In his letters to his friend Mathilde Wesendonck, it appears that while he was composing Tristan he already had the inspiration of working out the identification of Kundry, the messenger of the Grail, with the temptress who, under the spell of Klingsor, seduces the knights of the Grail; and he had, moreover, thought out the impressively obscure suggestion that she was Herodias, condemned like the wandering Jew to live till the Saviour's second coming.
A point of interest is that the exhortations to chastity are addressed to men only; the man is regarded as the victim, the woman as the temptress - women are never warned against men or against the general seductions of society.
The temptress in Proverbs appears to be a married woman; she is certainly such in chs.
Barberâs Cleopatra is a passionate free spirit, a manipulative temptress, a highly sexed, high maintenance drama queen.
Pasted over the photo of a museum relic, her saucy model becomes a temptress of caricatured exotica.
