Page 29 - GALIET BEAUTY´S LURE: WAR Helen of Troy and Margareta of Germany IV

elders, that she beautifies, yet terrifies. Transfixed by her immortal physical and ideological beauty, Paris and Hitler, too, will be torn apart like Actaeon. She is a fatal promenade. Wherever she is seen strolling, whether on Scaean Gates or Germany’s Wall, war’s rabid gaze follows her. She is a worthy, deadly prize. She is trophy to him who wins her with his veins and blood. She weaves and weaves death. Whatever in her room she weaves is an end of truce, a leap to war, or a blazing fire. She weaves red. Her threads are bleeding veins. Her loom: the spectacle of open crimson continents and wounds. These: a robe. In the incendiary strife endured for her sake, she is Crematoria and Mistress of Death. She devours flesh. She is chthonic: fury and rage. Lady Beauty inspires the terrible with her gaze: death. Whatever the Mistress of Death gazes upon, whether Jews, Trojans, or Argives, turns to funerary pyre or ashen death. Troy and Europe blaze. In her role, she is consort of the Meister of Death, as if she shared Persephone and Hades’ dark breath. As Lady Beauty and Mistress of Death, she dances her macabre tango with mortals. They must gaze at her, embrace, and dance with her, but risk her scorching breath. King Menelaus, Prince Paris dance with her, just as the man who plays with his vipers, just as the commandant, or Himmler, or Hitler himself, each a Meister of Death. They dance and have idylls with her. They daydream. While they kill, they daydream. While they bring others to death, they write or make love to her. Dumbfounded in their Faustian or Promethean strivings, they wreck.
She is Bliss and Abyss. Heaven and Hell.
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