von Kleist's "Penthesilea" as Architypal Female Fighter Form

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

In some narrative frame it could be argued that German playwright and novelist Heinrich von Kleist is who made Sylvie a fighter, or in the sense of how Einstein theorizes about gravity, provided the enormously dense mass that distorted the fabric of space and time (the bowling ball on the blanket analogy), to make all things swing and sway "downhill" until it's a careening masterpiece of unparalleled fighting, alone in the sport. If you haven't read it, it's incredible. It's basically Sci-Fi written in the dawn of the19th century, a Science Fiction on Gender. You can find it in German here (Penthesilea, free download), and in English in a beautiful hardcover here (Penthesilea, Amazon). It really is High Art meets Marvel superhero. Nothing like it.

It would be a pretty long and convoluted story to lay out the personal history between the play and Sylvie, and myself, diving down into German Literature (Sylvie studied German, and studied in Berlin), but it's enough to say that I do believe that the play positioned ourselves. It lay the course for this mad, incredibly romantic adventure. Silver Surfer, Wolverine. These fantasy images definitely set the course for the affective potentials of a human, but Penthesilea does incredibly more than that. It outlines a problematic between gender relations, and it does so as an accelerant.

above, a Maurice Sendak illustration from the hardcover translation - ascending a chasm

descending from space - Silver Surfer

I'm really creating this post as a place holder for a potential conversation about the figure of Penthesilea, and how she relates to the frame of the contemporary female fighter ambition. There is so much to discuss here it is my hope that piecemeal elements of the puzzle can be jigsawed together. If you are interested in the subject I highly recommend you read the play - it's not easy to get in English, if anyone with a superior Google finger can find a PDF English translation link, that would be awesome. This was a really formitive play that as I look back on it now maybe 10 years after it's initial influence or so, it seems more true, or compass setting than ever. 

above, the Death of Achilles in the play

It's hard to overstate the reach of this kind of examination. The myth of the Amazons - a parallel culture where women rule instead of men, bonded by a warrior code - has populated western consciousness for over 2000 years. Presently figures of martial power like Wonder Woman, drawn directly from that storytelling, symbolize real female power changes in the culture: growing voice, increased economic autonomies, self-determinations. Female fighters in the present day act out, in some sense, in the context of these images and storylines, and Penthesilea presents perhaps the acme of this kind of contestation, as female power to self-direct, take pride, self-own, wrestles against the idealized masculine form which symbolizes all of these things. The play traces the outline of the injunction which supposedly keeps the feminine from occupying the position of the masculine.

 

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

To Limn The Soul

The infinitesimal countless compiling graphemes of the fighter's art, that defy the written limits of language:

von Kleist's letter to his half-sister after a performance of the play

 

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

A bit from the Science Fiction:

Odysseus
Well, then. Achilles goes with me to greet
The Scythian heroine where she sits mounted
In martial panoply before her maids,
Plumes flowing from her helmet, skirt tucked high,
Her palfrey tossing gold and purple tassels,
Hooves stamping on the muddy ground beneath.
For one long moment, with a pensive gaze
She stares into our ranks, void of expression,
As if we stood before her carved in stone;
This bare flat palm has more expressive features
Than were displayed upon that woman's face:
Until her glance meets that of Peleus' son:
A deepening flush spreads down unto her neck,
Blood sets her face aglow as if the world
Surrounding her were leaping into flames.
Then, with a sudden jolt, she swings herself
Casting a somber scowl upon Achilles
Down from her horse, and, stepping toward us, leaves
The reins with an attendant, and inquires
What brings us to her in such pageantry.
We Argives, I reply, are highly pleased
To come upon an enemy of Troy;
Long has a hatred for the sons of Priam
Consumed our hearts, I say; great benefit
Would be our Joint reward if we were friends;
And other suchlike bounties of the moment.
But then I notice in the flow of talking:
She doesn't hear a word. Instead, she turns
And with a look of utter wonderment,
Suddenly like a girl, a sixteen-year-old
On her way back from the Olympic Games,
Addresses a companion by her side:
Oh Prothoë, I do not think my mother,
Otrerë, ever laid eyes on such a man!
The friend, embarrassed at these words, stays silent,
Achilles smiles at me, and I at him,
While she herself stands gazing, as if drunk
With admiration, at that glittering figure:
Until her friend reminds her timidly
That she still owes an answer to my words.

Whether from rage or shame, another blush
Staining her harness crimson to the waist,
She turns to me, confusion, wildness, pride
Commingling in her face, and speaks:
I am Penthesilea, Queen of the Amazons,
And you shall have my arrows for reply!

 

It is a martial love story, with the ideal male form (Achilles). The above is the first outline of the impossibility of alliance, which proposes a fundamental, but perhaps still productive antinomy between the sexes.

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

An interesting reading of the essential tension between masculine and feminine in the figure of the Amazon (argued in the context that the Amazon Queen, and all Amazon's after her) tore her right breast off in order to be able to militarily fire bow which a man's efficiency:

 

from: "Suddenness and Suspended Moment: Falling in Heinrich von Kleist’s Penthesilea"

What is fascinating is how the contemporary female fighter can be positioned between culturally feminine and culturally masculine qualities. Instead of having to resolve which one she is, proposed is a kind of aesthetic solution, putting them in productive tension with each other, making the weapon and the art. Here the artist, the fighter, the Amazonian, sacrifices part of themselves to enter the order of the art, and then puts the parts of themselves in energetic tension.

In the Penthesilea text she herself in turned into a projectile composed of receptacle and hurling elements, a machine of propulsion, as she chases down Achilles - the economy of words in building this combustion picture is really incredible:

Look! With what eagerness

She hugs her thighs around her charger’s body!

How, parched with thirst, bent low into the mane,

She sucks into herself the hindering air!

She’s flying as if shot straight from an iron bow!

Numidian arrows don’t fly half as swiftly!

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

 

 

Yet, in the play, is also the countervailing imagery of being willing to be split right down the middle of your dichotomies. In the German the word used, here translated as "head", is more precisely akin to "part". Present the part in your hair, or the place you are split in two, to the heavens. Standing firm, by allowing oneself to be split asunder. This is the exposure that the female fighter ventures, I believe, exposing within themselves the halves of humanity.

[Bad Seed]

The romantic era was so cool, not suprised they had a proto-Conan masterpiece like this. The idea of her physically altering herself in a radical way like that in order to fit into the male side of a dichotomy seems a bit odd to me though. When I think of warrior women I dont think of them as a walking dichotomy of male and female. Where Ive seen traditional accounts of warrior women(Greek, Scythian, Norse, Welsh) it doesnt seem like they dwell to much on them not fitting perfectly into a gender role, they seem to have a worldview that allows for more complexity than that. Maybe its just because they all come from a similar culture sphere. I wonder if this is maybe a Christian influence or simply from the mind of von Kleist.

[threeoaks]

Good Lord (response to Kevin's posts).   That's a lot of beauty.  Very cool to have an origin story for the both of you.  

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

On 7/27/2019 at 6:02 AM, Bad Seed said:

The idea of her physically altering herself in a radical way like that in order to fit into the male side of a dichotomy seems a bit odd to me though...I wonder if this is maybe a Christian influence or simply from the mind of von Kleist.

Maybe I'm not following exactly where your reference is here, but in the Kleist, and many other myths of the Amazons the breast is removed for efficacy in archery, not to "fit in" anywhere. Did I suggest above that there was a kind of fitting in that is involved in alteration (if so, can you quote it)? (I mean, there are ways that this definitely has been done by Sylvie, but I'm not sure I made that connection). The case can be made that women need to "castrate" themselves, in some fashion, in order to enter a male order, and that this ritual was part of the fantasy of the Amazon as imagined by Athenian (male) Greeks.

As to whether the removal of the breast was some kind of Christianized influence I think that is pretty doubtful. The name "Amazon" is literally taken to mean "without breast" in the Greek a- (ἀ-) and mazos (μαζός). It has been linked to their mythology from the very beginning (though in vase paintings they were never depicted as self-mutilated).

[Xestaro]

Archery is a hobby of mine and without looking into the deeper thoughts behind it I find it interesting that it wouldn't really be necessary to remove a breast for precision in archery, especially not with the "horsebows" typical of the general area which are relatively short reflex bows which means when you draw them, the string forms a relatively sharp angle and doesn't take up a lot of room around the archer's chest area.

Of course there are countless different styles of archery and I bet there are some where female breasts COULD be in the way but I'd think you'd rather adopt your style in such a case.

 

Just for the fun of it as you were bringing up comic art, here is a SciFi interpretation of Penthesilea in the form of a 28mm-scale miniature for the tabletop wargame Infinity (yet another hobby of mine):

 

Edited July 30, 2019 by Xestaro

[Bad Seed]

On 7/29/2019 at 4:14 AM, Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu said:

Maybe I'm not following exactly where your reference is here, but in the Kleist, and many other myths of the Amazons the breast is removed for efficacy in archery, not to "fit in" anywhere. Did I suggest above that there was a kind of fitting in that is involved in alteration (if so, can you quote it)? (I mean, there are ways that this definitely has been done by Sylvie, but I'm not sure I made that connection). The case can be made that women need to "castrate" themselves, in some fashion, in order to enter a male order, and that this ritual was part of the fantasy of the Amazon as imagined by Athenian (male) Greeks.

As to whether the removal of the breast was some kind of Christianized influence I think that is pretty doubtful. The name "Amazon" is literally taken to mean "without breast" in the Greek a- (ἀ-) and mazos (μαζός). It has been linked to their mythology from the very beginning (though in vase paintings they were never depicted as self-mutilated).

I very well may have mistakenly made that connection while synthesizing your post in my head, if so my bad. I dont mean to derail the thread with a Greek mythology discussion but my thoughts for anyone interested: The breastless archery thing still seems weird to me. Archery makes me think of Artemis, the Greek hunting goddess known for mad skill with her bow. Also doing a bit of googling it seems the a- mazos etymology was most likely a folk etymology, and considering the art depictions the breast removal myth attested by Justinus is considered by some to be inspired by the folk etymology.