“You with your narrow head, the white oval of your face, your hairline sharp as if it had been cut with a knife. With that torrent of hair which every man had to dip his hands into. You with whom no man who saw you could help but fall in love. What do I mean, fall in love! Fall prey. And not only every man, many woman, too.” (Pg. 25)

Guiseppe Piamontini. Neoptolemus and Polyxena. c. 1725

Neoptolemus, a Greek warrior who entered Troy concealed in the famous wooden horse, avenged his father Achilles by sacrificing Polyxena, daughter of the ruler Priam, on the parental grave.Sculpture, bronze statuette, dark brown patina; nude figure of Neoptolemus with dagger in right hand standing behind seated nude figure of Polyxena.

“Evasion, digression, those are always my tactics when her name comes up for discussion: Polyxena. She was the other woman. She was the woman I could not be. She had everything I lacked. Of course I know they called me ‘beautiful,’ even ‘the most beautiful,’ but their faces remained solemn when they said it. When she passed by they all smiled, the highest ranking priest as well as the humblest slave, the most dimwitted kitchen maid. I search for a word to describe her; I cannot help that; my belief that a successful phrase—words, that is—can capture or even produce every phenomenon and every event, will outlive me. But where she is concerned I fail. She was composed of many elements, of charm and meltingness; and of firmness, even hardness. There was a contradiction in her nature that was both maddening and attractive. You wanted to seize it, protect it, or rip it out of her if you had to destroy her in order to do it.