Patricia LARASH Painted Personae: Female Subjectivity and Male Publication Anxieties in Latin Love Elegy

A recurrent concern of both the elegiac lover and the elegiac poet is the appearance of the domina, what goes into creating it, and what it means for her, the elegiac lover, and anyone else who sees it. A concern with someoneís appearance treats her as an object of sight, and, in elegy, of desire. There is also a limited yet important role for a female subject in elegy. I argue that the domina is, in one sense, a figure for the poet himself, and that the egoís reaction to her makeup is a model for anxieties about addressee, audience, and publication. M. Wyke argues that Ovid's didactic poetry ostensibly addressed to women (Medicamina and Ars Amatoria III) appropriates the terms of female cultus for the purposes of discourse about male poetical and rhetorical techniqueóe.g. the term fucatio, "pigmented makeup," also means "verbal embellishment" (Wyke 1994). A cosmetics metaphor is more than terminologically relevant; it also illuminates anxieties about addressee, audience, publication, and publication in elegy. I assume that the made-up Roman woman, however much subjectivity she may have, is still subordinate not only to the patriarchal system which uses cosmetics as a signifier, but also, in elegy, to the ways in which she is the "other" against whom the poet defines himself. I argue that the domina and her cosmetic skill represent the poet, but only so far; the poet ultimately distances himself from her to emphasize how the power of his poetry transcends mere technique. By pointing out makeupís inability to preserve beauty, the poet not only betrays publication anxieties but also attempts to assuage these anxieties by implying that his art is more effective and lasting than hers.

The domina is often identified with poetry itself (e.g. "Cynthia" names both Propertiusí mistress and poetry). When she puts on makeup, however, she becomes a creator, representing the poet rather than the poetry. Cosmetics makes the domina not only a sexual object but also an art object, as A.R. Sharrock argues from the Pygmalion episode of the Metamorphoses and Prop. 1.2 (Sharrock 1991). In the Pygmalion episode, a male artist does indeed create the female art-object, but it is the domina herself who puts on makeup. I argue that cosmetics can make the domina both an object and a subject. The domina herself is an artist-figure, and her made-up face an artistic product, and in this sense the poet identifies with her.

The ego sometimes implies that the domina puts on makeup for a particular person (Prop. 2.29B, Tib. 1.9), often a rival lover. If a made-up face corresponds to a poem, the ego corresponds to the poemís reader, and the lover for whom the domina puts on makeup corresponds to the addressee. The ego, as "reader" of the makeup, infers the existence of a rival solely from the makeup (Prop. 1.15). This parallels how a reader constructs a poemís addressee solely from the text of the poem. The ego can see the dominaís makeup, assumed to be directed to someone else, because she circulates among more than just one loverójust as publication allows a poem to be read by more people than just the addressee. Positioning the ego as a reader who is not the addressee allows readers to reflect on their own position vis-à-vis elegy. Elegy maintains a fiction that it is, or should be, read only by an exclusive readership; as E. Oliensis observes about Horace Epist.1.20, the ego wants only the pauci to read his poems (Oliensis 1995). But the poem goes out in public, as does the domina, and is seen and read by the vulgus, just as the domina is seen by the ego, representing the reader. The poet threatens his readersí security by suggesting that their position as the pauci is not as exclusive as it appears; but he also empowers them by allowing them to observe critically the egoís own "reading" habits.