Woman and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her by Susan Griffin

Author:Susan Griffin [Griffin, Susan]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9781504012188
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2015-07-28T04:00:00+00:00

MARIE CURIE, last words

In this mass of substances she searches for the elementary, for what cannot be reduced. Sifting through the residue of pitchblende, she removes pinecones and rocks. Over days and weeks, over years, she grinds this material, she dissolves it, she filters it, precipitates it, collects it again, dissolves it again, precipitates again, crystallizes and re-crystallizes. Thousands of gallons become teaspoonfuls.

Finally, she can call this material pure. Yet it does not stay still. It gives off heat. Its emanations fill the air. It glows. Its rays pass through paper, glass, rubber, cloth, skin. A piece of metal placed near the radium but not touching it becomes radioactive. The pure radium burns itself away.

Now this substance has entered her hands. Her skin is burned. There are open sores. The lenses of her eyes become opaque. She cannot see. She has pains in her arms. She is exhausted. She collapses. She burns with fever.

Yet she will not allow these symptoms to be spoken of, and despite the complaints of her body, returns again and again to work this material.

But what the scientist touches she becomes. At her death, she declares, “I can’t express myself properly.” She says, “My head’s turning.” She tries to turn a spoon in a glass as though it were a rod in a beaker. She asks, “Has it been made with radium or mesothorium?” Its temperature becomes her temperature. She shakes with its coldness. “Thirty-eight degrees! I don’t know if it’s right. I’m trembling so.” Its properties become her own; her body, the experiment. “I’d like to set myself straight, my head’s turning.” At the end, she speaks for herself. “What are you going to do to me,” she says, “I don’t want it,” and demands, “I want to be left in peace.”

[SIGMUND FREUD, 1856–1939]

What then [is] it? Those it is which [are] upon their altars, the image is of the eye of Ra and the image of the eve of Horus. O RaTmu, the lord of the Great House, Prince, life, strength, health, of gods all, deliver thou from god that whose face is [in the form of] a dog, [and] his eyebrows like [those of] men, he liveth upon the enemy, watching bight that of lake of fire, devouring bodies and swallowing hearts, and voiding filth, not being seen himself. Who then is it? “Eater of millions” [is] his name.…

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