Page 15 - GALIET ABSENCE AND Presence's Loom: Helen and Penelope IV

Her clever stratagem10 aspires not to fulfil dreams, but to be swaddled in the beautiful embrace of presence. It reveals her astute resistance, for “she will not reject, or accept the wedding,”11 thus, she congeals her marriage to the other: she opts to dwell in presence by night, and absence by day as she unweaves Laertes’ shroud and her death; and in dying, she weaves and reweaves it; always doing and undoing to flee from the other, the stranger, the suitor’s bleak hall or isle; from her own absence; and from her fearful nostalgia for those fair halls of her being that once were.
Hence, she undoes what Helen cannot undo: her weavings at the war’s end. Indeed, war-prize Helen “shall be called beloved wife” says Goddess Iris as Laodike, “of the man who wins her (you).”12 Whichever way, Helen shall wed Prince Paris, or King Menelaus,13 and whichever way, she shall remain, or depart from Troy. Her ever-present salvation shuns astuteness, and her mythic presence dwells and remains beyond the calamity of Hektor’s death, and the war’s end.
10 Penelope’s second astute stratagem to test the prowess of suitors requires they string Odysseus bow, and shoot through twelve axe heads with the arrow, insinuating an impossible feat. Ody., 19.559-587. 398.
11 Ody., 15.124-151. 323.
12 Il.,3.137-139. This is also reaffirmed in the Trojan and Argive oath, “If it should be that Alexandros slays Menelaus, let him keep Helen for himself, and all her possessions...but if the fair-haired Menelaus kills Alexandros, then let the Trojans give back Helen and all her possessions, and pray also a price to the Argives which will be fitting...as a standard.” Il., 3.280- 285.
13 Il., 3.250-255.
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