Enough about pick up lines and enough about brake up lines.
Enough about resumés, enough about all of them.
This painting is an illustration of "The Divine Comedy" by Dante Alighieri, in which the story of Dante's descent to Hell accompanied of Virgil is beautifully described. Bourguereau took it to the next level by creating a vivid image of what the likes of human beings have the power to create:
Man can fight, man can destroy each other, and man can also sit in the background awaiting for the right moment to guide or to jump in.
There is so much that can be said about this painting, however I will not even begin to talk about it. (If you Google it, you'll find many different interpretations to its meaning).
For my part, I will simply continue to enjoy escaping the complexity of men and women though this cruel and vivid reminder.
Let this be too in the memory of all those who went through hell on this fatal day ten years ago...
Let the romance begin.
I am growing tired of hearing words, insignificant terms or subjective appellations to describe people, their wants and their needs. How I wish they could just be a system to be set-up smoothly without going through all of this. It pains me to have to answer certain questions and it aches me to have to listen to some of my friends do the same. Yet we need to know somehow about the other, we therefore need to ask.
In a recurrent dream of mine, I imagine I will know when the right person comes along because everything will just fall into pieces. Certainly, my imaginary world is full of romantic stories, as must girls love to dream about ...
But guys, bear with me.
The one scene that I very much would like to apply to my reality is the idea that MY guy will be able to look at one of my favorite paintings and see in it's arts the same beauty, strength and emotions as I do. Of course, that might not be so necessary, nor possible, but the general idea here is that he'd be at least able to understand where it's all coming from.
To brake through for a few moments from all those miserable/aggravating/frustrating dating stories, I just want to share one of my favorite paintings called "Dante et Virgile en Enfer, 1850" (Dante and Virgil in Hell) by Bouguereau.
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Man can fight, man can destroy each other, and man can also sit in the background awaiting for the right moment to guide or to jump in.
There is so much that can be said about this painting, however I will not even begin to talk about it. (If you Google it, you'll find many different interpretations to its meaning).
For my part, I will simply continue to enjoy escaping the complexity of men and women though this cruel and vivid reminder.
Let this be too in the memory of all those who went through hell on this fatal day ten years ago...
Beautifully put, and a beautiful painting! To quote C.S. Lewis, who captured what you're expressing far better than I ever could:
ReplyDeleteYou may have noticed that the books you really love are bound together by a secret thread. You know very well what is the common quality that makes you love them, though you cannot put it into words: but most of your friends do not see it at all...Again, you have stood before some landscape, which seems to embody what you have been looking for all your life; and then turned to the friend at your side who appears to be seeing what you saw -- but at the first words a gulf yawns between you, and you realise that this landscape means something totally different to him, that he is pursuing an alien vision and cares nothing for the ineffable suggestion by which you are transported....
Are not all lifelong friendships born at the moment when at last you meet another human being who has some inkling...of that something which you were born desiring and which...you are looking for, watching for, listening for? You have never had it. All the things that have ever deeply possessed your soul have been but hints of it -- tantalising glimpses, promises never quite fulfilled, echoes that died away just as they caught your ear. But it if should really become manifest -- if there ever came an echo that did not die away but swelled into the sound itself -- you would know it. Beyond all possibility of doubt you would say 'Here at last is the thing I was made for.' We cannot tell each other about it. It is the secret signature of each soul, the incommunicable and unappeasable want, the thing we desired before we met our wives or made our friends or chose our work, and which we shall still desire on our deathbeds, when the mind no longer knows wife or friend or work. While we are, this is. If we lose this, we lose all.
Friendship arises out of mere Companionship when two or more of the companions discover that they have in common some insight or interest or even taste which the others do not share and which, till that moment, each believed to be his own unique treasure (or burden). The typical expression of opening Friendship would be something like, "What? You too? I thought I was the only one."
... It is when two such persons discover one another, when, whether with immense difficulties and semi-articulate fumblings or with what would seem to us amazing and elliptical speed, they share their vision - it is then that Friendship is born. And instantly they stand together in an immense solitude.
"We cannot tell each other about it. It is the secret signature of each soul, the incommunicable and unappeasable want, the thing we desired before we met our wives or made our friends or chose our work, and which we shall still desire on our deathbeds, when the mind no longer knows wife or friend or work. While we are, this is. If we lose this, we lose all."
ReplyDeleteIm happy but frustrated to know that there is someone out there who was able to express verbally something I deeply believe in yet have never been able to express. (and the concept he describes so well might be why I have very little tolerance to people's thoughts and reactions at times, some things just do not need to be said)
Very often the concept of shidduchim sucks the romance out of life as one is boiled down to a heap of questions that cannot be answered. Where art romance? Let's pretend the guy is seeking a soulmate, not a questionnaire.
ReplyDeleteDante's Inferno is pretty interesting stuff.
Go with your date to The Met and see how he reacts to different paintings.
ReplyDeleteThis happens to be a pretty intense painting and kind of hard not to be struck by the rawness of the human qualities portrayed. I think we're all like Dante in the background whose expressions sums it up.
@david on the lake: Or we can be like the devil biting the human....
ReplyDelete