Franz Kafka is Dead ...

"He died in a tree from which he wouldn't come down. "Come down!" they cried to him. "Come down! Come down!" Silence filled the night, and the night filled the silence, while they waited for Kafka to speak. "I can't," he finally said, with a note of wistfulness. "Why?" they cried. Stars spilled across the black sky. "Because then you'll stop asking for me." The people whispered and nodded among themselves. They put their arms around each other, and touched their children's hair. They took off their hats and raised them to the small, sickly man with the ears of a strange animal, sitting in his black velvet suit in the dark tree. Then they turned and started for home under the canopy of leaves. Children were carried on their fathers' shoulders, sleepy from having been taken to see who wrote his books on pieces of bark he tore off the tree from which he refused to come down. In his delicate, beautiful, illegible handwriting. And they admired those books, and they admired his will and stamina. After all: who doesn't wish to make a spectacle of his loneliness? One by one families broke off with a good night and a squeeze of the hands, suddenly grateful for the company of neighbors. Doors closed to warm houses. Candles were lit in windows. Far off, in his perch in the trees , Kafka listened to it all: the rustle of the clothes being dropped to the floor, or lips fluttering along naked shoulders, beds creaking along the weight of tenderness. It all caught in the delicate pointed shells of his ears and rolled like pinballs through the great hall of his mind.

That night a freezing wind blew in. When the children wake up, they went to the window and found the world encased in ice. One child, the smallest, shrieked out in delight and her cry tore through the silence and exploded the ice of a giant oak tree. The world shone.

They found him frozen on the ground like a bird. It's said that when they put their ears to the shell of his ears, they could hear themselves.” 

Nicole Krauss

 

 

Blindsight ...

“Introspection is a devouring monster. You have to feed it with much material, much experience, many people, many places, many loves, many creations, and then it ceases feeding on you.” 

Anaïs Nin

 

 

Saints Cosmas and Damian and their Brothers Surviving the Stake by Fra Angelico

 

Painted between 1439-1442 this piece was once part of a predella, or lower register of Fra Angelico's most important altarpiece. Other parts of it are scattered in various galleries worldwide. The altarpiece was painted for the church of San Marco in Florence, and was commissioned by Cosimo de' Medici - whose name is echoed in the profession of Sts Cosmas and Damian (‘medici’ means 'physicians' in Italian).

 

Cosmas and Damian were two physician brothers living in Asia Minor in the third century. They and their three younger brothers were Christians, and during Diocletian persecutions they were compelled to prove their loyalty to the traditional gods with a sacrifice. When they refused, Lycias, the Roman Consul, submitted them to a series of brutal tortures. Miraculously they survived the torments but, finally, the enraged Consul has them all beheaded.

 

The episode represented here is the fruitless attempt to burn the five brothers. A circle of flames surrounds them, but the fire turns against the torturers, under the incredulous eyes of Lycias and his dignitaries.

 

“How people treat you is their karma; how you react is yours.” 

Wayne W. Dyer

Children of the Sun by Dead Can Dance

We are ancients
As ancient as the sun
We came from the ocean
Once our ancestral home
So that one day
We could all return
To our birthright
The great celestial dome

We are the children of the sun
Our journey's just begun
Sunflowers in our hair
We are the children of the sun
There is room for everyone
Sunflowers in our hair

Throughout the ages
Of iron, bronze, and stone
We marvelled at the night sky
And what may lie beyond
We burned offerings
To the elemental ones
Made sacrifices
For beauty, peace and love

We are the children of the sun
Our kingdom will come
Sunflowers in our hair
We are the children of the sun
Our carnival's begun
Our songs will fill the air

And you know it's time
To look for reasons why
Just reach up and touch the sky
To the heavens we'll ascend
We are the children of the sun
Our journey has begun

All the older children
Come out at night
Anaemic, soulless
Great hunger in their eyes
Unaware of the beauty
That sleeps tonight

And all the queen's horses
And all the king's men
Will never put these children back
Together again

Faith, hope, our charities
Greed, sloth, our enemies

We are the children of the sun
We are the children of the sun

Hellelil and Hilderbrand,The Meeting on the Turret Stairs by Frederic William Burton

This painting (1864) depicts the ill-fated lovers Hellelil and Hildebrand, meeting on the stone stairway of a medieval tower. The princess and her bodyguard had fallen in love but her father regarded the young soldier as an unsuitable match for his daughter and ordered his sons to kill him. The painting captures the couple’s poignant final embrace.

The painting is a popular fixture in the National Gallery of Ireland.

The Sound and the Fury ...

“...I give you the mausoleum of all hope and desire...I give it to you not that you may remember time, but that you might forget it now and then for a moment and not spend all of your breath trying to conquer it. Because no battle is ever won he said. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools.” 

William Faulkner

 

Woman Sleeping by Jean Spitzer

 

Wheatfield with Crows by Vincent van Gogh

“They are endless wheatfields under a cloudy sky, and I have not hesitated to attempt to express sadness and the deepest loneliness.”
Vincent van Gogh

This is one of the most famous works of Vincent van Gogh, a dramatic painting commonly associated with the artist’s suicide, which happened a few weeks later. Contrary to what is commonly thought, it is almost sure that this was not Van Gogh's last painting.

The representation of the wheat fields of Auvers-sur-Oise under different atmospheric conditions was one of Van Gogh’s favorite subjects during the last months of his life. In addition to the famous painting "of the crows", the artist painted "Wheatfield under a stormy sky", in a canvas of the same dimensions as this one, as well as several smaller pictures. But "Wheatfield with Crows" is unique for its vigorous strokes, its dark stormy sky -accentuating the contrast with the yellow wheat- and the presence of the crows, which has given rise to numerous interpretations.

Symbolic Interpretations

The paths: It's not a difficult leap to symbolically equate the separate paths in Wheat Field with Crows with the paths, past and future, of Van Gogh's own life. The paths are basically comprised of three sets: two in each foreground corner and a third in the middle winding toward the horizon. The left and right foreground paths defy logic in that they seem to originate from nowhere and lead to nowhere. Some have interpreted this as Van Gogh's own ongoing confusion about the sporadic direction his own life had taken. The third, middle path has remained the most fertile for symbolic interpretation. Does the path lead anywhere? Does it successfully transverse the wheat field and seek new horizons? Or does it, in fact, terminate in an inescapable dead end? Van Gogh leaves it to the viewer to decide.

The sky: From his earliest years as an artist Van Gogh was fond of scenes involving stormy skies . Van Gogh held a great deal of respect for the forces of nature and includes turbulent skies in a number of his works because the subject is so powerful and so full of artistic potential in the face of an empty canvas. Furthermore, Van Gogh once wrote about the liberating possibilities of storms: "The pilot sometimes succeeds in using a storm to make headway, instead of being wrecked by it." . Of course, as the years passed and Van Gogh's own mental state of well being became more battered, his perceptions toward nature may have darkened. Nevertheless, it can be argued that Van Gogh perceived storms as a vital and positive part of nature (admittedly, at least as he suggests in his earlier letters).

The crows: Perhaps the most powerful image within Wheat Field with Crows is that of the crows themselves. Again, much symbolic interpretation has sprung from the depiction of the flock of crows. Much of the speculation hinges on whether the crows are flying toward the painter (and, hence, the viewer) or away from him. If the viewer chooses to perceive the crows flying toward the foreground, then the work becomes more foreboding. If away, then a sense of relief is felt.