HECUBA AND THE LANGUAGE OF EMOTION
part one
Every time a TV arts programme critic describes a film or performance as "visceral", I imagine piles of cocktail sausages, when I'm sure I should be seeing shining entrails. The word doesn't cut the mustard any more. I don't feel my fingers touching vile jelly, like Cornwall does when he plucks out Gloucester's eyes.
HECUBA TRANSFORMED BY GRIEF INTO A DOG
AFTER GOUGING OUT THE EYES OF POLYMESTOR IN REVENGE FOR THE DEATH OF HER YOUNGEST SON
detail of Johann Wilhelm Baur's illustration to Ovid's Metamorphoses,1659 edition
"....Hecuba,
....was driven mad by sorrow
and began barking like a dog...
Such mighty power had grief to wrench her soul"
Dante, Inferno
When, in the cause of truthful citation, I put the quotation from the thirtieth Canto in Roman numerals, my blog was overrun by lascivious spybots...
Dante, Inferno
When, in the cause of truthful citation, I put the quotation from the thirtieth Canto in Roman numerals, my blog was overrun by lascivious spybots...
"...I
am re-begot
Of absence, darknesse, death; things which are not."
John Donne, A Nocturnal upon St Lucy's Day
Please don't ask me how I feel.
How I feel was described millenia ago.
My wailing is like the jackals and my mourning
like the ostriches or owls.
Why have you forsaken me,
this is my soul’s darkest night,
like the ostriches or owls.
Why have you forsaken me,
this is my soul’s darkest night,
cannot be said today without devaluation.
Metaphors that once illuminated the vale of tears,
now block its way.
Everyone is grief-stricken,
heart-broken or devastated
by loss of life, a job or a game;
The Abyss is a wrestler or science fiction,
no longer our primal home.
Maelstrom and Vortex
two muscled superheroes in tights.
We don’t know why Hecuba turns into a dog,
her human voice swallowed up by her grief,
her bloodshot eyes blazing with revenge,
disfigured by suffering, ugly inconvenience
howling through our civilized land.
Emotional expression must be younger
and more commercially pretty than that.
Infinity looks containable;
stress a fashionable affectation;
suicides (on the rise) inexplicable..
Even irony, exhausted, is the new cliché.
Language and customs are over-amplified,
no-one dares admit they hear the throttled cry
and whiplash sigh in anguish.
Self is never absent from interest;
no-one listens to the pauses where true feeling rests.
© Pippa
Rathborne 2010
