Category Archives: Beauty

Apr 10

Interconnections

With one essay, Guy Davenport demonstrates to me the difference between looking at American Gothic and seeing American Gothic.

“We can see a bamboo sunscreen–out of China by way of Sears Roebuck–that rolls up like a sail: nautical technology applied to the prairie. We can see that distinctly American feature, the screen door. The sash-windows are European in origin, their glass panes from Venetian technology as perfected by the English, a luxury that was a marvel of the eighteenth century, and now as common as the farmer’s spectacles, another revolution in technology that would have seemed a miracle to previous ages. Spectacles began in the thirteenth century, the invention of either Salvino degl’Armati or Alessandro della Spina; the first portrait of a person wearing specs is of Cardinal Ugone di Provenza, in a fresco of 1352 by Tommaso Barisino di Modena. We might note, as we are trying to see the geographical focus that this painting gathers together, that the center for lens grinding from which eyeglasses diffused to the rest of civilization was the same part of Holland from which the style of the painting itself derives.

Another thirteenth-century invention prominent in our painting is the buttonhole. Buttons themselves are prehistoric, but they were shoulder-fasteners that engaged with loops. Modern clothing begins with the buttonhole. The farmer’s wife secures her Dutch Calvinist collar with a cameo brooch, an heirloom passed down the generations, an eighteenth-century or Victorian copy of a design that goes back to the sixth century B.C.

She is a product of the ages, this modest Iowa farm wife: she has the hair-do of a medieval madonna, a Reformation collar, a Greek cameo, a nineteenth-century pinafore.

Martin Luther put her a step behind her husband; John Knox squared her shoulders; the stock-market crash of 1929 put that look in her eye.” [my favorite line]

The train that brought her clothes–paper pattern, bolt cloth, needle, thread, scissors–also brought her husband’s bib overalls, which were, originally, in the 1870s, trainmen’s workclothes designed in Europe, manufactured here for J.C. Penney, and disseminated across the United States as the railroads connected city with city. The cloth is denim, from Nîmes in France, introduced by Levi Strauss of blue-jean fame. The design can be traced to no less a person than Herbert Spencer, who thought he was creating a utilitarian one-piece suit for everybody to wear. His own example was of tweed, with buttons from crotch to neck, and his female relatives somehow survived the mortification of his sporting it one Sunday in St. James Park.”

From the essay, The Geography of the Imagination

I can honestly say I’d never given much thought to buttonholes before reading this piece.

Feb 14

Dante and Beatrice: Pondering unrequited love

I believe Dante and Beatrice were the ones who first made me really consider the idea of unrequited/unfulfilled love, or idealized love. If asked, I would probably define myself as a cynic (tho an optimistic one…a bit contradictory, I realize). I don’t consider myself a romantic, though I don’t have anything against romance either (my husband is a romantic and I appreciate this very much) (and I do find myself falling for romantic notions of “The Artist”). I’m not one to seek out love stories on the big screen, but I can enjoy one from time to time (the quirkier, the better). Back to Dante and Beatrice. During a class on Dante, the professor explained that Beatrice was Dante’s great love, though, it is believed, the two spoke only once (when they were children), and Beatrice died at a very young age (25, I think…maybe younger). They both married different people, but Dante considered Beatrice his great love, and his muse, and he immortalized her as the pilgrim’s guide to Heaven in the Divine Comedy. I’m fascinated by the apparent strength of his feelings for Beatrice, in spite of his limited contact with her. She was his muse for his lifetime. I assume it was the idea of her that he was in love with—that his imagination created this muse that inspired him to the heights he reached. And I can’t help but wonder whether the person he married ever came close to receiving the same level of adoration he gave to the idea of Beatrice (who can compete with such an idolized image)? Of course, I’m looking back on Dante’s love for Beatrice with a 21st century perspective, so it helps to remember what life was like in Dante’s time.

Then we have William Butler Yeats and Maud Gonne. I learned about the two of them just last summer when I visited Dublin. At the Dublin writers museum, there is a brief bio on Yeats and it discusses his adoration of Gonne. If I remember correctly, he asked her to marry him several times, and she declined each proposal. What really stuck in my mind after reading the bio was the fact that, later in his life, he asked Gonne’s daughter to marry him. Wow, I thought, that is really…odd. Well, when it’s presented in such an abbreviated biography it sounds odd, but after visiting the National Library where there was an exhibit dedicated to Yeats’ life, I learned that it wasn’t quite as odd as it first seemed. Or, it seemed a little more reasonable to me when I had a better understanding of his relationship with Gonne and her family. The daughter said no to Yeats’ proposal as well. I was taken with the idea that WB Yeats (WB YEATS!) put himself out there to this woman, and was rejected, yet continued to idolize her. According to wikipedia, after asking Gonne’s daughter to marry him (and being rejected), he said to one of his friends “who am I, that I should not make a fool of myself”. I like this sentiment a great deal, particularly when coming from a poet like Yeats. It seems today (and maybe throughout history) there is a certain amount of fear of looking the fool if one’s advances are spurned, so I find Yeats’ willingness to keep trying, even after being rejected, quite charming.

So, here is to true love, to unrequited love, and to idealized love. May they inspire great happiness, great passion, and/or great art.

No Second Troy by William Butler Yeats (written after Gonne married Major John MacBride)

Why should I blame her that she filled my days
With misery, or that she would of late
Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways,
Or hurled the little streets upon the great.
Had they but courage equal to desire?
What could have made her peaceful with a mind
That nobleness made simple as a fire,
With beauty like a tightened bow, a kind
That is not natural in an age like this,
Being high and solitary and most stern?
Why, what could she have done, being what she is?
Was there another Troy for her to burn?

**********************************************
To his Coy Mistress (not a perfect fit with the theme of the post, but still…)
by Andrew Marvell

Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, lady, were no crime.
We would sit down and think which way
To walk, and pass our long love’s day;
Thou by the Indian Ganges’ side
Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the Flood;
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires, and more slow.
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast,
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart.
For, lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate.

But at my back I always hear
Time’s winged chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found,
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song; then worms shall try
That long preserv’d virginity,
And your quaint honour turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust.
The grave’s a fine and private place,
But none I think do there embrace.

Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may;
And now, like am’rous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour,
Than languish in his slow-chapp’d power.
Let us roll all our strength, and all
Our sweetness, up into one ball;
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life.
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.

************************************

A portrait of O’Keefe by her husband, Alfred Stieglitz

Feb 9

Note to self: It’s only life

I had been planning to do a post like this when February 19th drew nearer, but reading SJ’s eloquent and touching post about the death of her friend Carol inspired me to write it now. The post is in memory of my father, who passed away two years ago on the 19th. Those of you who know me well, know his absence is always present. I recall the day he told me of his condition and the poor prognosis of it all. When I began to cry he said there was no reason to—that we had had 27 great years together, and while he would take whatever treatments he needed to, there was no reason to be sad…all things come to an end and at least we had a great time while we were together. This made me cry more because it seemed so reasonable and Buddhist-like, and at the same time resigned. We ended up having 30 great years together, as he went on to shock even his doctors with his faith that he could survive stage IV colon cancer. The doctors later said they wouldn’t have given him six months (had he asked, which he didn’t), and were astounded when he went on to live for three more years. His chemo didn’t keep him down long; as soon as he felt up to it, he’d be out chopping wood, or visiting with friends. My mom was diagnosed with ovarian cancer at this time (she’s now in remission from breast and ovarian cancer and doing very well), and she would get pep talks from him. He had not spoken to her in years because of their bitter divorce, but now he was trying to buck her up, and get her not to dwell on the negative.

During this time he traveled to South Florida to see me and Spence get married, and toasted us at our wedding reception. And within seven months from that day, he was gone. My aunt called me in January to say things weren’t so good, so I returned home at that point and stayed there until after he died. We had good times even then. The television was on constantly; I think it served as a distraction for him (it certainly did for me). At one point he flipped around and found a John Wayne movie. I gave him my “we are sooo not watching this movie” sideways glance, to which he responded with his little eyebrow dance (moving his eyebrows up and down in quick succession), which meant “we are totally watching this movie.”  Other days we marveled at the bad judgment of contestants on The Price is Right, who were clearly overbidding on their showcases during the showcase showdown. We never failed to miss the drama on Dr. Phil, and our nights were filled with the sitcom Becker, his favorite tv show at the time. And during it all he was on a massive dosage of painkillers (yet still in pain, tho you couldn’t tell from his demeanor); his body continued to weaken, but his hope did not. I honestly don’t think he could fathom that he was dying. I think the idea was so beyond what he could imagine that he didn’t dwell on it. Right until the last minute, I believe that he believed he would somehow make it through. Perhaps having such unquestioning faith in such times is a good thing.

I try to use his memory as a reminder of life—that it doesn’t go on forever. When I feel myself getting worked up over what others may think of this or that, or whether I made a mistake by saying or doing this or that, I make the effort to think of him, and to remember that we only go around once. Who knows how long the go around will last? The only certainty is it won’t last, and occasionally reminding myself of this helps me to lighten up.