Pasiphae's Story

Pablo Picasso, Pasiphae

 

Through the tangled branches of an olive tree, she saw him white below her, turning his head from side to side in the breeze. She slid out of her crimson robe and threw it against the tangled branches, where it caught and hung. She prayed a moment to her sea-born sister, to Passageway and Cul-de-sac, then ran white over the grass, and threw herself down on her hands and knees before the god-engendered animal.

We have come to a Cul-de-sac in our narrative. Words, like politeness, provide us with a way of slipping a noose on the ideas, forces, and accidents, which are our lives and the life of the world. Physical access to metaphysical phenomena is forbidden mortals, but our obedient and observant servant, language, can reach out and touch - not, however, everything. I will not ask my words to lead us through the cypress branches, to overlook that turn of history. The sun-born had intercourse with the Queen, and she came again and again, every day through the warm summer, falling, we must suppose, among the yellow flowers, or among the little passageways his knife-sharp hooves cut in the grass of the gravelly bank.

Extract from: Pasiphae's Story, copyright © 1964 by Dirk van Nouhuys