Page 25 - GALIET ABSENCE AND Presence's Loom: Helen and Penelope IV

distant symbolically from Penelope’s un-weaving hours of being.
There, anguished Penelope seeks her refuge to dwell in the boundless, immanent, capacious existence ever present in her loom, and its ever-alluring mystery, her saving grace, who dreams of her idyllic abode, and connubial bed lyric with beingness, despite the ominous, transforming and deforming threat to her lovely abode posed by the lecherous, insatiable suitors.
While this un-weaving symbolizes her utopia, union, and the due sanctity to her wedded vows; weaving augurs her possible dystopia, separation, and remarriage. Thus, to weave suggests her resignation to a hateful wedding, while to unweave suggests her unison with her Odysseus. Indeed, Queen Penelope, unlike Menelaus’ Helen, rebels against her despised wedding, and dawning day “that will divide her (me) from Odysseus’ house.”33 Thus, she weaves and unweaves in her wide web loom with fine threads34 to postpone the hateful hour of her inevitable remarriage.35
Her astute choice of fine threads symbolize a meticulous weaving so as to postpone, and thus, preserve the sanctity, too, of her beautiful bridal chamber and bed, whose ivory, silver and gold carved bedpost, made by Odysseus’ hands from a bole of a
33 Ody., 19.559-587. 398. 34 Ody., 23.179-207. 384. 35 Ody., 19.117-148. 383.
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