American History

The Western penchant for logic and the grace that comes from balance and reason can be traced back to the Ancient Greeks.  The word Greek automatically conjures the image of excellence (Freeman, 23).  In our world today, Greek columns are invoked on university campuses and their drapery is still used by famous fashion designers to highlight the perfection of the figures of Hollywood stars.  Most of the great ideas that inform our institutions  including Democracy, or even the structure of a movie plot  can be traced to one famous Greek philosopher or another.  Such was their devotion to excellence that Renaissance men like Leonardo da Vinci were only heirs to men like Aristotle and Plato, who are quoted in classrooms today by professors teaching everything from English Literature to Physics.

The Greeks aimed for perfection and often came very near to achieving it in the different fields in which they tried their hand, and intellectually and artistically they were so daring that that these fields were many.   Still, their aesthetics were so strict and often so male-centered that only a few remarkable individuals like the poet Sappho, could break the mold and tell their own story through their art.  While we find ourselves today separated by thousands of years from the Greeks, our society is still plagued by one-sided standards of beauty and one-sided versions of stories.  It is in the light of this truth that Regina Spektors song Samson becomes noteworthy as it tells the story of Delilah, a bad woman from the Bible, in sympathetic terms.

Greek society, especially of the Athenian model, was notable for the respect it gave to the individual man.  Here maybe is an important point where Western thought would divert from the Eastern.  The individual man is important because he has his own thoughts, though they might vary only a shade or two from that of his neighbor.  However, in terms of physical aesthetics the Greeks were inclined to set a universal standard to be aspired for.  This is most obvious in the kouros, statues of beautiful young men that were supposed to exemplify THE beautiful, naked human form.  Indeed, they even proclaimed that everything beautiful could mathematically be expressed in something called The Golden Ratio.

At this point, it is possible to notice that something seems to be missing from the equation.  If the Greeks extolled Reason, what happens to the other side of the coin  Where is Emotion, or Intuition  The Greeks, glorious as they were, seemed to have mistrusted things that were out of control.  Mathematics and logic, on which they based their aesthetics, are prime examples of control and predictability.  Here, then, it is possible to arrive at the weakness in the Greek way of thinking which so permeates even modern existence.

The Greeks did not see beauty in the unpredictable  therefore, they relegated things that were unreasonable to second-class status, and that of course, included women.

The Athenians locked their women into the gynaeceum, where they would be apt to do less harm, bred children with them, and in the meanwhile loved their male best friends devotedly with their minds and souls.  By way of addressing this lack, a brilliant woman named Sappho founded her own community of strong, intelligent females on the island of Lesbia (Barnaby, 40).  She managed to produce such immortal poems as Ode to A Loved One where she describes the sensation of love with power and exquisite detail.  Of course this poem contains three people  the persona, a youth and another woman.  Besides the aptness of the lines that go For, while I gazed in transport tossed My breath was gone, my voice was lost, there is also the equivocal situation of three people of different sexes enmeshed in love and desire (Barnaby, 95).

It would be easy to shrug and say Lesbian in the modern sense of the word, but what is actually manifested here is the female capacity to acknowledge different points of view.  The traditional categories are Single or In a Relationship, for instance.  We are always either with someone, or we are alone.  The truth is that in love and desire we are not only one or two  we can be three or four or indeed a hundred.  This womans ability to take the perspective that isnt always talked about, as well as the recognition of the powerful Males tendency to mistrust women, is revealed with sensitivity in a contemporary song called Samson by Regina Spektor.

The story of Samson originates in the Hebrew tradition.  It should be noted here that the Hebrews were Asian, geographically speaking, but they were unique in that they were an Asian culture that was very male-centered.  Unlike their neighbors also, they had only One God, and the prioritized spiritual power over material power.  While most people of the era would look for food, clothing and shelter from their gods, the Hebrews looked to theirs for spiritual and intellectual guidance.  Unfortunately, like the Greeks, this way of thinking also meant priorities heavily skewed in one direction and a tendency to fear the unpredictable.

The story of Samson as it is found in the Bible, tells of a strong man whose strength lies in his hair.  His hair must never be cut, for if it is, he will be no more harmful than a baby.  It is a woman named Delilah who leads him to his downfall, as she cuts his hair and takes away his strength of a hundred men.  In this manner Delilah joins the ranks of such unpredictable females as Eve or Jezebel.

However, in Regina Spektors Samson, an effort is made to retell the old story from the womans perspective.  In this song, the speaker is Delilah herself, calling Samson her sweetest downfall.  She proclaims that she loved him first.  The story that runs throughout the lyrics tells of how she met Samson when his hair was long, how they loved, and how he came to her bed and called her beautiful.  She then cuts off his hair  in the Bible it says she did so while he was sleeping, that she betrayed him and tricked him thus  but here it is different.  Here, Samson doesnt wake up without his hair, he knows she is cutting off his hair and tells her that shed done all right.  After which, Delilah notes that we couldnt bring the columns down we couldnt destroy a single one and history books forgot about us and the Bible didnt mention us, not even once.

It is important to note here that Samsons loss of his hair is conscious in this version, and that the persona uses we instead of he as the Bible does.  Just as Sappho rebelled through her writing against her societys tendency to enclose women out of their fear for their unpredictability, and hence their weakness  what is unpredictable cannot be relied on, and is therefore weak  this Delilah highlights the fact that in relationships, there are always two active agents.  Its about two people, and how they interact.  Its not the old story of a strong man weakened by a temptress, by a bad woman.  Its about a couple of flawed human beings, both of whom seem to love too much.  Its the story of a man who puts himself into the hands of a woman who does what doesnt seem to make sense.  The song mentions columns to be brought down.  In the Bible Samsons eyes are taken out while he is weak, after which he is chained to columns.  His hair slowly grows back while in this state, and one fine day he DOES bring the columns down and annihilates himself and his enemies.  Combining this ending and Delilahs words in Samson we see how her cutting of his hair is actually an act of love and not of destruction.  The invincible Samson must become weak before he can triumph.  While men would fear all weakness, the woman element acknowledges a more creative or at least a more unusual way of arriving at the end that we want.

Just as Sappho acknowledges that love and desire can exist between and among three, and not just the traditional two, Regina Spektors Delilah tells us that there is more than one way to make a man strong  it doesnt always mean pampering his ego or keeping him safe from all harm.  Sometimes the most loving act that can be performed for one that we love is to strip them, break them, so that they are forced to create fresh horizons and test the limits of their strength.