circe triumphant
This is a drawing of the sorceress, Circe, painted by my friend Shelley. I love it! She actually looks like she might come from Italy or Greece, which is more than I can say for other Circe portraits. I am thinking of John Waterhouse’s exquisitely done painting, Circe Invidiosa. In it we see the woman from the island of Aeaea appear as a pale, upper class British lass. I suppose it's no surprise coming from a Victorian, but a little disappointing; especially when it turns out that Aeaea isn’t really a mythical island but lies on the western coast of Italy (it turns out it was connected to the mainland by a small, sandy peninsula and at high tide still turns into an island). So Circe is Italian, not Gaelic.
What she is really famous for is turning Odysseus' sailors into pigs for having vulgar table manners. In the sort of logic that only works in fairy tales and classical mythology, when her magic failed to work on Odysseus, Circe fell in love with him. Odysseus had no problems being her lover for a year but then left her so he could return to his wife. Oi vey! Later in the story Odysseus goes berserk and kills everyone he finds hanging out in his house, eating his food, when he returns from his year spent on Aeaea. He feels aggrieved, he tells his wife. But when I think of reprehensible behavior I think of girls in certain parts of the world who are sold for cash. This happens everyday and for the same hundred dollars I spend a month on coffee I could probably rescue another human life out of bondage. As the Bengali poet Anuradha Mahapatra put it, "… when I see an image worshiped/ I think about the daughter of the house/ being sold for cash". There's reprehensible behavior for you.
As for Circe, accounts vary on her reaction to the news her lover was leaving her. This is one of them.
Thanks Shelley! You rock (again)!
Don't talk to me of betrayal; each day
one more daughter will get sold for money.
If they had my art, darling, you would pray
to be swine. Look at me. My long, tawny
hair is black with ash, with sorrow from you.
Such a fire and the black earth rages in me.
Fire and honey flower. Who turned? and who
kissed me? Tell me, was that love? I lay, only
in my anklets, all night. I remember
all of your anger, all of your contempt.
You crave what you crave. I am such a toy.
You crave to be fed. Your cravings beggar
me; they are of all who you'll lure and tempt;
comfort and console; betray and destroy.