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Tag: Sleeping Beauty

March 4, 2021

“The Birth of Bacchus” (ll)– Ovid

Jupiter and Semele, 1889 - 1895 - Gustave Moreau

         “Jupiter and Semele” (1889 – 1895)

 

                 Gustave Moreau

 

                       _________

 

 

            Old Beroe’s decrepit shape she wears,

            Her wrinkled visage, and her hoary hairs;

 

Old Beroe, faithful servant of Semele

 

she, Juno / Hera, goddess

 

hoary hairs, love it

 

            Whilst in her trembling gait she totters on,

            And learns to tattle in the nurse’s tone.

 

Juno / Hera transforms herself into

Old Beroe, tattl[ing], talking idly, in

the nurse’s tone, impersonating her

in order to seek revenge, if you’ll

remember, on Semele, for bearing

her husband’s progeny

 

            The Goddess, thus disguis’d in age, beguil’d

            With pleasing stories her false foster-child.

 

foster-child, a child who is fostered,

nurtured, by someone other than a

parent, Semele, by Old Beroe,

purportedly, in this instance

 

false, Juno / Hera is not Old Beroe,

but the nurse’s duplicitous, false,

in both senses of the word here,

double

 

beguil’d, enchanted, amused


            Much did she talk of love, and when she came

            To mention to the nymph her lover’s name,

            Fetching a sigh, and holding down her head,

            “‘Tis well,” says she, “if all be true that’s said.

 

Juliet’s nurse from Romeo and Juliet,

I thought, meets Sleeping Beauty’s

wicked stepmother, for a more

contemporary coupling

 

            But trust me, child, I’m much inclin’d to fear

            Some counterfeit in this your Jupiter:

 

Some counterfeit, yourJupiter is not

your [actual] Jupiter, Juno / Hera

suggests

 

            Many an honest well-designing maid

            Has been by these pretended Gods betray’d,

 

well-designing, without guile, with

no ulterior motive

 

pretended Gods, men who unjustifiably

beat their chest, tell tall tales, unequal

to their proclaimed accomplishments


            But if he be indeed the thund’ring Jove,

            Bid him, when next he courts the rites of love,

            Descend triumphant from th’ etherial sky,

            In all the pomp of his divinity,

            Encompass’d round by those celestial charms,

            With which he fills th’ immortal Juno’s arms.”

 

Juno / Hera, as Old Beroe, tells Semele

to ask her lover, when next he courts

the rites of love, to prove he is indeed

Jove / Jupiter / Zeus, to dress

appropriately

 

Encompass’d round, accoutred,

enveloped, in

 

the pomp, incidentally, the splendour

of his divinity, take on a couple of

extra poetic lines, verses, indicative

of that very splendour

 

note also that Semele seems to have

no qualms about Jove / Jupiter / Zeus‘s

marital status, about bearing the child

of another woman’s man, indeed that

of a very, in this instance, goddess,

the redoubtable Juno / Hera


            Th’ unwary nymph, ensnar’d with what she said, 

 

ensnar’d, ensnarled, caught up in


            Desir’d of Jove, when next he sought her bed,

            To grant a certain gift which she would chuse;

 

Desir’d of, asked of, requested of

 

chuse, choose


            “Fear not,” reply’d the God, “that I’ll refuse

            Whate’er you ask: may Styx confirm my voice,

            Chuse what you will, and you shall have your choice.”

 

Styx, goddess of the river Styx, which

forms the boundary between Earth and

the Underworld, had sided with Jove /

Jupiter / Zeus during the War of the

Titans and been granted by him that

oaths should henceforth all be sworn

upon her, and be punctiliously observed

 

Phoebus / Apollo had similarly granted

his own son Phaeton his wish upon very

Styx, if you’ll remember, with the direst,

for both, of consequences


            “Then,” says the nymph, “when next you seek my arms,

            May you descend in those celestial charms,

            And fill with transport Heav’n’s immortal dame.”

 

show me, Semele asks of her suitor,

what she gets, what Juno / Hera gets,

when next you seek my arms

 

go, girl, I thought, if you’re going

to be irreverent

 

            The God surpriz’d would fain have stopp’d her voice,

            But he had sworn, and she had made her choice.

 

on very Styx, he’d sworn, ever so

perilously

 

stay tuned

 

 

R ! chard

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November 18, 2016

the judgment of richibi

the-judgment-of-paris-1.jpg!Large.jpg

        “The Judgment Of Paris“ (1625) 

                         Peter Paul Rubens

                                       ___________

at the end of a long overdue visit to 
a friend’s home the other night, she 
asked me, did you notice their facial
skin, which of us do you think had 
the best complexion, you can be 
honest, she insisted

we had intended to watch the finals
of a voice competition we’d both 
been following, over a glass of 
wine, or two, each, when a friend 
called, from, essentially, the door,
with a second friend in tow on their
way to a concert in the city

the friend of the friend, a lovely,
effervescent woman, from Poland
originally, with a story to tell of
growing up behind the Iron 
Curtain, was also a beautician in 
a spa she runs in a nearby resort
city

the first friend, equally effervescent, 
had been telling my own friend of the 
intervening events since last they’d  
met, while I lapped up, more or less  
by default, this other alternate Soviet 
reality, perfumed as it was irresistibly 
throughout with the friend’s  
friend’s mellifluous Polish accent

I hadn’t paid any attention whatsoever
to skin quality apart from accepting  
a spa courtesy card for my mother, who 
would, naturally, be interested 

my dearest dear, I answered, I am  
not going anywhere near that one, 
look what happened to Paris when
he fell into that trap

what happened, she asked

the Trojan War, I answered  

the Trojan War, she asked

Paris was the son of Priam and Hecuba, 
king and queen of Troy, I explained, he, 
one of its princes, he’d been awarded 
Helen, wife of Menelaus, king of Sparta, 
by Aphrodite, goddess of love, he’d 
chosen Aphrodite to be the most 
beautiful among the goddesses, that 
was her prize

but let me step back a little, I  
interrupted, you need more context

Eris, goddess of discord, had not been 
invited to the marriage of Peleus and 
Thetis, I recounted, he a Greek hero, 
she a sea nymph, parents both later to 
Achilles, hero at Troy, slain, incidentally, 
by that very Paris, you can read all about 
it in the “Iliad“, I highly recommended

during the festivities, Eris tosses a 
golden apple among the assembled 
divinities, which reads

            “to the fairest” 
 
you can hear the stirrings of the much 
later Sleeping Beauty, incidentally, in 
this earliest of tellings, reconfigured 
from the original myth

Athena, Aphrodite and Hera, all assume
they are meant to receive the apple, and 
ask Zeus, father and husband, to decide

you’ll have to get someone else to touch 
that one, he replies, much as I did

and delegates the task, with the help 
of Hermes, the messenger god, to the
the guileless Paris, son of Priam and 
Hecuba, Trojan king and queen, as I 
said, he, Paris, prince

Paris was tending sheep on Mount Ida
when, fatefully, by a spring, the nubile 
goddesses appeared vaunting their 
unadorned splendours, stark, flagrant, 
manifest, to the musical accompaniment 
of the Graces, Faith, Hope and Charity, 
also the Horae, the Hours, goddesses 
of the seasons, maidens all in complicit  
attendance

Paris, mere mortal, would never have 
stood a chance 

but to sweeten, nevertheless, the 
deal, were it not yet sufficiently sweet, 
Hera promises Paris Europe and Asia 
should he choose her, Athena, 
conquest in war, Aphrodite, goddess 
of love, was set to give him the most
beautiful woman in the world

Paris opts for Aphrodite, and is 
awarded Helen, the face that
launched the thousand proverbial 
ships, the wife, not incidentally,  
and completely inconveniently, of 
the King of Sparta, Menelaus, who 
attacks thereupon Troy with his 
brother, Agamemnon, and their 
allied legions, to reclaim 
Menelaus’, whether abducted, or 
indeed unfaithful, wife, no one 
has ever conclusively determined, 
Paris having been Paris

no one won 

no one survived but Odysseus, 
but that’s another story

I walked home shortly afterwards, 
crossed my own Aegean, ten or
eleven blocks back, red lights, 
nighttime traffic, watched the voice 
competition I’d taped in any case at 
home, whooped it up along with my
favourite contestants, drank to my
narrow miss, had gotten away, I
considered, with the equivalent of 
Europe and Asia, if only in my 
mind

beauty might be in the eye of the 
beholder, I surmised, but it can 
have its thorny indeed 
consequences

Richard

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