Notes on HD’s ‘Leuke’ in her _Helen in Egypt_
On L’isle blanche “as a flash in the heavens at noon / that blinds the sun, / is their Meeting.” CP100 I am struck by this image of the white island – a splitting of the atom – skills known to the ancients – an ability to split the atom with the weapon of superconsciousness – as Krishna demonstrated for Arjuna, and the walls of Jericho ruined by chanted harmonics. If Agamemnon and Achilles are two parts of an atom, to be split asunder for love, whom is the third star, if not Helen?
The cruel ties of Love bound within a gaze; Love does not love me but I love Love. As Helen wanders in the veils of time, she is drawn to her changing story: the disputable origins, locations and serenity of floating beneath a clear Mediterranean summer night. I smell the crisp tang of hot sand as my senses withdraw – the stars measured by the sway of a mast.
Again, the woman scorned, Oenone: abandoned by Paris for Helen of a thousand ships. Yet she bears witness to the death of her Love, calm, but for her “wild eyes” as Pallas turns her back on Paris. The handsomest man alive, the bewitched suitor betrayed to his death by Aphrodite’s promise. Yet he slew Achilles for Helen, the man whom she loved – after Aphrodite’s spell untangled at the walls of Troy.
Driftshards in time, detail of a veil fluttering in the wind as Helen vanishes into the stairwell.
Dying Paris reaches out for ghostly Helen, “you say you did not die on the stairs, / that the love of Achilles sustained you; I say he never loved you.” HE 144.
The cruel ties of Love bound within a gaze; Love does not love me but I love Love. As Helen wanders in the veils of time, she is drawn to her changing story: the disputable origins, locations and serenity of floating beneath a clear Mediterranean summer night. I smell the crisp tang of hot sand as my senses withdraw – the stars measured by the sway of a mast.
Again, the woman scorned, Oenone: abandoned by Paris for Helen of a thousand ships. Yet she bears witness to the death of her Love, calm, but for her “wild eyes” as Pallas turns her back on Paris. The handsomest man alive, the bewitched suitor betrayed to his death by Aphrodite’s promise. Yet he slew Achilles for Helen, the man whom she loved – after Aphrodite’s spell untangled at the walls of Troy.
Driftshards in time, detail of a veil fluttering in the wind as Helen vanishes into the stairwell.
Dying Paris reaches out for ghostly Helen, “you say you did not die on the stairs, / that the love of Achilles sustained you; I say he never loved you.” HE 144.
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