Eugene Lee-Hamilton’s poem “To The So-Called Venus of Milo” explores the famous sculpture from the Hellenistic period of Ancient Greece, depicting Aphrodite, the goddess of love, sex, and beauty. The Venus de Milo is a beloved statue which resides in the Louvre in Paris and has been extraordinarily well-protected throughout history by the French and lovers of the statue at large. It is also, and perhaps most importantly, not a perfect statue. Both of the goddess’ arms have broken off over time, both before its discovery and excavation in 1820. And yet, Bettany Hughes refers to it as “the most replicated of all Aphrodite-Venuses around the globe” (135) in her biography Venus and Aphrodite. The Venus de Milo is an amputee, taking away the all-powerful allure of the gods and goddesses of Olympus. This becomes all the more important with the lens of Lee-Hamilton’s own disability, neurasthenia, which was the physical manifestation of leg paralysis, in his case, from severe mental illness.
In the first part of Lee-Hamilton’s poem dedicated to the statue, he references the widespread praise of this particular statue. He writes, “Embraceless Beauty, Strength bereft of hands; / To whose high pedestal a hundred lands / Send rent of awe, and sons to stand beneath” (3-5). The acknowledgement of just how popular this particular reference of Aphrodite had become is also interesting considering how relatively recently it had been discovered by the time that Lee-Hamilton was writing. Hughes refers to the Venus de Milo as “cherished with extraordinary care and chivalry” (135). She, meaning Aphrodite, was cared for by the society that discovered her in a way that she was not by the society that created her. Even without her arms, she was a show of strength and a source of awe and wonder. In fact, it may even be argued that her allure came indeed from her very lack of arms. Her body had wondrously survived the ages, even if all of her limbs could not.
This fascination with Venus de Milo not in spite of, but in light of her disabled body, is well explored. Hughes writes, “[C]ivilization is reveling in her castration––the armless Venus feeds a ruin-lust” (136). In the second part of Lee-Hamilton’s poem does just this, although it may take a different tone than the “reveling” that Hughes refers to. He imagines a variety of locations the arms of Venus de Milo may be in, all of them filled with hope and cultural significance. He writes of them lying “where the Greek girls reap” (17), tying in the importance of Aphrodite worship to ancient Greek girls and women. Alternatively, he wonders if the arms have been used to create mortar “for some Turkish tower / Which overshadowed Freedom for a time” (24-25), much like the body that we do have was used as infill for a Roman wall (Hughes 135). By not just seeing these missing arms as a loss for the Venus de Milo and those viewing her, but rather as pieces that must have served some great purpose in the world, Lee-Hamilton is allowing himself to imagine the lack of limbs as something still worthy of praise and adoration.
I appreciated how you thought about the Venus de Milo through the angle of disability as it was one that I was not familiar with before. The connection of the Lee- Hamilton’s personal experience with disability and how the poem presents Venus de Milo’s lack of limbs was very interesting to read as it shifts the narrative on how the lack of limbs represents the standards and expectations of women’s beauty to one about seeing disability as beautiful. The humanizing aspect of allowing disability to be seen beyond the negative light it is often portrayed in allows for nuance and complexities and not something that is used to box people into certain ideas of self.
I really like your interpretation of “To The So-Called Venus of Milo”! You say her lack of limbs adds to her allure, I agree that Venus being an amputee furthers her from humanity and connects her with the unreachable divine. Her body is made in such extreme perfection it could not be attainable, and her missing limbs separates her from the ‘normal’ human form even more. Could Lee-Hamilton possibly be seeing divinity within himself? Or maybe he is looking for it with his poetry? I know that Biblical figures, Jesus specifically, would be depicted intentionally unnatural. This was so the average viewer, with the “natural” body, could not relate to divine figures. Maybe Lee-Hamilton is seeing himself as important or divine because of his physical differences?