William Vollmann - Kissing the Mask - Beauty, Understatement and Femininity in Japanese Noh Theater, with Some Thoughts on Muses (Especially Helga Testorf), Transgender Women, ... Geishas, Valkyries and Venus Figurines

251: “Many, if not most women are the wrong shape…” — Anders.

252: “Sexual difference, which owes much to symbolic dualisms…” — Millot, p. 15.

252: “A smoldering smoky eye.” — Harper’s Bazaar , January 2008.

20: A CURTAIN OF MIST

255: A waka-onna, fushikizo and manbi seen all together — Tokugawa Art Museum, Noh Masks and Costumes , p. 24 (plates 36–38).

256: “Empowering interpreters with expertise…” — Rath, p. 81.

256: “Okina is not a pine tree spirit…” — Jeff Clark corrections, to my ms. p. 30.

256: “Poetry is finer than prose…” + “Poetic thought works by suggestion…” — Fenollosa, pp. 23, 28.

257: Representation of Genji’s dying wife by means of a folded robe — In the Noh play “Aoi-no-Ue.”

257: The tale of Sen no Rikyu’s ocean-view garden — Treib and Herman, p. 23.

257: Utamaro’s yuujo from 1794 — Utamaro book, trans. Yasuda Nobuko. Picture 31: Nouryoubijinzu. Around Kansei 6–7 (1794–95). Colored silk book. Hitono (=unit for counting fabric size) 39.5 x 65.6 cm. Chiba City Museum of Art.

257: Remarks of Mr. Mikata — Interview of October 2006.

257: Description of Utamaro’s round-cheeked white geisha faces — After Utamaro (Tadashi Kobayashi), pp. 25–29 (geisha series from “A Collection of Portraits of Reigning Beauties”).

258: Matisse drawings — Op. cit., various pages.

259: “The waste of a woman is in not knowing her carnally.” — Simpson, p. 521 (“The Instruction of ‘Onchsheshonqy [P. British Museum 10508],” 20/20).

259: “The ‘fetish-object’ in the history of courtly love is a surrogate…” — Kunzle, p. 7.

259: Description of the Queen of the Night — After Collon, pp. 6 (as she looks now) and 8 (digital reconstruction).

260: Understated clothing and breast forms sometimes protects the male bodies of transgender women from being recognized. — Information from Rose, pp. 34–35.

260: Footnote: “The extruding animal breast…” — Clark, p. 130.

260: “The one thing that women share…” — Serano, p. 52.

260: Description of “Venus” figurines — After illustrations in Gimbutas, pp. 163–65. One example sports what the author calls “double-egg-shaped buttocks.”

261: “In punchy shades of purple, green and blue…” — Allure , August 2008, p. 181 (Cara Litke, “Crossing the Line”).

261: Footnote: “It is usually said that a woman should keep everything in her heart…” — Makuzu, p. 22.

262: “Although they are peasants, they embody the refinement of a centuries-old courtly aesthetic…” — Takeda and Bethe, p. 21 (Tom Hare, “Rituals, Dreams, and Tales of Adventure: A Material History of Noh Drama”).

22: SUN-BRIGHT LIKE SWORDS

264: “They saw a large band of shield-maidens…” — The Saga of the Volsungs , p. 50.

265: The three “fair southron maids” — “Volundarkvitha,” in Hollander, p. 160.

265: “For the white-armed woman he waited long” + “her white arms” — Ibid., pp. 161, 160.

265: The lovely Norsewoman — What about domestic beauty? Concerning the brooch-breasted, blue-shirted highborn wife of “Rígsthula,” “was her brow brighter, her breast lighter, / her neck whiter, than whitest snow.” Her son married a girl who was “dainty-fingered, fairhaired and wise.”

265: Footnote: Description of the thrall wife — “Rígsthula,” in Hollander, p. 122.

265: Sun-bright like a sword — For instance, Odin extolls Billing’s daughter, “the sun-bright maid” (“Hávamál,” in Hollander, p. 28); in “Voluspa” (p. 10) we read that “the war god’s sword like a sun doth shine.” We might also mention that Svipdag’s “sun-bright maiden” Mengloth shares her appellation with a man; Sun-Bright was also the name of Svipdag’s father (Hollander, p. 152).

265: Shunga ’s whiter bodies of women than of men — For instance, Clark et al., p. 102 (Torii Kyonobu I’s early eighteenth-centuty ukiyo-e shunga “Erotic Contest of Flowers” [detail].)

266: Denigration of arms in the “zoologist’s portrait, celebrating women as they appear in the real world” — Morris, pp. ix., 117.

266: Gerth’s “arms did gleam…” — “Skírnismál,” in Hollander.

266: “When she lifted her arms and opened the door…” — Sturluson, p. 31.

266: “In a witch’s arms beware of sleeping…” — “Hávamál,” in Hollander, p. 31.

266: Dangerous as the ghost of a Christian woman — “Svipdagsmal,” in Hollander, p. 143.

266: “The crafty woman / in her arms who folded my father” — Ibid., p. 142.

266: “For thy shining arms on the shoulders lay…” — “Lokasenna,” in Hollander, p. 94.

267: “Though fair women, / and brow-white…” — Sigrdrífumál,” in Hollander, p. 239.

267: “Methought in the darkness came dead women…” — Greenlandish Lay of Atli, in Hollander, p. 298 st. 25.

267: Norsewomen as doom — These examples could be multiplied at tedious length. When Bjorn Brynjolfsson meets Thora Lacecuff, he takes a great fancy to her, says the saga, but does not say why; he abducts her (Egil’s Saga , p. 81). When Egil Skallagrimssson falls in love with his brother’s widow Asgerd, his love poem mentions nothing about her characteristics (ibid., p. 132). In The Saga of Bjorn, Champion of the Hitardal People we meet Oddny Thorkelsdaughter, “an exceptionally beautiful” woman whose exceptional beauty is not described, but on account of it she is called Oddny Isle-Candle (Sagas of Warrior Poets , p. 154).

267: Sinfjotli “saw a lovely woman…” — The Saga of the Volsungs , p. 50.

267: Femme fatale of Eyrbyggja Saga — P. 78.

269: “Ivar’s story” — In Hrafnkel’s Saga , pp. 129–31.

269: Encomia of Helga the Fair — Sagas of Warrior Poets , p. 141 (The Saga of Gunnlaug Serpent-Tongue ).

269: Footnote on Helga — Ibid., p. 117.

269: Same footnote: Description of the bound captive — Two Viking Romances , p. 21 (“Bosi and Herraud”).

269: Description of figurines of Valkyries or disir — After illustrations in Lindow, p. 96.

270: Citations from Njal’s Saga — Pp. 184, 185, 189, 198.

270: “There you go, my two sons…” — The Saga of Grettir the Strong , p. 158.

271: Glam’s curse — Ibid., p. 85.

271: “Then the tide of battle turned…” — The Saga of the Volsungs , p. 53

272: Decapitation of the eight-year-old boy — The Tale of the Heike , vol. 2, p. 700.

272: Heike arrogance, evanescence — Ibid., vol. 1, p. 5. The book is rife with such passages.

273: The dooms of Katla and Odd — Eryrbyggja Saga , pp. 62–63.

273: “Have it your way, but it’s a decision I’ll live long to regret.” — Egil’s Saga , p. 126.

273: Other citations from Njal’s Saga — Pp. 171, 239–40.

274: Guthrún called “demonic” — Hollander, p. 285.

274: Final doings of Brynhild — “Sigurtharkvitha hin skamma” (short lay of Sigurth), in Hollander, p. 260.

275: Sigrún and Helgi in the mound — “Helgavitha Hundingsbana II,” in Hollander, pp. 200–201.

275: Footnote: The “hateful and grim” Valkyrie in Odin’s hall — “Helgavitha Hundingsbana I” (First Lay of Helgi Hundingslayer), in Hollander, p. 186.

Same footnote: “A different, cruder picture” — Davidson, p. 64.

275: “The nape of the neck is the glamor spot…” — Ito and Inoue, p. 64.

276: Footnote: Thomas Blenman Hare’s diagram of gender inflection patterns — Op. cit., p. 3.