dafnes y apolos

... The poet seeks to capture his beloved, is left embracing a reified form, and achieves, in compensation, the laurel of poetic glory. That poetic glory, however, comes at the expense of the integrity and agency of the beloved. Even as Daphne is transformed into an inanimate object, Laura is transformed, trough petrarchan metaphor, into a collection of precious objects. Her body is desarticulated, her identity is denied subjective wholeness.