The Anathemata

Middle-sea and Lear-sea (continued)

and the Delectable Korê:

by the radial flutes for her chitona, the lineal, chiselled hair

the contained rhythm of her

is she Elenê Argive

or is she transalpine Eleanore

or our Gwenhwyfar1

the Selenê of Thulê

West-Helen?

She’s all that and more

all korai, all parthenai made stone.2

David Jones notes

1 Gwenhwyfar, gwen-hooy-varr, stress accent on the middle syllable; Guenevere.

2 I was thinking in particular of the sixth-century-BC Athenian statuette of a young woman, known to connoisseurs as the ‘Beautiful Kore’, and of others of the archaic period which in some ways share a certain similarity of feeling with some carved queens of the twelfth-century-AD in the West—at Chartres for instance. Kore, maiden; korai, parthenai, maidens.

additional notes

See here for an image of the Peplos kore, which may have been the one DJ had in mind of the dozen or so possibilities. I have chosen this image because it shows a modern reproduction in what may have been something like its original colouring.

As the next paragraph makes clear, DJ sees her as an image of Persephone (also known as Kore, the girl).

Elenê Argive is Helen of Troy (who was born in Argos before being carried off to Troy).

Eleanore is Eleanor of Aquitaine.

Selenê is a Greek moon-goddess and Thulê is the most northerly place known to the classical world, a six-days’ sail north of Britain according to Greek explorers and geographers (Strabo’s Geography, Book 1 Chapter 4). According to some accounts, Helen is identified with the moon-goddess (Jackson Knight, Virgil: Epic and Anthropology, page 90 — though I do not always trust this author).

DJ has written: ‘The British origin of Helena (the mother of Constantine) can now, in every probability, be dismissed as having no historical foundation; nevertheless in tradition she is paramount. In Welsh legend, or in material mixed with Welsh legend, she is almost Britannia herself. In that tangled story she passes from pseudo-history into the realm of true myth. We discern her as the eternal matriarch. In the Welsh secular tale, The Dream of Macsen Wledig she is a figure of numinous beauty, whose Welsh brothers conquer Rome. And in Christian hagiography she is associated more than any other woman –except one– with that instrument on the hill “where that young prince of glory died”.’ (Epoch and Artist, p. 44.)

comments

see also

Gwenhwyfar returns in Part 7, Mabinog’s Liturgy.

semantic structures

glossary

a chiton: the ancient Greek tunic.