THE TERRIFYING EYE AS SYMBOL IN HISTORY

97th DOG Annual Meeting 1999

V285
THE TERRIFYING EYE AS SYMBOL IN HISTORY

A. Henning

All over the world terrifying aspects of the monoculus are well-known as malevolent eye, which are distinctly symbolized by the mythus of Polyphemus cyclops in Homer's Odyssey. The blinding of Polyphemus as a symbolic act of rape makes clear extreme fear of men facing the female, which transforms the vulva into an eye. Archaic female metaphors of the eye are shown by the correspondence of the 5400 years old sumeric sign NAM₂, which represents the lunar goddess Inanna, with the phenomenologically identic chinese "mù" for eye. The tradition of the mesopotamic goddess is continuated by the Cretan Kore (Persephone), who represents the virginal aspect of Demeter. Kore meens in Greek girl, eye and pupil.

Because Odysseus's act of violence did not dissolve the fear of the female, he had to withstand to the bewitching, men into swine converting goddess Kirke, until she became human to share her bed with Odysseus on par with him. The malevolent eye is overcome by love. Odysseus's individuation reflects the overcoming of matriarchal structures.

The "divine" creativity of the female sex symbolize Romance "Christ in the Mandorla (an almond-shaped aureole)"-iconographies, later analogous Russian orthodox icons do so much more than those, and especially the visionary egg-shaped cosmos in Hildegard's of Bingen book of visions "Scivias" from 1165, which reveals her sex as necessary for the incarnation of God. Growing feudalistic-hierarchical suppression by inquisisition and clerical discrimination of the female transform the sex symbols into monocular "eyes" again, as Gothic rose-windows in a triangular tympanon, so especially on St. Lorenz church in Nuremberg, followed by changing the medieval Madonna with child-iconography of the type Madonna Platytera (pregnant Madonna) into the Protecting Madonna with the Mantle. The latter indicates increasing infantilization of clerically tutelaged believers. In 1487 in his picture "The Table" Hieronymus Bosch threatened inqisitors hunting witches by the resurrected all seeing Christ as puppet in the pupil of an eye in the same way, as later the baroque "God's eye" in the triangle intimidated subjects, pretending symbolically the divine right of absolutistic power. Today the terrifying eye is represented by monocular video-cameras watching high secure prisons, military objects and those of state security. The archaic female metaphor of the eye makes evident the process of creation of Pablo Picasso's "Guernica" in May 1937.

Dr. med. Aloys Henning, Spandauer Straße 104K, D-13591 Berlin

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