I got the chance to interview three students and two faculty who are working on the project.
Kathleen Juhl, director of the final Songs of Bilitis reconstruction performance this Friday, talks about directing the reconstruction tableaux vivants as well as the “deconstruction” tableaux vivants and what they’re about
Kerry Bechtel, costume designer, talks about her inspiration for the costumes
Ashley Foster, senior music theory and composition major, who composed a setting of “Attente” (“Waiting”), which she will perform on Friday
Audrey Olena, junior music theory and physics major, who composed a setting of “Melancholy” (in English), which I get to sing! Audrey will also be reciting a poem she wrote — a final love letter from Bilitis to Mnasidika — to close off Friday evening’s performance
Katie de la Vega, sophomore music education major who studied and performed the 3 Chansons last semester and explains what they’re about. Katie is also playing viola in the string quartet for Ashley’s piece.
With the help of some extremely talented and generous folks, I was able to record and edit this video fairly quickly despite my lack of sleep, the craziness of this week, and all the other things I should have been doing. It mainly addresses the aspects of Bilitis (as she is portrayed not in Debussy’s 12 Chansons, per se, but in Louys’ work as a whole) that are problematic for audiences today. It’s the first video I’ve made before, so I know it’s patchy and weird, but this is why I would especially appreciate your commentary. Please let me know what you think.
Also: I definitely mispronounce “chansons.” And left out a bunch of things I wanted to talk about. We’ll save that for another video, after I get done editing a few hours of interview footage…
Here’s a quick look at where the 6 Épigraphes Antiques draw their musical-thematic content from within the 12 Chansons. All translations are by Alvah C. Bessie from the sacred-text.org website.
One must sing a pastoral song to invoke Pan, God of the summer wind. I watch my flock, and Selenis watches hers, in the round shade of a shuddering olive-tree.
Selenis is lying on the meadow. She rises and runs, or hunts grasshoppers, picks flowers and grasses, or bathes her face in the brooklet’s cooling stream.
I pluck the wool from the bright backs of my sheep to supply my distaff, and I spin. The hours are slow. An eagle sails the sky.
The shadow moves; let us move the basket of flowers and the crock of milk. One must sing a pastoral song to invoke Pan, god of the summer wind.
Mnasidika then took me by the hand, and led me through the portals of the town to a little barren field where a marble shaft was standing. She said to me: “This was my mother’s mistress.”
I felt a sudden tremor, and, clinging to her hand, leaned on her shoulder, to read the four verses between the serpent and the broken bowl:
“Death did not carry me away, but the Nymphs of the river. I rest here beneath the light earth with the shorn ringlets of my Xantho. Let her alone weep for me. I shall not say my name.”
We stood there long and did not pour libation. How can one call upon an unknown soul from out the rushing hordes of souls in Hades?
Épigraphe III. Pour Que La Nuit Soit Propice — Chanson 4. Chanson (Song)
Shades of the wood where she now ought to be, tell me, whence has my fair mistress strayed? –She has gone down to the plain. –Meadow, oh! tell me, where is my mistress? –She has followed the banks of the stream.
–Beautiful river who just saw her passing, tell me, is she hereabouts? –She has left me to stray on the road. –Oh, road, do you still see her? –She has left me for the street.
–Oh, white street, path of the city, tell me, oh! where have you lead her? –To the golden street, which enters Sardis. –Oh! pathway of light, do her naked feet press you? –She has entered the home of the King.
–Oh, palace of splendor, light of the world, give her again back to me! –See! she has necklaces, hung to her breasts, chaplets of blossoms entwined in her hair, long strings of pearls looped on her legs, and two arms encircle her waist.
You tie your sounding crotals to your airy hands, Myrrhinidion my dear, and no sooner have you taken off your dress, than you stretch your tensing limbs. How pretty you are with arms flung in the air, arched flanks and rouge-red breasts!
You begin: your feet step one before the other, daintily hesitate, and softly slide. With body waving like a scarf, you caress your trembling skin and desire bathes your long and fainting eyes.
Suddenly you clap your castanets! Arch yourself on tip-toe, shake your flanks, fling your legs, and may your crashing hands call all the lusts in hordes about your fiercely twisting body.
Let us applaud wildly, whether, smiling over your shoulder, you twitch your convulsed and strongly-muscled croup, or undulate, almost stretched abroad, to the rhythm of your ardent memories.
I went with Plango to the Egyptian courtesans, far above the old city. They have amphoras of earth and copper salvers, and yellow mats on which they may squat without an effort.
Their rooms are silent, without angles or corners, so greatly have successive coats of blue white-wash softened the capitals and rounded off the bottoms of the walls.
They sit unmoving, hands upon their knees. When they offer porridge they murmur: “Happiness.” And when one thanks them they say, “Thanks to you.”
They understand Hellenic, but feign to speak it poorly so that they may laugh at us in their own tongue; but we, tooth for tooth, speak Lydian and they suddenly grow restless.
The night is fading. The stars are far away. Now the very latest courtesans have all gone homewards with their paramours. And I, in the morning rain, write these verses in the sand.
The leaves are loaded down with shining water. The little streams that run across the roads carry earth and trains of dead leaves. The rain, drop by drop, makes holes in my song.
Ah, how sad and lonely I am here! The youngest do not look at me at all; the oldest all have quite forgotten me. ‘Tis well. They will learn my verses, and the children of their children. . .
Here is something neither Myrtale, nor Thaïs, nor Glykera will say, the day their lovely cheeks grow sagged with age. Those who will love when I am gone, will sing my songs together, in the dark.
With the publication of Chansons de Bilitis by Pierre Louÿs in 1894, the world was presented with a vast collection of poetry ostensibly written by an ancient Greek poetess of the sixth century B.C. The poems immediately garnered attention as graphic, first-person portrayals of lesbian love by a Greek poetess of the ancient world. Although Louÿs had simply composed the poems himself, he used his knowledge of classical literature to intertwine the lives of the fictional Bilitis and that of a real, supposedly lesbian, poetess living at the time: Sappho.
The history of Sappho is a complicated and mysterious one with a lack of factual evidence regarding her life and an abundance of speculation surrounding her sexuality and lifestyle. Scholars such as Holt N. Parker and Joan DeJean continually emphasize the need for skepticism when reading Sappho’s “biography” as a majority of the “facts” are merely oft-repeated legends. What seems to be most certain is that Sappho was a poetess, living primarily in the city of Mytilene on the island of Lesbos. However, scholarship abounds which claims that Sappho was an older woman and teacher of of young girls with whom she had sexual affairs in preparation for their marriage night. Her poems, written in the first-person and expressing admiration and love for females, have been used as evidence that she was a lesbian, or, at the very least, bisexual. Yet Sappho’s poems never explicitly describe sexual activities occurring between women or Sappho’s own participation in such activities. Scholars cite the gender ambiguity found within her poems as evidence that she could have been heterosexual. Sappho could be simply speaking from a male perspective, or, in other cases, addressing a male – not female – subject. The early translations of Sappho’s poems made any gender ambiguity concerning the subjects of her poems either “he” or “one” – never “she.” Only until later years, when a belief that Sappho participated in same-sex love became more accepted, did translations begin to use feminine pronouns more frequently. Yet even other scholars argue that Sappho, living in a sexually segregated, “man’s world,” was simply a champion of female sexuality and the beauty of the female form and marriage. Still others emphasize that an individual’s poetry is not always their biography. Thus, the speaker in Sappho’s poems could be a persona – not Sappho herself. With the absence of concrete evidence from ancient sources or from the extant fragments of Sappho’s poems, speculation is all that scholars can hope to offer in determining what her personal life was truly like.
Louÿs’ interpretation of Sappho, known as “Psappha” in Chansons de Bilitis, follows the popular lore surrounding her in 19th century France. The vocabulary for “female homosexuality” and “female homosexual” had only been recently developed in the French language (“saphisme” in 1838 and “lesbienne” in 1867) and was inspired by recognized beliefs amongst the French about Sappho and her life on the island of Lesbos. Lesbian novels and sapphic fictions were extremely popular at the time, and Chansons de Bilitis was no exception. Louÿs, however, depicts Sappho actively participating in lesbian affairs, unlike the Sappho’s of other lesbian fictions during the time. He renders Sappho as a teacher who is the “absolute female counterpart of the older man who is the erotic teacher in pederastia” (DeJean 276). In Louÿs’ poems, Bilitis joins Sappho’s circle, receiving an education in poetry and same-sex love. Cleverly, Louÿs exploits the literary fashions of the time in Chansons de Bilitis while continuing to circulate and even create more of the ill-based “facts” concerning Sappho’s life. Influenced by the French obsession with Sappho and lesbian love at the time, Louÿs writes explicit passages in fulfillment of a sexual craving that Sappho’s poems simply failed to satisfy.
Recent scholarship about Sappho has attempted to focus on her poetry – its beauty and remarkable nature – rather than her sexuality, admitting that the question is one that cannot currently be answered. The centuries of folklore and legend create a Sappho whose “origins so clearly lie in the products of masculine fantasy” (Parker 335) rather than on any type of fact, as seen prominently in Chanson de Bilitis. The highly erotic, sexually charged image of Sappho, fed by male heterosexuality, has simply failed to do her or her work justice. Her close association with Bilitis has prevented in some cases a serious exploration of a poetess considered by the ancients to be the tenth Muse. Whether writing of lesbian love or not, Sappho’s work contains an expression of emotions and desires that should not be so quickly abandoned in pursuit of the “dirty” details that so many believe a lesbian love story must contain.◆
The complexity of this topic prompts numerous questions that cannot always be concisely or readily answered. How should we as modern day readers interpret the works of Sappho? What kind of role does Sappho’s sexuality play in examining such emotional poetry? Is it really that important of an issue? And what of Pierre Louÿs’ work? It follows the literary fashions of the time, but should that influence how we then interpret it in a modern context? Is art of any type intended to change over time with its audience, or simply remain static, forever designed to carry only the artist’s original message? Listed below are some of the sources that I found useful in my research and will provide further avenues for those who wish to learn more about the topics discussed here or begin the quest for answers:
DeJean, Joan. Fictions of Sappho. Chicago: The University of Chicago, 1989. Print.
Hallett, Judith P. “Sappho and Her Social Context: Sense and Sensuality.” Source 4.3 (1979): 447-64. Print.
Parker, Holt N. “Sappho Schoolmistress.” Transactions of the American Philological Assocation 123 (1974): 309-51. Print.
Snyder, Jane M. Lesbian Desire in the Lyrics of Sappho. New York: Columbia UP, 1997. Print.
Christine Harris’ (’11) artwork confronts some of the issues invoked by Les Chansons de Bilitis. She’s written about each of her works below.
1. For this piece, the structure of the head is emphasized through a series of gestural marks as inspired by the movement of Abstract Expressionism. The color system in use is the earth palette, which is energized through the application of the paint film from thin to thick. The overall mood of the piece can be interpreted different ways the figure is recumbent, but there is an overall intensity, which may suggest an aggressive feel. The figure is also female and gives a slightly atypical way of seeing the female body and the females in contemporary society as well as Bilitis.
2. In this study of the head, color is used to evoke a specific expressive mood. Here, a specific challenge with these colors was to make them read as luminous in certain areas to bring them forward in pictorial space. The color scheme works more with the idea of a recumbent figure being bore down by hardships in their lives. This piece can also be seen within the context of Bilitis and contemporary ideas of gender.
3. When complements are used, a more apparent contrast between these two colors is achieved. A tension that is set up is aided again by the aggressive build up of paint versus a more typically submissive position of the head. This leads us to question the demeanor of the sitter as well as question ways of traditionally depicting gender. The interplay between warm and cool light is explored and used more to solidify the ideas of structure of planes that make up the head.
4. Looking down at the female figure usually communicates ideas of females as being submissive. However, she is intentionally painted with a strong intensity to juxtapose this against the traditional female depictions, if not reverse it. So, the female is given an object pose, but a demeanor of a subject. Within this piece, the proportions are distorted, but not so much that it is readily apparent upon first glance. Thus, the longer the viewer enters the world of the piece the more disconcerted they become as the distortions become more and more apparent. Additionally ideas that were used in earlier works were again revisited here including varieties of paint film, luminosity and warm versus cool light. The roving brush strokes swirl to create a female that directly challenges gender notions much in a similar way to the work of Bilitis. This piece is an illusion that perhaps makes statements about contemporary ways gender is constructed and may also be an illusion.
5. Within this piece, we become more aware of how gender stereotyping occurs within our culture. Pink and blue are both colors that can be loaded with pre-convinced notions specifically in regard to gender. (Blue is used under the pink paint, but cannot really be seen.) Again, color is used in an expressive way to convey larger ideas. The figure does not seem comfortable in the space she inhabits due to the scale of the head relative to the size of the canvas. This figure seems to stay further back from the viewer, but unfortunately seems uncomfortable to be trapped within the space of the pink canvas. The passivity of the pink is also juxtaposed against the intensity of the gestural mark. This piece calls into question similar issues to that of Bilitis and how gender operates in contemporary society.
In an earlier post, Brooke addressed a contemporary example of depictions of female sexuality in art – Mode2’s frank, empowering (yet still voyeuristic) treatment of his female subjects does resonate boldly with today’s audiences in an a fashion that is perhaps quite similar to that which Louÿs’ work stirred – some love it, and some probably find it distasteful. This is a good point for us to continue anticipating audience response to the performance of Les Chansons de Bilitis (and subsequently, the DVD documenting the production process, which will undoubtedly reach much larger audiences beyond the “Southwestern bubble”). However, I believe one must look much further than Mode2’s depiction of controversial content involving women; specifically to contemporary attempts to address an image that is much less apparent – that of the openly sexual, lesbian woman.
Two Sisters
Audrey Kawasaki is a contemporary artist whose subject matter includes some of the same aspects of the conflicting view of woman that Bilitis represents. Kawasaki is well known in the contemporary art world for her repetition of a common theme; haunting nymphettes painted on wood panels, whose suggestive figures are usually surrounded by a dreamlike aura, fading into or meshing with the background. Their forms are also typically depicted as flowing into or entangled with such natural elements as coiling sea creatures, ominous bird skeletons, or the creeping silhouettes of flowers. The overt relation between the lusciousness of female form and sensuous bucolic ecstasy reminded me so much of those consistent parallels Louÿs drew between the fresh young Bilitis and her surroundings.
Minaminouta
After It Is Done
However, what could be considered the most controversial aspect of Kawasaki’s work (beyond the nude young women) is the fact that there are often more than one – interacting in ways that suggest homosexuality. Provocative and commanding with their come-hither stares, delicate beckoning fingers, Kawasaki’s lolitas are simultaneously stunning, eerie, and erotic. However their forms are contradictions: waifs suggesting pre-adolescence boast fully-developed breasts, the “innocent” young women tend to beckon the viewer, sometimes only with the heaviness of their full-lidded eyelids, and sometimes with the brashness of a curled tongue licking a pair of sumptuous lips
Charlotte No Keikaku
The fact that she only paints female characters (in the few occasions where a male character appears he is usually submissive to a much more attention-grabbing female figure in the foreground) brings me to wonder how much Kawasaki anticipated reaction to her work, and what sentiment she intended to provoke. She has a huge popular following and has displayed in many galleries across the world. I wonder how many people would write off her work as “pornographic” – her indulgence in the female form is not that different from Louÿs’. I’m also curious about how many of her fans and followers read her work as attempting to stand as representation of homosexuality in women – and how many, on the other hand, take aesthetic pleasure merely from the sumptuousness of the female forms snaking out from her paintbrush. As far as I know, Kawasaki has never made any clear claims about her personal motivation regarding the homoerotic quality of much of her work.
Waiting
This is an important point to address in the context of Les Chansons de Bilitis, because in order to anticipate the reaction of today’s audience to such a provocative performance, we could think of the different “purposes” itserved in its day and the reactions it provoked. More pragmatically, we could the analyze American public’s responses to the presence of lesbianism in more recent years (in popular culture and academic/art movements alike). What do the images of bisexual or homosexual women in media represent? To be honest, I can’t say that I’ve seen many over the years, at least in America. How are they used, including in the contexts of marketing and commercialism as well as “entertainment” or attempts at social discourse? (What comes to mind right now is Katy Perry’s “I Kissed A Girl” music video, in which celebrity Perry parades around in displays of “femininity” that do little more to upset the hegemonic standards of feminine sexuality than a playboy spread). But how do audiences respond to this representation, which, while suggesting a new era of openness to depictions of girl-on-girl action, clearly concludes that Perry’s antics were mere experimentation?
Utagai
Last week in one of my film classes we discussed how Ellen Degeneres’ show from the ‘90s was canceled shortly after she “came out” on the air during the Oprah Winfrey show. I give Ellen major credit for extending this move (which had social impacts that rippled out for years to come) into her own show – the next episode that aired included her character “coming out” to a psychiatrist (played by Winfrey). What had to do with the show’s lack of popularity after this instance, if Ellen’s wit and humor had been so widely received prior to her coming out? Does that mean that the popular audience of that time was still not open to having representations of non-hetero-normative individuals on television become something “normal”? And would the popular audience have a similar reaction today?
It is difficult for me not somehow relate the majority of my discussions to the media industry and/or popular audience reception. However, television did evolve out of theater, and does effectively carry the same type of audio-visual punch that formerly allowed classic performances such as Louÿs to resonate so strongly in the minds of the public. The influence these media have on audiences, and their reactions to such topics as addressed through these media, are important to consider when analyzing the potential influence or provocation that SU’s performance could have. To bring my discussion full circle while keeping in line with this perspective, it is interesting to consider that to date, the only film adaptation of Les Chansons de Bilitis is the somewhat misleadingly-titled French film Bilitis (1977), which is a coming-of-age story about a heterosexual girl. Therefore, the last question I pose is; Could there be a modern-day Bilitis who is accepted (and respected) by the (general) public? And what would people have to say about her? And how could she potentially function as a figure, a message, a muse?
***
Nicole Licea is an alumnus of Southwestern University and is currently in the Radio-Television-Film program at the University of Texas at Austin.
Of great design, this blot of stars
How it clings to the folds of sky like wet grass to skin
The shoreline presses against the water’s lips
Like the soft wet shapeliness of your mouth at the nape of my neck
Raising hairs with your delicate breath.
But the water’s lips are foamed, eroding
Melting to a fine oily surface, streaked with sifted colored light
Soaking the dry, separate sand into one weighted, damp blanket
Spreading up to the edge of the finest grains of sand
Your hand, weighted, upon mine.
To sit with salted wind streaming from the fading limestone
As stiff green plants make way from the rock-beds
And your warm smell of greenery, of stone, of skin, of Mytilene—
oh! sweet Mnasidika! my soul cannot be sated save by yours!
May I waste a thousand lifetimes searching for you in death.
So far in our blogs and writings about Bilitis, Revisited, Audrey has addressed the issue of location: Why would Southwestern, a small liberal arts university in Central Texas, host a series of concerts whose works center on a woman who had experienced much sexual frustration and curiosity as a teenager, the hardship of being raped, the pain of abandoning her child and leaving her homeland only to become welcomed and loved in the arms of another woman who would eventually betray her, then finally enjoying a sexually liberated life as a courtesan serving the Goddess? Brooke went a step further and asked how we introduce the public, SU students and members of the Georgetown and surrounding communities alike, to the beautiful, yet dark side of Bilitis’ sexuality and sexual experience without making them avert their eyes in embarrassment or shame? How do we do all this and get people talking about the multitude of issues presented by Louÿs’ and Debussy’s Bilitis?
It might be helpful for us to go back and consider how Louÿs dealt with this issue in fin de siècle Paris. Talking about date rape, the abandonment of a child, homosexual love, and prostitution would have been taboo in “polite” conversation. Even though removed by space and time, Americans still have similar hang ups about sexual issues as the Parisian audiences of Louÿs and Debussy. Once the controversy surrounding the authenticity of the Louÿs’ poems had faded, the conversation continued because Louÿs had created not just a stock character destined to be lost in history, but a multifaceted, dynamic woman who defied categories and labels. She is neither homosexual nor heterosexual; innocent nor guilty; good nor evil. Because she is a complex person with thoughts, sympathies, faults and emotions, instead of an emotionally distant topic of gossip and intrigue, we are able to connect with her and the story of her life, even if we have not experienced exactly the same things as she has. Louÿs never tries to shield his audience from the darkness and confusion of Bilitis’ rape nor the powerful sensuality and beauty of lesbian love nor even the violence and Bilitis’ acceptance of prostitution as the next step in her life. So even when we might have turned our eyes away in shame, Louÿs finds a way for us to connect with her.
Louÿs was certainly ahead of his time because even today, in our popular media and culture, we rarely see such vivid, full expressions of lesbian love (as a positive, nurturing, sexual/emotional experience). Lesbian and homosexual characters generally are without dimension, stock characters really. Think of how many versions of the Will and Grace dynamic ((homosexual man and a heterosexual woman who have a perfect relationship minus the sexual consummation) you’ve seen in movies and other television shows. The lack of consummation keeps viewers interested and tuning in every week to see if Will (or any other gay male in this dynamic) will ever “come to the other side” and realize his true love for Grace. Homosexuality must be heterosexualized in this way in order to be made consumable by the masses.[1] Even The L Word, a show which featured far more varied expressions of lesbians than the usual cable show or movie, has received criticism for not including enough non-white, butch, and generally less affluent women. I don’t want to disparage the steps (and risks, in a business sense) that have been taken to bring homosexuality more within the mainstream, but in 2009, it’s not enough that our media only offers these types of incomplete, sometimes misleading and trivialized representations of homosexuality. And I’m only talking about how homosexual characters are type cast in relation to heterosexuality… what about transsexuals or genderqueers? We need to talk about these and other sexual issues not just for the joys and knowledge we gain by connecting with our fellow human beings, but because when we can relate to people different than us, we feel sympathy and are less prone to revert to stereotypes and violence in any form; we view people for who they are, not what minority (or majority) they represent. So I hope my blog leaves you with a challenge, a call to open your eyes to what is different and sometimes shame-causing. These artificial boundaries and feelings keep us from truly knowing one another on terms that are not our own or the norm.
And finally, dear readers, in my earnestness to really get at what is so important and relevant about Bilitis (not that you should disregard what I have just said, though), I almost missed one of the most obvious reasons. Bilitis is still relevant today because the discomfort her raw and sensual sexuality can cause for some people highlights how most Americans feel shame in contemplating and enjoying the sexual… or at least that they feel they shouldn’t show that pleasure in public or even always to their partner! We should not only take the more serious message that entails some social justice work to heart but let us also remember that Louÿs and Debussy are drawing us into a world where sexuality is mostly importantly enjoyable, albeit not without consequences. I’m not calling for orgies to take place in honor of Bilitis, but there’s nothing wrong with being open about not just the dark side of sexuality, but also the positive, healthy aspects of it. So I hope you will disregard the false sense of shame that you may (or may not) carry around regarding sexuality and join us in the conversation before, during or after one of the several performances of Debussy’s Bilitis in January and February.
I just came across a passage in Twyla Tharp’s The Creative Habit about the value of finding the most effective structure or form for one’s creative projects. I like this analogy she makes about the necessity of a structure that holds together ideas and allows them communicability rather than constricts them. In the paragraphs above she has compared two poetic forms — the sestina and the sonnet. The sestina is extremely confining, while the sonnet is more clear and adaptable.
The difference between the sonnet and the sestina is the difference between going fishing with a fishing net or in a diving bell: Both devices are build for the water, but the diving bell is hard, inviolate, confining, and inviting only to extremely curious fish; the net is flexible, porous, and expansive — perfectly designed to haul ‘em in.
At our summit meeting yesterday we talked about what kind of audience we’re trying to reach. It seems unlikely that we could reach a very broad spectrum of people, but perhaps it’s not impossible. The most exciting part of the project for me so far is the opportunity to document this experience through student media — including video and radio. Through these means of communication, we’re going to see just how far we can extend our little net.
I am a 20-year-old female, a junior at Southwestern. I am old enough to relate to Bilitis, and it has occurred to me suddenly that my parents have no idea about the subject matter of this project, and I am positive that I cannot ever tell them.
Bilitis represents the universal ardor and torture of love, the neediness, the listlessness, loneliness, weakness, dependency, numbness, and utter necessity of love and sex and that is certainly subject matter Hollywood gets away with every second in under-the-breath innuendos. But unlike those awkward sex moments in movies you might accidentally watch with your parents, Les Chansons de Bilitis do not allow you to shut your eyes while the 15-second scene passes. Bilitis confronts sexuality head-on, and you have to keep your eyes open the whole time.
That’s the difficulty in presenting a project like this – in bringing an issue to the surface that many would prefer to keep underwater, and asking everyone to take a good look at it. At least, as close to “everyone” as we can get.
By traditional standards, revisiting this work in a university setting would not subsume presenting Bilitis to the “many.” Our work would exist for those who were already privy to or at least mildly curious about lesbian studies, Louÿs and Debussy, or French fin-de-siècle culture. But we want to reach further than that. If we can cultivate new artworks and discussion not only within our own community, but also in those chasms of understanding that divide us from others, only then we might do Bilitis justice.
So why does everyone need to know about her? Because Bilitis is not a remnant of the past. The poignancy of her story makes its taboo-shattering all the more powerful, and her reincarnations are everywhere. For today’s post, I want to highlight some quotes from a two-year-old interview with artist Mode 2 that my friend Nicole recently pointed out to me in the June ’07 issue of Juxtapoz. The differences and similarities in their treatments of sexuality in art illuminate how we might look at Bilitis today. Mode 2′s art, like Louÿs’ poetry, uses gripping detail to challenge societal expectations for expressing sexuality, and what’s important about both artists is their respect for women as powerfully sensitive, emotionally-attuned beings.
Unlike Louÿs, who uses Bilitis’ voice in the first-person, Mode 2 captures candid moments on the dance floor, in the bedroom, and on the street, where his fictional subjects are mostly unaware they’re being documented.
“I’m a discreet and creepy little voyeur, not interested in exhibitionists and what they choose to show you. I like to catch what people don’t want you to see.”
Louÿs embodies the female, allowing for an imaginative, sympathetic depiction of those innermost emotions she would only detail in her private diary, and Mode 2 draws attention to those beautiful details that she sometimes chooses not to expose because she might not recognize them as beautiful herself. Drawing attention to these facets of the female experience — the things we don’t talk about, the things we hide — is powerful because it stimulates and prioritizes dialogue.
On the difficulty in approaching eroticism in his subjects –
“I want to do the Coco de Mer 2008 calendar, but I’m also wondering how to further explore sexuality through paintings and drawings and avoid finding myself breaking laws on obscenity. It is not the be-all and end-all; there are the political and environmental issues I would like to address, too, but society has become so complex it is difficult to deal with a subject through one image…
There are no rules, but I don’t want images that turn people off, closing their eyes and ears and minds because they find it offensive. It’s an narrow path to tread, a total tightrope. Some say you can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs, but doing murals in Belfast I wanted to have both sides of the political divide looking at them and into them. I’d like to be able to deal with sexuality in the same way.”
How do we completely and openly celebrate Bilitis’ sensual beauty, in (almost?) all its explicitness, without putting off people who aren’t ready for it? How do we allow “the other side of the divide” to look into our audience as well? I have to evade a complete answer for now, because the question is enormous and I do have to do homework too, you know. For now I can at least say that this is one of our constant questions for this project. Throughout the coming months I’ll continue to address how all of us working on it — the artists, poets, composers and performers of new and old works that will coincide with the performance of Debussy’s works — might answer it. And maybe, someday soon, I’ll figure out a way to explain this project to my parents.
Here is a more recent interview with Mode 2 from Format Magazine, and maybe if I get permission I can share a PDF of the interview from Juxtapoz.
