My favorite detail about Perseus other than his winged horse has to do with the delicacy with which he handled that severed Gorgon head, taking care not to scratch or rough the head by grainy sands, how he thought to place it on a bed of leaves, then sea plants, how this act birthed coral.
I am reminded by Calvino, who in an age for questioning the fate of books, considered a related question of weight, and made a case for lightness. Only the reflected image allows for the presentation of what may be revealed only indirectly.
I am reminded by Moses, pleading let me see your face to God on the mountain, and God like, no but here is my backside and no doubt the frisson of such an encounter with the hind-parts of divinity is the highest achievement of any art.
How else does a winged horse emerge from Gorgon blood? By what other arrangement but such delicacy can the stomp of a single hoof draw water from stone and invite muses to drink? Where they gather to admire the horse, its beautiful wings.
Always wings, always the mountaintop. The nearness to sky, to flight. The weight of being is weight enough. Only the image––or better, song––can pulse across space, soaring.
I hope so. Let us not, before it comes, be crushed the accumulated weight of the dust of ourselves rubbled in the making and unmaking empires, those heaviest of forms.
***
Notes while reading the opening of Italo Calvino’s Six Memos for the Next Millennium.
An excellent, and thought-provoking, piece, Stacey. Well written.
Love Calvino.
Chris, Thank you! : )
I’ve always wonder if Moses only saw the “glory” of God after He walked passed him. No actual hind parts.
That makes sense to me. I am inclined to think the hind parts are the glory, and the joke is on us, because we often have a mistaken idea of what glory is supposed to look like : )
I agree with you.