Earlier today, Jeremiah and I were having a conversation in which he mentioned that during his interwebs perusal yesterday, he "found a picture of a swan raping a woman." (Please don't ask how we arrived at this conversational juncture; we just did.) His face, when I did not immediately recoil in horror, but instead agreed that such a thing was legit, was priceless. I told him the myth of Leda and the Swan, from which union Helen of Troy was born. He seemed less horrified after I explained it, and I decided to share this poem (again) from Yeats:
Leda and the Swan
A sudden blow: the great wings beating still
Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed
By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,
He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.How can those terrified vague fingers push
The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?
And how can body, laid in that white rush,
But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?A shudder in the loins engenders there
The broken wall, the burning roof and tower
And Agamemnon dead.
Being so caught up,
So mastered by the brute blood of the air,
Did she put on his knowledge with his power
Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?
2 comments:
I just love imagining this conversation. Because it is funny. And because, really, anything Greek IS rather horrific: just ask Medea. Or Oedipus.
It is horrifying. Even as I was explaining the story, I kept thinking, "This is awful! Why am I talking about this? Why didn't Helen come out half swan?"
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