Page 30 - GALIET ABSENCE AND Presence's Loom: Helen and Penelope IV

marvel, and subtle suitor snare: as her fine threads become done and undone during three springs, the vigorous green root strengthens her bridal chamber, until the fourth ill spring that reveals her plot, whereby the impious suitors catch her unravelling Laertes’ robe;50 O wretched spring hour where she must, by necessity,51 finish her weaving, and consummate her despised remarriage and departure from lovely Ithaca of her Soul. Thus, she weaves Laertes’ funerary robe, as if a despairing song that marks her own death, not her presence, unlike Helen, for she “wants to die...not please another man.”52
Thus, like Aedon, Queen of Thebes, Penelope, too, sweetly, yet mournfully sings “perched among the clustered leaves when spring returns,” as if perched on the vigorous olive-tree of her wedded glee; her sweet song, the un-weavings from spring to thrice spring, of permanence, of memory of Odysseus as if he were beloved, dead Itylus.53 This is, sadly, Helen’s unsung song. Thus, Penelope, too, like Aedon, is “the nightingale of the greenwood,” whose song “...often varies (varying).../with shifting accents,”54 ever torn in the crepuscular hour between sweet memory and bitter loss, presence and absence, for Penelope’s soul, too, “shift(s), thrust(s), now here, now there/not knowing
50 “We suitors caught her in the act, as she/alone unraveled the consummate cloth/she had no choice but to complete her work.” Ody., 23.118-156. 477-78.
51 Ody., 2.110.
52 Ody., 20. 67-78. 405.
53 Though this link between Odysseus and Itylus is ambiguous in that Penelope does not kill Odysseus, it does insinuate the depths of her grief.
54 Ody., 19.518-24.
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