Sexual Difference
In the opening poem of The World’s Desire, the uncertainty between He and She becomes apparent. The poem describes the quicksilver alternation between the star and the snake, symbols of sexual difference:
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- The fables of the North and South
- Shall mingle in a modern mouth.
- There lives no man but he hath seen
- The World’s Desire, the fairy queen…
- Not one but he hath chanced to wake,
- Dreamed of the Star and found the Snake.
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According to Koestenbaum, Lang and Haggard “mingle in a modern mouth”: they collaborate, two mouths speaking as one. By calling mingling “modern,” they imply that collaboration and the propensity to confuse star and snake are contemporary urges. To take this a step further, it is not only that Odysseus cannot decide which woman he loves, wavering between Star and Snake, but it is also the Star and Snake’s refusal to remain distinct. This leads the reader to an even more bewildering erotic choice: a confusion over which sex to love. The reader must decide whether to swear allegiance to the “blood red” menstrual star on Helen’s breast or to the snaky phallus represented with Meriamun. In fact, the character of Meriamun is so sexually open-ended that it is difficult to say whether she is a man in a woman’s body or a woman in a man’s.
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