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Cleopatra's Metamorphoses and the Discourse of Orientalism

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Cleopatra's Metamorphoses and the Discourse of Orientalism Domesticating the Eternal Queen: Cleopatra’s Metamorphoses and the Discourse of Orientalism 27 Feminist Studies in English Literature Vol.20, No. 3 (2012) Domesticating the Eternal Queen: Cleopatra’s Metamorphoses and the Discourse of Orientalism Yoon Kyung Cho (Yeonsung University) Ⅰ Attracting many people’s interest throughout the centuries, Cleopatra VII (69‐30 B.C.), the last Pharaoh of Egypt, has inspired countless artists and writers. Such statements as “the world’s best‐ known brand” in The Economist (September 14, 1991) illustrates Cleopatra’s popularity. Although she is a significant figure in literature, art, and music, it is not easy to discern the historical truth about Cleopatra. Even her tomb has never been found, and there are few extant portraits of her. When the general public thinks of Cleopatra, two antithetical images usually come to mind. One is of a politically skilled tactical leader, and the other is of a seductive femme fatale who brought a Roman hero, Antony, to ruin. Many scholars and critics have actively studied how such images of 28 Yoon Kyung Cho Cleopatra have been established upon her authentic existence throughout history. However, mostly a variety of rumors on her have been exuberantly reproduced and her dual image continues to make her an inspiring object. After Egypt was defeated by Rome, Cleopatra was used for propaganda by Octavius Caesar’s regime. Augustan poets poured their hatred and insults upon the figure of Cleopatra, as she was a signifier of matriarchy and Hellenism. In their poetry, the Egyptian queen was a sexually licentious whore who even committed incest. However, as Virgil, Horace, and Propertius were read by Latin, Greek, and Jewish writers in the Roman Empire, the Egyptian queen was established as a legend. This means that disgust and fascination were doubly coated onto the figure. Cleopatra was also recreated as a fictional character in this era, with fictional episodes added to the story of the queen. Plutarch created the episode in which Cleopatra approached Caesar wrapped in a carpet, and Pliny created the episode in which the queen dissolved pearls in vinegar to captivate Antony during a magnificent banquet. Florus beautified Cleopatra’s suicide, by having her commit suicide at her dead lover’s side. Cleopatra was out of the public mind during most of the Middle Ages, but was revived due to the recovery of the ancient times and ancient texts and art in the Christianized world. Freed from the relation with male figures, Cleopatra exceeded Antony in popularity, and she was fashioned as a woman who embodied the sense of tragedy of human beauty and passion, compared to Eve. Stories of Cleopatra spread into many other European regions throughout the Renaissance. From the sixteenth century, the Domesticating the Eternal Queen: Cleopatra’s Metamorphoses and the Discourse of Orientalism 29 romantic aspect prevailed in these stories, especially once Plutarch’s text became widely available in the translation by Jacques Amyot. Through the intermediary of an English version, this text inspired Shakespeare’s famous tragedy. Shakespeare’s portrayal marked a turning point in the establishment of the Cleopatra‐myth, though he did not create innovative elements. According to many scholars, Shakespeare used the legend of the Egyptian queen to carry a political message, displaying his own literary talent. Afterwards, as Augustus was depicted as a victor for the influence of classicism, Cleopatra became a victim, during the Age of Enlightenment. With the accelerated colonization by the West, encounters between the West and the East frequently occurred. In this process, the West’s suspicion and fantasy accumulated around the queen, and her culture that represented the East. As the British and French empires exposed Westerners to the East, artists and writers interpreted the Orient as a culture of sensuality, luxury, decadence, and mystery. Cleopatra, naturally, played a leading role in Orientalist work, for which the ancient description remained the sources. In particular, Romanticism and Orientalism in the nineteenth century produced a rather exotically attractive figure of Cleopatra. From the twentieth century on, Cleopatra has become a world star of great renown, through film, advertisements, popular novels, and cartoons. There is no doubt that the feminist and postcolonialist points of view have arranged a touchstone to deconstruct the Cleopatra‐myth established by the West. However, it seems not easy for the Egyptian queen to be completely liberated 30 Yoon Kyung Cho from the ideas forged around her. This is because “issues of politics and desire” are closely related “in representing Cleopatra.” In this figure, the two antithetical images of a political leader and femme fatale are complicatedly “entwined and collapsed into each other. That is one reason why the figure of Cleopatra has survived so strongly as a term in cultural exchange and been reworked so often. Its power to generate and sustain fantasy is exceptional” (Hamer xvi). In the same vein, Ania Loomba says that “the figure of Cleopatra is the most celebrated stereotype of the goddess and whore” (75). She maintains that Cleopatra’s dual image of the goddess and the whore penetrates historical representations of Cleopatra. According to Mary Hamer, however, such consistent stereotyping of Cleopatra did not penetrate all the places and times in the beginning. Hamer examines manifold works from a wide historical background ranging from engravings, fine arts, and literature to media arts that adopted Cleopatra as the main material. She finds out that there is no single or predictable meaning to be read from those various figures of Cleopatra represented for each time. She shows that the images of Cleopatra have been made within the hegemony of the period when each of the works was produced (xv‐xvi). Interestingly, Hamer’s statement meets the prerequisite for Loomba to stipulate Cleopatra as a “stereotype of the goddess and the whore.” Loomba also points out that the figure of Cleopatra “has accommodated and been shaped by centuries of myth‐making and fantasy surrounding the historical figure.” Independently of her origin, the figure of the Egyptian queen has been invented and manipulated in accordance with hegemonic need and purpose of the Domesticating the Eternal Queen: Cleopatra’s Metamorphoses and the Discourse of Orientalism 31 West. Loomba’s stipulation of Cleopatra is founded on William Shakespeare’s representation in Antony and Cleopatra. In Shakespeare’s representation of Cleopatra, “we can identify several different strands of contemporary meaning which intertwine with connotations attaching to her from earlier stories.” That is, “Renaissance politics and stagecraft” were combined with Cleopatra’s status as an Egyptian queen, and ultimately shaped the ambivalent identity in Shakespeare’s play (Loomba 75‐78). Needless to say, no single standard for the description of Cleopatra has ever existed, and even Shakespeare could not standardize her completely as well. Characterizations of Cleopatra after Shakespeare do not repeat his representation collectively at all, but adopt their own peculiar representative ways that reflect political, social, and cultural values of each period. Nevertheless, Shakespeare’s representation of Cleopatra still seems to play a key role on the way she is perceived. This might be understood to be connected with Shakespeare’s cultural position. More interestingly, various representations of Cleopatra that mirror each period can even be subcategorized into the Bard’s ambivalent representation. Under the big category of Shakespeare’s Cleopatra swinging between the goddess and the whore, many works lean on either side of the dichotomous figure of Shakespeare’s in representing her. Since there is no fixed standard for the figure of Cleopatra, this means that she has been modified and invented in ways driven by necessities. At the moment when Westerners took the superior position from the contest with the Orient, the West holding power was absorbed in expanding and maintaining superiority. The West 32 Yoon Kyung Cho restructured its relations with the contestant to the superior Self vs. the inferior Other. The way that the West related with the Orient is Orientalism. Edward W. Said gives three definitions on Orientalism. Firstly, Orientalism is “an academic discipline.” Secondly, it is “a style of thought based upon an ontological and epistemological distinction made between ‘the Orient’ and (most of the time) ‘the Occident.’” Thirdly, it is “a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient” (2‐3). Said explains the concept of Orientalism rather concretely as follows: The Orient is an integral part of European material civilization and culture. Orientalism expresses and represents that part culturally and even ideologically as a mode of discourse with supporting institutions, vocabulary, scholarship, imagery, doctrines, even colonial bureaucracies and colonial styles . I believe no one writing, thinking, or acting on the Orient could do so without taking account of the limitations on thought and action imposed by Orientalism . Orientalism, therefore, is not an airy European fantasy about the Orient, but a created body of theory and practice in which, for many generations, there has been a considerable material investment. Continued investment made Orientalism, as a system of knowledge about the Orient, an accepted grid for filtering through the Orient into Western
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