Pandora's Senses: The Feminine Character of the Ancient Text

Preface

“Throughout hi story people ha ve kn ocked th eir h eads aga inst th e r iddle of femininity.” Thus Freud introduced the subject of his famous lecture of . He turned t o th e audience and di stinguished betw een th e meanings of this riddle for hi s male and female listeners: “Nor will you have escaped w orrying over thi s problem—those of you who ar e men; to those of you who are women this will not apply—you are yourselves the problem.” The enig ma of femininity stimula tes men ’s cur iosity. Freud ha d n o doubt that each of his male listeners knew what it was like to struggle with that mystery. Indeed, throughout history femininity has been deemed a secret lega cy, inciting a masculin e desir e t o deciph er th e meaning of woman and to explain, and thus put an en d to, this insoluble riddle. Some feminists have criticized Freud’s seemingly stereotypical notion of woman as th e object of male desire. Because he v iewed woman as a riddle, he considered male desire to be a desire for knowledge—or for the unknown. This turned woman into a sor t of terra incog nita. While she continued to play a tr aditionally passive role, men were the inheritors of a metaphysics of desire. In writing Pandora’s Senses, I found myself thinking through and revising Freud’s gendered response to “the problem” of femininity. Being myself “the riddle,” as Freud would have it, I nonetheless find myself sharing the responses of Freud’s male listeners to the mysteries at hand. Ever since I can remember, I have been knocking my head against the riddle of femininity . One of my most significant memories from early life is connected to the figure of Eve. Our teacher called in sick on e day, and there seemed ix  to be n o one available to take control of our wild and noisy class. Suddenly a young woman teacher appeared and began to tell us th e story of the apple from the book of Genesis. Imitating Eve’s seductive gestures, she offered a w onderful red apple t o her make-believe partner. We were immediately captivated by this powerful figure. The woman in front of us— that is, Eve—instantly turned us into silent listeners, stupefied beholders. My early fascination with Eve, and my subsequent captivation with the wonder of Pandora, constituted a fun damental textual interaction in m y biography. As I s ee it, it i s in tha t mysterious moment, the moment in which woman captures the reader’s imagination, the archetypal moment in which the reader is struck by the beauty of feminine appearance, that a text discovers its multif arious senses. My early readings of Eve and Pandora were connected to the text’s sensual dimension—that is, to its ability to evoke the actual taste of biting into an apple, or to simulate a r eal sense of the danger of gazing at the dazzling P andora. But this was only one dimension of a text tha t i s w ritten un der th e feminin e spell. Like Diotima’s er otic c onstruction, the s ensual e ffect of reading thi s text i s inseparable fr om its tr anscendental for ce. In w riting Pandora’s Senses I wanted to locate the mysterious image of woman right at the center of the history of the reading experience. I am composing this preface at Ginzburg’s Café, which is located close to my home. This is where I w ill bring the writing of Pandora’s Senses to a close. But this last stage of writing is where, I hope, the book will begin for you. You might be interested to know that my first ruminations about writing this text began dur ing strolls along the Yarkon River in Tel Aviv. These morning walks on the banks of what is, in reality, not much bigger than a cr eek were a tr emendous joy. At first, they provided me w ith precious moments for w ondering about a possible title while, at the s ame time, searching for a name for m y expected bab y girl. And when I la ter became deeply engaged in writing Pandora’s Senses, Renana’s beautiful eyes were already gazing up at me from...