Mussolini, Leda & The Swan
Leda & The Swan live on top of the highest hill in my neighborhood. Mussolini is the ghost here. The ghost of the ghost of the Doctor and his family who lived here. That was in the 1930’s. As a local story goes, the Doctor was an eye surgeon. He operated on the eye of one of Mussolini’s family members. Apparently the procedure was successful. As a gift the Doctor received the sculpture. For years now, I have tried to figure out the connection - that is why would the Mussolini family gift the Doctor an image of an impending rape, especially one that does not look like a rape? Leda’s voluptuous looking body appears fully ready for the Swan - her torso arched back, her arms stretched up and out under the descending swan’s body, his stiff, phallic beak, face and throat throat uplifted, her hands tenderly gripping his outspread wings.
There is a story that Mussolini - the Fascist - had an evil eye. Maybe evil eyes ran in the family. Maybe one ran very far afoul. Maybe that was the one that submitted to the doctor’s knife. Maybe not.
One knows or can speculate - looking up at the sculpture - that Leda’s open eyes - the Swan’s beak coming down - risks having at least one plucked.
That’s, perhaps, a stupid assumption or projection, and not a likely connection. The sculpture - it’s air of heightened expectation- looks extraordinarily ecstatic, especially now as the morning sun gently crosses their bodies.
The situation, the drama, is also permanent. The story has gone as far as we are going to get. Eternally suspended, the narrative stops here. Zeus will not appear, nor will the other children, including the fabled, beaufiful Helen. The artist stopped the work at a point without known consequences. One can make up a story, or remember the ancient story, but that is one’s own story. The sculpture transcends the myth, and it also transcends the story of the ghosts of its custodians, the history of those who made the gift and those who received it.
Yet, with one mystery. For those of those of us, who know the story of the gift - who live locally and often visit the sculpture - it remains strange, strange to know that somehow Mussolini - as an historical ghost that still carries a spook - has permanently touched, indeed crowned the highest hill in the neighbohood with this gift. It’s a sculpture with a patina beyond its patina - a ghost that’s not about to leave - an edge beyond the edge.
Isn’t it interesting - in this particular time - the way in which the presence of fascism re-enters the imagination, one’s vocabulary? As in a President who refuses to release documents.
(If you look into the lower middle pane of the window, one can actually possibly see the face of a real ghost - his wings outspread visible in the adjacent windows. Or so somebody has told me!)