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Post by lorna on Oct 3, 2016 9:14:53 GMT -1
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Post by lorna on Feb 6, 2017 13:45:51 GMT -1
As a follow up I was planning to review this but don't tend to do public reviews of books I can't review positively. So here I'll post my draft review and then some afterthoughts on aspects of the book that troubled me after me I'd reviewed it. I'd be interested to hear your opinions on the areas I've found problematic.
Draft Review
Flower Face: A Devotional Anthology in Honor of Blodeuwedd is a collection of essays, prayers, poems, stories, songs, visual art and photography honouring the Welsh divinity, Blodeuwedd. It was published by Ninth Wave Press, the publishing arm of the Sisterhood of Avalon, in 2016.
The foreword is written by Jhenah Telyndru, ‘Morgen of the Sisterhood of Avalon’. She possesses an MA in Celtic Studies from the University of Wales and her analysis of Blodeuwedd’s story forms the intellectual core of the book.
Like myself (and pretty much everybody I have spoken to about Blodeuwedd), Jhenah finds the story of Gwydion creating Blodeuwedd from flowers to serve as a bride for Lleu problematic:
‘Blodeuwedd is, herself, brought into being in order to satisfy the final destiny lain upon Lleu, and in many ways, plays a very passive role in Lleu’s coming to power. She is a prize, a woman created to be the perfect wife: beautiful and compliant... she is not shown to give consent... Gwydion is her creator, and perhaps sees himself as her father, or at least her owner.’
In the past Blodeuwedd has been portrayed as an ‘Unfaithful Wife’ because she sleeps with Gronw whilst Lleu is away, then plots with him to murder Lleu. Blodeuwedd finds out the conditions under which Lleu can die*, then Gronw fashions a spear and strikes the killing blow.
Jhenah notes that under the Welsh Laws a marriage without consent is not a legal union and that her true and legal union is with Gronw. She views Blodeuwedd’s actions as an assertion of her personal agency.
Jhenah argues that Blodeuwedd was originally a goddess of seasonal sovereignty. Drawing on similar stories featuring male representatives of the seasons battling for a sovereignty goddess** she says Lleu plays the role of the Solar Hero and Gronw the Otherworld Champion competing for her hand in a sacred marriage.
When Blodeuwedd is with Lleu she is a Flower Maiden and when she is with Gronw she is an owl. Whereas in the original story, Blodeuwedd’s transformation into an owl is her punishment from Gwydion for killing Lleu (who he finds dying in the form of an eagle in an oak tree), Jhenah sees her transformation to result from her choice of husband as a free agent.
I thought this was a powerful and attractive argument, but was slightly perturbed by the lack of consideration of the ethical implications of the murder plot - even if you’re in an arranged marriage is it really ok to kill your husband to win your freedom?
Many of the other pieces similarly affirm Blodeuwedd’s rebellion and assertion of her agency. In ‘Meadowsweet/Passionflower’ Tiffany Lazic links Blodeuwedd’s story to women’s emancipation and the affirmation of passion and sexuality. Several authors interpret Blodeuwedd’s actions as representative of regaining personal power and finding one’s authentic self.
In ‘Night-Blooming’ Jennifer Roberts writes:
‘the flowers never really suited you, did they?
Far better, the silent sweep of wing
the strength of night-bird’s claws,
the eyes that pierce the darkness,
the beak that pierces bone,
And better by far, the hunter’s will that knows no master.’
Other subjects include personal accounts of journeys and pathworkings, poetry by Dafydd ap Gwilym and Robert Graves, Alan Garner’s The Owl Service, links between Buffy and Blodeuwedd (!), recipes for a feast for Blodeuwedd and blessing oil. I enjoyed the songs and a few of the poems and prayers, but felt the stories were slightly weaker as they humanised the deities (this may just be a result of my personal taste).
One thing that struck me as I read (and was then confirmed by the bios) was the absence of male voices. All the authors are female. I’d have liked to hear a male opinion on Gwydion’s creation of Blodeuwedd and her contrasting relationships with Lleu and Gronw. I also noticed around half the authors belong to the Sisterhood of Avalon, which may account for the similarity of viewpoints.
I was a little disappointed that none of the authors spoke in any depth on the magic of Gwydion’s creation of Blodeuwedd. Patriarchal connotations aside, I find the magical creation of a woman from flowers deeply fascinating: it holds a numinous Frankenstein-esque quality. This wasn’t considered, nor the questions it raises: does such a being have consciousness? Does she have a soul? (From an animistic perspective where matter is viewed as conscious and ensouled - yes - but I’d like to have heard other opinions).
Overall, Flower Face is an engaging introduction to Blodeuwedd’s story and collection of devotional writing centred around a Sisterhood of Avalon perspective; it is worth reading for Jhena’s essays alone. However, it lacks divergent perspectives, in particular from men - surely there are men out there who venerate Blodeuwedd?...
*Because Lleu cannot be killed indoors, out of doors, on horseback or on foot, he must stand under an arched roof with one foot on a bath tub and the other on a billy-goat!
** Such as Gwyn, Gwythyr and Creiddylad and Pwyll/Arawn’s battle with Hafgan.
~
Afterward I still found myself troubled by some aspects of the anthology. Whilst I'm all for defying the patriarchy and standing for female sovereignty I felt here that the sisterhood, led by Jhenah, had forced a reading about female emancipation on Blodeuwedd's story, which to me is more of a tragedy.
In relation to the lack of divergent opinions it made me realise what I like about Brython is that whilst we honour the same deities we all approach them differently and thus have completely different stories to tell.
I'd be intrigued to hear your opinions on what I've said and, of course, on the book if you've read it!
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Post by Lee on Feb 6, 2017 21:37:00 GMT -1
I will come back to this when I have had a bit of a think, If he doesnt object to me posting it - I saved something YEARS ago that Megli wrote;
What Blodeuedd new said to Lleu
My skull which you cradle is a mossy nest of woven wood and feather-tangles.
Behind my eyes storms a hive, bee-heat and bee-murmur –
Do you feel it when you stroke your man’s thumbs on my eyelids?
Bend for the silk of my kiss? Do you hear her, the queen in the cells of my skull?
You love to run your nose in my hair,
Smell autumn in the golden hay lying on your pillow.
In this hall wherever I tread there is the scent of things rootless and fragrantly dying.
I myself am a meadow, slowly dying as I wait in your halls…
If only you saw clearly, eyes not muzzy with magic,
You would see my back as a snail-trail, a silver line you trace up the stalk of my spine,
From which fan the slender leaves of my shoulders.
You bend down your golden head to kiss the knot of my navel…my darling,
My honeysuckle, you say… and down between my legs, there, you find honeydew and salt,
Cuckoo-spit in my forking stem, and I stretch out longing for wild light and woodland rain,
Beyond this shuttered room you think we share.
You think I am a woman;
I am as fleeting and inhuman as the swirl of wind through summer leaves,
Or the moon's glance at the moth.
If you looked, truly looked,
Perhaps you would see my glittering girdle is the dancing motion of insects,
And it is not silver and gold that rings my long fingers,
But the burnished backs of beetles on coils of bindweed and twisting vine.
The women whisper that you smell of the wood when you rise happy from my bed,
Of woods and earth-bread and meadowsweet crushed for strewing.
Oh my Lleu, my Lleu, it is not I whom your uncle enchanted, but you –
You who see fruit of paradise in my breasts' fullness,
When you press hot kisses among my docks and blossoms, circle my rosehip nipples.
You see human eyes where grey stream-pebbles lie couched in moss.
You see a mouth where a butterfly only opens and closes her wings.
And what seem a wife’s gracious words
Is but the hoot of an owl through the halls of the twilit wood.
For if your uncle, the wizard, withdrew his wand from my spine,
Which keeps me tall and human-seeming,
Then I would turn and shudder into bee-swarm and summer mist,
With a sigh of homecoming to my native elements...
and become once more only leaves, and flowers, and the owl’s call
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Post by Heron on Feb 8, 2017 16:32:03 GMT -1
I haven’t seen this book. But it is not uncommon today for Blodeuwedd to be seen by feminists as a woman asserting her independence from male authority, or to see Gwydion (if not Lleu) as an oppressive male. It is quite possible to read the story in this way, as in other ways, and stories which have been retold, or made from elements of stories inherited from oral folk tale, can just as well be re-made to fit different agendas in succeeding ages. If people want to read it politically or ideologically, as it seems currently fashionable to do with this story, then people can obviously make their case as they have done. If, however, we want to read it mythically we may want to come to a different conclusion. Is the myth it contains about women’s freedom from male authority? The first thing I’d want to say here is that we have to remember, as Megli’s sublimely beautiful piece asserts, that Blodeuwedd is not human. She is created by magic, in her own right from natural elements, or, as Megli’s piece also suggests, by the enchantment of Lleu to see her as a woman rather than as flowers. Gwydion is good at this sort of thing. In the first part of the tale, which forms a prelude to the story of Blodeuwedd, he tricks Pryderi by similar enchantments. If we want to see him as a man behaving badly perhaps a better example is the way he causes a war to get Math away from his court so his brother Gilfaethwy can rape Goewin, Math’s maiden foot holder (which also sounds as if it has deeper mythic significance but this is unclear). We might also note that Math punishes Gwydion and Gilfaethwy by turning them into animals, and that they alternate gender over three years and each knows what it is like to be a female and to bear offspring. So there are typological links between the prelude and the events of the Blodeuwedd story. If we pull out just one of a series of interacting elements, which we can do to concentrate on one perceived theme, we are reducing the story just to this one theme. But mythic narratives function as much by the correspondences of images, events and symbolic detail as they do by simple narrative progression. Do the echoes from one part of the tale to another suggest, rather, a theme of the way magic is misused , and the consequences of so misusing it? It might have seemed so to the medieval author. Further back in the story’s origins other themes could be buried in the way gods relate to each other, but this is not easy to unravel in the tale we have.
I was interested that Blodeuwedd was seen as a sovereignty goddess. Presumably on the basis that Lleu is a representation of Lug (he acts in consort with the Irish sovereignty goddess in the ‘Baile in Scáil' story). But I can’t see how this works in terms of the story we have. Certainly she offers the sovereignty of the land to someone else, and Gronw has to kill Lleu to get it. But sovereignty goddesses don’t get brought into being then got rid of so easily. Unless, that is, it is all part of a game she is playing with Gwydion who brings her out of her natural element and returns her to it, here himself playing the part of Lug? But that would undermine any attempt to see her as the victim of male power or as asserting female independence, except in the way the story was (confusedly?) shaped by the medieval author.
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Post by lorna on Feb 9, 2017 10:55:49 GMT -1
@ Lee - wow, that poem's beautiful and captures Blodeuwedd's numinous and ephemeral nature and the magic of her creation perfectly! Any chance of getting in touch with Megli for a republication on the blog and/or website?
@ Heron - thank you for your thoughts. I'd agree that Blodeuwedd being an enchantment of Gwydion's from flowers and not human is definitely a part of her story. However, it grows more complex when she seems to assert her own agency and plots with Lleu to kill Gronw. For me this has a 'magic cooking pot' flavour to it - magic that has got out of hand, Gwydion's creation running out of control. One might see Gwydion's transformation of Blodeuwedd into an owl as a way of regaining control? I'd agree there is a misuse of magic, plus a magic running out of control and leading to dire consequences, theme throughout the Mabinogi.
Jhenah's argument that Blodeuwedd is a sovereignty goddess relies on comparisons to Gwyn, Gwythyr and Creiddylad and Pwyll/Arawn vs Hafgan (although here the female is missing - maybe Arawn's wife?) where a Solar Hero and Otherworld Champion battle for a sovereignty goddess. Jhenah argues that Lleu is a Solar Hero and that his killing of the wren earlier in the story represents him killing Winter's King. He and Blodeuwedd get together when she is created from flowers in spring. Gronw appears in Lleu's kingdom in autumn hunting a stag on the bank of a river giving him Otherworld Champion attributes. Together they plot to kill Lleu. The Otherworld Champion kills the Solar Hero/Summer King. In Jhenah's reading Blodeuwedd's being turned into an owl is less of a punishment than an assertion of her transformation from flower maiden with Lleu in Summer to woman with an owl's wisdom with Gronw in winter.
But... yes... I'm not aware of other sovereignty goddesses getting brought into being and being transformed into something else so easily either... I'm currently not too sure who or what Blodeuwedd is!
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Post by Heron on Feb 10, 2017 15:53:16 GMT -1
... I'm currently not too sure who or what Blodeuwedd is! Yes I think that is very much the consensus opinion among many who have engaged with this story. The Fourth Branch of Y Mabinogi has always seemed to me the most difficult to interpret and has a different feel to the preceding three. I have wondered if it had a different author. But John Carey suggests that it is the only one of the Four Branches that is wholly Brythonic in its source material. He thinks the the first three branches and much of the Preiddeu Annwn and other Taliesinic poems, although specifically Welsh in their medieval expression, have their sources in Irish material, but not the Fourth Branch. |
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Post by megli on Mar 1, 2017 16:49:13 GMT -1
Bleeding hell, I had totally forgotten that poem. Poor old Blodeuwedd. I'm writing about her at the moment for a book on magic in medieval Welsh and Irish literature, trying to place her in the context of medieval and ancient stories of women artificially synthesised by magical skill. There are actually a fair number of parallels, and I'm fairly sure she was a high medieval creation, i.e. not originally a Brythonic goddess. NOT, I must emphasise, that that matters at all! She is clearly alive and richly moving. I think she's the saddest, the most heart-rending character in the Four Branches. There's a wonderful play by Saunders Lewis called Blodwuwedd---translated into English as 'The Woman Made From Flowers'---which I think is the best treatment of her in modern times.
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Post by lorna on Mar 1, 2017 18:19:48 GMT -1
Bleeding hell, I had totally forgotten that poem. Poor old Blodeuwedd. I'm writing about her at the moment for a book on magic in medieval Welsh and Irish literature, trying to place her in the context of medieval and ancient stories of women artificially synthesised by magical skill. There are actually a fair number of parallels, and I'm fairly sure she was a high medieval creation, i.e. not originally a Brythonic goddess. NOT, I must emphasise, that that matters at all! She is clearly alive and richly moving. I think she's the saddest, the most heart-rending character in the Four Branches. There's a wonderful play by Saunders Lewis called Blodwuwedd---translated into English as 'The Woman Made From Flowers'---which I think is the best treatment of her in modern times. The book sounds really interesting. Please let us know when it's available. Thanks for the heads up on 'The Woman Made of Flowers' - certainly one to add to the reading list! |
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Post by Heron on Mar 2, 2017 19:49:24 GMT -1
....I think she's the saddest, the most heart-rending character in the Four Branches. There's a wonderful play by Saunders Lewis called Blodwuwedd---translated into English as 'The Woman Made From Flowers'---which I think is the best treatment of her in modern times. I saw the play in Welsh some years ago; yes, it focuses powerfully on Blodeuwedd herself as a tragic figure torn out of her element to live in a human world that she cannot fully understand. |
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