The Myth of a Rape: H.D.’s Reimagining Greek Mythology as Feminist Statement
In Greek mythology, Zeus disguises himself as a swan and rapes the maiden Leda. Leda’s rape is depicted in countless literary and artistic renderings, but one such well-known treatment is William Butler Yeats’ poem “Leda and the Swan.” The poem begins violently:
Sudden blow: the great wings beating still
Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed
By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,
He holds her helpless breast upon his breast (1-4).
The language locates the violence in a way that is physical and graphic. Zeus, despite his seemingly passive incarnation, yields a terrific and terrifying source of power, while Leda is “helpless” in his act of violence and control. H.D.’s poem, “Leda,” reimagines the myth from a feminine perspective, focusing less on violence in its physical manifestation, but rather on its disruptions on the female psyche.
While many treatments of the mythology downplays the violence (Leda is often described as having been seduced or ravished by Zeus), both Yeats and H.D. recognize the violence in the act and the disruptions it has on the normal course of interaction. The first two stanzas in “Leda and the Swan” depict the rape. The body is physically present within these lines. Images of “terrified vague fingers,” “feathered glory,” “loosening thighs” locates the body within a violent context. Leda’s powerlessness against Zeus’s brute strength is recognized in the questions that are posed in the second stanza: “How can anybody laid in that white rush,/feel the strange heart beating where it lies?” Here, Yeats moves from the physical to the psychological. In the third stanza, the rape comes to a climax with Leda’s impregnation: “A shudder in the loins engenders there.” What occurs next is the total shift away from the physical to the psychological as Leda has visions of Agamemnon’s death and the destruction of Troy. Within the mytho-historical context, these events come about because of the rape.
The rape, along with Leda’s coupling with her husband, Tyndareus, produce four children: the famous Greek figure Helen of Troy, Clytemnestra, and the twins Castor and Polydeuces (also referred to as the Dioscuri). Helen and Castor are fathered by Zeus, while Clytemnestra and Polydeuces are Tyndareus’s mortal children. In the mytho-historical timeline, all of Leda’s children are responsible for the death and destruction she envisions. Yeats’ poem ends with a question that ponders the knowledge Leda has of the future: “Did she put on his knowledge with his power/Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?” The “knowledge” that she is putting on is located squarely within Zeus’s actions: the rape will have far-reaching destructive consequences.
Here, Yeats parallels the destructive act of rape with the destruction of the nation-state. The psychological scarring of this violence is located not within Leda herself but on men (Agamemnon’s death at the hands of Clytemnestra and her lover) and on Troy. The only acknowledgment within the poem of Leda’s psyche is the “knowledge” she puts on. Yet, this knowledge again has less to do with Leda’s own psychological well-being and the disruption the rape causes to her and more to do with the death and destruction that occurs on others. The question that is posed bears a guilt/blame complex that is leveled against Leda. If Leda is aware of the “knowledge” of the destruction that lies in wait of the nation of Troy, then she becomes Zeus’s accomplice of sorts.
Given this interpretation, H.D.’s version challenges Yeats’ version of the myth by focusing on the psychological scarring the rape will have on Leda. Like many women writers during the modernist period, H.D. confronted the challenges facing them in classic literature and drama. Women as subjects were to be looked at and admired for their beauty, but had no true representation or voice. In “Leda and the Swan,” Leda is less an autonomous figure but a metaphor for the nation-state. The destruction of her body parallels the destruction of Troy. Leda exists only as a poetic term. H.D., on the other hand, rescues Leda’s place within the mytho-historical text and gives her a voice to this experience.
“Leda” begins not with the violent act itself (in fact it is never referred to in the poem), but with what occurs prior to the attack. H.D., a forerunner in the Imagist movement, often derived meaning through the juxtaposition of images rather than abstract constructions. Thus, “Leda” begins with a striking image:
Where the slow river
meets the tide,
a red swan lifts red wings
and darker beak,
and underneath the purple down
of his soft breast
uncurls his coral feet (1-7 1303).
The beginning stanza is deceptively beautiful because H.D. focuses on the image of the swan, but there are ominous undercurrents of the disruption that will occur with the swan’s appearance in Leda’s bed. This is found in the first two lines. A disruption is occurring with the meeting of the “slow river” and “tide.” A tide, according to The American Heritage Dictionary, can, among a number of definitions, mean “a specific occurrence of [such] a variation” or an “onrush; flow.” In this case, the variation-the tide lifting the surface level of the water or rushing in of tidal waters-creates a disturbance in the “slow-moving” river. The image plays subtly on the act of violence, both as a physical act and a psychological one as well. Something will occur that will change the normal course of things. The image is also sexually charged since the tidal flow represents the ejaculation that will occur at the climax of the rape.
The image of the swan is also significant. The swan’s red wings, darker beak, and coral feet contradicts many of the established images of the swan depicted in paintings by such artists as Leonardi Da Vinci or Michelangelo, who both portray the swan in a quasi-realistic fashion (quasi-realistic since the swan is always depicted as being large enough to overpower Leda). The emphasis on the color red is a word play women poets in the modernist movement capitalized on for its association with women to feminize the language of poetry in a masculinized text. H.D. locates this color with its association to Leda and the impact the swan will have on her. This suggests that Zeus in his disguise chose a color for its seductive powers. The swan is also associated with the colors purple-“the purple down” (5)- and gold-“…flecked with richer gold its golden crests” (14-15). Purple and gold are often associated with nobility, so H.D.’s usage of these colors betrays Zeus’s disguise. A swan is not a swan, in this case.
H.D.’s description of the swan and its passage down the river also contradicts Yeats’ violent imagery. The scene is located within a pastoral tradition with its concentration on “dying heat/of sun and mist,” (9-10) and the “gold day-lily” (29). The language associated with the swan is also devoid of violence. The swan drifts idly down the river and one is not immediately certain of his direction or aim. The images are too placid to fit within the same construct as Yeats’ depiction of a violent attack. And yet, in the third stanza, H.D. places the swan at the apex of the disturbance that will occur in Leda’s life: “he floats/where tide and river meet” (22-23). The swan’s association with the “lifting of the tide” and the confrontation between the tide and the river places him squarely at the center of the violence that will later occur. In this sense, H.D., rather than showing the violence in graphic details, hints at what will come.
Her use of images to “hint” at violence works in a subtler fashion than Yeats’ poem. While Yeats shows the violence committed against the “body” or nation-state, H.D. places the violence not on the body but within the victim’s state of mind. As with “Leda and the Swan,” H.D. switches briefly from the concrete images that dominate the poem to the abstract. The first four lines of the final stanza changes from the swan’s journey on the river to Leda. This will be the only appearance she will make in the poem, but it is nonetheless powerful in its depiction of Leda’s state of mind before the disruption occurs. Leda is addressing her husband, Tyndareus-“Ah kingly kiss-” (24), just before their lovemaking. Leda’s dialogue is intimate and loving:
no more regret
nor old deep memories
to mar the bliss; (25-27).
Here, H.D. marks what is to be disrupted by the rape: “bliss.” Zeus’s rape will become a significant event in her life that will “mar the bliss.” H.D.’s usage of the verb “to mar” is equally significant. Defined as “[T]o damage, disfigure, or spoil” (American Heritage Dictionary), the verb thus places the violence committed against Leda in more abstract, psychological terms as opposed to the concretization of physical violence against the body, buildings, and structures. Bruises heal, new civilizations are built on the ashes of old, but Leda is forever “marred” by the violence committed against her psyche. She will lose the idyllic “bliss” she has already established with her husband.
It should be noted that within the mytho-historical text, Leda commits suicide after the destruction that is wrought against and committed by her children. Leda never recovers from the psychic wound committed by Zeus’s act of violence. H.D.’s poem rescues this event from a masculinist perspective and places Leda and her psychological trauma within the very center of the mythic events.
