Rule No. 1: Naked Queens Are Trouble

Another day, anothing brilliant painting by dead French genius Jean-Léon Gérôme. This one is titled King Candaules, or Le roi Candaules in French.

The story, as Herodotus tells it, is rife with intrigue, betrayal, and high-level espionage. King Candaules -- dude in bed on left -- was bragging to his bodyguard Gyges -- guy in cloak on right -- about the beauty of his wife the queen -- luminous naked woman, center. The queen was so beautiful, said Candaules, that unless a man saw her beauty for himself (au naturel, as it were), he could never comprehend it. Gyges obediently agreed. No seriously, continued Candaules, you should hide in our room tonight and watch when she takes her clothes off, I'm telling you. And to Gyges this seemed like a terrible idea. But the king would not be put off, and Gyges had very little choice, and so here he is hiding in the royal bedchamber while the queen disrobes.

You'll notice, if you look at the queen -- and we should all be looking at the queen in this painting -- that she has her cloak raised, hiding her face from her husband. And that she is looking right at Gyges as he lurks shamefacedly in the shadows.

Because that is what happens: the queen notices Gyges, and realizes what her husband is up to (no self-respecting bodyguard would be idiotic enough to spy on the royal disrobing under his own motivation). She keeps her cool. The next morning, she summons Gyges -- nothing out of the ordinary about it -- and then informs him that she knows he's seen her naked, and on account of this insult to her modesty either he or her husband must die, and she doesn't particularly care which one it is. Gyges, again, pleads for her to change her mind, but she doesn't give in. And so Gyges kills Candaules, and marries the queen -- who is never named, by the way -- and this usurpation is what Croesus must atone for several generations down the line in Herodotus' Histories, which is why he was telling us the story in the first place.

Once again, it is the revelation of the female body that is central -- except here, it is a tragic and not a triumphal moment. The view of the naked queen is the moment that will required Gyges to become either a martyr or a murderer, and will lead Candaules to his self-engineered death; perhaps this is why she has her back to the viewer, who is thus spared the full power of her nudity. Moreover, look at Candaules, our title figure: he's way back in the shadows, screened by some uninteresting folds of drapery -- and he is looking at Gyges. This is clearly a man with a tendency to voyeurism: it is not the sight of his wife's perfect beauty that turns him on, but the sight of someone furtively glimpsing that beauty.

In Gérôme's vision, the brightness and nudity of the queen and her garments find their counterparts in the darkness and concealment of Gyges. The bodyguard seems to carry a darkness about with him, even as the queen seems to illuminate the room. Again as in Phryne we have the blue garment on the left, a white body in the middle, and a red cloth to the right -- just like the French flag, come to think of it. I need to say that again for emphasis: these two paintings are arranged just like the French flag, with blue on the left, red on the right, and a naked woman as the central white bar. Maybe this is why they caused such a stir. The flag-section here is smaller, limited to just the king and queen -- appropriate, since it is they who are the subject of the looming revelution. Gyges almost looks as though he is in a separate painting -- a Goya, rather than a Gérôme. Both he and Candaules are secondary figures; the queen dominates the frame.

Next up: Alcibiades, playboy heartthrob of the ancient world.

On Paintings and Prostitutes.

Until recently, I could not have distinguished Jean-Léon Gérôme from Jean-Claude van Damme -- unless the latter roundhouse kicked the former in his frippery French mustache. Yet through the miracle of Internet reconnaissance, with all its myriad trajectories and tangents, I wound up along an obscure trail that led me to the following sentence on Wikipedia: "Phryne before the Areopagus, King Candaules and Socrates finding Alcibiades in the House of Aspasia (1861) gave rise to some scandal by reason of the subjects selected by the painter, and brought down on him the bitter attacks of Paul de Saint-Victor and Maxime Du Camp."

(Note his self-portrait -- I was not joking about the mustache.)

On a whim, I looked up those three paintings. Here is the first:

Phryne Before the Areopagus.

The story behind this moment is hard to track down at first: supposedly, according to some sources, the nude female figure is Phryne, aka Alcippe, a daughter of Ares and a participant in the very first murder trial, in which Ares was acquitted of the murder of the son of Poseidon who had raped Alcippe/Phryne. This is apparently the reason why the rock upon which the Athenian court sat was titled the Areopagus, or 'hill of Ares.' Looking back at the painting, it follows that the rape victim's clothing is here being suddenly, almost violently removed in the middle of a public courtroom by a man who, if not actually her father, is certainly looking out for her father's interests, and not the girl's.

This is terrible. It is also nonsensical -- one glance at the painting is enough to convince me that it can't possibly be Phyrne/Alcippe, daughter of Ares. For one thing: where is Ares? The nude female figure is the only glorious thing in the scene; any godlike presence would surely be similarly noteworthy. From a narrative perspective, the heart of the myth is the moment when Ares is acquitted, and gives his name to the court. Yet the title of Gérôme's painting is not, as you see, Ares Before the Areopagus.

Besides, there is the matter of the whore.

You see, Phryne is also the name of a famous hetaera -- translate: courtesan -- who lived in Athens in the 4th century BC. She is rumored to have offered to rebuild the walls of Thebes, destroyed by Alexander the Great, on the condition that the resurrected walls then read: destroyed by Alexander, restored by Phryne the courtesan. Sadly, this verbal middle finger to Alexander was refused. Moreover, Phryne supposedly charged a customer for her favors based on how much she liked them (king of Lydia = national debt-level sum, but philosopher Diogenes of Sinope = the kindness of her heart) and is therefore a prime candidate for being the prototypical hooker with a heart of gold. (Diogenes is most famous for coining the term 'cynic,' thus proving that being cool got you laid even in ancient times.)

Moreover, the hetaera was once brought before the Areopagus as a defendant, and charged with profaning the Eleusinian Mysteries (the ancient equivalent of telling everyone what's in the center of a Mormon temple, but nevertheless while the charge was serious it was not an unheard-of crime). During her trial, Phryne's breasts were exposed to the court, either by herself or her defender -- and she was instantly acquitted.

Obviously, this is very much the story Gérôme's depiction is engaged with.

It is crucial to note that the difference between a hetaera and a porne, a common street prostitute with a pimp (yes, ancient Greece had pimps). A hetaera was her own woman, intelligent, charming, and educated as well as beautiful; technically speaking, the word hetaera translates merely to "female companion." Your male cohorts would be your hetaeroi, with no (okay, very little -- okay, some) sexual overtones. Moreover, a hetaera was expensive enough to be beyond the reach of ordinary men; Phryne was outspoken because she could afford to be.

Let's take one more look at that painting. The first bit that grabs your eye is the luminous pale skin of the female figure. If you look closely, you can see that her glowing body is the source of all the light in the room: the blue cloth she is no longer wearing is brighter closer to her body, and the deepest shadows are farthest away from her. The red robes of her judges are vibrant, and flicker as though their wearers have been literally set alight with her undoubtedly erotic power. In fact, the natural sweep of our eyes plays tricks on us here as it moves from left to right over the canvas. First we see the figure and its erstwhile covering, then the flame-like movement of the judges reacting, and then our eye is drawn back to the figure (by its arresting brightness) and it seems as though that cool blue cloak is a sheet of water waiting to douse her like a match dropped on dry tinder. As though she is dangerous.

Now, in more detail: Phryne is not entirely naked. She is still wearing a gold bracelet, a necklace, and a small red flower in her hair. Her entire body is exposed both to the court and to the viewer; a normal woman in this situation would be trying to shield her body with her hands. (In fact, the famous Venus statue of Praxiteles, also known as the Venus Pudica or Modest Venus, uses one hand to cover her naughty bits, and supposedly had Phryne as a model.) But our girl is hiding her face: she manages by this not only to imitate shame and modesty -- allowing her to seem virtuous when she is anything but -- but also to remain aloof and mysterious. You can see either her face or her body, but never both at the same time. This is an immensely alluring, canny gesture on her part.

As for the men watching, each and every one of them wears a different, individual expression. They are mocking, aroused, repelled, fascinated, sleazy, horrified, shocked, and amused by turns. One man has clapped his hand to his head in the universal (and, apparently, eternal) gesture indicating "WTF!" -- another is just as clearly pointing at her ass and discussing it with his neighbor.

Moreover, there is a shadowy figure who goes unnoticed at the far left of the painting. It took me a long while, staring intently at the digital reproduction, before I realized this person must be the priest who is the plaintiff in this case. And, in the center, balancing Phryne's own body, a tiny golden statue of Athena (there is an inscription on the pedestal). The heads of Athena, Phryne, and her defender (perhaps the orator Hypereides) form a line heading down and right, while the heads of the judges form a line moving down and left. The two lines meet just to the right of Phryne's body; I can't help but think that this is how at least part of her luminosity is achieved -- our eyes slide to her and then slightly away from her, as though she is too divinely beautiful for us to simply stare at.

***

Phyrne is not in fact our hetaera's real name. Her given name was Mnesarete, meaning "virtue-mindful," which is quite lovely, but not really conducive to success in her profession. Supposedly, the nickname Phryne, "toad," was given to her on account of her sallow complexion. She is anything but sallow here. I like to think, per Gérôme, that it was in reality her cynical temper and bitter tongue that gave her that name, as well as a large part of her appeal. If she had merely been a beautiful, well-behaved Greek woman, we would never have heard about her. I much prefer to think of her as the Dorothy Parker of the Athenian set, mocking those who deserve it and taking lovers as they pleased her body or her purse, or both.

A mystery remains: what on earth upset people so much about this painting? The stark eroticism? (Seems unlikely in 19th-century France.) I am attempting to dig up the critics' remarks.

Next up: King Candaules.

UPDATE: Still no luck on the scandal, but I have noticed one extra detail about this painting: the colors from left to right are blue, white, and read -- just like the French flag.

My Cups Runneth Over.

Here is a useful pamphlet on how to be the absolute worst lingerie saleswoman in the short history of one hopeful young lingerie buyer's life.

A clarification: when we say "worst," we do not simply mean "least successful at selling lingerie." Rather, we mean: "supreme at not only discouraging the customer from buying anything, but sending them running out of the store in tears, vowing never to return, and despondent about the current state of their body."

This is, needless to say, a far from everyday occurrence.

1. Don't ask right away if she needs help, even if she is rather listlessly fingering a bra on display and lingering pointedly near where you're obviously chatting with a friend and regular customer. No doubt you also give this woman your employee discount on your severely overpriced merchandise.

2. When you do ask if the customer needs help, exude irritation. When you learn what she's looking for, be sure to point out that you probably don't have it, but offer to fit her and show her to a dressing room anyway.

3. For the fitting, make sure the bra you give her is not only floral -- which she hates and is explicitly not looking for -- but made of a mesh as transparent as possible. Not even the nipples are going to be hidden here. Believe me, few things are more humiliating than standing with your arms outstretched in front of a total stranger in an unflattering bra with your nipples showing.

4. Leave her in the dressing room for at least five minutes, while you stand outside in the thirty-square-foot space and talk loudly about her with your friend. Because if anything is more humiliating than standing with your arms outstretched in front of a total stranger with your nipples showing, it is waiting to do so while the total stranger stands outside and discusses you with her friend as if you weren't there, and unable not to listen.

5. When you do deign to start the fitting, don't forget to point out that she's busting out of the transparent, unflattering bra. Has she put on a lot of weight lately? Also, she's clearly wearing it wrong. Does she wear her own bras that high on her back? How ignorant.

6. Offer to comb the store looking for the skintone, unadorned bra she has requested and specifically intends to wear underneath thin t-shirts in hot summer months. Leave her in the dressing room for another full five minutes.

7. Chat some more with your friend.

8. Assuming your customer has not already thrown on her own clothes and fled in instinctual self-preservation, bring back the six ugliest bras she has ever seen. Make sure at least three are covered in the lumpy details she is specifically hoping to avoid.

9. When she emerges from the dressing room thirty seconds later, having finally given up all hope not only of finding a bra in this store today, but also of ever being physically attractive to anyone ever again in her life, ask how the bras fit. If all has gone according to plan, she should mumble some small pleasantry with a noticeable catch in her voice and a telltale sheen in her eyes, before slinking out of the store with her head hung low in shame. Turn back to your friend, pull out the inevitable bottle of champagne from beneath the counter, and toast your success.

... I wish I could say the above was exaggerated for comic effect. Alas, it was not. I don't want to put the name of the store here, but enquiries will be swiftly and honestly answered.

Masterpiece, my ass.

There are a few things I would like to say to Jimmy Stewart after my first viewing of Hitchcock's "Vertigo," and since I am trying to study for a Finnish exam I am going to write them first in Finnish and then retranslate. Because, let's face it, retranslated English is comedy gold.

Perkele, Jimmy Stewart! Minä en ollut koskaan katsonut "Vertigo"-elokuvaa. Aina minä kuuluin, että oli tosi hyvä elokuva, että näyttelijät olevat tosi rohkeat. Joo, kaikki rakastaa tätä elokuvaa.

Mutta en minäkään. Haluaisitko sinä miksi, Jimmy Stewart? Voisinko minä ilmoittaa? Koska sinä et ollut kilti, Jimmy. Elokuvan ensimäisessä osassa sinä rakastuit Kim Novakiin, ja oli ihmeellistä, oli kaunista. Mutta toisessa osassa Kim Novak kuoli, vaikka hän ei ollut oikeestaan kuollut, ja sinä tuli hulluksi. Sitten taas sinä tapasit Kim Novakin kanssa, ja taas rakastuit häneen. Mutta sinä halusit että toisen Kim Novakin tulla ensimäiseksi Kim Novakiksi -- sinä ostit vaatteet, sinä muutit hänen tukan vären! Hän ei ollut onnellista, mutta hän rakasti sinua. Sitten sinä oppit että ensimäinen Kim Novak ei ollut kuollut -- että toinen oli ensimäinen -- ja sinä päätit tappaa häntä! Ja tämä ei ollut ihmeellistä. Ei ollut kaunista. Nyt inhoan sinua, Jimmy Stewart. Minä menen katsomaan "Rear Window"-elokuvaa taas.

Oh, and by the way, there are going to be spoilers in this. Read ahead and save yourself the trouble.

Goddammit, Jimmy Stewart! I had never seen the movie "Vertigo." Always I heard, that it was a really good movie, that the actors were really fearless. Oh yeah, everyone loves this movie.

But not me. Would you like to know why, Jimmy Stewart? Should I inform you? Because you weren't nice, Jimmy. In the movie's first part you fell in love with Kim Novak, and it was wonderful, it was beautiful. But in the other part Kim Novak died, but she hadn't really died, and you went crazy. Then again you met Kim Novak, and again you fell in love with her. But you wanted the second Kim Novak to become the first Kim Novak -- you bought clothes, you changed the color of her hair! She wasn't happy, but she loved you. Then you learned that the first Kim Novak hadn't died -- that the second was the first -- and you decided to kill her! And this wasn't wonderful. It wasn't beautiful. Now I hate you, Jimmy Stewart. I'm going to go watch "Rear Window" again.

Que Syrah Syrah ...

When I talk about this wine, I am supposed to put the winery name in all caps. SYZYGY. So there. It looks extra emphatic in bold.

It is harder to find a science-y wine in Fred Meyer than in Fremont, and harder in Fremont than it is in Kirkland, which shouldn't surprise me as much as it did. Of all the bottles I investigated, this was the only properly scientific-looking one, a dashing blue and orange label (here hot off the press) with a properly space-age sans serif font. The term 'syzygy' refers to the moment when three celestial bodies in the same gravitational system -- say, Earth, the moon, and the sun -- are in perfect alignment. (Among other things.) Supposedly this is when the winery harvests their cabernet sauvignon grapes, at a moment of eclipse in 2005. I mentioned this to friend Ray, who was properly (scientifically) sceptical: "It takes longer than the length of an eclipse to bring in a harvest." Nevertheless, the label pleases me, although it is less friendly than Educated Guess.

The new Cab Sauv is due out at the start of may -- the bottle I take home is a full, unblended Syrah from the -- say it with me now -- SYZYGY winery in Walla Walla. I spent my four undergraduate years in Walla Walla, and Syrah was one of the first reds I was exposed to, so I was hoping for something particularly special from this bottle of wine. It was pretty good -- rich, and full, and warming -- but it wasn't anything particularly stunning. Maybe I'll keep an eye out for the cabernet sauvignon in a month.

Syrah's history in the United States, interestingly, involves a group called the Rhone Rangers. They were initially formed in the 1980s, disbanded in the early 1990s, and revived before the end of the prior millennium. The entire purpose of this group appears to be the promotion of and education about the Rhone varietals in America, which includes links to various articles on same from around the country -- including this Australian article detailing how the source of Shiraz' peppery tone had been located by a group of Australian scientists. Considering this and the recent efforts to lock down varietal relationships with DNA tests in oenology labs around the world, a clear tension between Old World terroir-centered methods and New World science-tested methods begins to emerge.

In Vino Veritas: Science, Wine, and Science-y Wines

Obviously there is a lot to be said about oenophilia, and in particular about the delightful absurdity of its vocabulary. It is easy to get distracted when your technical terms are words like "supple" and "hollow" and "chewy" -- which rightfully have no place in beverage descriptions -- and before you know it you're slinging around your favorite uncommon adjectives -- wistful! sly! insouciant! -- with a complete disregard for accuracy and comprehensibility. Nor does it help in the quest for clarity to note that many varietals have specific aromas that have been identified seemingly at random: for instance, the pencil box note in a glass of Cabernet Franc.

Much as I love this mode of language, I need some sort of anchor if my oenological leanings are to progress. For a while I stood by the German Rieslings, which are invariably delicious, but now I'd like to investigate the reds and the drier whites as well. But where to start? Even if you ignore the less common varietal grapes (Carmenère, anyone?) there's still no obvious place to begin. All you have to go on is a hunch and the impression made by the design of the label on the bottle. Therefore I have decided -- where is my triumphant horn section crescendo? -- to investigate wines with science-y themes.

It is entirely appropriate that the first wine I choose is called Educated Guess, from the Roots Run Deep winery in the infamous Napa Valley. The label approximates an old blackboard, with hexagonal molecular structures and chemical processes chalked out attractively in white on the black background. The winemaker's description is as follows: "Rich, ripe and focused with juicy blackberry and boysenberry fruit, all tied together with a creamy french vanilla middle and a lingering finish." Mine is much less evocative: delicious. Of course, they're talking about the 2005 vintage, and the bottle I tasted was the 2006, which appears to have a much stronger spice than the earlier bottle. For the first time, I have a sense of how the spiciness of a wine can play with both its fruitiness and its sugar level: the peppery note here provides a sharp opening note supported by the rich velvet tone of the fruit, and a smooth lingering sweetness binds the two together like a silk ribbon tied around a stack of love letters. In fact, the more I drink of it, the more I like it -- so much so that by the end of the bottle I have bestowed upon it the title of Favored Red, a title heretofore only possessed by L'Ecole 41's Recess Red.

The varietal here is Cabernet Sauvignon, one of the reds I am growing more interested in, and one which for years was thought to be descended from Roman grapes. However, more recently its true lineage (a blend of Cabernet franc and Sauvignon blanc, just as the name would suggest) was revealed by, of all scientific things, a DNA test.

Diseased Ovines and Spilled Beer: Not a History of Scotland

The benefits of studying a foreign language are etc. etc. But also, there are tongue-twisters.

I once came across a list of Finnish ones. Finnish is a tongue with a relatively limited supply of phonemes -- in fact, to the Indo-European eye it looks as though a typist has fallen asleep on the letters k, p, and t -- which means the potential for the kind of repetition upon which the tongue-twister thrives is fairly high. Reading the list (with its handy translations) was a delight, and one in particular was so appealing a sentiment that I promptly undertook to memorize it:

Ääliö, älä lyö! Ööliä läikkyy!

Idiot, don't hit! The beer is spilling!

Now, the Finnish front vowels -- ä, ö, and always y -- bedevil an English speaker such as myself, but still it took very little time before this phrase was tripping gaily off my tongue. Among other things, it seemed useful: the impulse to prevent some drunken, thoughtless partygoer from upsetting one's own beverage -- say, onto the shoes or shirt of a person with whom one aspires to hook up -- is an abiding human motivation. But then again, is this phrase actually practicable? Doesn't its nature as a tongue-twister prevents its use in real life? After all, in English, if one should turn to a friend and say to them, "Pass the peeled poached pears, please, Peter," it comes across as repellently, abhorrently cute (NB: not the kind with puppies -- rather the kind with lisping children of adorable precocity and cherubism). And honestly the Finns are much less likely than the Americans to respond favorably to cute.

Also at issue here is the ease of repetition, which at length began to puzzle me. Finnish tongue-twisters rattle easily from my lips, but telling a simple anecdote in the same language is fraught with pitfalls; on the other hand my English has native fluency, but I cannot opine about the sixth sheik's sick sheep with anything approaching reasonable speed. Is this due to the difference between vowel pronunciation and the damnable fricative "sh" -- or is there in fact an inverse relationship between comprehension of a language and facility with its most deliberately challenging form? I am able to memorize the Finnish sentence as a mere progression of syllables -- almost as a musical rather than a linguistic phrase -- while I am forced to deal with the English one as a set of discrete units and images. And something about my awareness of these images short-circuits the relationship between my brain and my mouth. Bizarre.

But now, having brought up the idea of meaning, we can't get away from it. The meaning of a tongue-twister is an inherently paradoxical business. On the one hand, what the phrase means is entirely subordinate to the sound: 'the sixth sheik's sick sheep' is not at all the same as 'the sextile desert chieftain's diseased ovine.' At the same time, no legitimate tongue-twister strings words together randomly. There is always the pretense of a story, even if that story makes no sense. Case in point: Peter Piper. How in the hell did the peppers get pickled before being picked? Or take sinful Caesar, in whose time snifters had yet to be invented. And what happens to those anachronistic snifters when he proceeds to seize his knees? A further sampling from Finland proves this odd quality is international:

Vesihiisi sihisi hississä.
The sea-monster was hissing in the elevator.

Höyhen löytyi yöllä työpöydältä.
A feather was found on the work bench in the night.

What is really at stake here is nothing less than the purpose of language. Generally our culture falls into two camps on this topic: 1) language as code, as a means of carrying information that is separate from mere human memory, and 2) language as fantasy, as imagination, as symbolic somehow of the real (or some unreal) world. What tongue-twisters point to is the elusive idea of language as specifically aural, a notion which only a very few poets these days really remember, in our world of type and text and videography. Sound, for all our musicophilia, is growing increasingly less important to language: it's strange even to think that the great poets of the ancient world wrote and performed works of staggering length and complexity without writing any of it down. (So far as we know -- but Milman Parry makes a good case.) And somehow -- and it necessitates stating at the outset that I still don't quite know how this tangent struck me as relevant, but I can't get it out of my head -- I thought about action movies. The lines we all remember, the quotes that become cultural currency -- it's at least partially because of the sound. Our greatest and most recognizable action stars: Sean Connery, Arnold Schwarzenegger (way less awesome as a politician than an actor -- a sort of reverse Reagan), Clint Eastwood, Sylverster Stallone, John Wayne, Robert de Niro, Bruce Willis -- all of them have something distinctive in the way they speak, whether it's an accent (Connery, Scwarzenegger, Wayne) or merely an inflection (Eastwood, Willis -- who, come to think of it, kind of sounds like Clint Eastwood). Lines that have virtually no linguistic content out of context -- "I'll be back," "The day is mine, Trebek!" -- become verbal milestones. The cinema studies world is crying out for an aural analysis of the action genre and its contribution to characterization. Maybe this also explains the lack of similar stardom in van Damme and Segal. Sorry, guys, you just didn't have the right sound.