## The Bath of Diana

From Ovid's "Metamorphoses," translated here by Pierre Klossowski, who also did the accompanying artwork.

### Introduction

> Venus is the goddess of gratification, slipping at times into boredom. Diana is the goddess of tensions hurtling into madness and murder. Easy and attainable is the nudity of Venus; severe and elusive is that of Diana. For having glimpsed Diana bathing, Actaeon the voyeur was transformed into a stag and torn apart by the fangs of his own hunting dogs. This mythical scene with no words or voices save that of a savage pack of hounds was sung by Ovid; Pierre Klossowski explores it here in a brilliant text. David Alan Brown examines another Bath of Diana, created by the elegant Parmigianino, a painter youthful as Actaeon himself, in the boudoir of Paola Gonzaga in the castle of Fontanellato.

### Waiting

This line of hills, these woods, this little valley, and this spring: could they be real only in her absence? This clearing where my hounds sport, this stand of forest where fawns appear: are they not mere apparitions made arbitrary by my decision to await her here? These beeches, these aspens whose leaves whisper a thousand things to me, trying to dissuade me or convince me to stay on; and those willows, a bit farther down, where she could hide: do they perhaps define a space too quotidian for such an arrival? The more I become lost in the appearance of these objects, the better I see what the breeze is tracing: her brow, her hair, her shoulders -- unless a stronger wind folds her tunic deeper into the hollow of her thighs, above the knees. This grassy slope, where suddenly some poppies sway and lightly bow: does it not feel her swift heels, as the enameled sward is lashed by the golden boots from which her slender legs rise? I sense more than ever the dignity of space: I feel now the most rational pleasure of my spirit, as her brow, her cheeks, her neck, her bosom, and her shoulders are shaped in this space and dwell there, while her untenable gaze explores it, and her agile fingers, her palms, her elbows, her legs cleave the air and strike it. But if space heralds her coming, when she does come I doubt that these woods will remain before my eyes; this valley will seem to me a mere illusion down to its roots. I doubt that the spring will murmur outside of me when she herself has neared it. But the stream flows calmly still: before grazing it with her foot, having cast down her bow, the nymph would have separated that water from my thought...

In the space destined to receive her I am only tolerated, on condition that I be as simple as these trees. My thought overflows this space, where this same thought sprang forth like the spring that feeds this pool. She herself wishes to find these places in their innocent guise. And it is I who alter the outlines, who stir the branches, trouble the waters...

To find the path that leads to this absolute space!

Sometimes I thought I saw up there, on the cliff, the back of old Pan, as he also lay in wait for her. But from a distance he could have been mislaken for a stone, for an old, dry log. Then he could no longer be discerned, though his pipes were still heard. He had become melody. He had passed into the quivering air, where she sweated, where the perfume of her armpits breathed, and of her belly, as she disrobed.

### The back of Artemis

Do not look Artemis in the face: you would swoon beneath her gaze. For though her whole body may appear, I have veiled its essence. Her gaze is the only thing I could not veil: death, for you mortals. But, instead, look at her obliquely, if you can, or in profile. Or, preferably, from behind: not that she cannot see you -- far from me such a foolish notion -- but even if she were to glance at you over a shoulder, from behind she would tolerate you. And who knows? -- in that attitude she might be obliged to submit to you. For it is through me that she consents to appear, through my borrowed body to which she has to adapt herself, assuming in this union, despite her proud impassivity, the movements that stir me and, from then on, are her own movements. And I can assure you that my coquetry imposed upon her chastity is not least among the things that fascinate her: the more she denies herself to the base emotions that upset us, demons and mortals, the more she succumbs to the emotions of modesty, which for her had been only an abstract notion. She does not know that, with me, she is risking unpleasant surprises, but she apprehends them with a curiosity that her impassive essence grants her. She runs tirelessly, but the hunt is only an excuse, a way to forget the visible body that I lend her, the lovely body that you know. Look then at this nape, beneath the hair caught up in a knot and flowing over the ears. See the slender neck, the spine interrupted by that high girdle that passes beneath the concealed bosom. More than once I slip from this drapery, when all my impetuous slyness is concentrated in one nipple or the other. But move down: consider the slim hips and the behind like that of a handsome youth. Oh, she scolded me the first time, out of modesty, for those firm, round, high buttocks, with none of that vulgar amplitude that marks Aphrodite... Dare I tell you that this is where you might enjoy the greatest success? Then I move over the thighs, the longest, ah, and yet the loveliest in their sobriety. Look at the sturdy knee that dominates wild beasts: those calves, ankles, heels that outstrip all, as becomes the goddess who is more swift than wit or lightning or tempest. But see also those shoulders and those arms; see the long hands, terrible when they grasp the bow, and so tender when they stroke the brow of women in childbirth. I must tell you that here is also one of her weak spots, if I may speak thus of her: the skin of her palms and fingers. When she touches herself, bathing, she shivers, astonished by the contact of the form I have lent her, for I have put in the hands all the sensitivity which I suffer myself. Her delicate wrists were powerless to free her from the clutches of Hera, as she lashed her. For in the palms of her hands, as in her armpits, in the hollow of her thighs, and her knees, my role is greater than that of her impassive nature.

### The warning of Alpheus

For several days Actaeon had not heard his demon. Far from feeling any concern, he enjoyed the rest from that specious chatter. Once again, stirred by the breeze, the leaves and the spring spoke to him and gently lulled his spirit with their alternating whispers. Suddenly the sound of the water became louder, more and more insistent; and Alpheus, his beard dripping, rose up, after having taken on an intelligible form. He spoke thus to the idle hunter: "Allow me, O Actaeon, to be concerned by your puzzlement. Perhaps my long fluvial experience can provide you with a helpful lesson. You are surrounded by more opportunities than you realize. Long before you, like so many others before me, I desired the elusive Huntress, the impregnable Virgin; though she is divine, and I am merely the god of a river. To speak to one another the gods like to assume the form that they have given you mortals, because it is the image of their essence; but in their quarrels sometimes they confront one another in a different kind of disguise. For me the conflict was unequal: when my fluid nature was too burdensome for me, I had at my disposal only the appearance you now see. She had countless spells through which to escape my pressing attentions. And yet, provoking my most grim thoughts, she continued appearing to me as the slender young girl on whom I used to spy from a distance during her exciting hunt. And I was mad enough to see in this a lure and so I took on the stubborn form of a man, to seduce her. One night I mingled with a patrol of her nymphs, but through a childish trick she had already parried my move. All the nymphs had smeared their faces with clay, and I went from one to another, seeking her, often passing in front of her, as she secretly laughed at me behind her earthen mask. When I had returned to the bed of my humble origin, one day I saw her approach in the disguise of the nymph Arethusa, hesitate, disrobe, and finally entrust herself to my still-slow waters, shaded by willows and poplars. This was too much. And seeing her thus naked, but sheathed in the tangible nakedness of Arethusa, stirring with her hands and thighs the fluid peace of my contained spirits, I felt once again the insane need to offer her my virility in human guise. Then, still naked, she fled; but the sight of her nakedness gave my body the mounting impetuosity of my waters. And I dared call out to her the assumed name: 'Arethusa,' I cried, 'Arethusa where are you fleeing?'

I overflow, and the more we run through dells and plains, among wooded hills and rocks, the more I overcome obstacles, the more the landscape submits to my determination and favors my enamored race. Sometimes I widen; sometimes my bed deepens; I pursue her to the depths of the caverns where she has hidden, breathless, and perhaps is awaiting me. Then, abandoning that charming form that had unleashed my excitement, she accepts the homage of my true nature. Her form becomes liquid and transparent, mingling with mine. I can discern her now in the strong current that sweeps me along. But as she thus calms my subterranean turmoil, she hollows out chasms and, through other dark grottoes, she flows down to Ortygia. There she rises again to the light, to be found again limpid and chaste. This, O Actaeon, was the happiest lesson of my adventurous floods: desire is achieved when the form to which it aspired is dissolved; to restore us to our peaceful progress, divine power gives the object of our desire a different appearance; but it gives to that desire also the ability to recognize itself in the object, changing it at the same time as its pursuer. He will grasp it then in another form, but it is such a part of the act of seizing it that desire also submits to its law. And that law does not consist of restraining oneself or of expanding to the point of becoming stagnant, but in triumphing over oneself and flowing perpetually. Thus I overcame the most serious test to which we river gods must submit: the danger of drying up, grim and dumb. Victorious, I go on roaring, and Arethusa is my reward."

### Nec nos videamus labra Dianae

"In reality, Madame, nothing proves that you yourself are not the Father of the Gods. Didn't he assume your own sweet face, to win the most loyal of your handmaidens? I saw you embrace Callisto a moment ago. I say a moment, for we are allowed to call up this scene at any moment, or never. But if the divine one can thus barter his awful aspect for the most delightful and thus lead his worshipers to the loss of their souls, surely I am entitled to suspect... " These last words, barely uttered, stuck in his throat. Already horns were pressing from his brow, already his nose and his jaw were growing longer; and speech became futile for him. His eyes reflected a pleasure, certainly still innocent and already mingled with an animal fright. And now that fright tinged the modesty of the bather, and what had been virginal about her modesty was transformed into an impatience to flee, an impatience for refuge within the fleece of the goddess. Actaeon the man is dying, but wants still to clarify, to apologize politely, devoutly. And yet his composed demeanor, one foot set gently before the other, on some clumps of grass, becomes the untimely image of an animal, standing on his hind legs, offering himself, displaying the huge member, threatening as an offering for the goddess. Did Diana then intend to amaze herself by this metamorphosis she brought about? With one hand she had just dashed water in his face, but then, as she pronounced his sentence, she was already withdrawing the other hand from the hollow of her thighs, whether because by then she had already initiated Actaeon, and as he was initiated, she was admitting him to this intimate rite, or whether she was putting an end to theophany. With this movement, in any case, she revealed her vermilion vulva, its secret lips. Actaeon sees those infernal lips open at the very moment when the water trickles over his eyes, blinding him and making him rear up. His thought then reaches its culmination as the horns sprout from his brow; and the shock of the event makes him spring forward, his arms turned into legs, his hands turned into cloven hoofs. He is not even surprised to see them press, in a flash, on the divine shoulders, as all his hairy belly quivers against the dazzling skin of the goddess' thighs, still dripping. And this quivering becomes the same as Diana's when a mortal dares touch her: her quivering when, with a hand she knows is as murderous as it is beautiful, she grasps a lascivious animal by the muzzle and feels it licking her palm. The water wrinkles as the man-stag strikes it, and at the movement of the goddess' long legs, closing and opening. The horned creature pants, the unarmed Huntress moans, cries out with the voice of her nymphs; and as she cries out, she laughs. He mauls her with his neophyte animal's clumsiness, she eludes him. She slips, and he falls again on her, and in her. Alas! to be so close to the goal, and so far from it. The shaft of silence, so hostile to his need to speak, enflames him.

But, cleverly, Diana does notfully complete the metamorphosis; she allows some parts of him to remain human. Actaeon's legs, trunk, and head are animal. His right arm is already a hairy foreleg, and the hand a cloven hoof; but the opposite arm and hand he retains intact; and this reveals a hesitation on the part of the goddess, and a kind of challenge. Moved by the sight, filled with the stag's ardor, how far will the goddess venture? She carelessly allows his flowing hunter's mantle to remain on the man-stag's shoulders, and his hunting horn, slung over the same shoulders, sways and strikes the bather's thighs. In this condition, the forehoof that was his right hand, slipping off the goddess' shoulder and down her back, which she has turned on him, tries to reach her hip. Then, groping beyond her side, then on her belly, he attempts in vain to arrive at the pubes. For a moment, her eyes lowered, with a smile that slightly draws back her clenched lips, she tolerates him. And, with his left hand still whole, terrified, he grasps her breast, which he cannot refrain from stroking. Turning around, but somehow observing him out of the corner of her eye, the goddess raises her arm, baring her armpit, where he greedily sticks his muzzle, but with a greed that becomes fearful when his tongue finally licks her nipple. In the most splendid body with which she has ever clothed herself, Diana quivers...

A great stag, white as snow, separated Actaeon from the divinity, and covering the back of the goddess of forests, the horned king entered his Realm. But his reign is brief. The nymphs have welcomed him rejoicing, and he goes towards them with no fear, and they charm him in a thousand ways, stroking his horn, his brow, the length of his neck, and soon his flank and his belly, while he shakes his head and paws the ground innocently. And when they have crowned him with laurel, they lead him before the goddess. Two nymphs are preparing the Huntress for her repose, and they raise her dress to her bosom. Diana opens her bare thighs, and the nymphs bring closer the stag, whose ardor they must now restrain a bit. The goddess of forests finally receives the horned king. But the nuptial race ends with the death of the hero: he has barely made the queen moan when already the countless pack is filling the grotto with its barking. The dogs sink their claws into his fur, and as they are tearing him to pieces, the king sprinkles with his blood the dazzling body of the Virgin. Then the nymphs come to give the goddess the final ablutions, but the charms of Diana melt into the pure light that she herself sheds, and soon, as her brow has become invisible, only the diadem indicates her presence: the shining crescent rises above the crests of the hills, to take its place in the emerald vault of dusk.

Pierre Klossowski

visits since 8/9/97

Fiction -- Updated Wednesday, January 29, 1997 -- E-mail Actaeon