The depiction of women in the illustrated works of Pierre Louys

by Paul Gervais

The illustrated novels of Pierre Louys are instructive in many ways. Primarily, of course, they reveal evolving artistic responses to the author’s prose and verse, thereby not just illustrating his personal vision but demonstrating- indirectly- what book purchasers were understood to want, and what publishers and their commissioned artists believed they could offer them, within the parameters of law and public decency. In other words, the nature of illustrations can be a record of changes in society- in attitudes to sexuality, gender and the status and rights of women.

Louys’ first books appeared in the last decade of the nineteenth century, notably Les Chansons de Bilitis in 1894 and Aphrodite in 1896. The earliest illustrated editions are distinctly reflective of their era, tacitly articulating contemporary attitudes towards the female gender and the position of women in society. Librairie Borel‘s 1899 edition of Aphrodite, illustrated by Antoine Calbet, is a case in point: his depictions of Chrysis reflect the Academic tradition of life studies, derived from the classical artistic tradition since the Renaissance, and the young Galilean courtesan is depicted very much in the style of Greek statues of Aphrodite and paintings of Venus by Botticelli, Tiziano Vecelli and others thereafter.

The title pages of the Calbet edition

Likewise, when Georges Rochegrosse provided plates for an edition of Ariadne in 1904, what he supplied was a very revealing reflection of the period’s conceptions of bacchantes- frenzied women. In the plate illustrated below, they are seen wreathed in ivy and flowers and leopard skin, about to tear apart the helpless Ariadne. Elsewhere in the same volume, Greek ladies were presented as sedate, respectable, elegant, graceful and beautiful- as in the illustration that accompanied the preamble to The House on the Nile by Paul Gervais, which is seen at the head of this post.

As I have described in other posts, numerous further illustrated editions of the various books written by Louys were to follow, both before and after his decease in 1925. A constant feature of these was women in greater or lesser states of undress, plates that faithfully responded to the text but also very consciously appealed to the primarily male collectors of fine art limited editions of books. Amongst these many examples, the most interesting are probably those designed by women. Those volumes worked on by Suzanne Ballivet, Mariette Lydis and Clara Tice are notable for the quality of their work and for the fact that the latter two were lesbian and brought their own sense of eroticism to their reactions to the texts. So, for example, in her plates for the 1934 edition of Les Chansons de Bilitis, Lydis’ vision of female lovers was far more intimate and subtly sensual than most of the works produced by male contemporaries- such as J A Bresval (see below). Other women who worked on the various titles by Louys included Renee Ringel (Aphrodite, 1944), Yna Majeska (Psyche, 1928), Guily Joffrin (Psyche, 1972) and editions of Bilitis illustrated by Jeanne Mammen, Genia Minache (1950), Carola Andries (1962) and Monique Rouver (1967). The frequency with which female illustrators were employed as the century passed is noticeable, although I hesitate to identify a distinctly feminine style.

Maritte Lydis, plate for Bilitis, 1934

Post-war, new editions of Louys introduced us to new conceptions of his female characters. J. A. Bresval illustrated an edition of Bilitis in 1957, his figures being very much inspired by contemporary film stars like Gina Lollobrigida and Brigitte Bardot. The women have a dark-haired fulsomeness typical of the period; the eroticism is rather cliched, such as the frontispiece to the book, which shows Bilitis with a lover: the latter kneels before her partner, embracing her waist and kissing her stomach; the standing woman cups her breasts in her hands and throws back her head in a highly stereotypical soft-porn rendering of female ecstasy.

However, by 1961 and Raymond Brenot’s watercolours for a new edition of Sanguines, we see a new aesthetic of the female body beginning to emerge: the bosoms may be just as fantastical, but there is a slenderness and, in some of the clothes, a sense of a more liberated and relaxed mood. Pierre-Laurent (Raymond) Brenot (1913-98) was a painter who was also very much in demand to design record sleeves, advertisements and fashion plates (for such couturiers as Dior, Balenciaga, Ricci and Lanvin). More tellingly, he is known as the ‘father of the French pin-up’- consider, for example, his advert for lingerie manufacturer Jessos- “Comme maman, je porte un Jessos” declares a young teen with pigtails, seated with her blouse unbuttoned to reveal her bra (“just like my mum’s”); I have discussed this style of marketing in another post. Brenot’s poster designs, for consumer goods, holiday destinations and films and theatres, regularly featured glamorous young women and, when this work declined during the later 1960s, he returned to painting, producing many young female nudes.

Brenot, Parrhasius in ‘The Wearer of Purple’ from Sanguines

What has to be observed, though, is that most of the nudity portrayed by Brenot was not justified by the actual stories in Sanguines. There are some naked slaves in The Wearer of Purple (see below), and Callisto in A New Sensation does share a bed with the narrator, but most of the rest of the stories are really quite respectable and sex-free (by the standards of Louys), being more concerned with psychology than sexuality. What we see, therefore, is evidence for the tendency to treat the works of Louys as a platform for erotic illustration. Frequently, this was a distinct element in the author’s stories, but it seems that he had acquired a reputation for sexiness which was then applied more liberally, presumably in the knowledge that the name would sell. The same criticism can, in truth, be made of Georges Rochegrosse’s depiction of the bacchae in the 1904 edition of Ariadne (see earlier): what he depicted might perhaps be implied in the text, but what Louys wrote doesn’t wholly warrant the nudity that we see:

“They wore fox skins tied over their left shoulders. Their hands waved tree branches and shook garlands of ivy. Their hair was so heavy with flowers that their necks bent backwards; the folds of their breasts streamed with sweat, the reflections on their thighs were setting suns, and their howls were speckled with drool.”

Ariadne, c.2

Brenot, Callisto in ‘A New Sensation’ from Sanguines

The men who feature in Brenot’s illustrations often seem hesitant, ill at ease or, even, embarrassed at being discovered with the women in their company- his take on the ‘satyrs’ with nymph in a scene from ‘The Wearer of Purple’ is a case in point. In Louys’ story, this is an incident involving a slave girl being assaulted by two other servants so as to create a titillating composition for the the artist Parrhasius to paint. As we can see in the reproduction below, the satyrs appear afraid of the young woman, having lost all their accustomed priapism, whilst she strikes me as indifferent to their presence and in fully control of the situation. Given Brenot’s later output, it’s almost certainly overstating things to say that these plates reflect shifts in social attitudes.

Brenot, two satyrs & a nymph in ‘The Wearer of Purple’ in Sanguines

Coming right up to date, the 1999 edition of Aphrodite demonstrates how visions of women may have developed and advanced (or not). The book was issued in three volumes, the first two being illustrated by two male comic book artists, Milo Manara and Georges Bess respectively. Both have distinctly erotic styles and the results strike me as being, in essence, highly accomplished and artistic reproductions of glamour photography and lesbian porn; for example, George Bess’ picture of the reclining woman, which faces the start of Book 2, chapter 1 of the story, seems to me to be drawn in a style very much influenced by Mucha or Georges du Feure: the streaming hair and the encroaching, twisting foliage all have the hallmarks of Art Nouveau (which is of course highly appropriate given the publication date of the original book). In the modern version, Chrysis is regularly depicted in intimate scenes alone, with her maid Djala or with the two girls Rhodis and Myrtocleia. With their tousled hair, pouting lips and pneumatic breasts, these women are very much the late twentieth century ideal. Most of the time, they are presented as being more interested in each other than in any of the male characters in the story, but my response is that there are really rather high-quality examples of fairly standard pornographic obsessions. When we look at them, it’s worth recalling Pierre Louys’ own description of his heroine, when he wrote to the painter Albert Besnard asking to paint her:

“Chrysis, as womanly as possible- tall, not skinny, a very ‘beautiful girl.’ Nothing vague or elusive in the forms. All parts of her body have their own expression, apart from their participation in the beauty of the whole. Hair golden brown, almost Venetian; very lively and eventful, not at all like a river. Of primary importance in the type of Chrysis, the mouth having all the appetites, thick and moist- but interesting […] Painted lips, nipples and nails. Depilated armpits. Twenty years old; but twenty years in Africa.”

Aphrodite, chapter 1, Milo Manara, 1999

Bess, plate for Aphrodite, 1999, Book 2, c.1, ‘The Garden of the Goddess’

A fascinating contrast to the the first two volumes of the 1999 edition is to be found in the third, illustrated by Claire Wendling (born 1967). She is a French author of comic books and her response to the text is interesting because it is so much darker and less obviously ‘sexy’ than that of her male collaborators. The plates are, literally, dark in tone and, although they tend to focus on solo female nudes, rather than lascivious eroticism is there is a mood of mental and physical suffering entirely appropriate to the final section of the book, in which Chrysis is arrested, sentenced to death, executed and buried. Her cover image evokes- for me- thoughts of Gustav Klimt in its decoration, but the twisted, crouched posture of the woman doesn’t look seductive- rather she’s supplicatory or, possibly, predatory.

At the start of this post I proposed that the book illustrations published with successive editions of the works of Pierre Louys can be a record of changes in society- in attitudes to sexuality, gender and the status and rights of women. I think that this is true, but that the evidence does not necessarily reveal huge steps forward in those areas. Far more women are involved now in commercial art, and the works of Louys provide vehicles for the expression of lesbian desire on their own terms: albeit in the service of illustrating books written by a man in which his sympathetic views of same-sex attraction compete with heterosexual masculine eroticism. Art styles have evolved, but the attitudes expressed by what’s depicted have not necessarily developed at the same pace.

Pan- Gone but not forgotten?

Verrirt/ Lost by Franz von Stuck (1891)

The composer and First World War poet Ivor Gurney wrote a little lament for Pan as the god of nature that reflects a common sense, at the close of the Great War, that much of the hope and revived interest in the Greek deity that had suffused British culture in late Victorian and Edwardian times had dissipated. In addition, the poem is as likely to reflect Gurney’s own sense of despair and professional frustration and failure in the early 1920s, as the depression that was to hospitalise him for the remainder of his life descended. 

“What was dear to Pan is dear to him no more,

He answers prayers never- nor ever appears-

And so sore a loss is this to his lovers

They play never, the sweet reed sounds no more

In the oak coppice- or the Severn poplar shade

Silver hearted… softly wailing at eve,

The silent country folk no more bring gifts

They delighted in- nor the new pipe greenly made.”

Gurney, What was dear to Pan

I think there is an echo too of a common conceit in Gurney’s verse, that the Cotswold Hills of Gloucestershire, once the site of many Roman villas, still bore traces of those ancient Roman settlers- although plainly in this case the incursions of the modern world were driving them away. Pan himself is affirmed as a beloved deity of farming folk, associated with music and green vegetation. The mood, though, is wistful, evocative of abandonment and loss.

Not all poets were convinced that Christianity and mechanical farming, transport (and warfare) had banished the Great God. The poet Edmund Gosse (1849-1928) wrote the poem Old and New to celebrate that very displacement of the old deities by Jesus, but (in my opinion anyway) he made the older ways sound like a lot more fun…

“Come, Hesper, and ye Gods of mighty waters,

Ye nymphs and Dryades,

Come, all the choir of white Pierian daughters,

And girls of lakes and seas,

Evoe! and Evoe lo! crying,

Fill all the earth and air ; Evoe Io!

And the hanging woods, replying,

Shall shout the echo there!

All day in breathless swoon or heavy slumber.

We lay among the flowers.

But now the stars break forth in countless number

To watch the dewy hours ;

And now lacchus, beautiful and glowing,

Adown the hill-side comes,

With tabrets shaken high, and trumpets blowing,

And resonance of drums.

The leopard-skin is round his smooth white shoulders,

The vine-branch round his hair ;

The eyes that rouse delight in maid-beholders,

Are glittering, glowworm-fair ;

The king of all the provinces of pleasure,

Lord of a wide domain,

He comes and brings delight that knows no measure,

A full Saturnian reign.

O take me, Maenads, to your foxskin-chorus.

Pink-lipped like volute-shells,

For I must follow where your chant sonorous

Roars down the forest-dells ;

The sacred frenzy rends my throat and bosom,

I shout, and whirl where He,

Our vine-god, tosses like some pale blood-blossom,

Borne on a windy sea.

Around the car, with streaming hair and frantic,

The Maenads and wild gods.

And shaggy fauns and wood-girls corybantic

Toss high the ivy-rods ;

Brown limbs with white limbs hotly intertwining

Whirl in a maddening dance.

Till, when at last Orion is declining,

We slip into a trance.

The satyr’s heart is faintly, faintly beating ;

The white-lipped nymph is mute ;

lacchus up the western slope is fleeting,

Uncheered by horn or lute ;

Hushed, hushed are all the shouting and the singing,

The rapture, the delight,

For out into the cold grey air upspringing,

The morning-star shines bright.”

Gosse, Old & New

Gosse’s verse is crammed with classical references. Hesper is Hesperus, the planet Venus in the evening and son of the dawn goddess Eos (or Aurora). The Pierides were the nine royal sisters who competed with the Muses song contest and, when they were defeated, were turned into birds. Iacchus is another name for Dionysos, and those ecstatic, frenzied sea nymphs, dryads and bacchae we’ve also met before. Evoe Io is the traditional cry of the maenads and bacchantes, an exclamation of joy addressed to and naming the divinities Dionysos and Isis. It was also used in poetry by Aleister Crowley, who more seriously desired to invoke Bacchus.

Gosse wanted to argue that the Dionysian revels had been suppressed and displaced (driven off by the ‘Morning Star,’ by whom he meant Jesus- whom he addressed in the second part of this poem, entitled A.D.). However, as I have demonstrated before, other poets did not want to abandon those dreams of freedom and unrestrained expression, so that- even after several millennia- we’re not yet fully prepared to accept that the Great God Pan and his entourage are truly dead.

Dionysos & Aphrodite- some modern literary recreations

Louis Icart, Chansons de Bilitis, 1949

I have written a great deal recently about the French author Pierre Louys. I first encountered his work when I was researching my two books on the Greek classical deities, Aphrodite and Dionysos (respectively, Aphrodite- Goddess of Modern Love and Dance, Love & Ecstasy– The Modern Cult of Dionysos/ Bacchus– published by Green Magic Publishing in 2021 and 2022).

As their titles suggest, these two books are just as concerned with our reactions to and understanding of Aphrodite and Dionysos today as they are to outline their cults in classical times. I demonstrate how the two deities have pervaded our culture- through literature, art, music, theatre and our world view- since the late nineteenth century. The writing of Pierre Louys, I argue, made no small contribution to this, as- although he set about recreating the worship of these gods in a partially imaginary ancient world- he was speaking to contemporary problems and preoccupations. Having encountered what are probably the two most significant and famous books by Louys, I proceeded then to read the rest of his output. He wrote other recreations of ancient mythology, but he also transferred his attention to the modern world in which he lived, creating utopias and other fictional settings in which to put his ideas into practice. 

In Les Chansons de Bilitis (Songs of Bilitis, 1894), Louys sought to articulate the worship of Aphrodite/ Astarte/ Venus and of Dionysos as living faiths which formed the backdrop for everyday lives and everyday ways of approaching the world. By this means, he was able to express his own views on morality and lifestyles in an oblique manner from behind a façade of fiction and past societies. In the world of Bilitis, Pan and the nymphs are alive and present in her home in Pamphylia and she contacts Aphrodite directly and physically in the branches of trees (songs 1 & 24). When Bilitis moves to Mytilene, she meets her first love, a girl called Mnasidika, who wears on a necklace a little statuette of Astarte, the goddess who acts as her guardian and is “the Most Amorous One.” 

Later, on Cyprus, the island home of the goddess, Bilitis dedicates herself more fully to her cult. Astarte/ Aphrodite is dual in many ways (virgin and mother, fire and foam of the seas); she is the one who unites “the multiple species of savage beasts and the sexes in the forest.” Bilitis becomes a maenad, ecstatically praising Dionysos through orgies in which “they offered you again the love you cast within them.” This line, with the verb ‘jeter‘ (to throw or fling), suggests to me a measure of randomness and variability in the results of the god’s actions. Some translators prefer the verb ‘pour,’ which indicates something more specific; ‘cast’ instead admits differences between individuals- or, in other words, varying preferences. Some of the maenads may prefer men, others women, some, both; Dionysos himself is portrayed as bisexual in the Greek sources and I think it’s clear from all of his work- especially his earliest books- that Louys celebrated the relaxed pansexuality of the ancient world (as he perceived it, anyway). In Bilitis’ account of the bacchic celebration, the moon is rising; it is the white body of Aphrodite whose light trembles on the sea “a thousand tiny lips of light- the pure sex or the smile of Kypris Philommeides.” Hesiod named Aphrodite Philommeides (genital-loving) because she is said to have sprung from the severed member of Uranus. Louys plays on this ambiguity of meaning in his choice of words- “mille petites lèvres de lumière.;” obviously, both could be appropriate to a goddess of love. When the moon sets, the priestesses of Astarte make love together- a secret female rite dedicated to the Mother of the World, the untiring and irresistible lover (songs 92-97). To the Venus/ Aphrodite of Louys’ books, all love is acceptable: in song 102, ‘The Torn Robe,’ a girl is cross when a man steps on and rips her dress at the back: “my yellow dress is all torn and if I walk the streets like this they’ll take me for a poor girl who serves inverted Venus”- this is the Venus Aversa, whom I have described previously; the speaker is concerned that walking round with her bottom exposed may give the wrong idea to some.

Louys returned to these themes in his next novel, Aphrodite (1896), which is set in and around the temple of the goddess in Ptolemaic Alexandria. The shrine is surrounded by the booths of courtesans whose work is devoted to the goddess; if they give birth to girl children, the infants are immediately married symbolically to Dionysos “for virginity displeases Aphrodite.” They are then dedicated to training in the temple’s famous school to learn “all the erotic arts.” This education continues until such time as they feel they are ready to serve the goddess themselves- “because desire is an order of the goddess who must not be thwarted” (here I understand an implication that both the timing and the manner of honouring the goddess of love are indicated). In Alexandria too, the goddess is worshipped by priestesses in orgiastic rites, but she also receives more humble and ordinary offerings and prayers from the faithful. These gifts may be flowers and clothing, but they can be acts of love and even the bodies of the faithful, whilst the prayers may reflect the worshippers’ own concerns- as when the two flute players Rhodis and Myrtocleia ask Aphrodite to accept offerings “from our joined hands if it be true that the gentle Adonis alone does not satisfy you and that an embrace still gentler delays, at times, your slumber” (Aphrodite, Book 2, chapters 1 & 6).

Lastly, in his poetry collection Stanzas, Louys composed a song in praise of Aphrodite:

“O goddess in our arms so tender and so small,
Goddess with a heart of flesh, even weaker than us,
Aphrodite by whom all Eve is Aphrodite
And is adored by a man at her knees,

You alone survive after the twilight
of great Olympians submerged by the night.
A whole world collapsed on the tomb of Hercules;
O Beauty! you come back from the past that is running away.

As you were born in the Hellenic light,
You raise the sea, you redden the rosehip;
The whirling universe is intoxicated by your breath
And the breast of a child takes you in whole.

As you were born from the senses of Praxiteles,
Every lover is divine, and I doubt, in his eyes,
Whether Heaven makes you a woman or makes her immortal,
Whether you descend to man or be reborn for the Gods.”

He sees the goddess enduring, simply because love, desire and motherhood are constants of human existence.

Through his sympathetic treatments, especially in Bilitis, Louys helped to establish a modern lesbian identity. As an author, meanwhile, whilst no longer pursuing the pseudo-classical theme so assiduously, Louys continued to work out the same kinds of issues in fictional contemporary settings. The same ideas remained central to his later prose and poetry: he continued (by demonstration rather than by dogmatic declaration) to assert the diversity and equality of love and passion. Removed from imaginary ancient societies, the later stories no longer justified reference to the pagan deities and, shorn of the context of their presence, we may seem to be confronted with unrestrained indulgence of the obsessions and fantasies of Pierre Louys. However, the absence of mention of the old divinities does not mean that Louys had forgotten the world view he had formulated around them. His thesis still seemed to be that the ancient gods and peoples did not discriminate (in both senses of the word) and that modern societies might do well to learn this again from them.

Georges Barbier, from Chansons de Bilitis, 1922

Dangerous Liaisons- Mortals and Gods

William Blake Richmond, Aphrodite & Anchises

I have written numerous times about the gods and their lovers, but in this posting I want to focus on the perils for mortals of getting mixed up with divine partners. My starting text will be that ever-quotable scholarly work, the film Notting Hill (1999). Towards the end discussing the return of ‘The American’ to London, this exchange takes place:

“Max: Let’s face facts, this was always a no-win situation. Anna’s a goddess: you know what happens to mortals who get involved with gods.
William: Buggered, is it?
Max: Every time.”

Facts are, indeed, facts, and the record of human-deity romances is a sobering one. Aphrodite had several mortal lovers, including Anchises and Adonis. Neither were consensual partners- the goddess simply took them because she wanted to and she could. Their ends are almost always tragic too: the red rose is the flower most emblematic of the goddess because, according to one story, roses sprang from the blood of Aphrodite’s lover, Adonis, when he was gored by a boar and bled to death in the goddess’ arms. In other versions of the story, the boar was either sent by Ares, who was jealous that Aphrodite was spending so much time with Adonis, by Artemis, because she wanted revenge against Aphrodite for having killed her devoted follower Hippolytus, or by Apollo, to punish Aphrodite for blinding his son Erymanthus.

As for Anchises, Aphrodite pretended to be a Phrygian princess so as to be able to seduce him, only to later reveal herself and inform him that they would have a son named Aeneas. At the same time, though, the goddess warned Anchises that if he told anyone about her being the mother of his child, Zeus would strike him down with his thunderbolt. He failed to heed her warning and was duly struck down, either dying or being blinded.

The same applies to Dionysos/ Bacchus. One of his most famous partners is Ariadne, abandoned by Theseus on the island of Naxos after they slay the minotaur. In most accounts, Dionysos saves her and they have a happy marriage, although Ariadne dies young. However, the Belgian author Pierre Louys approached the relationship in a far darker manner. In his short story Ariadne, published during the 1890s and later included in his collection The Twilight of the Nymphs, he presented a unique interpretation of the interaction between the Minoan princess and the god.

Having been abandoned by Theseus on Naxos, Ariadne awakes to sound of bacchantes, satyrs and pans approaching. The maenads are described vividly: “Their hands waved branches of trees and shook garlands of ivy. Their hair was so laden with flowers that their necks bent backward; the folds of their breasts were rivulets of sweat, their thighs glowed like setting suns and their shrieks were spotted with flying foam.” They cry out to Iacchos- “Beautiful God! Mighty God! Living God! Leader of the Orgy!” imploring him to “Incite the multitude! Drive the rout and the rapid feet! We are yours! We are your swelling breath! We are your turbulent desires!”

As soon as the frenzied women see Ariadne, they tear her limb from limb and scatter her remains. Dionysos then appears, dismisses them, and resurrects their victim, intoning over her dismembered corpse “Arise! I am Awakening. I am Life. This is the road of Eternal Peace.”

Then, rather than marrying Ariadne, as the traditional story tells, this Dionysos makes her his queen, of a place “where you shall never again see the sun too glittering not the night too shadowy… you shall never again feel hunger nor thirst nor love nor fatigue…” He is the “Ruler of Shades, the Master of the Infernal Water” and she shall sit beside him on his throne presiding over a land where “the anguish of death is miraculously transfigured in the intoxication of resurrection,” where pain and trouble become ecstatic and where a great eternal peace reigns. Ariadne is overjoyed with this prospect- and then he annihilates her completely. Louys chose to explore the strand of the ancient myth that made Dionysos an equivalent of Hades/ Pluto and lord of the underworld; hence, his uniquely bleak and savage conception of the god is not without classical authority.

Dionysos in fact had multiple partners, mortal and divine, female and male. His affair with the Thracian boy Ampelos also ends in tragedy:

“It’s said that the beardless Ampelos, son of a nymph and a satyr, was loved by Bacchus on the Ismarian hills. Upon him the god bestowed a vine that trailed from an elm’s leafy boughs, and still the vine takes from the boy its name. While he rashly picked the ripe grapes upon a branch, he tumbled down from the tree and was killed. Bacchus bore the dead youth to the stars.”

In another version, Ampelos was killed while riding a bull maddened by the sting of a gadfly sent by Atë, the goddess of folly- the beast threw the boy and then gored him to death. Another doomed male lover is also recorded: according to several writers, Dionysos was guided during his journey to the underworld to rescue his mother Semele by a man called (variously) Hyplipnus, Prosymnus or Polymnus, who shamelessly requested, as his reward, to be Dionysos’ lover. Sadly, he died before he got his reward and the relationship was consummated.

The mention of Semele highlights another tragic divine-human love affair. Dionysos was conceived when Zeus had sex with the mortal woman Semele (whose name in fact means ‘Earth’ in Phrygian- hence Dionysos is again born of a union of sky and earth). In one version of this story, she asked to see her lover in his true, divine form. Zeus appeared to her as a bolt of lightning, which struck and killed the pregnant woman. Zeus was able to save his son, though, sowing the baby up in his own thigh until he could be born. This episode underlines what Max said to Will about the perils of divine partners. Either they will prove fatal for you- or other gods will be jealous or vindictive and take their revenge upon the vulnerable mortal.

Speaking with the Birds- the Bacchic Rites

Carlo Palumbo, Baccanti

In his poem Bacchus, the American poet Ralph Waldo Emerson gives us a fresh perspective on the Bacchic rites, calling for-

“Wine of wine,
Blood of the world…
That I, intoxicated,
And by the draught assimilated,
May float at pleasure through all natures,
The bird-language rightly spell,
And that which roses say so well.”

The wine of the Dionysian rites doesn’t just make you drunk, therefore: far more than that, it grants admittance to an understanding of the true secrets of the natural world. It creates a deep knowledge and comprehension of the workings of the universe. Together, wine and bread are, Emerson declared:

“Food which needs no transmuting,
Rainbow-flowering, wisdom-fruiting;
Wine which is already man,
Food which teach and reason can.

Wine which music is;
Music and wine are one;
That I, drinking this,
Shall hear far chaos talk with me,
Kings unborn shall walk with me,
And the poor grass shall plot and plan
What it will do when it is man:
Quickened so, will I unlock
Every crypt of every rock.

I thank the joyful juice
For all I know;
Winds of remembering
Of the ancient being blow,
And seeming-solid walls to use
Open and flow.

Pour, Bacchus, the remembering wine;
Retrieve the loss of me and mine;
Vine for vine be antidote…
Haste to cure the old despair,
Reason in nature’s lotus drenched,
The memory of ages quenched;
Give them again to shine.”

Temistocle Lamesi, Bacchic Scene- The Maenads

Rather than any physical transubstantiation, as supposed in the Christian rites, Emerson seems to have been imagining some more direct, personal transformation through these Bacchic ‘sacraments.’ Very often, as John Greenleaf Whittier did in The Brewery of Soma, we envisage the orgies of Dionysos as being all about hedonistic excess and self-forgetting ecstasy:

“Some fever of the blood and brain,
Some self-exalting spell,
The scourger’s keen delight of pain,
the Dervish dance, the Orphic strain,
The wild-haired Bacchant’s yell…”

What if, though, the rites are as much about self-discovery, self-realisation and prophecy- that they are deeper and more revelatory than we might suppose? I have suggested that the aim of the Bacchantes is unity with the deity, but Emerson’s vision seems to promise something more- perhaps something that’s more permanently transformative than we might have supposed. Unity with the god is not just mind-expanding bliss, it is consciousness expanding knowledge and awareness, a revelation of how the gods see experience the world.

For more see my book about Dionysos, from Green Magic Publishing:

Drunk Dancers- some Germanic Bacchantes

Franz von Stuck, Bacchantes, satyrs and nymphs

One of the arguable defects of many artists’ depictions of bacchantes, nymphs and other women of mythology is that they can be reduced to idealised and unreal figures. This is one reason why I like the work of some of the German nineteenth century painters, such as Lovis Corinth (1858-1925), Franz von Stuck (1863-1928) and Arnold Bocklin (1827-1901)- who, admittedly, was Swiss. Their vision of the maenads in particular could be quite brutally honest- and very far from the perfect anatomical specimens you find in much Greek sculpture.

Lovis Corinth, Bacchanal

Corinth, Bacchantenpaar

The Expressionist Corinth painted and drew a number of bacchanals, all of which inevitably featured naked figures in varying degrees of intoxication and debauch.  His nudes are refreshingly real- they are not perfect, slender nymphs but rather paunchy males and solid, slightly coarsened women with sagging breasts.  Everyone staggers around on unsteady feet and with glazed eyes. His Bacchantenpaar of 1908 comprises a plainly middle couple, very jolly after a good drink.  The man is flushed with wine and possibly lacking a few teeth; the pair look exactly like a couple of German peasants at a beer festival- which is very probably exactly who his models were.

Corinth, Homecoming Bacchantes

Even Corinth’s rendering of Ariadne auf Naxos (1913) has the heroine slumped naked, sprawled in a stupor with her legs apart, looking more like she has been overcome by wine and desire than ennui. Contrast this to John Waterhouse’s version, where our heroine’s boredom after being abandoned by Theseus has certainly overwhelmed her, but has left the princess drowsy in the heat and looking like a David Hamilton glamour shoot, enjoying an erotic reverie

Corinth Ariadne auf Naxos

John William Waterhouse, Ariadne

German symbolist Franz von Stuck drew figures very similar to those of Corinth: a full range of young, old, pretty and ugly celebrants- as in his etching Bacchantes, Satyrs and Nymphs (see top), which shows a reeling and staggering procession of overwrought dancers.  His Bacchanal of 1905 depicts a circle of dancers in front of a classical portico; one of the naked frenzied females is just at the point of collapsing into the arms of a companion. She is, again, an older, more solid woman rather than a willowy fantasy of a nymph.

von Stuck, Bacchanal

Arnold Bocklin didn’t paint many scenes concerned with the Bacchic rites, but his Nymph on the Shoulders of Pan is unquestionably one. The grey haired and goaty satyr perpetuates the tendency for showing a diverse population in Arcadia. The nymph, meanwhile, goads her steed along with the pine-cone tip of her thyrsos. All in all, it appears that the pan isn’t wholly happy; she’s leaning back and pulling on his horn, which seems to be hurting him. Perhaps she’s a little too drunk to notice.

Bocklin, Nymphe auf den Schultern Pans, 1874.

Although German artists predominate in this genre of ‘real’ scenes from legend, they weren’t of course the exclusive purveyors of such a vision of antique myth- witness Alexis Axilette’s Silene entrainé par les nymphes which also eschews perfect models for its characters.

Axilette, Silene entrainé par les nymphes

Finally, I turn to a picture that truly encapsulates much of the spirit of many of the images of the bacchic rites that the period produced.  In 1886 Austrian painter Gustav Klimt was commissioned to decorate a staircase in the newly completed Burgtheater in Vienna.  He painted a memorable depiction of the Altar of Dionysus for the theatre audiences to admire on the way to the auditorium. In his work, Klimt often drew on Greek imagery to create aesthetic, mysterious and unsettlingly erotic designs and the Burgtheater panel is no exception to this. Unlike other German speaking painters of the period, though, he preferred the bacchante as slender girl to some of his compatriots’ more stolid and mature figures.

In the painting, two naked adolescent girls, whom we may confidently identify as a pair of maenads, appear before the god’s shrine.  One reclines, seemingly exhausted after the Dionysian orgy, and languidly offers up some slightly wilted flowers whilst gazing straight out at the observer.  The other girl holds a staff (which must represent Dionysos’ thyrsos) in one hand as she presents a statue to the god. In contrast to her exhausted companion, she is an alert and perfect creature who might almost have been carved from marble like the shrine.  She has immaculate pale, smooth skin, pert conical breasts, beautifully sculpted hair and dramatically made-up eyes.  To one side of this pair, a satyr figure plays on a drum and in the background lurk two young children with strangely black eyes- we may assume that their pupils have been hugely expanded by drugs.

Klimt’s vision radiates a sensual enigma which many of the other pictures considered here do not: they were concerned with earthy, real individuals, who’ve drunk too much and, if they feel lusty, are probably too inebriated to do much about it. Klimt’s almost icy scene sets itself at a distance from such wild and uncontrolled ecstasies. Instead, the worship of the god is restrained, almost frozen.

Klimt, Altar of Dionysos (detail)

Emma Hamilton- Georgian pin-up girl

George Romney, Lady Emma Hamilton as a bacchante

In modern terms, we might describe Emma Hamilton as hot, a babe, an effective influencer on social media. She knew how to promote herself; she kept up a supply of selfies and Instagram images for her fans. She knew that sex and good looks could sell, so she sold. Of course, the medium she chose- portraits in oils by leading painters of the day- was almost the only few option open to her to get herself recognised, but the product itself hasn’t changed in two hundred years- a pretty face, a winning smile, great hair- and just a bit of sauciness (spot that hint of nipple and the side boob in the gauzy slip below).

Romney, Hamilton as a Bacchante

Emma Hamilton (born Amy Lyon- 1765-1815), was an English model, dancer and actress. She began her career aged 12 on the stage in Drury Lane. This led to work as a society hostess, nude dancer and artists’ model and, in due course, she became the mistress of a series of wealthy men, culminating with the naval hero Lord Nelson. In 1791, aged 26, she married Sir William Hamilton, British ambassador to the Kingdom of Naples, where she a close friend of the queen, sister of Marie Antoinette, and met Horatio Nelson. Hamilton was bright, witty and elegant and made the best of the opportunities she found in every situation that confronted her.

Elizabeth Vigee le Brun, Emma Hamilton as a Bacchante

In 1782 Hamilton was introduced to the portrait artist George Romney. She became his favourite model and he sketched and painted her repeatedly, nude and in various guises. Other artists, such as French painter Elizabeth Vigee le Brun, were also fascinated by her looks and style. Hamilton loved to dress up, which must have been a great attraction, and we see her playing a variety of classical or famous roles- Circe, Cassandra, the Sibyl, Titania and Mary Magdalene. She didn’t object to revealing her body, which must have endeared her even more to some painters.

Romney, Hamilton as Circe (1782)

Vigee le Brun, Hamilton as Ariadne

What interests me here is Emma Hamilton’s repeated appearance as a bacchante- and I count here her portrait as Ariadne (above), for this princess was saved and married by Dionysos/ Bacchus after she had been abandoned by Theseus on Naxos following the slaying of the Minotaur. The leopard skin, vine leaves and wine cup all indicate Ariadne’s bacchic connections here.

Hamilton wasn’t alone in choosing to present herself as a maenad. Lots of other women did so, especially actresses and dancers, but also noble women and princesses. See below Jacques-Antoine Vallin’s Madame Bigottini as a Bacchante– she was a ballet dancer and doubtless keen on self-promotion just like Emma Hamilton; contrast this to William Hoare’s Lady Emily Kerr as a Bacchante. The eligible and marriageable daughter of a respectable and wealthy family wouldn’t- on the face of it- have wished to associate herself with actresses and dancers and other women who were “no better than they should be” (let’s not overlook that fact that both Bigottini and Hamilton cheerfully bared some bosom) but here she is, in something of a state of underdress, and looking not much older than fourteen (and rather serious and sensible, too). She has her thyrsos and her tambourine, all ready for the Bacchic rites, even though it’s hard to believe she’d actually have got involved.

Vallin, Madae Bigottini

William Hoare, Lady Emily Kerr as a Bacchante

Dressing up as a bacchante clearly wasn’t regarded as demeaning, despite the associations with drunkenness, violence and general excess. Why did they do it? Probably indicating that you knew your classics did no harm at all to your standing in society- you projected yourself as educated and cultured. For Lady Kerr, this would have confirmed her existing position; for Bigottini, it presumably raised her status somewhat. Yet, at the same time, it had a bit of an edge. The sensual, ecstatic aspect of the bacchante wasn’t forgotten- so you could imply you were a bit wild, a bit daring, whilst also showing you’d read your Euripedes. It was win-win- and very attractive.

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Laurence Alma-Tadema: Depicting a Victorian Dionysos

A Dedication to Bacchus, 1889

I’ve written in previous posts about the very popular and successful Victorian painting genre of recreations of scenes from everyday life in ancient Greek and Rome. Leading artists included Frederic Lord Leighton, Sir Edward Poynter and Laurence Alma-Tadema (1836-1912). The latter was born in Dronryp, in the Netherlands, but developed a profitable career and major reputation as a painter in Britain after he settled in the country in 1870.

The cult of Dionysos and the its associated ‘maenadism’ (the female devotees of the god) was a subject to which Alma-Tadema repeatedly returned. I’ve discussed his work in some detail in my recent book on Dionysos, Dance, Love and Ecstasy; here, I can illustrate the pictures we weren’t able to reproduce in that text and examine his vision of classical bacchanals.

We’ll start with Alma-Tadema’s imagining of the ‘official’ cult of the young god. The Dedication to Bacchus is a huge canvas, showing the presentation of a enormous skin of new wine at the god’s shrine. The bacchantes are assembled, playing music, dancing and wearing their tiger and animal skins (signifiers of the wild and ecstatic aspects of their rites). Looking at Alma-Tadema’s busy and sumptuous canvas, the marble, the tunics- the pomegranates (!)- all painted with such skill, we might well overlook the main character in all this celebration. Look again, and you’ll see, towards the extreme left, a little girl with her mother bending down to explain something to her. The child, with lustrous red hair, is nearly naked, except for a gauzy purple veil. She is the dedication to the god- but don’t worry, she won’t be sacrificed. She will, however, be trained as a priestess in the cult, joining her other sisters in the celebration of the rites. Her nakedness presumably indicates a sort of fresh start, reborn for the god.

Autumn Vintage Festival, 1877

A Harvest Festival, 1880

Inevitably, as this last picture indicates, wine played a big part in the festivals of Dionysos/ Bacchus. He had roots as an agricultural god, associated with growth and fruitfulness, especially of the vines, and Alma-Tadema reflected this explicitly in several paintings. We see the bacchic priestesses playing a central role in thanking the god for a rich harvest of grain and grapes. All the ‘key’ features that typified Dionysian celebrations are present in these scenes: music- notably tambourines- dancing, garlands of vine leaves, animal skins and, in A Vintage Festival below, on the extreme right, the thyrsos, the wand or staff that symbolised the young god; it is a shaft made of fennel or a related umbellifer topped with a pine-cone. They’re phallic symbols, pretty obviously.

A Vintage Festival, 1871

Celebrations of the god’s rites didn’t just take place in major public festivals in temples. Private events, often of a more mystical nature, took place in private homes. These were called orgia (‘orgies’); the name has special connotations for modern readers of course, and not without good reason. Sexual initiations- and just simple sex to celebrate the god- were a feature of Dionysian worship, but definitely not the only aspect. Alma-Tadema’s Private Celebration attempts to show just such a private, family rite. They’ve got in some musicians and the master and mistress of the house are leading the ‘ecstatic’ dancing. She, for one, looks rather staid and not wholly committed; her husband waves his much of grapes around with more abandon. Perhaps he’s had more wine than his spouse; one guest certainly has: they should never have let him have an entire amphora to himself.

A Private Celebration or Bacchanal, 1871

Excess, and ecstasy, are fundamentally what it was all about though. The bacchantes would dance themselves into a frenzy in honour of Dionysos, fuelled by wine and (possibly) opium or hemp, and they might (allegedly) indulge in incredible feats and exertions, insensitive to pain or cold and a capable of tearing animals (and people) limb from limb. Then they would collapse, wherever they found themselves. Alma-Tadema’s Bacchante (1907) certainly looks a bit dazed and glazed as she plays her cymbals in front of a statue of young Bakkhos.

Bacchante c. 1907

The comedown the next day was the problem. The Exhausted Maenides, an unfinished painting of 1873-4, is one example of this. The women’s dishevelled state is also mildly suggestive of the hints that sex with each other was part of the wild abandon that honouring the god involved. As we know, he’d have been perfectly happy with this.

Exhausted Maenides, 1873-4

One of the most famous paintings by Alma-Tadema is The Women of Amphissa (1887). Plutarch told the story of how some bacchantes arrived in the town at the end of their bacchanalia in the mountains. They collapsed in stupors and sheer exhaustion in the market place where they were highly vulnerable to assault by some foreign troops then occupying the town. The local women, respecting the bacchantes devotions to Dionysos, came out and guarded them from rape all night, and then fed and cared for them as they awoke the next morning. Alma-Tadema shows the maenads groggy and bleary eyed, just starting to recover. You might spot how the canopy of the nearest market stall is held up by two thyrsoi, perhaps not a wholly appropriate use for the god’s symbolic staff…

The Women of Amphissa

As I mentioned in the book, Ursula Le Guin (1929-2018) dramatised this episode in a poem Maenads. Here it is:

Somewhere I read
that when they finally staggered off the mountain
into some strange town, past drunk,
hoarse, half naked, blear-eyed,
blood dried under broken nails
and across young thighs,
but still jeering and joking, still trying
to dance, lurching and yelling, but falling
dead asleep by the market stalls,
sprawled helpless, flat out, then
middle-aged women,
respectable housewives,
would come and stand nightlong in the agora
silent
together
as ewes and cows in the night fields,
guarding, watching them
as their mothers
watched over them.
And no man
dared
that fierce decorum.

Further Reading

I hope you enjoyed Alma-Tadema’s work. He’s just one of numerous artists I cover in the book and whose work I’ve also featured here. These include John Collier, William Stephen Coleman, John Godward, Herbert Draper and the Normands. See too Christopher Wood, Olympian Dreamers (1983) and, for more information on Victorian art, see details of my book Cherry Ripe on my publications page.

Arthur Wardle- wild beasts and wilder women…

A Bacchante

Arthur Wardle (1864–1949) was a British painter- not a great or inspired one, but persistent and productive. He worked in different techniques (for example, designing posters for the Great War recruitment drive) and dabbled in a variety of styles and genres- whatever, I suspect, he thought might sell.

Waiting for Master

Wardle’s artistic career began with great promise; at the age of only sixteen, he had a picture accepted for the Royal Academy’s summer exhibition. The painting showed cattle grazing by the Thames, and it was animals that provided the key theme throughout his career, most notably dogs and big cats. Wardle was prolific and successful, exhibiting regularly.

Springtime

Wardle had no ‘style’ of his own, really- unless we count ‘furry.’ Some of his works resemble James Tissot’s fashionable society beauties- seen with their dogs, of course. He also dabbled in Victorian genre, showing country and family incidents, classical scenes like those of Lord Leighton and Laurence Alma-Tadema, and this proved an area which shaded into what we might call ‘fantasy’ art. The Bacchante illustrated at the top of the page typifies this: who knows why this woman is wandering around with her bunch of grapes, unmolested by the pack of leopards? Perhaps that maenad frenzy I’ve described before deters them; perhaps they’re scared of being attacked by her? Then again, the satyr seen below seems to get on with the leopards just like a pair of domestic pet cats. Doubtless this symbolises oneness with nature.

A Sylvan God

A Lady with Leopards

Wardle’s world certainly seems to be full of characters who are oblivious- or immune- to the terror of dangerous beasts. I wouldn’t, for example, suggest kicking a full grown swan- especially if you’re naked. If you do, the idyll won’t last for long.

Enchantress

Spring Idyll

There are peaceful encounters with beasts, as well. There’s the Spring Idyll with game birds and, even better, Wardle’s Fairy Tale, illustrating a line by Sir Walter Scott “All seem’d to sleep – the timid hare/ On form, the stag upon his lair/ The eagle in her eyrie fair/ Between the earth and sky.” (The Bridal of Triermain, 1813)

Fairy Tale

The prize probably has to go to Wardle’s 1912 picture, The Lure of the North. This is one of the maddest pictures I’ve had the pleasure of seeing. No commentary is required, really… It’s hard to imagine that exhibition visitors and potential purchasers were expected to take this seriously. Enjoy it all the same. For more information on Victorian art, see details of my book Cherry Ripe on my publications page.

For more information on late nineteenth and early twentieth century art history, see my books page.

Dionysos and the Death of Orpheus

Luigi Bonazza, The Legend of Orpheus

Orpheus is a famous name from Greek legend. The son of a Thracian king, he is renowned for his many skills- he was a poet and musician, he sailed with Jason and the Argonauts in search of the Golden Fleece, he brought knowledge of medicine and agriculture to the world, he was a religious prophet and, perhaps most memorably, he descended into the Underworld of Hades to try to recover his lost wife Eurydice. After she had been bitten by a snake on their wedding day, he managed to retrieve her from death on condition that he did not look back at her until they had both escaped the Underworld. Orpheus broke this promise and forfeit his wife a second time.

At the same time, the story and career of Orpheus is closely linked with the cult of Dionysos. Orpheus is said to have developed a version of the Dionysian rites known as the Orphic Mysteries, with practices that differed from the more conventional worship of the god. In the Orphic tradition, Dionysos performed the role of patron god connected with death and immortality. This was because , as a baby, Dionysos had been dismembered by the Titans but had then been reborn and, secondly, because he had saved his own mother Semele from Hades. He therefore symbolised the one who guides the process of reincarnation.

Orpheus didn’t invent the mysteries named after him; rather they were a combination of the original form of the cult of Dionysos with other philosophical and religious ideas that entered Greece from the east, offering a different way of approaching and relating to the deity. The principle Orphic innovation was the idea was that humankind was a compound of divine and wicked nature and, as a result, the aim of the mystery was to enable a person to purge him or herself of the baser parts of the soul through rituals and by moral purity over a succession of reincarnations into a series of lifetimes. At the end of this extended process, the soul would have become fully divine and would be freed from the cycle of death and rebirth. It’s here that there was the most significant divergence from the original cult of Dionysos. His rites were intended to be transcendental: through intoxication and possession- the “blessings of madness”- the worshipper could become united with the god there and then- the lifetimes of effort and spiritual evolution could be avoided. It’s been argued that the Orphic cult was a conscious attempt to ‘tone-down’ the Dionysian rites, moving away from the orgiastic roots to something calmer and more civilised. The idea of intoxication was spiritualised, rather than being a literal state. Be that as it may, Orpheus himself couldn’t escape the consequences of that intoxication.

Emile Levy, The Death of Orpheus, 1866

What interests me in this posting is Orpheus’ death. A passage in the Iliad gives the background to this:

“Having gone down into Hades because of his wife and seeing what sort of things were there, he did not continue to worship Dionysos, because of whom he was famous, but rather thought Helios to be the greatest of the gods, Helios whom he also addressed as Apollo. Rousing himself each night toward dawn and climbing the mountain called Pangaion, he would await the Sun’s rising, so that he might see it first. Therefore, Dionysus, being angry with him, sent the Bassarides, as Aeschylus the tragedian says; they tore him apart and scattered the limbs.”

Emil-Jean Baptiste Philippe Bin, The Death of Orpheus, 1874

In this account, Orpheus was- essentially- martyred for his heretical views. Another story, found in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, records that, in despair after he failed to recover Eurydice from Hell, he turned to boys for love and comfort. Feeling rejected and insulted by this, some bacchantes of the Cicone tribe in Thrace set upon him and tore him apart- though his singing head floated down the River Hebrus on his lyre until it was found at Lesbos, where a shrine was established to Orpheus.

Felix Vallotton, Orpheus Dismembered, 1914

The singing head of Orpheus has regularly been depicted by artists, but his violent death at the hands of the frenzied maenads is (probably understandably) much less frequently pictured. No doubt part of the reason for this is that it exposes one of the more negative aspects of the bacchic delirium; as I described before, there are high points of ecstasy but these can be matched by a fury and loss of self-control (just as the dismemberment of King Pentheus in Euripides’ Bacchae parallels the tragic end of Orpheus).

Gustave Moreau, Orpheus

This madness and blood lust is not, though, inseparable from the sexual exhilaration of the bacchantes. The association of these two mental states is something you’ll see quite often in myth; men are drawn inexorably to the sirens, the chimera, the sphinx, despite the mortal danger they represent. We see these strange parallels explicitly in Luigi Bonazza’s triptych illustrated above. Some readers will identify how much the artist was inspired by Gustav Klimt in his design and the decoration of the frame. As for the panels, on the left we have Eurydice in Hades; in the centre, the poet Orpheus, and, on the right, the immediate aftermath of his death. His body lies in the background as the bacchantes dance away; you may note that the woman on the left is caressing her breast, seemingly rather aroused by the whole situation… We can see the same exultation amongst the women in the paintings by Bin and Levy- their nakedness during the murder only adds to the unsettling atmosphere of these scenes.

Whatever the Orphic mysteries may have aimed to achieve, the ecstatic side of the Dionysian rites persists. So, for example, in his Lyrical Legend of Orpheus (1905), Aleister Crowley depicted its continuing potency: “blinded by some Panic dust/ By Dionysian din/ Deafened, aroused the laughing lust/ To fling my body in.” The maenads in the poem “weave/ Dances to the mighty mother [Semele]!/ Bacchanal to Bacchus cleave!”

John Waterhouse, Nymphs Finding the Head of Orpheus