Pretty much the only poem I care about (SORRY POEMS) is Hilda Doolittle (H.D. to you)’s “Helen” on the “Of Troy” lady of the same name.
All Greece hates
the still eyes in the white face,
the lustre as of olives
where she stands,
and the white hands.
All Greece reviles
the wan face when she smiles,
hating it deeper still
when it grows wan and white,
remembering past enchantments
and past ills.
Greece sees unmoved,
God’s daughter, born of love,
the beauty of cool feet
and slenderest knees,
could love indeed the maid,
only if she were laid,
white ash amid funereal cypresses.
AAAGHGHHH, right? That pretty much sums up Western society’s attitude towards women and beauty for the last 2500 years or so. Anyhow. Helen of Troy is the absolute best. She was the daughter of Zeus and Leda (yes, the swan lady), the most beautiful mortal woman in existence, and was kidnapped roughly 400 times before the age of 20. Kidnapping, in ancient Greece, was really just a friendly way of saying hello, how’ve you been, I’m running away into the hills above Lacedaemonia with all of the women in your family but you can have at least half of them back if you’re willing to challenge me in a footrace. Ladies who hadn’t been kidnapped by a certain age had a wan, forlorn look to them, as if to say Where are the simple joys of maidenhood, like the poet says.
So! Helen spent a great deal of her childhood being flung about from heroic figure to heroic figure, being briefly kidnapped by Theseus of all people before finally settling down with Menelaus, the king of Sparta. SMASH CUT TO ten years later when Paris, after having judged Aphrodite to be the most beautiful of all the goddesses and earning her favor, sails into town and takes Helen home with him to Troy.
This is the fun part! Because, you know, this was a beloved subject for European painters for centuries, and European painters had a lot of conflicting and varied opinions about female agency and morality. So there are roughly 4000 paintings titled “The Abduction of Helen,” all with varying degrees of actual abduction. (Helen ended up being fine, or as fine as a woman can be who has been kidnapped as often as one of Liam Neeson’s daughters; she either tired of Paris or never truly loved him and rejoined her husband and children in Sparta after the Trojan War, which is more than you can say for the Trojans.)
Here are some of them, in order of abduction.
The title of this painting is not the Abduction of Anybody, the title of this painting is Right This Way, My Lady.
This is just a calm walk to a boat with a deeply unattractive Paris.
She had time to bring her dog and a little monkey on a leash! And people are just standing around in the distance as their queen switches countries! Not caring a whit, like you do when your queen is abducted.
This one at least has a battle going on in the background, which seems appropriate, but Helen is just languidly waving goodbye, like you do when you abandon your family/are forcibly removed from your country. She’s already grabbing Paris’ abs with her other hand! This is a stellar abduction.
THIS ONE IS MY ABSOLUTE FAVORITE. The entire painting is wall-to-wall action shots and Helen is just LYING DOWN ON THE GROUND. “Someone pick me up when all of this is over, I don’t care what country I’m the queen of next.”
Here we see Helen receive a triumphant piggy-back ride from her lover and captor as they flee the city.
This one is right in the middle. There’s clearly a struggle going on, but Helen is already pulling out the Shruggie. “What are you gonna do,” she seems to say. “I’m already in the boat, honey. Nothing to be done about it. You just come find me in Troy if you want me to come home later.”
THIS is an abduction. THANK YOU. (I mean. Not THANK you, obviously. Don’t abduct anyone.)
Something about this painting just doesn’t quite capture the spirit of the moment. Helen looks more miffed than anguished, and the fellow brandishing the short sword on the far left side of the line is doing so rather wanly. Two stars.
This is a good kidnapping! Helen is trying to avoid being dragged onto what appears to be a third of an actual boat, and there are people actively fighting over her in the background.
This has all of the hallmarks of an abduction, but no one is actually behaving as if one is currently going on. All the soldiers are just standing around looking at one another. “Xanthos! How’s it been? Has it really been eight years since the last time I fought you for the possession of Helen? How’s Thebes?”
Helen’s face is so grimly determined here, which I absolutely love. “My name is Paris – I sailed here for love of you – how you must despise me for tearing you from your children and lord, but I could not resist your beauty, for I –”
“Just take me away from here. I don’t care what your name is.”
The Mild Convincing Of Helen
“Oh, I don’t know.”
“Come on. You’ll like it.”
“Oh, all right then.”
“No, help, don’t, stop, save me, Menelaus — oh, is this ship for me? Put me down on the port side, I want to see the islands.”
This is not the face of a woman who has just been forcibly removed from her family and country; this is the face of a woman who has been cut off by a bartender she thought was flirting with her but was actually just concerned about her drinking.
Tags: helen of troy, mythology, religion
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“the mild convincing of helen”!!!
that H.D. poem is A++++
Agreed. The Mild Convincing of Helen. Yes.
“This is a good kidnapping!” she said with relief and glee.
“Oh, no, do I really have to leave behind the responsibilities of motherhood and queenliness to be worshipped like the daughter of a god I am, while bunches and bunches of men battle to the death about it? Well, if I must.”
“THIS is an abduction” Yep, I love this one, this Helen is the only one actually being girly and scratching his face with her nails! Dont ever stop interpreting Art for us.
i can’t express how much i love this
I think it’s a bit unfair to Leda to refer to her as the “swan lady.” That was all Zeus’ kink, it’s not like he gave her a choice, not like she was saving herself for a giant bird with a phallus.
The most baffling aspect of the dog/monkey painting for me is the cherubs. It’s like they’re directing traffic? “One moment, please; abduction coming through!” The one with the torch is probably making siren noises.
What is even the deal with cherubs anyway? They just show up in classical paintings seemingly at random. I guess they’re supposed to represent passion or something, but the fact remains that they are babies with wings, and I find it difficult to accept that the sight of babies with wings was ever a turn-on for anyone. Apparently at some point they became a thing that artists were obligated to include if they wanted to sell their work. “I quite like this painting, but there just aren’t enough winged babies in it.”
Eros/Cupid practised co-location, I guess? Maybe it’s like the Prestige, we think there’s just one Eros, but, really, they were triplets/quadruplets/quintuplets, flying all over Greece, shooting people with love arrows. At least it makes some narrative sense to have Eros(es) in an Abduction of Helen painting.
Also wasn’t at least one of the kidnappings somehow related to Cupid’s mom Aphrodite? Maybe she sent him as surveillance or some shit.
I mean, maybe she didn’t leave the house that day for the sole purpose of boning a swan, but she DID see a swan and think “that is a good looking gentlemen I’d like to have sex with him”
Depends on the version/interpretation. Leda is one of Zeus’ conquests that is often interpreted as a victim of rape rather than the subject of seduction.
She seems pretty into it here: http://www.theoi.com/Gallery/K1.11.html
Artistically, Leda is portrayed as consenting much more often than not, but also I think it’s pretty difficult to determine consent in Greek myths in general. So personally, I like to imagine consent as much as possible. It makes it more fun for me.
An extremely thorough googling (like, I scrolled all the way to the bottom of the first page) of “What is the point of cherubs” brings back nothing but twee child care centre websites. So, I dunno I guess they’re saying “Bye! Have fun on your abduc-vacation! We’ll watch the kids and are not at all weird!”
are we not gonna talk about the boy so black he doesn’t even get to have facial features in the third image or the way the artist on the fourth was cleeearly more interested in his lovingly gorgeous topless studs on the boat than in the figures in the action itself?
wonderful as ever
I choke-laughed when i scrolled back up to see your pt, I completely missed the black kid the 1st read through. Maybe bc he is not a living child but ACTUALLY A LIVING SHADOW.
That actually happens a lot (sadly) in photographs of paintings that contain both white and black figures. Here’s a better version.
Ooooh Mr Sailor oooo, what rippling muscles you have.
And the artist was all, “come on, I’m all about DIVERSITY”
The artist of the fourth wasn’t all about the topless guys on the boat, he also did a LOT of good work on the soldiers’ legs.
Sadly the portions of the Iliad devoted to the wacky adventures of Kid Nyarlathothep and his monkey sidekick have been lost to history
DAMN IT I SHOULD’VE MADE THE BLACK PHARAOH JOKE ugh you shame me
Something I love about these is that almost all of the European painters assumed that ancient Greeks and Trojans just dressed the same as they did (and, not to mention, were white). “Oh, it’s a war that happened two thousand years ago? DOUBLETS ABOUND!!”
They were doing alternate-universe fan art before alternate-universe fan art was a thing.
And the ships that look just like the ones the Dutch painters could probably see every time they looked out to sea, instead of, you know, Greek triremes and longships and shit.
(Don’t ask me about Greek ships, I don’t know. I just know that don’t look like THAT.)
Actually, with the exception of the fifteenth-century Florentine painting (sixth one down), none of these features dress that would have been contemporary to the painters. Rather, the figures wear a kind of fantastical drapery loosely derived from ancient statues. A lot of post-Renaissance artists, such as Rubens and Poussin, put a great deal of effort into creating authentic representations of antiquity–the fact that they didn’t always succeed reflects living in an era before photography, the internet, or modern archaeology.
“Hey, what did olden days people wear?”
“Sheets. They were just constantly in the process of escaping from sheets. Think about what happens when a toddler gets into the scarf drawer and that’s about it. Plus really fancy hats.”
Yesssss! Paging Two Monks!
never not kate beaton time: a medieval film
Ready for the Trojan War to be retold as an 80s’ high school movie, where Paris rolls up in Hector’s prize T-bird and gets Helen to ditch class and go on a road trip.
I would watch this.
FUND IT, AMERICA.
Then Menelaus gets his brother and his two gay buddies from the football team to go beat up Hector’s crew.
YES.
No, seriously, why isn’t this a thing already?
This is the greatest idea EVER and I’m crying because it doesn’t actually exist.
LOVING the final Big Hair, No Heart Helen
It’s the sort of look that says: “Sure, fairest of the *mortal* women. So I’m some sort of consolation prize? Fine- y’all are having a war, then.”
I’ve never been abducted, yet another failure as a gentle maiden. However, if anyone wants to try, I’d be open to a nice kidnapping to Belize. Bring rum.
Grimly-determined, tits-out Helen almost looks as if she’s leading the way, and Paris is trying to redirect her.
“No, my love, the ship is this way, over here.”
“Nope, don’t care, I would like to be abducted in this direction.”
“But wait, but I had this whole cunning plan for how we were going to escape.”
“Your plan is inefficient and melodramatic. So are we doing this abduction thing or what?”
30 Helens Agree
30 Helens Agree: “ILIUM IS REALLY NICE THIS TIME OF YEAR.”
Hey speaking of Helen of Troy, is anybody else reading ODY-C (a gender-swapped-ish far-future comic book retelling of The Odyssey)? I read the first issue and am intrigued, although I don’t love the “only a Man can save this all-female/intersex universe!” idea. But it’s by Matt Fraction, and I am generally not disappointed by his treatment of female characters, and also the art is cool.
I’m not sure this actually is in order of anything; Peak Abduction happens around #10 and then it’s all downhill from there.
I love how half the artists were clearly like “shit she’s meant to be the most beautiful woman of all time, how do we paint that?” and clearly settled on “well if at least one of her tits is out that’s probably enough”
Helen’s tits are well known in Greek mythology. Once Menelaus drags her back home after the whole Troy incident, he takes her to the top of the walls of the city where he is going to throw her off as punishment, but she rips off her dress to show him her penitence, and her amazing bod makes Menelaus forgive her. Quite seriously in some versions he is struck dumb by the beauty of her tits. So, that’s a thing.
Not only am I called Helen, for a (regrettably not so brief) period in 2007 I had the exact same hair as in that last picture. 9 years on I’ve finally perfected the facial expression – now I just need to persuade some handsome bimbo to “abduct” me to a palace on a Mediterranean island and wait for the bloodshed to begin!
I recited that H.D. poem at a poetry contest once and nobody appreciated it, just like Helen can’t appreciate her own abduction. Also, Mallory, I love you.
I lost it at ‘Right this way, my lady’ and had to switch tabs and open my Important and Official excel spreadsheet to calm myself.
Really? Because there seem to be a fair number of not-very-drapery-ish sleeves, and #2 looks to me like she’s wearing a corset, but maybe I’m misinterpreting stuff.
Helen is seriously one of the most interesting figures in the whole of Greek myth – if prodded I can give an excellent mini lecture comparing Helen and her bros to the Sanskrit Ashvins (twin horse gods! Gods on horses!). I will ‘well actually’ all over your shit.
Also I love this, Mallory you are a treasure and a vision.
She seems pretty into it here: http://www.theoi.com/Gallery/K1.11.html
Artistically, Leda is portrayed as consenting much more often than not, but also I think it's pretty difficult to determine consent in Greek myths in general. So personally, I like to imagine consent as much as possible. It makes it more fun for me.
Paris in painting #2 is deeply unattractive, and as a bonus he has one of those little mustaches that 15-year-old boys grow to prove they’ve actually hit puberty. A+.
Paris in painting #2 is deeply unattractive, and as a bonus he has one of those little mustaches that 15-year-old boys grow to prove they've actually hit puberty. A+.
This is so fantastic. I wanted to point out, for those interested, that this ambivalence about Helen’s agency in her abduction has been there since the earliest literary representations of the myth. It shifts constantly between the Iliad, the Odyssey, and references in the lyric poets like Sappho. My favorite is the semi-comic late tragedy by Euripides called the Helen, in which it turns out that Helen never even went to Troy at all, and had just been chilling in Egypt the whole time while all those dudes fought over a phantom version of her. She was truly the locus where the Ancient Greeks were trying to work their shit out re: the horror and beauty of women, as H.D. captures so well.
A little late to the party here, but I thought I would point out that some sources claim that Helen’s (unwilling) mother is Nemesis, the goddess of retribution/vengeance, who was then given to Leda. This coupling, the like of which has never happened before or since, resulted in the paradox that is Helen of Troy: something enchantingly beautiful that was also mercilessly destructive.
It is interesting to note that there’s a version of the story in which Helen, once she finally gets a break from the menz, is slain by women.
A little late to the party here, but I thought I would point out that some sources claim that Helen's (unwilling) mother is Nemesis, the goddess of retribution/vengeance, who was then given to Leda. This coupling, the like of which has never happened before or since, resulted in the paradox that is Helen of Troy: something enchantingly beautiful that was also mercilessly destructive.
It is interesting to note that there's a version of the story in which Helen, once she finally gets a break from the menz, is slain by women.