In response to a recent post, Daurade's "Staff of Life" (which sounds sort of perverted when you put it that way), I noted St. Lucy's tray of eyeballs resembled St. Agatha's tray of breasts, and I mentioned the possibility that the historiographies of these saints may have been conflated. Daurade wondered if we could find other example of conflating eyeballs & nipples.Well I googled for images of "eye nipple", & I found this wonderful image.
But what is it?
It's a beautiful picture. To me the woman looks Hellenist, but I barely know what that word means, so I'm probably wrong. I see a lion's head draped across her head, and the lion's paws across her breast. And I think, but am not sure, that the "breast" is actually some object that she may be holding in her left hand. And the "breast" appears to to have rays emanating from it, as if it were a sun or a meteor; the rays seem to express upward as if fanning from an object hurtling from the heavens. There's clearly lots of symbology that I'm just not getting--which is why I'm asking for your help!
The image itself points to a bizarre little page that also shows a relevant Rene Magritte (see below), quotes Shakespeare's King Henry VI ("At their mother's moist'ned eyes babes shall suck"), and provides deadlinks to "the chapter Before the Milk of the World: Nipple-Eyes out of N. Hilton’s Lexis Complexes.
But the page doesn't say what this image is! So I ask again:
What is it
Oh, damn, I think that I just solved the mystery, but I don't have time to read this long & interesting looking article right now:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.english.uga.edu/~nhilton/lexis_complexes/chap2.html
I'm gonna read that article! It it occurs to me that if the breasts are eyes and the navel a nose, that makes the vagina a mouth, or vagina dentata....
ReplyDeleteThanks to The Gid. Damn interesting article that!
ReplyDeleteJustin, you've got an interesting blog there. Thanks for the comment. I second your props. Good post and very interesting article on the nipple-eye thing.
ReplyDeleteAlso, odd that the first picture is "Reason", an image from the French Revolution. The Eye of Reason, at a woman's breast....the woman being like Marianne? Why the lion's head? Like that Mithras figure from a while back....great find....
Also, Gid, hands off my staff.
ReplyDelete@Justin: Thanks for the feedback! Believe it or not, but I still haven't had a chance to read that article; good as it looks, life gets the better of me sometimes. You've got some interesting posts on your blog. That beautiful eclipse shot you posted would fit right in with imagery of this eye-nipple thing!
ReplyDelete@Daurade: heh, heh.
ReplyDeleteThanks to both you guys for the comments on my blog.
ReplyDeleteThe Gid, that article is well worth a read. And thanks for introducing me to this peculiar topic. Quite "eye" opening. ;-)