I photographed this religious icon at the National Museum of Art of Romania in Bucharest some years ago. Here, there is a clear delineation between the victorious angels in heaven and the monstrous devils that they cast down into hell. Or is there? It seems to me that not just devils are on a downward spiral into the abyss, some the haloed figures appear to be fallen angels. Or falling angels, at any rate. Herodotus's narrative of the Persian War, like the Trojan War before it, is not framed as battle between good and evil. In fact, I'm not sure these earlier polytheistic societies even considered good and evil in such simplistic terms. So what does a pre-Christian figure like Helen have to do with concepts such as sin, hell, and damnation? The answer is Faust.
Yes, this is my roundabout way of talking about Helen's appearance in Christopher Marlowe's 16th century play The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus, but it is also my way of expressing the devastation of the Trojan War without resorting to a tired summary of that story. Herodotus does not bother to recap Homer. His main point about this conflict in The Histories is to relate how his Persian sources claim the sack of Troy, also known as Ilium, as an example of the inherent Greek hostility. While these Persians acknowledge, according to Herodotus, that the abduction of women is immoral, they consider the wholesale destruction of an entire empire for the sake of one woman to be utterly insensible. "The face that launched a thousand ships and burnt the topless towers of Ilium," is not a justifiable cause. It is, however, a line from Marlowe.
The legend of Johann Faust, the scholar who sold his soul in exchange to obtain forbidden occult knowledge and supernatural power, existed before Christopher Marlowe's play, but Doctor Faustus served to popularize the story on stage. Although the later Goethe play would also include the figure of Helen in the classically themed second half, she stands alone in Marlowe's play as the object of Faust's desire, since the Gretchen character had not yet been added as a love interest for Faust. She is first conjured forth from the ether to show Faust's students the true paragon of beauty. Later, when Faust contemplates repenting his infernal bargain, the devil Mephistopheles, his personal liaison from Lucifer and one of many demonic creatures in an expansive subterranean pantheon, gives him Helen for his lover. At this point in the play, Faust delivers the famous speech about the face, the thousand ships, and the topless towers. So here, Helen is not the catalyst for a civilization destroying war, but the tipping point in the conflict between damnation and redemption of the human soul itself.
Looking at these artworks depicting the celestial clashes between angels and devils, one can sense that Marlowe's Helen is still at the center of a vast cosmic battle. Maybe not as the literal queen of Sparta, but as the personification of human desire, which overwhelms the soul's quest for heaven and, at least in Faust's case, sends the soul down to hell along with the devils and fallen angels. The Greeks, either from wounded pride or greed for Troy's wealth, plunge themselves into ten years of hellish warfare on the pretext of bringing Helen back to Sparta. Herodotus may not view these actions as evil exactly, but he is highly aware of human fallibility. The nine books of The Histories are filled with complex, flawed men and women, who often meet tragic fates because of their unchecked desires for power, glory, and even erotic love.
And what about Helen? Up until now we've seen her as a symbol, but in the following post, she will speak for herself...and be be denounced by Hecuba!
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