This love will undo us all

"Some men say an army [...] is the most beautiful thing on the black earth. But I say it is what you love. [...] For she who overcame everyone in beauty left her husband behind and went sailing to Troy." Sappho 16

Lesbian with a Special Interest in all things mythology and religion — particularly Greek, Irish, Arthurian, and the Bible

"While the Danaans conquered, while savage Hector held them, [Paris] fought a nobler war in [Helen's] lap." Propertius' Elegies

Favourite characters: Helen, Paris, Menelaus, Hecuba, Medb, David, Ruth, basically all the Trojans

"[Paris] came with his garments flowered in gold and his dress blazoned with gems. He loved Helen and was loved by her." Euripides' Iphigenia in Aulis

Other blogs: @thyateira for faith and @undilutedundiluted for fandom shite

"You do not hate the face of the Spartan daughter of Tyndareus, nor is Paris to blame: the ruthlessness of the gods toppled Troy from its heights." Vergil's Aeneid

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Why, Paris of Troy themselves 🙂‍↕️

Helen confounds these neat distinctions between domestic and heroic memory by violating the norms of each gender. She makes a parody out of Iliadic forms of remembering kin—the kind of memory valorized by both Nestor and Agenor—because, as a woman, she has no business sailing to Troy and not minding her child and parents. The similarity of Sappho’s phrasing to the Iliadic imperatives serves only to remind us of how the male model of remembering during battle is being perverted for a woman’s (Sappho’s and Helen’s) poetic purposes. In a different way, Helen also violates the Penelopean model of memory by escaping from husband and house, removing herself both physically and mnemonically from her situation as the wife of Menelaus. Helen does not remember according to either the male or the female paradigm, but in the process of transgressing these norms, she illuminates some of the complex interconnections between the arts of memory and poetry.