马修·普莱尔创作的诗歌《真相和谎言,一个寓言》(Truth and Falsehood. a Tale),阐释了一个赤裸的真相。
Once on a time, in sunshine weather,
Falsehood and Truth walk’d out together,
The neighbouring woods and lawns to view,
As opposites will sometimes do:
Through many a blooming mead they pass’d,
And at a brook arrived at last:
The purling stream, the margin green,
With flowers bedeck’d, a vernal scene,
Invited each itinerant maid
To rest a while beneath the shade;
Under a spreading beech they sat,
And pass’d the time with female chat;
While each her thoughts, the other feign’d.
At length, quoth Falsehood, Sister Truth,
For so she call’d her from her youth,
What if, to shun yon sultry beam,
We bathe in this delightful stream,
The bottom smooth, the water clear,
And there’s no prying shepherd near?
With all my heart, the nymph replied,
And threw her snowy robes aside,
Stripp’d herself naked to the skin,
And with a spring leapp’d headlong in.
Falsehood more leisurely undress’d,
And laying by her tawdry vest,
Trick’d herself out in Truth’s array,
And cross the meadows tripp’d away.
From this cursed hour the fraudful dame
Of sacred Truth usurps the name,
And with a vile perfidious mind
Roams far and near to cheat mankind;
False sighs suborns, and artful tears,
And starts with vain pretended fears,
In visits vain still appears most wise,
And rolls at church her saint-like eyes;
Talks very much, plays idle tricks,
While rising stock her conscience pricks;
When being, poor thing, extremely gravell’d,
She secrets ope’d, and all unravell’d.
But on she will, and secrets tell
Of John and Joan, and Ned and Nell,
Reviling every one she knows,
As fancy leads, beneath the rose.
Her tongue so voluble and kind
It always runs before her mind;
As times do serve she slily pleads,
And copious tears still show her needs,
With promises as thick as weeds -
Speaks pro and con, is wondrous civil,
To-day a saint, to-morrow devil.
Poor Truth she stripp’d, as has been said,
And naked left the lovely maid,
Who, scorning from her cause to wince,
Has gone stark naked ever since,
And ever naked will appear,
Beloved by all who Truth revere.
— — Matthew Prior,Truth and Falsehood. a Tale
Édouard Debat-Ponsan, Nec Mergitur (Nor is she submerged) or La Vérité sortant du puits, 1898, Musée de l’Hôtel de Ville, Amboise.
Jean-Léon Gérôme, Truth Coming Out of Her Well,1896 (Medium Oil on canvas, Dimensions 91 cm × 72 cm, Musée Anne de Beaujeu, Moulins, Allier)
真相的对立是谎言,但是她们总是成对出现。谎言的目标就是掩盖真相,而掩盖的最好方式就是让人们不敢看真相,不相信真相。这个故事来源于埃及新王国时期第十九王朝的故事《虚假蒙蔽真相》(The Blinding of Truth by Falsehood)。新王国是公元前 16 世纪至公元前 11 世纪的古埃及帝国。这一时期的古埃及历史包括第十八、十九和二十王朝。通过放射性碳测年,新王国的建立时间被定为公元前 1570 年至公元前 1544 年之间。这是埃及最繁荣的时期,标志着埃及国力的顶峰。
安德洛墨达(Andromeda;古希腊语:Ἀνδρομέδα,罗马化:Androméda or Ἀνδρομέδη, Andromédē)是埃塞俄比亚(Aethiopia)国王克甫斯(Cepheus;古希腊语:Κηφεύς Kepheús) 和卡西俄珀亚(Cassiopeia or Cassiepeia;古希腊语:Κασσιόπεια Kassiópeia or Κασσιόπη Kassiópē)的女儿。和美杜莎一样,她的美丽就是她的原罪。
在《伊娜娜与伊比》(Inanna and Ebih)和《伊娜娜赞美诗》(Hymn to Inanna)等古代著作描述了异装变身等仪式。
imbued with pain and ecstasy, bringing about initation [sic?] and journeys of altered states of consciousness; punishment, moaning, ecstasy, lament and song, participants exhausting themselves in weeping and grief.
If by dull rhymes our English must be chain’d,
And like, Andromeda, the sonnet sweet
Fetter’d, in spite of pained loveliness;
Let us find out, if we must be constrain’d,
Sandals more interwoven and complete
To fit the naked foot of Poesy:
Let us inspect the lyre, and weigh the stress
Of every chord, and see what may be gain’d
By ear industrious, and attention meet;
Misers of sound and syllable, no less
Than Midas of his coinage, let us be
Jealous of dead leaves in the bay wreath crown;
So, if we may not let the muse be free,
She will be bound with garlands of her own.