Gwerful Mechain was a Welsh female poet,
which in itself was fairly unique among European love lyrics. There are some similarities
between most European love poems and the ancient poetry mentioned. To generalize, most love
poems written by medieval Europeans, like those from the more ancient past, were in praise of
the female body and physical beauty. As Gwerful Mechain wryly puts it in "The Female
Genitals," making fun of the typical love poetry of her time,
Its €˜your hair lay on the pillow like a sleepy golden storm,
€˜girl of the
golden brow and €˜soft wet eyes,
€˜sweet rosy breasts, something dancing like
fireflies...
Compare this to the Song of Songs:
How beautiful you are, my darling!
Oh, how
beautiful!
Your eyes behind your veil are doves.
Your hair is like a flock of
goats
descending from the hills of Gilead.
Your teeth are like a flock of
sheep just shorn,
coming up from the washing.
Each has its twin;
not
one of them is alone.
Your lips are like a scarlet ribbon;
your mouth is
lovely.
Your temples behind your veil
are like the halves of a
pomegranate...
It is such similar wording, you can easily
see how the European love lyricists were inspired by poetry from an older time. When it comes to
celebrating and describing female beauty, metaphors and similes abound; poets seem endlessly
able to find new ways to refer to female bodies. Interestingly, they also have a tendency to
pick apart the woman's body and remark on each bit in turn. In a sense, this is removing the
woman's whole identity and only offering her as a collection of beautiful anatomy. For example,
this Ancient Egyptian love poem states the following:
My
one, the sister without peer,The handsomest of
all!She looks like the rising morning star
At the start
of a happy year.Shining bright, fair of skin,
Lovely the
look of her eyes,Sweet the speech of her lips,
She has
not a word too much.Upright neck, shining breast,
Hair
true lapis lazuli;Arms surpassing gold,
Fingers like
lotus buds.Heavy thighs, narrow waist,
Her legs parade
her beauty;With graceful step she treads the ground,
Captures my heart by her movements.
She causes all men's
necksTo turn about to see her;
Joy has he whom she
embraces,He is like the first of men!
When she steps
outside she seemsLike that the Sun!
Once again, we know everything about the woman except her personality and her own
desires. Notably, everything about the woman is named and celebrated except her genitals.
Everyone knows that is what surely must be on the lusty poet's mind, but he (or she) is
culturally inhibited from saying so. In this, Gwerful Mechain breaks the mold. She proudly
celebrates the actual female genitals, giving them names both cheeky and admiring and
proclaiming them as the center of all interest. As she states:
They are things of some strength, taking regular beatings...
Then she goes on to describe the vulva in flowery poetic language,
which once again echoes what we have noticed with the previous poems. However, she wishes male
poets would be more direct in just calling it what it is. With wonderful good humor and true
wit, Gwerful Mechain offers a true poem celebrating women's sexuality.
Although her work is written in a very different style, she might perhaps have
appreciated the more direct approach of Catullus. He was less shy (though equally lyrical) in
describing the physical effects of love:
Lesbia, come, let
us live and love, and be
deaf to the vile jabber of the ugly old fools,
the
sun may come up each day but when our
star is out...our night, it shall last forever
and
give me a thousand kisses and a hundred more
a thousand more again, and
another hundred,
another thousand, and again a hundred more,
as we kiss these
passionate thousands let
us lose track; in our oblivion, we will avoid
the
watchful eyes of stupid, evil peasants
hungry to figure out
how many kisses we
have kissed.
His passion is so evident, and he is not
afraid to express the volume of their kisses in a way that likely would have made medieval
European poets blush. This poem is an invitation to love. That is something even Gwerful Machain
could appreciate. Sappho is a bit more emotional in her expression of love and physical
desire:
For whenever I look at you even briefly
I can no longer say a single thing,
but my tongue is frozen in
silence;instantly a delicate flame runs beneath my skin;
with my eyes I see nothing;
my ears make a whirring noise.
A cold sweat covers me,
trembling seizes my body,
and I am greener than grass.
Lacking but little of death do I
seem.
Love is cruel indeed! It wracks the body and makes
one feel almost ill. This, as described by Sappho, is also present in many European love poems.
One might say her emotional sensitivity is due to her being a woman, but Gwerful Machain would
probably have suggested a more direct approach to resolving this physical agony.
Therefore, we must look at these poems more as a collection of works, all on the theme
of sexuality and love. If we do that, it is clear that there are more similarities than
differences. Gwerful Machain truly stands out among them. After all, she was not afraid to get
right to the point in her most famous poem, "The Female Genitals."
Sources:
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