April 2, 1947

Sexual personae: art and decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990) was the first book Camille Paglia (April 2, 1947) published and it launched her career as splashy iconoclast. We quote:

'The Egyptians admired sleekness, in greyhounds, jackals, and hawks. Sleekness is smooth Apollonian contour. But slinkiness is the sinuous craft of daemonic darkness, which the cat carries into day. Cats have secret thoughts, a divided consciousness. No other animal is capable of ambivalence, those ambiguous cross-currents of feelings as when a purring cat simultaneously buries its teeth warningly in one's arm. The inner drama of a lounging cat is telegraphed by its ears, which swerve round toward a distant rustle as its eyes rest with false adoration on ours, and secondly by its tail, which flicks menacingly even while the cat dozes. ....
'Thus the Egyptian veneration of cats was neither silly nor childish. Through the cat Egypt defined and refined its complex aesethetic. The cat was the symbol of that fusion of the chthonian and Apollonian which no other culture achieved.'

Well these are interesting ideas, and I wonder if she would still stand-by them today. Among her other books is Glittering Images: A Journey Through Art from Egypt to Star Wars (2012), which may be my next read.