Editing Circe (section)

===Sexual politics===
With the [[Renaissance]] there began to be a reinterpretation of what it was that changed the men, if it was not simply magic. For [[Socrates]], in Classical times, it had been gluttony overcoming their self-control.<ref>Xenophon's ''Memorabilia of Socrates'' [http://thriceholy.net/Texts/Memorabilia.html Book I, 3.7].</ref> But for the influential emblematist [[Andrea Alciato]], it was unchastity. In the second edition of his ''Emblemata'' (1546), therefore, Circe became the type of the [[Prostitution|prostitute]]. His Emblem 76 is titled ''Cavendum a meretricibus''; its accompanying Latin verses mention Picus, Scylla and the companions of Ulysses, and concludes that "Circe with her famous name indicates a whore and any who loves such a one loses his reason".<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.emblems.arts.gla.ac.uk/alciato/emblem.php?id=A46a016|title=Alciato at Glasgow: Emblem: Cavendum à meretricibus.|website=www.emblems.arts.gla.ac.uk}}</ref> His English imitator [[Geoffrey Whitney]] used a variation of Alciato's illustration in his own ''Choice of Emblemes'' (1586) but gave it the new title of ''Homines voluptatibus transformantur'', men are transformed by their passions.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.mun.ca/alciato/whit/w082.html|title=Whitney 82|website=www.mun.ca}}</ref> This explains her appearance in the Nighttown section named after her in [[James Joyce]]'s novel ''[[Ulysses (novel)#Episode 15, Circe|Ulysses]]''. Written in the form of a stage script, it makes of Circe the brothel madam, Bella Cohen. Bloom, the book's protagonist, fantasizes that she turns into a cruel man-tamer named Mr Bello who makes him get down on all fours and rides him like a horse.<ref>The text is at [http://www.online-literature.com/james_joyce/ulysses/15 Online Literature].</ref>

By the 19th century, Circe was ceasing to be a mythical figure. Poets treated her either as an individual or at least as the type of a certain kind of woman. The French poet [[Joseph Albert Alexandre Glatigny|Albert Glatigny]] addresses "Circé" in his {{Lang|fr|Les vignes folles}} (1857) and makes of her a voluptuous opium dream, the magnet of masochistic fantasies.<ref>French text [http://www.mediterranees.net/mythes/ulysse/epreuves/circe/glatigny.html online].</ref> [[Louis-Nicolas Ménard]]'s sonnet in {{Lang|fr|Rêveries d'un païen mystique}} (1876) describes her as enchanting all with her virginal look, but appearance belies the accursed reality.<ref>French text [http://www.mediterranees.net/mythes/ulysse/epreuves/circe/menard.html online].</ref> Poets in English were not far behind in this lurid portrayal. [[John Warren, 3rd Baron de Tabley|Lord de Tabley]]'s "Circe" (1895) is a thing of decadent perversity likened to a tulip, ''A flaunting bloom, naked and undivine... / With freckled cheeks and splotch'd side serpentine, / A gipsy among flowers''.<ref>[http://www.bartleby.com/246/757.html ''A Victorian Anthology''] 1837–95.</ref>

[[File:'The Kingdom of Sorceress Circe' by Angelo Caroselli and Pseudo Caroselli.jpg|thumb|upright=1.1|left|''The Kingdom of Sorceress Circe'' by [[Angelo Caroselli]] (c. 1630)]]

That central image is echoed by the blood-striped flower of [[T.S.Eliot]]'s student poem "Circe's Palace" (1909) in the [[Harvard Advocate]]. Circe herself does not appear, her character is suggested by what is in the grounds and the beasts in the forest beyond: panthers, pythons, and peacocks that ''look at us with the eyes of men whom we knew long ago''.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://world.std.com/~raparker/exploring/tseliot/works/poems/eliot-harvard-poems.html|title=T.S. Eliot's 'Harvard Advocate' Poems|website=world.std.com}}</ref> Rather than a temptress, she has become an [[Emasculation|emasculatory]] threat.<ref>James E. Miller Jnr, ''T.S. Eliot: The Making Of An American Poet'', Pennsylvania State University 2005, [https://books.google.com/books?id=Aq-lfNXrIDAC&dq=%22Circe&pg=PA71 p. 71].</ref>

Several female poets make Circe stand up for herself, using the soliloquy form to voice the woman's position. The 19th-century English poet [[Augusta Webster]], much of whose writing explored the female condition, has a dramatic monologue in blank verse titled "Circe" in her volume ''Portraits'' (1870).<ref>The whole text can be read on [http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/circe PoemHunter].</ref> There the sorceress anticipates her meeting with Ulysses and his men and insists that she does not turn men into pigs—she merely takes away the disguise that makes them seem human. ''But any draught, pure water, natural wine, / out of my cup, revealed them to themselves / and to each other. Change? there was no change; / only disguise gone from them unawares''. The mythological character of the speaker contributes at a safe remove to the [[Victorian morality|Victorian]] discourse on women's sexuality by expressing female desire and criticizing the subordinate role given to women in heterosexual politics.<ref>Christine Sutphin, The representation of women's heterosexual desire in Augusta Webster's "Circe" and "Medea in Athens", Women's Writing 5.3, 1998, pp. 373–93.</ref>

Two American poets also explored feminine psychology in poems ostensibly about the enchantress. Leigh Gordon Giltner's "Circe" was included in her collection ''The Path of Dreams'' (1900), the first stanza of which relates the usual story of men turned into swine by her spell. But then a second stanza presents a sensuous portrait of an unnamed woman, very much in the French vein; once more, it concludes, "A Circe's spells transform men into swine".<ref>''The Path of Dreams'', [http://www.gutenberg.org/files/27024/27024-h/27024-h.htm#Page_54 p. 54].</ref> This is no passive victim of male projections but a woman conscious of her sexual power. So too is [[H.D.]]'s "Circe", from her collection ''Hymen'' (1921). In her soliloquy she reviews the conquests with which she has grown bored, then mourns the one instance when she failed. In not naming Ulysses himself, Doolittle universalises an emotion with which all women might identify.<ref>''Hymen'', [http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/doolittle/hymen/1921-circe.html pp. 21–22].</ref> At the end of the century, British poet [[Carol Ann Duffy]] wrote a monologue entitled ''Circe'' which pictures the goddess addressing an audience of "nereids and nymphs". In this outspoken episode in the war between the sexes, Circe describes the various ways in which all parts of a pig could and should be cooked.<ref>''The World's Wife'', London 1999; the text is on the [http://www.porkopolis.org/library/pig-poetry/carol-ann-duffy Porkopolis website].</ref>

[[File:Dosso Dossi 003.jpg|thumb|upright=1.2|[[Dosso Dossi]]'s ''[[Circe and Her Lovers in a Landscape]]'' (c. 1525)]]

Another indication of the progression in interpreting the Circe figure is given by two poems a century apart, both of which engage with paintings of her. The first is the sonnet that [[Dante Gabriel Rossetti]] wrote in response to [[Edward Burne-Jones]]' "The Wine of Circe" in his volume ''Poems'' (1870). It gives a faithful depiction of the painting's [[Pre-Raphaelite]] mannerism but its description of Circe's potion as "distilled of death and shame" also accords with the contemporary (male) identification of Circe with perversity. This is further underlined by his statement (in a letter) that the black panthers there are "images of ruined passion" and by his anticipation at the end of the poem of ''passion's tide-strown shore / Where the disheveled seaweed hates the sea''.<ref>Painting and poem are juxtaposed on the [http://preraphaelitesisterhood.com/the-wine-of-circe-by-edward-burne-jones-poem-by-dante-gabriel-rossetti Pre-Raphaelite Sisterhood site]; the letter to Barbara Bodichon is quoted on the [http://www.rossettiarchive.org/docs/24-1869.raw.html Rossetti Archive site].</ref> The Australian [[A. D. Hope]]'s "Circe – after the painting by Dosso Dossi", on the other hand, frankly admits humanity's animal inheritance as natural and something in which even Circe shares. In the poem, he links the fading rationality and speech of her lovers to her own animal cries in the act of love.<ref>''A Late Picking – poems 1965–74'', quoted in the [http://www.poetrylibrary.edu.au/poets/hope-a-d/circe-0417019 Australian Poetry Library] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180704035713/https://www.poetrylibrary.edu.au/poets/hope-a-d/circe-0417019 |date=2018-07-04 }}.</ref>

There remain some poems that bear her name that have more to do with their writers' private preoccupations than with reinterpreting her myth. The link with it in [[Margaret Atwood]]'s "Circe/Mud Poems", first published in ''You Are Happy'' (1974), is more a matter of allusion and is nowhere overtly stated beyond the title. It is a reflection on contemporary gender politics that scarcely needs the disguises of Augusta Webster's.<ref>''Selected Poems'', Boston 1976 [https://books.google.com/books?id=Vv2dfKp74sAC&q=circe pp. 201–23].</ref> With two other poems by male writers it is much the same: [[Louis Macneice]]'s, for example, whose "Circe" appeared in his first volume, ''Poems'' (London, 1935); or [[Robert Lowell]]'s, whose "Ulysses and Circe" appeared in his last, ''Day by Day'' (New York, 1977). Both poets have appropriated the myth to make a personal statement about their broken relationships.<ref>Jane Polden, ''Regeneration: Journey Through the Mid-Life Crisis'', London 2002, [https://books.google.com/books?id=nXSWIIugy_0C&dq=%22Circe%22&pg=PA125 pp. 124–28]; "Ulysses is of course one more surrogate for the poet", Bruce Michelson, ''Lowell Versus Lowell'', Virginia Quarterly Review, Winter 1983, [http://www.vqronline.org/essay/lowell-versus-lowell pp. 22–39].</ref>