|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
The Thracian king, although he withdrew, seethes over her and seeking her form again and her movements and (the gestures of) her hands, imagines what he does not see as what he wishes, and he himself nourishes his own flames, while his anxious passion takes away sleep. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Finally, scopophilia and sadism come together in the juxtaposition of Tereus' gesture of conquest, vicimus (513), when he gets Philomela aboard his ship. Now the desiring, scopophilic gaze becomes the sadistic gaze that the predator relentlessly fixes on his prey (51418): |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
exultatque et vix animo sua gaudia differt
barbarus et nusquam lumen detorquet ab illa,
non aliter, quam cum pedibus praedator obuncis
deposuit nido leporem Iovis ales in alto:
nulla fuga est capto, spectat sua praemia raptor. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
He rejoices, and in his thoughts he can scarcely postpone his pleasures, the barbarian, and never does he turn his eyes from her, not otherwise than when the predatory bird of Zeus with his hooked talons places a hare in his nest on high: the captive has no chance of flight; the ravisher watches his prize. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
As this simile suggests, the gaze becomes increasingly aggressive (sadistic); but the image becomes reality when the site of lust shifts from the male viewer to the female body, for the image is now repeated to describe the rape itself (52930). |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
That first rape is then reenacted in a brutal upward displacement to the mouth, violated by the insertion of the forceps and the sword (55563). The application of the verb repetere, now to the act of rape instead of the visual anticipation of rape emphasizes the continuity of the progression from gaze to act (repetens faciem motusque manusque, 491; lacerum repetisse libidine corpus, 562).13 The "tyrannical" assertion of sadistic power over the female body now becomes total, as the double rape not only completes the victim's degradation but also removes her voice. This second rape also completes the transfer of authority over her body from father to tyrant/rapist as it nullifies her "calling" for the name of the father (et nomen patris usque vocantem, 555). Neither the father nor his symbolical surrogates, the Olympian gods, offer any help (547f.). Only at the very end of the story is there an answer; |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
13 The rape scene has many parallels with the rape in Shakespeare's Lucrece, as is often noted (e.g. Lucrece 414ff.). See also Richlin (1992a) 172. Kahn (1991) 145 notes "a connection between his [the rapist's] gaze and his power over her" [Lucrece]. Lucrece 678f. also offers a close, though less brutal, parallel to the upward displacement of the rape to the mouth: see Kahn 149f. Fully applicable to the Philomela episode, mutatis mutandis, is Kahn's remark on p. 150: "When Tarquin muffles Lucrece's cries with the folds of her nightgown, as he rapes her . . . he but repeats and reinforces the dominant tendency of the culture in concealing, sealing off, muffling women's desire and women's speech." |
|
|
|
|
|