Pussy Willow Sighs
A Meditation in Five Movements
Introductory essay for art and poetry book.
"Verily at first Khaos (Air) came to be, but then next wide-bosomed Gaia (Earth), the ever-sure foundation of all the deathless ones who hold the peaks of snowy Olympos, and dim Tartaros (Hell) in the depth of the wide-pathed Earth, and Eros (Love), fairest among the deathless gods, who unnerves the limbs and overcomes the mind and wise counsels of all gods and all men within them."
-Hesiod, Theogony 116 ff (trans. Evelyn-White)
(Greek epic c. 8th or c. 7th B.C.) (1)
From nocturnal Chaos, the hermaphroditic,(2) protogenos god Phanes bursts from Time’s cosmic silver egg. Their ouroboric countenance emanates from the depths of the Void. They vivify all things, creating ever-expanding, prodigious life and luminescent, orgastic joy. Phanes is a shapeshifter, also known as Eros; they are the cosmogonic deity of the ancients, and an awe-inspiring, transcendental mystery. As Cupid, with his piercing arrows and flaming torch, he is a cruel, ruinous god. Eros compels us to seek physical connection, and he is an iconic figure of boundless sensuality. When viewed through this allegorical lens, we can glimpse Eros’s shapeshifting form in the poetry of Viktor Bruxi.
Prelude–scatenato expansivo (wildly expansive): Primordial, fertile, and procreative Eros appears in the poem, “Stake.” Bruxi’s shepherdess is the muck of the earth: the gulch and mulch is fluffed up, stirred up, and flogged. As Bruxi revels in the sounds of boggy intercourse, his limbs morph into a landscape of soggy flagellation. He writes, “...when a love claim can I stake out, in a mossy valley, moisten smacking sod...ameliorate lay, stir up in the love pod”: with his phallus-stake in the grasping, wet, and hot terra firma, the poet is both the claimer and the claimed. Lingering in the atmosphere is Freud’s theory of the polymorphous perverse (3 ) which declares that humans are born with unfocused libidinal drives. Norman O. Brown recapitulates the polymorphous perverse as an energy that radiates throughout the whole body; when sexuality is liberated from “the tyranny of genital organization”(4) we can move beyond the hierarchy of anatomically defined erogenous zones. In his arcadian imagination, Bruxi is fused with nature, and the line between himself and his earthy lover is collapsed. He invites us to merge with the cosmic energy of the sun, to spread our seed in the wind, to be penetrated by transmutable fire, and, with awe and jubilation, to revere the bucolic orgy of human evolution.
Fugue–lentando (gradually slowing and softer): Metaphysical Eros reflects our yearning to transcend the corporeal cage of the flesh and to unite with the eternal divine. The body deteriorates, and the natural world’s evanescence confirms the impermanence of being. Bruxi’s wistful lament, “Dolphin,” expresses our wish for a perpetual state of contentment—to attain a mystical communion with another living being in order to defy the fact that we are marked by ceaseless change and that death is inevitable. Converse to Bruxi’s rooted dolphin, Izumi Shikibu’s vision of dissipation illustrates the unavoidable loss of love and life:
The one close to me now,
even my own body–
these too
will soon become clouds,
floating in different directions. (5)
Shikibu’s transcendental vision stretches outward from an intimate, interior space into empyrean tranquility; Bruxi nestles in a womb-like lap, “roving idly there, flip, flap,” safely suspended from the passage of time. He removes his “slipper,” (6) and is, momentarily, liberated from the finitude of existence. For both poets, sensuality offers a temporary shelter from our existential reality, but, in order for spiritual growth, we must kiss it goodbye, and, with melancholic grace, fall into oblivion.
Decrescendo–a niente (fade to nothing): Incarnated as a trickster, Eros, son of Aphrodite, (with his golden arrows dipped in destructive, madness-inducing love), is a winged boy who strikes humanity and gods alike. For sport, he injects his targets with mind-bewitching desire that can end in abjection and even death. Historically, he devolves as Cupid, a playful, mischievous boy, and then as a putto, a chubby, rose-faced, languorous child. He becomes a cute, castrated symbol on mass-produced Valentine’s Day cards: we need to restrain him. Bruxi’s poem, “Pralines” reveals our apprehension about falling in love and our need to be in control. He observes,“Down, belay me into your ravine, fathomless, they tell...sweet like a praline, eh...lethal, as well!”: love can be fatal. We want sweetness and heart fluttering, but fear losing ourselves to seduction or feeling the pain of unrequited love. (7) The philosopher Slavoj Žižek provides an example of the contemporary drive to manage Eros’s chaotic nature through technology; internetdating sites like OkCupid offer byzantine questionnaires mapped to match-making algorithms to assure “love without the fall.” He compares this to wanting coffee without caffeine, beer without alcohol, ice cream without fat, and asserts that, “...this is love...a dramatic, traumatic moment. But this is too dangerous for us now. We are too narcissistic to risk any kind of accidental trip or fall. Even into love.” (8) We avoid the experience altogether, or, out of disappointment, frustration, and dissatisfaction, we retreat into an onanistic paradigm.
Drone–bocca chiusa (with closed mouth): From his labyrinthine wilderness, Eros watches us touch ourselves, and as we gaze lustfully at the computer screen, he calls us to emerge from our cocoon of self hood and to seek connection. With the mouse and the monitor, we exchange sexual fantasies with others; we Skype-sex a stranger in order to stroke away our loneliness and to find relief from our isolation. Our movements become more frenzied, furtive, heated, and, simultaneously, on our iPod, we can hear Rozz Williams wailing:
I sit and hold hands with myself
I sit and make love to myself
I’ve got blood on my hands
I’ve got blood on your hands
Blood on our hands
Blood (9)
It’s sanguine, feral, and juicy. The intensity is intoxicating, but should we meet in person? Should we expose ourselves? Our technological disembodiment shields us from the hazards of in-the-flesh encounters, and our private cravings are tracked by search engines, stored in a database, and archived in the Cloud. (10) We are safe behind the screen. But Eros demands that we not simply catalog our messy, slippery, visceral body, drenched in sweat, blood, ejaculate, and saliva; we must share it, open our mouths, and eat our fill. In “Draw,” Bruxi leads us out of our circumscribed masturbatory castle. He wants us to “squeeze...through the slit,” to take a “long draw,” and to fly to a place where there is sucking; there is licking; there is kissing; there is delight in bodily fusion, and the electronic veil is split open.
Finale–sospirando (sighing): Under the pussy willow trees, we moan in ecstasy as we lie prostrate near the mossy bank of the river’s edge. Crossing this watery chasm is Phanes, the glory of the sky, (11) who brings to light the circuitous transmutations of our desire: we are potent and debased; impassioned and ignored; triumphant and forgotten. Her fluid hips, peaked breasts, and engorged phallus arouse us to the point of climax where we are held, suspended, and time disappears. Sighing, we drift downstream. Close to us now, he whispers, “We are all flesh, we are all one body.”(12) Our euphoria melts away our identity. Phanes’ hermaphroditic body is an androgynous body, containing all sexes: they represent a genderless consciousness.(13) Bruxi’s use of contrasting, paradoxical metaphors reflect this aspect of erotic experience, and his psychosexuality is not limited by his gender identity. In “Ribbon,” he penetrates “a chasm,” yet he is both hard and soft; stiff but sinuous— “Indurate a moist, resilient schism, with ribbon in colors of prism”—these disparate images voice his vulnerability and mutability. Viktor Bruxi’s subject (14) is sensitive, naked, and raw. His generative language is an invocation to jouissance (15), a pleasure that is blissful and orgasmic, but it is a fragile state, susceptible to anxiety and doubt. The poet describes a lustful, loving, and transformative body—composing eulogies that, ultimately, dissolve the boundary between himself and the reader.
Illustration credit: Francesco de’Rossi, Phanes, drawing, c.16th-century, Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia (last accessed January 8, 2014).
NOTES
1 Aaron J. Atsma, “Eros: Greek Protogenos God of Procreation,” Theoi Greek Mythology, Exploring
Mythology and the Greek Gods in Classical Literature and Art, 2010-2011, http://www.theoi.com/
Protogenos/Eros.html (last accessed February 7, 2014).
2 The term hermaphrodite is mythological. Instead, the term “Intersex” is used to describe variations in
sex characteristics. See “Is a Person Who is Intersex a Hermaphrodite?” Intersex Society of North
America, http://www.isna.org/faq/hermaphrodite (last accessed February 7, 2014).
3 Sigmund Freud, Trans. James Strachey, The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works
of Sigmund Freud, 24 vols. (London: Hogarth) 1953-74. http://www.cla.purdue.edu/english/theory/
psychoanalysis/definitions/polymorphous.html (last accessed February 7, 2014).
4 Norman O. Brown, Loveʼs Body, (New York: Random House, 1966),127.
5 Jane Hirshfield, and Mariko Aratani, The Ink Dark Moon: Love Poems by Ono No Komachi and
Izumi Shikibu, Women of the Ancient Court of Japan, (New York: Random House,1990),137.
6 The English translation of the Czech word “slipper” does not communicate the specificity of its
cultural reference. In Czech, the word is used for the sterile “booties” that are worn in a hospital.
7 “We desire the way a twice-poisoned dog eyes a third piece of meat,” Philip Milito, Quotes: Broken
Hearts, End of Love, Unrequited Love, Bitterness, The Simian Line, http://www.jenniferboyer.com/
QuotesBrokenhearts.html (last accessed March 28, 2014). See also Jim Thorton, “The Science of
Heartbreak,” Menʼs Health, January 28, 2009, http://www.menshealth.com/sex-women/pain-lost-love/
page/4 (last accessed March 28, 2014).
8 Helen Brown, “Slavoj Žižek: The World’s Hippest Philosopher,” The Telegraph, July 20, 2010, http://
www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/authorinterviews/7871302/Slavoj-Zizek-the-worlds-hippestphilosopher.
html (last accessed February 7, 2014).
9 Christian Death, “Cavity—First Communion,” Only Theater of Pain, Frontier Records, CD, 1982.
10 Eric Griffith, “What Is Cloud Computing?” PC Magazine Digital Edition, March, 13, 2013, http://
www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2372163,00.asp (last accessed February 7, 2014).
11 “Orphic Hymn 6 to Protogonus (trans. Taylor) (Greek hymns C3rd B.C. to 2nd A.D.): ʻ...ʻTis thine
from darksome mists to pure the sight, all-spreading splendor, pure and holy light; hence, Phanes, called
the glory of the sky, on waving pinions through the world you fly.ʼ" Aaron J. Atsma, “Phanes: Greek
Protogenos God of Creation and Life,” Theoi Greek Mythology, Exploring Mythology and the Greek Gods
in Classical Literature and Art, 2010-2011, http://www.theoi.com/Protogenos/Phanes.html (last accessed
March 28, 2014).
12 Conrad Aiken writes, “We were all born of flesh, in a flare of pain, We do not remember the red
roots whence we rose, But we know that we rose and walked, that after a while We shall lie down again,”
IZquotes, http://izquotes.com/quote/206019 (last accessed February 7, 2014).
13 Norman O. Brown, Loveʼs Body, (New York: Random House, 1966), 84-85. Also, Jacques Lacan
affirms, “When one loves, it has nothing to do with gender.” Patricia Gherovici, Please Select Your
Gender: From the Invention of Hysteria to the Democratizating of Transgenderism,(New York: Routledge),
117.
14 The term “subject” used here is from “critical theory and psychology..the actions or discourses that
produce individuals or ʻIʼ —the 'I' is the subject.” “Subject (philosophy),” Wikipedia: The Free
Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subject_(philosophy), (last accessed March 28, 2014).
15 The French word jouissance means pleasure or enjoyment and has a sexual connotation. The term
has been appropriated as part of the philosophical discourse of psychoanalysis, poststructuralism, and
literary theory.
© 2014 The Author, Janet Silk.
Introductory essay for Flares, Conflagrations, Refulgence, Coruscation: Victor Bruxi, trans. Hela Fchunce, Lamar Annex, in production, 2015.
Image Credit: A 16th-century Illustration of Phases by Francesco de'Rossi, Wikipedia, public domain
"Verily at first Khaos (Air) came to be, but then next wide-bosomed Gaia (Earth), the ever-sure foundation of all the deathless ones who hold the peaks of snowy Olympos, and dim Tartaros (Hell) in the depth of the wide-pathed Earth, and Eros (Love), fairest among the deathless gods, who unnerves the limbs and overcomes the mind and wise counsels of all gods and all men within them."
-Hesiod, Theogony 116 ff (trans. Evelyn-White)
(Greek epic c. 8th or c. 7th B.C.) (1)
From nocturnal Chaos, the hermaphroditic,(2) protogenos god Phanes bursts from Time’s cosmic silver egg. Their ouroboric countenance emanates from the depths of the Void. They vivify all things, creating ever-expanding, prodigious life and luminescent, orgastic joy. Phanes is a shapeshifter, also known as Eros; they are the cosmogonic deity of the ancients, and an awe-inspiring, transcendental mystery. As Cupid, with his piercing arrows and flaming torch, he is a cruel, ruinous god. Eros compels us to seek physical connection, and he is an iconic figure of boundless sensuality. When viewed through this allegorical lens, we can glimpse Eros’s shapeshifting form in the poetry of Viktor Bruxi.
Prelude–scatenato expansivo (wildly expansive): Primordial, fertile, and procreative Eros appears in the poem, “Stake.” Bruxi’s shepherdess is the muck of the earth: the gulch and mulch is fluffed up, stirred up, and flogged. As Bruxi revels in the sounds of boggy intercourse, his limbs morph into a landscape of soggy flagellation. He writes, “...when a love claim can I stake out, in a mossy valley, moisten smacking sod...ameliorate lay, stir up in the love pod”: with his phallus-stake in the grasping, wet, and hot terra firma, the poet is both the claimer and the claimed. Lingering in the atmosphere is Freud’s theory of the polymorphous perverse (3 ) which declares that humans are born with unfocused libidinal drives. Norman O. Brown recapitulates the polymorphous perverse as an energy that radiates throughout the whole body; when sexuality is liberated from “the tyranny of genital organization”(4) we can move beyond the hierarchy of anatomically defined erogenous zones. In his arcadian imagination, Bruxi is fused with nature, and the line between himself and his earthy lover is collapsed. He invites us to merge with the cosmic energy of the sun, to spread our seed in the wind, to be penetrated by transmutable fire, and, with awe and jubilation, to revere the bucolic orgy of human evolution.
Fugue–lentando (gradually slowing and softer): Metaphysical Eros reflects our yearning to transcend the corporeal cage of the flesh and to unite with the eternal divine. The body deteriorates, and the natural world’s evanescence confirms the impermanence of being. Bruxi’s wistful lament, “Dolphin,” expresses our wish for a perpetual state of contentment—to attain a mystical communion with another living being in order to defy the fact that we are marked by ceaseless change and that death is inevitable. Converse to Bruxi’s rooted dolphin, Izumi Shikibu’s vision of dissipation illustrates the unavoidable loss of love and life:
The one close to me now,
even my own body–
these too
will soon become clouds,
floating in different directions. (5)
Shikibu’s transcendental vision stretches outward from an intimate, interior space into empyrean tranquility; Bruxi nestles in a womb-like lap, “roving idly there, flip, flap,” safely suspended from the passage of time. He removes his “slipper,” (6) and is, momentarily, liberated from the finitude of existence. For both poets, sensuality offers a temporary shelter from our existential reality, but, in order for spiritual growth, we must kiss it goodbye, and, with melancholic grace, fall into oblivion.
Decrescendo–a niente (fade to nothing): Incarnated as a trickster, Eros, son of Aphrodite, (with his golden arrows dipped in destructive, madness-inducing love), is a winged boy who strikes humanity and gods alike. For sport, he injects his targets with mind-bewitching desire that can end in abjection and even death. Historically, he devolves as Cupid, a playful, mischievous boy, and then as a putto, a chubby, rose-faced, languorous child. He becomes a cute, castrated symbol on mass-produced Valentine’s Day cards: we need to restrain him. Bruxi’s poem, “Pralines” reveals our apprehension about falling in love and our need to be in control. He observes,“Down, belay me into your ravine, fathomless, they tell...sweet like a praline, eh...lethal, as well!”: love can be fatal. We want sweetness and heart fluttering, but fear losing ourselves to seduction or feeling the pain of unrequited love. (7) The philosopher Slavoj Žižek provides an example of the contemporary drive to manage Eros’s chaotic nature through technology; internetdating sites like OkCupid offer byzantine questionnaires mapped to match-making algorithms to assure “love without the fall.” He compares this to wanting coffee without caffeine, beer without alcohol, ice cream without fat, and asserts that, “...this is love...a dramatic, traumatic moment. But this is too dangerous for us now. We are too narcissistic to risk any kind of accidental trip or fall. Even into love.” (8) We avoid the experience altogether, or, out of disappointment, frustration, and dissatisfaction, we retreat into an onanistic paradigm.
Drone–bocca chiusa (with closed mouth): From his labyrinthine wilderness, Eros watches us touch ourselves, and as we gaze lustfully at the computer screen, he calls us to emerge from our cocoon of self hood and to seek connection. With the mouse and the monitor, we exchange sexual fantasies with others; we Skype-sex a stranger in order to stroke away our loneliness and to find relief from our isolation. Our movements become more frenzied, furtive, heated, and, simultaneously, on our iPod, we can hear Rozz Williams wailing:
I sit and hold hands with myself
I sit and make love to myself
I’ve got blood on my hands
I’ve got blood on your hands
Blood on our hands
Blood (9)
It’s sanguine, feral, and juicy. The intensity is intoxicating, but should we meet in person? Should we expose ourselves? Our technological disembodiment shields us from the hazards of in-the-flesh encounters, and our private cravings are tracked by search engines, stored in a database, and archived in the Cloud. (10) We are safe behind the screen. But Eros demands that we not simply catalog our messy, slippery, visceral body, drenched in sweat, blood, ejaculate, and saliva; we must share it, open our mouths, and eat our fill. In “Draw,” Bruxi leads us out of our circumscribed masturbatory castle. He wants us to “squeeze...through the slit,” to take a “long draw,” and to fly to a place where there is sucking; there is licking; there is kissing; there is delight in bodily fusion, and the electronic veil is split open.
Finale–sospirando (sighing): Under the pussy willow trees, we moan in ecstasy as we lie prostrate near the mossy bank of the river’s edge. Crossing this watery chasm is Phanes, the glory of the sky, (11) who brings to light the circuitous transmutations of our desire: we are potent and debased; impassioned and ignored; triumphant and forgotten. Her fluid hips, peaked breasts, and engorged phallus arouse us to the point of climax where we are held, suspended, and time disappears. Sighing, we drift downstream. Close to us now, he whispers, “We are all flesh, we are all one body.”(12) Our euphoria melts away our identity. Phanes’ hermaphroditic body is an androgynous body, containing all sexes: they represent a genderless consciousness.(13) Bruxi’s use of contrasting, paradoxical metaphors reflect this aspect of erotic experience, and his psychosexuality is not limited by his gender identity. In “Ribbon,” he penetrates “a chasm,” yet he is both hard and soft; stiff but sinuous— “Indurate a moist, resilient schism, with ribbon in colors of prism”—these disparate images voice his vulnerability and mutability. Viktor Bruxi’s subject (14) is sensitive, naked, and raw. His generative language is an invocation to jouissance (15), a pleasure that is blissful and orgasmic, but it is a fragile state, susceptible to anxiety and doubt. The poet describes a lustful, loving, and transformative body—composing eulogies that, ultimately, dissolve the boundary between himself and the reader.
Illustration credit: Francesco de’Rossi, Phanes, drawing, c.16th-century, Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia (last accessed January 8, 2014).
NOTES
1 Aaron J. Atsma, “Eros: Greek Protogenos God of Procreation,” Theoi Greek Mythology, Exploring
Mythology and the Greek Gods in Classical Literature and Art, 2010-2011, http://www.theoi.com/
Protogenos/Eros.html (last accessed February 7, 2014).
2 The term hermaphrodite is mythological. Instead, the term “Intersex” is used to describe variations in
sex characteristics. See “Is a Person Who is Intersex a Hermaphrodite?” Intersex Society of North
America, http://www.isna.org/faq/hermaphrodite (last accessed February 7, 2014).
3 Sigmund Freud, Trans. James Strachey, The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works
of Sigmund Freud, 24 vols. (London: Hogarth) 1953-74. http://www.cla.purdue.edu/english/theory/
psychoanalysis/definitions/polymorphous.html (last accessed February 7, 2014).
4 Norman O. Brown, Loveʼs Body, (New York: Random House, 1966),127.
5 Jane Hirshfield, and Mariko Aratani, The Ink Dark Moon: Love Poems by Ono No Komachi and
Izumi Shikibu, Women of the Ancient Court of Japan, (New York: Random House,1990),137.
6 The English translation of the Czech word “slipper” does not communicate the specificity of its
cultural reference. In Czech, the word is used for the sterile “booties” that are worn in a hospital.
7 “We desire the way a twice-poisoned dog eyes a third piece of meat,” Philip Milito, Quotes: Broken
Hearts, End of Love, Unrequited Love, Bitterness, The Simian Line, http://www.jenniferboyer.com/
QuotesBrokenhearts.html (last accessed March 28, 2014). See also Jim Thorton, “The Science of
Heartbreak,” Menʼs Health, January 28, 2009, http://www.menshealth.com/sex-women/pain-lost-love/
page/4 (last accessed March 28, 2014).
8 Helen Brown, “Slavoj Žižek: The World’s Hippest Philosopher,” The Telegraph, July 20, 2010, http://
www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/authorinterviews/7871302/Slavoj-Zizek-the-worlds-hippestphilosopher.
html (last accessed February 7, 2014).
9 Christian Death, “Cavity—First Communion,” Only Theater of Pain, Frontier Records, CD, 1982.
10 Eric Griffith, “What Is Cloud Computing?” PC Magazine Digital Edition, March, 13, 2013, http://
www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2372163,00.asp (last accessed February 7, 2014).
11 “Orphic Hymn 6 to Protogonus (trans. Taylor) (Greek hymns C3rd B.C. to 2nd A.D.): ʻ...ʻTis thine
from darksome mists to pure the sight, all-spreading splendor, pure and holy light; hence, Phanes, called
the glory of the sky, on waving pinions through the world you fly.ʼ" Aaron J. Atsma, “Phanes: Greek
Protogenos God of Creation and Life,” Theoi Greek Mythology, Exploring Mythology and the Greek Gods
in Classical Literature and Art, 2010-2011, http://www.theoi.com/Protogenos/Phanes.html (last accessed
March 28, 2014).
12 Conrad Aiken writes, “We were all born of flesh, in a flare of pain, We do not remember the red
roots whence we rose, But we know that we rose and walked, that after a while We shall lie down again,”
IZquotes, http://izquotes.com/quote/206019 (last accessed February 7, 2014).
13 Norman O. Brown, Loveʼs Body, (New York: Random House, 1966), 84-85. Also, Jacques Lacan
affirms, “When one loves, it has nothing to do with gender.” Patricia Gherovici, Please Select Your
Gender: From the Invention of Hysteria to the Democratizating of Transgenderism,(New York: Routledge),
117.
14 The term “subject” used here is from “critical theory and psychology..the actions or discourses that
produce individuals or ʻIʼ —the 'I' is the subject.” “Subject (philosophy),” Wikipedia: The Free
Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subject_(philosophy), (last accessed March 28, 2014).
15 The French word jouissance means pleasure or enjoyment and has a sexual connotation. The term
has been appropriated as part of the philosophical discourse of psychoanalysis, poststructuralism, and
literary theory.
© 2014 The Author, Janet Silk.
Introductory essay for Flares, Conflagrations, Refulgence, Coruscation: Victor Bruxi, trans. Hela Fchunce, Lamar Annex, in production, 2015.
Image Credit: A 16th-century Illustration of Phases by Francesco de'Rossi, Wikipedia, public domain
