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

So much is the female associated with her white arms that when Loki, who is insulting everyone in Valhalla, arrives at the goddesss Ithun, he cannot forbear from pro forma praise of her most lovely feature: “for thy shining arms on the shoulders lay / of thy brother’s banesman.”

THE POWER OF THEIR BECKONING

To be sure, fair-browed Brynhild, white-armed Guthrún and the various other swan-white ladies become as de-individualized and stylized as Lady Murasaki’s blackhaired Japanese beauties. But the power of feminine beauty grows all the more uncanny for its mechanistic invariability. The Valkyrie Sigrdrífa counsels her hero-bridegroom: “Though fair women, / and brow-white, sit on bench: / let the silver-dight one not steal thy sleep.” What about them is so dangerously alluring? Doubtless their white foreheads and silver rings contribute. But it may be the stylized invitation itself that comprises the thrilling peril. In the Greenlandish Lay of Atli, a doomed warrior’s wife, vainly counseling him not to accept the invitation of the man who will kill him, relates the following dream: “Methought in the darkness came dead women hitherward… beckoned and bade thee… to their benches forthwith.” Who knows whether in death they remain fair and brow-white? The wife fears the power of their beckoning just the same.

Indeed, the beauty of a Norsewoman can be likened to a sort of doom inflicted upon the men who suddenly find themselves in love or in lust with her. 3In The Saga of the Volsungs , a certain Sinfjotli simply “saw a lovely woman and strongly desired to have her.” That suffices. In Eyrbyggja Saga , two berserks are lured into a rage and consequent fatal exhaustion by the mockingly silent presence of a woman described only as “gold-adorned.” We know that she is dressed in her best and lifts her head high. We know her name, which is Asdis. That is all. And yet this saga, like so many others, does not withhold detailed descriptions of the second most beautiful category in the world, namely, weapons such as the sword of Steinthor whose silver hilt shines and whose grip is wound around with gold-threaded silver wire. Why then should gold-adorned Asdis remain a cipher, unless such was the saga writer’s choice? The eponymous hero of the thirteenth-century “Ivar’s Story” breaks his heart over a woman named Oddny Jonsdottir, and although his grief and its remedy — receiving permission to talk about Oddny day after day with the King of Norway — comprise the point of the tale, Oddny herself is not described in any way. It is as if she were an earthquake. Among the romantic motifs in Norse myths and fairytales we encounter love instantaneously induced through sight of the beloved in a picture or magic mirror, love caused by a glimpse of an unknown princess’s hair, and, of course, the love that comes from seeing a woman’s white arms. If I could see Oddny in a magic mirror, could I resist her? Would the shining of her arms suffice to enthrall me forever, or would I need a glimpse of her magic hair? In The Saga of Gunnlaug Serpent-Tongue , a warrior-poet sings his subjection to Helga the Fair: “The woman was born to bring war / between men…” 4He praises her as “the ring-land’s light-Valkyrie,” meaning “the land’s rings’ goddess,” which signifies simply and hauntingly woman . All this seems in keeping with the appearance of the old Scandinavian figurines of Valkyries or disir : longhaired, silhouetted from the side, almost blank of facial features, stylized, nearly inhuman.

“THEN I WISH ALL MY LUCK ON TO YOUR HEADS”

What is doom? One summer in Iceland, a man named Hrapp rows out to the narrative, which rides and rocks on the verge of departing for Norway, and he asks to be carried into future chapters. How many unknown characters inhabit the darkness that frames everything we can see in this present instant of our lives? As he so often does, the saga writer withholds description of Hrapp here; our impression gets conveyed entirely through dialogue. “I suspect,” says the captain, “that whoever takes you aboard will have cause to regret it.” All the same, Hrapp gets his way. Cheating the captain out of payment for his passage, he next requests to be taken into the household of Gudbrand of the Dales, whose daughter he will seduce, impregnate and abandon, whose son he will murder, and whose temple to the gods he will pillage and burn. Upon meeting him, Gudbrand remarks, “You don’t look like a man of good luck.” And indeed, Hrapp soon finds it prudent to get out of Norway. “Save me, good people,” he cries to the Njalssons, “for the earl is after my life.” Helgi Njalsson replies: “It strikes me that you are a bringer of ill luck. It would be wiser to have nothing to do with you.” “Then I wish all my luck on to your heads,” says Hrapp, and in due course, there it goes.

The lesson read in this is that once Killer-Hrapp darkens anyone’s door, there remains no right way to deal with him. Ungrateful, violent, treacherous, he will abuse a kindness as well as avenge a rejection. Killing him outright will merely ensure a different doom. The heroes and heroines of Norse sagas express a cool, brave indifference to each and all such prospects. If one must die, then so be it. Enduring what cannot be helped need not equal submission to it. And in The Saga of Grettir the Strong , when the outlawed hero’s mother takes final leave of him and his brother, her admonition, whose gloom can certainly not be denied, offers a residuum of proud comfort: “There you go, my two sons, and your deaths will be the saddest of all, but no one can avoid what is ordained. I will never see either of you again. Meet the same fate.”

But what if there were some way to avoid doom? In the sagas we also often find a strong shrewd man of moderation, who succeeds, if only temporarily, in containing the violence of his neighbors. Even Grettir has friends, whose support, alas, erodes page by page. Olaf the Peacock in Laxdaela Saga declines to act against his son’s killer, who happens to be his foster son, and the eponymous protagonist of Njal’s Saga continually acts to limit hostilities and make settlements between people. When Hrapp’s bad luck begins to assault his sons, Njal counsels them: “You should let it be understood that you intend to take action only if you are provoked. But if you had asked for my advice at the very beginning, you would never have raised the matter at all, and so you would never have compromised yourselves.” This is truly the voice of rational restraint. All the same, Njal’s very next words run: “But now you are already committed to a trying situation; humiliations will be heaped upon you, until you have no alternative but to cut through your difficulties with weapons.” And so we descend back to inevitable doom. Olaf the Peacock, who bears advantages of person, deeds, wealth and lineage, does persuade all parties to the feud to settle, however grudgingly, but after his death, the constrained inevitable bursts its fetters just as the Fenris Wolf will do come the end of the world. As for Njal, wise, moderate and careful though he is, even second-sighted, from the very first we find him, like all the others, a hostage to friendship and kinship. He enters the saga by counseling underhanded tactics in a dubious third party lawsuit. He does not initiate this process; nor does the friend who comes to him; nor can either of them derive any good from winning it — on the contrary. No matter. Njal cannot escape getting enmeshed in matters which he knows full well are dangerous. His doom is to be burned alive in his house with his wife and sons.

Who sent Hrapp to ensnare us? Where lay Grettir’s fault? On the one hand, Grettir’s cruel and sullen nature manifests itself even in childhood, when he flays his father’s mare alive; but then, like the late-starting youngest son in many a fairytale, he begins to accomplish great things, and goes far down on the road to renown until he does the good deed of killing the bloated black monster called Glam, who curses him with outlawry and ill fortune. “And this curse I lay on you: my eyes will always be before your sight and this will make it difficult to be alone. And this will lead to your death.” What is the morality of providence? Can we give a hero any more credit for being lucky than we can a woman for being beautiful? In The Saga of the Volsungs , when Odin appears at a battle that his former favorite King Sigmund has been winning, and raises his spear against him, Sigmund’s sword breaks. “Then the tide of battle turned, for King Sigmund’s luck was now gone.” The expression “favored of fortune” fails in this context. It is one thing when an Old Testament figure transgresses the will of the divine, and then his fortune, or that of his descendants, turns evil. But as Odin himself reminds us in the Eddic poem “Hávamál,” the doom of every living thing is to die; no virtue of any mortal is immortal, excepting only renown. Therefore, no matter how hard we try to escape our doom, there will always be other men of rage and violence ready to be drawn into the saga; and even if Hrapp could somehow be avoided, slain or appeased, then Odin must come forth from the darkness with his spear aimed at us.