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

UGLINESS

dark skin showing patchily through under face powder (p. 22)

disorderly hair (p. 26)

ugly-haired in white robe lower class, in scarlet trouser-skirt (p. 71)

a mottled complexion (p. 189)

“I cannot stand a woman who wears sleeves of unequal width” (p. 170)

“women in travelling costumes who walk in a great hurry” (p. 262)

a thin ugly woman with dark skin and a wig (p. 262)

a darkskinned person in an unlined robe of stiff silk (p. 262)

Descriptions of Feminine Beauty in Some Old Norse Sources

1

Descriptions of feminine beauty in the Elder Edda (Hollander trans.). Non-visual descriptions such as “good” and “loving” (e.g. “Hávamál,” p. 30: “the good maiden, in whose loving arms I lay”) are omitted. So are non-concrete visual descriptions such as “winsome” (“Helgavitha Hjorgarthssonar,” p. 170: “the winsome women of the war leader”).

ARMS (11 REFERENCES)

PHRASE: gleaming

SOURCE: “Skírnismál,” p. 66.

PHRASE: shining

SOURCE: “Lokasenna,” p. 94.

PHRASE: soft (2x)

SOURCE: “Svipdagsmal,” p. 151.

PHRASE: white

SOURCE: “Atlakvitha,” p. 290.

PHRASE: white

SOURCE: “Hábarzljod,” p. 79.

PHRASE: white

SOURCE: “Hávamál,” p. 40.

PHRASE: white

SOURCE: “Helgavitha Hjorgarthssonar,” p. 171.

PHRASE: white

SOURCE: “Helgavitha Hundingsbana II,” p. 201.

PHRASE: white

SOURCE: “Volundarkvitha,” p. 160.

PHRASE: white

SOURCE: “Volundarkvitha,” p. 161.

BROW (5)

PHRASE: brow brighter than whitest snow

SOURCE: “Rígsthula,” p. 125.

PHRASE: brow-white

SOURCE: “Hymiskvitha,” p. 85.

PHRASE: brow-white

SOURCE: “Sigurtharkvitha hin skamma,” p. 260.

PHRASE: brow-white

SOURCE: “Volundarkvitha,” p. 167.

PHRASE: fair-browed

SOURCE: “Brot af Sigurtharkvitha,” p. 245.

BREAST (1)

PHRASE: breast lighter than whitest snow

SOURCE: “Rígsthula,” p. 125.

COLOR IN GENERAL (6)

PHRASE: fair

SOURCE: “Volundarkvitha,” p. 161.

PHRASE: snow-white

SOURCE: “Alvíssmál,” p. 111.

PHRASE: sun-bright

SOURCE: “Hávamál,” p. 28.

PHRASE: sun-bright

SOURCE: “Helgavitha Hundingsbana II,” p. 200.

PHRASE: sun-bright

SOURCE: “Svipdagsmal,” p. 151.

PHRASE: swan-white

SOURCE: “Atlakvitha,” p. 293.

FINGERS (1)

PHRASE: dainty-fingered

SOURCE: “Rígsthula,” p. 126.

HAIR (2)

PHRASE: fairhaired

SOURCE: “Helgavitha Hjorgarthssonar,” p. 170.

PHRASE: fairhaired

SOURCE: “Rígsthula,” p. 126.

NECK (1)

PHRASE: whiter than whitest snow

SOURCE: “Rígsthula,” p. 125.

SHAPE (2)

PHRASE: slender

SOURCE: “Alvíssmál,” p. 111.

PHRASE: slender

SOURCE: “Hávamál,” p. 40.

CLOTHES AND ORNAMENTS (8)

PHRASE: blue-shirted

SOURCE: “Rígsthula,” p. 125.

PHRASE: brooch-breasted

SOURCE: “Rígsthula,” p. 125.

PHRASE: gold-dight

SOURCE: “Hábarzljod,” p. 79.

PHRASE: gold-dight

SOURCE: “Hymiskvitha,” p. 85.

PHRASE: gold-dight

SOURCE: “Helgavitha Hjorgarthssonar,” p. 175.

PHRASE: in golden weeds

SOURCE: “Fafnismál,” p. 231.

PHRASE: ring-bedight

SOURCE: “Helgavitha Hjorgarthssonar,” p. 171.

PHRASE: silver-dight

SOURCE: “Sigrdrífumál,” p. 239.

2

Descriptions of feminine beauty in Laxdaela Saga. Gudrid, the heroine, is never described in any specific terms. The hero, Kjartan, gets a good two sentences of description.

3

Descriptions of feminine beauty in Njal’s Saga . The heroine, Hallgerd, is frequently described when she makes her dramatic entrances onto the stage. The author devotes more description to her than to anyone else. I have omitted non-specific descriptions such as “a woman of great beauty.”

“She was a tall, beautiful child with long silken hair that hung down to her waist” (ch. 1, p. 39).

“She was very tall, which earned her the nickname Long-legs, and her lovely hair was now so long that it could veil her entire body” (ch. 9, p. 55).

“She had put on a woven blue cloak over a scarlet tunic and a silver belt. She wore her hair hanging loose on either side of her bosom and tucked under her belt” (ch. 13, p. 66).

“The one in the lead was the best dressed of all… Hallgerd was wearing a red, richly-decorated tunic under a scarlet cloak trimmed all the way down with lace. Her beautiful thick hair flowed down over her bosom” (ch. 33, p. 93).

POSTSCRIPT: A NOTE ON SOME NOVELS BY SIGRID UNDSET

That great twentieth-century envisioner of medieval Norway, Sigrid Undset, bestows upon us spacious treasuries of description, so that at first she seems to deny the Eddic tradition of understated love-doom. Here, for instance, is her most famous heroine, Kristin Lavransdattir: She was “small-waisted, with slender, fine limbs and joints, yet round and plump withal. Her face was somewhat short and round, her forehead low and broad and white as milk; her eyes large, grey and soft, under fairly drawn eyebrows. Her mouth was somewhat large, but it had full bright red lips, and her chin was as round as an apple and well-shaped. She had goodly, long, thick hair, but ’twas something dark in hue, almost as much brown as yellow, and quite straight.” A few pages later on, when Kristin is getting ready for a certain fateful dance, Undset has her “spread her masses of yellow hair out over her shoulders and back” — a simple, powerful act of much the same enthralling character as the display of a legendary heroine’s shining white arms. When at that dance Kirstin encounters Erlend Nikulaussön, who will be the love and torment of her life, the scene is underplayed with great skill. She smiles, gazes into his eyes; finally she accompanies him into the herb-garden in the darkness. She “knew that this was madness,” writes Undset. “But a blessed strengthlessness was upon her. She only leaned closer to the man and whispered softly — she knew not what.” At dawn they vow oaths to one another, although she was promised to another. After that, no one can pull Kristin back from the doom she craves, not even her sorrowing father, who is perhaps the most lovingly drawn of any character in either of Undset’s great trilogies. “She burst into weeping,” we read. “But she wept because she had felt in his caress and seen in his eyes that now he was so worn out with pain that he could not hold out against her any more.” He has himself been doomed by his compassionate love for his daughter, which overcomes his equally loving concern for her best interest as he sees it. As for Kristin, in her we find the resolution of an ancient Norse heroine, but overlain with Christian compassion and guilt. Her world remains in most respects the supernatural one of the Eddas. At the very beginning of the trilogy, when she is still a small girl, the reflection of a grey-eyed dwarf-maiden or elf-maiden bends toward her, seeking to lure her into the mountain with a wreath of flowers. Although this scene foreshadows the eventual tarnishment of Kristin’s bridal crown, it has been so skillfully realized that the elf-lady lives in her own right. She has been delineated in more detail than we would have found in the sagas, but even so, some reserve remains in the description; something is lacking or mysterious about her. She appears specific and even beautiful enough, but her reflected image must be wavering slightly in the dark pool; her form possesses less fixity than Kristin’s; she might be the reflection of bushes and a rock, and her nostrils strangely resemble a horse’s. This dangerous other world obtrudes itself upon us from time to time throughout the novel; and one of the last experiences Kristin has in her old age before entering a convent is hearing a stone roll and a door shut beneath the mountain. What would have happened had she followed the elf-lady? We never hear of the mountain letting anyone go; and at one point a mendicant monk informs us that the damned cannot be saved because they are addicted to their torment.