flowers. Tiger-capped lilies and spider-wort shivered at the tussle of bodies half hidden where they lay at the base of the blooming stalks. Zizola could hear him and his consort of nymphs well before she could see him.

“Giano!” she called, as she waded through the tall grass, brushing the low branches out of her face. “Giano, you dowager’s hound, get your hump up. I’ve come to talk to you.”

A pink-faced nymph sat up, the tall grass barely concealing the generous flesh of her full breasts. She pouted, giving Zizola an annoyed expression, and then her eyes rolled up in delighted rapture. Something beneath her bounced her up and down with vigor, shaking the honeyed hair loose from its pins.

Zizola slowed, and then stopped altogether as the nymph arched her back and shrieked happily. Giano answered her, somewhere hidden in the grass, his body covered by the fleshy thighs of the nymph above him. He growled, then grunted, then barked out lusty names, “my fat fruit, my honey roll, my melting gorgonzola.” Zizola shrugged, annoyed at having to wait for the old letch to finish, but she knew enough of his habits to know that when he started confusing his paramours with food he was nearly done. Sex made him hungry, and she was certain that his climaxes were caused as much by a fierce desire for food as from the generous flesh of the woman riding his ever-ready asparagus.

“Dai, dai, hurry it along,” Zizola shouted impatiently. “I haven’t got all day.”

“I do,” moaned the nymph, and licked her lips.

“Pasta con fungi, mounds of ricotta with honey and raisins, Ferrera lasgna with veal and cinnamon,” Zizola taunted and heard Giano’s moans. She spoke faster, “Ragu, risotto with pidegon peas, ucellini in brown sauce…”

Giano growled, the nymph squealed and then pitched forward, only the rhythmic rise and fall of her spine visible above the curtain of tall grass. Their heavy panting ruffled the shivering lilies.

“Bene,” Zizola snorted, waiting with arms crossed until the nymph rolled over and disappeared beneath the veil of green.

Giano sat up, leaves and crushed flowers entwined in the tangle of graying hair. His skin beneath a scraggly beard was ruddy and chaffed. He yawned, and gave Zizola a sly, sleepy smile.

“Carina,” he said, scratching his scrawny chest, and the dark eyes looked at her with mock disappointment. “To hurry a man along in his labors in such an edible fashion… really….it isn’t fair. You know my weakness,” he complained. “If only I knew yours…I could return the favor.”

Zizola bit her thumb and shook it at him. “Get up old man.”

He grinned and stood, the tips of the grass and the belling flowers barely covering his naked flanks...

 

Art Credit: Alexey Kondakov. Check out more of his wonderful combinations of Renaissance Art and the Modern landscape. 

Taiko Haessler: Costa Rican Duendes and Folklore

Many years ago now, my daughter took herself to Costa Rica as a teenager to immerse herself in a Spanish speaking country to learn the language and a place of great beauty -- mountains and ocean. She found it in a small seaside town called Tamarindo (which since those years has become a favorite tourist destination, though back then it was surf shops, local dances halls and miles of white surf. I was writing for an online journal of mythic arts at the time and prevailed upon her to write an article on her experience with Costa Rican popular culture and folklore. She sent us back "When My Hair Was Woven With Duendes," and what a wonderful article it is on the duendes of the rain forest and encounters with magical and sometimes dangerous creatures.

 

"...For weeks I asked Lysia to bring me any storybooks she might have on Costa Rican folklore, mythology, or duendes (faeries). Then, on my last day at the school, she took me aside and quietly suggested that I speak with her after class. Thrilled, I assumed that she had brought a book to loan to me — but what Lysia had in store was not a book. Instead, it was a personal story of her encounter with a creature called La Segua. Sitting in the cool shade of the rancho, the midday sun glistening off the restless sea and white sands, Lysia recalled for me her frightening encounter with Costa Rica's other world..."  Read the article.

 

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