Mata Hari, Netherland Beauty Poem by Rm. Shanmugam Chettiar

The most notorious of all female spies,
The personification of the femme fatale,
The mysterious exotic and erotic
Dancer from the East, Mata Hari was
Margaretha Geertruida Zelle,
Who broke away from her Friesland home
In the Netherlands and married the lovelorn
Rudolf MacLeod, a military officer. 1

Her father gave her a luxurious childhood.
After he became bankrupt, Mata Hari
Went to live with her various relatives.
She studied to be a kindergarten teacher
but left from an affair with the headmaster.
She moved to Java with her husband,
Whom she married when she was eighteen,
Twenty-two years younger to her dismay. 2

Their married life was not a rosy one;
He was a roque and she grew stultified.
He suffered from syphilis unknown to her.
They had a son who died when he was four
And a daughter, who went with her mother
When they got divorced after six years
On returning to Holland from the East Indies.
She had learnt Indonesian dance those times. 3

Margaretha Geertruida Zelle became
Mata Hari, meaning in Malay as Sun.
When she was near destitute, she took train
And went to Paris. She thought ‘all women
Who ran away from their husbands went to Paris.'
She worked with circus as an equestrienne
And switched over to be a dancer
With the knowledge she gained in the East Indies. 4

In her dancing debut she wore a casque
Of gold upon her head, a breastplate,
And a few layers of flimsy cloth. She danced
Before a statue of Siva, the Hindu god.
She divested herself, one by one,
Of the veils implying that, as a sacrifice,
She gave beauty, youth, love at His feet,
Unclasping her belt, she fell in a swoon." 5

She danced in theatres, at exclusive salons,
And in the homes of the very rich.
‘Majestically tragic, the thousand curves
And movements of her body trembling
In a thousand rhythms … an exotic spectacle
Yet deeply austere … Mata Hari dances
With her muscles, with her entire body, '
Wrote papers in Paris on her performance. 6

Mata Hari had affairs not for money
In her early days. She liked men and hence
Had sex with them. She maintained affairs
With several highly placed French officials
And many officers of the military.
She went on tour throughout Europe,
Expanding her fame, learning languages.
Male admirers of her were swelling there. 7

She had a liaison with an opera composer
And became the mistress of the wealthy
Alfred Kiepert and lived with him for three years.
While in Berlin, she was also the mistress
Of one of the chief police. She vanquished
Her dance competitors by year nineteen six.
For several more years Mata Hari
Roamed dancing, being lauded by the press. 8

Mata Hari's career went into decline
After 1912 and ended by 1915,
By when she became a successful courtesan
Known more for her sensuality and
Eroticism than for her beauty.
She was seen as a promiscuous woman
And a dangerous seductress in the circle
When the first world war was approaching. 9

World War 1 struck; Netherland was neutral.
Zelle was free to cross national borders.
She developed love with a Russian pilot,
Vadim Maslov, who served for French army.
It turned out to be a very intense
Romantic and sexual relationship.
Zelle called him as the love of her life.
He was twenty-two and she, thirty-nine. 10

Maslove lost his eyes in the fight with Germans
In the summer of year nineteen sixteen.
She was denied permission to see him
As she was from a neutral country.
Swayed with intense pathos for her lover,
She agreed to spy for the French so that
She could get access to reach her lover.
Crown Prince Wilhelm of German was her target. 11

In her strategy to meet the Crown Prince
To seduce she had to deal officers.
In exchange of money she offered herself.
Receipt of money by her was taken
As the bribe to leak French secrets to them.
She, accused of spying for Germany,
Was tried and shot dead in nineteen seventeen.
Men who caused her death must be impotent. 12

A harlot? Yes, but a traitoress, never!

Beauty is maimed by the impotent.


(Margaretha Geertruida MacLeod (August 1876 - 15 October 1917) , better known by the stage name Mata Hari, was a Dutch exotic dancer and courtesan who was convicted of being a spy for Germany during World War I. Despite her having admitted under interrogation to taking money to work as a German spy, many people still believe she was innocent[1] because the French Army needed a scapegoat.[2][3] She was executed by firing squad in France.) [4]