Leda and The Swan- a literary marvel
Posted by Amresh Verma on
Leda and the Swan is an iconic piece of literature. In Greek mythology, the story of Leda and the Swan revolves around the idea that the god Zeus, who takes the form of a Swan, seduces and impregnates Leda. According to mythology, she gave birth to Polydeuces and Helen, at the same time to Clytemnestra and Castor, who were the children of her husband, Tyndareus.
In the W. B. Yeats version, Clytemnestra, who was the daughter of Tyndareus, is shown to have been traumatized by what the god has done to her mother. According to various versions of the story, the god took the form of a swan and copulates with Leda on the same night she slept with her husband.
In some versions, the children hatched from the two eggs that she laid. In others, Helen is the daughter of a goddess known as Nemesis, who symbolized the disaster that would befall the people of Hubris.
The niche undoubtedly owed it is sixteenth-century popularity to the paradox it turned out, considered more acceptable to depict a girl in the act of copulation with a swan compared to a man. Typically the earliest depictions show the pair love-making with some boldness—more so than in any depictions of a human match made by artists of ivy league in the same period.
For that era, the idea was ahead of its times, depicting eroticism. W. B Yeats take the reader in its element..
A sudden blow: the great wings beating still
Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed
By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,
He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.
How can those terrified vague fingers push
The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?
And how can body, laid in that white rush,
But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?
A shudder in the loins engenders there
The broken wall, the burning roof and tower
And Agamemnon dead.
Being so caught up,
So mastered by the brute blood of the air,
Did she put on his knowledge with his power
Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?
Robby Zora has created an Abstract Digial Art based on the myth, with an erotic undertone coinciding the theme. This piece of art symbolises passion and lust. Take this literary, mythological piece to your home:
https://robbyzora.com/collections/artworks/products/leda-and-the-swan
