Page 15 - GALIET BEAUTY´S LURE: WAR Helen of Troy and Margareta of Germany IV

brutality, but also Nazism’s insanity and savagery. Her weavings constitute a mise en abyme or a mirroring narrative or structure20 that reflects, abysmally, or infinitely, the Iliad’s war narrative unto Nazism’s war narrative. Both epics are woven with the flesh and blood endured for beauty’s sake.
Hitler’s relentless pursuit of his sublime and terrible ideological beauty 3⁄4 golden-haired Margareta 3⁄4 as depicted in Celan’s verse21 devastated Europe and the world, just as Paris’ and Menelaus’ pursuit of lovely-haired Helen22 ruined Troy 3000 years earlier. The irrational, heedless pursuit of the sublime, divine beauties seen in Helen of Troy and in Margareta of Germany, the first, a physical beauty, the second, an ideological beauty, opens up a chasm in humanity’s history, showing an intricate, fearful symmetry between Homer’s Iliad and Celan’s Death Fugue. This frightful symmetry confronts history’s terrifying past with a macabre present: it mirrors the abyss of Helen’s Grecian physical beauty unto Margareta’s Romantic-Classical ideological beauty as causes of war. Consequently, this eerie symmetry mirrors the insidious strife amongst Paris, Menelaus and Hitler, in their romantic, obstinate quests to wreck Troy and Europe for Lady Beauty’s
of Philology 127 (2006): 10. Footnote 18.
20 This was suggested by Dr. Sirluck and Dr. Podleski when studying the Iliad in Arts One. “Mise en abyme” is a literary recursion coined by Andre Gide for the literary device of infinite regression, suggesting inter-textuality, self-referentiality, and also the abysmal. Cuddon, J.A. “Mise en Abyme.” The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. London: Penguin, 1977. 513.
21 Celan, Paul. “Death Fugue.” Selected Poems and Prose of Paul Celan. Trans. John Felstiner. New York: W.W.W. Norton, 2001. 31.
22 This is one of the many epithets that refer to Helen along “long-dressed,” “Argive,” “daughter of Zeus,” and others.
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