For those (like me before finding out) who are wondering which painting is presented here : It’s The Meeting on the Turret Stairs by Frederick William Burton ! I adore it.
Hi, yeah, do you want to yearn and ache some more because OOF
(taken from the National Gallery of Ireland website)
A thing i like about this painting is that you cannot see it any time you want. It is normally hidden behind doors because of conservation issues, so you have to time it right to get a glimpse of it and enjoy it for a moment before the doors are closed again, thus coincidentally matching the viewing experience with the subject matter
Why don’t you change me at all costs? Starlight and star-crossed Take me so breathless Yeah, woke up in a safe house singing, “Honey, let’s get married”
thinking about how orpheus turning to look back at eurydice isn’t a sign of mortal frailness but a sign of love
“Eurydice, dying now a second time, uttered no complaint against her husband. What was there to complain of, but that she had been loved?” ― Ovid, Metamorphoses
This is true no matter the version you’re reading.
1. Eurydice trips and Orpheus turns to help her because he loves her.
2. Orpheus cannot hear Eurydice behind him, and fearing that he’s been tricked, turns to make sure she’s there.
3. Orpheus makes it out of the Underworld, and so full of love and excitement to be with Eurydice, turns to embrace her, forgetting that they both need to be out of the Underworld.
No matter what happens in the story, Orpheus loses Eurydice because his love for her compels him to look.
Orpheus, I can forgive you, then, There’s not a soul alive who wouldn’t have looked back
Don’t forget Gluck’s opera, where Eurydice doesn’t know Orpheus is forbidden to look back, Orpheus is also forbidden to tell her, she assumes he must not love her anymore, and Orpheus finally looks back to reassure her of his love because he can’t bear her anguish.
In that version in particular, but possibly in all retellings, a part of us wants Orpheus to look back, because his failure proves his love.
I’d be the voice that urged Orpheus When her body was found I’d be the choiceless hope in grief That drove him underground I’d be the dreadful need in the devotee That made him turn around (Hey ya) And I’d be the immediate forgiveness In Eurydice
pretty poetic that Hades gave Orpheus the task of walking away from the underworld, trusting that Eurydice would follow, when Hades himself has been through that same trial, inverted, hundreds of times. Once a year Hades has to watch Persephone walk away, forcing himself not to follow, trusting every time that she will return to him.
1. Find a monster and give it a name. Any name will do, people say that names have
power, to be careful what to pick, but really, for this, any name. To even hold a name is power enough. Call it by that name until it begins to
respond, only good things have names.
Wait and it will become good.
2. Find a monster and bring it into your
house. Feed it at your table, make it
eat with cutlery and crockery, sit up straight, elbows in. Feed it so it is not restless, so it does not
fall into monstrosity again. Wait and it
will become calm.
3. Find a monster and treat it gentle. Show it goodness, calmness, kindness. Never strike it, speak softly, make your way
closer to it every night until you can sit beside it. Women and tigers, old songs still sung by the
fire, such an act has never been impossible.
Wait and it will become soft.
4. Find a monster and sing it to sleep. Ask it how its day went, how the people
treated it. Tell it that everything will
be ok, that in the morning all its fears and sorrows will leave it and the
birds will sing. Tell it about the sun,
about springtime and budding leaves. Kiss
its forehead every night and wake it up every morning. Wait and it will become nothing more than a
scared child.
5. Find the person standing before you, a child
wearing a monster’s face, trapped in a body all grown up and alone, and give it
a hope, and give it a home. Let it leave
knowing there’s a place for it to come back to.
Let it return and curl up in front of the television with you and weep
into your shoulder. Make it popcorn and
put chocolate on the popcorn and let it lick its fingers and fall asleep. Cover it with a blanket. Wait, and it will become nothing more than
what it has always been. All you did was
peel back the darkness.
bro not to start again on names but u ever think abt how some names have been used for centuries, millenniums even…like how many times has the earth heard a mother calling, ‘alexander!’…how many times have the stars caught a lover whispering, ‘freyja’…how many times has the ground we’ve walked on and continue to walk on felt vibrations of a friend excitedly yelling, ‘mary!’
#names are so amazing because everyone’s name is *theirs* but that name has been used thousands of times by so many people but right then and #there it is *their* name #and theirs alone [@flower-borne]
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#how beautiful is it that we did our best to find the loveliest sounds the human voice can make #and assigned those sounds to one another #so that our whole identity is inexplicably linked to something made with love in mind [@honeytuesday]
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#how ppl are named after family members; or after the things we love and that inspire us (hope; faith; not to mention all the non-english #names with meanings of beauty and kindness and intelligence; also how a lot of names have biblical or otherwise religious origin); how names #translate over countries and languages (mary/marie/maria/etc); how some don’t translate as well bc of linguistic differences (julia/yulia) [@maryolive]
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#how names hold stories and history and how one name is enough to bring back memories! #how parents fondly choose a name because of the meaning and wish their child carries the legacy of the name forward #how we have silly nicknames for each other and it’s like here’s a part of you given to you from my side and now it’s ours #the name of your enemy is the name of my lover and both have spurned us so here we are grieving different people of same names [@ijaazat]
my favourite is historians i have met who have named a child after
something they glanced at on a historical record once, because it was the first
time they had heard the name - and hey they liked it
because it means in this world there is a little girl who is named
for a woman long gone. and that woman will never know this, and this girl will
never meet this woman. but they are connected by a few letters of handwriting
in an old book and hundreds of years
H.D., from Collected Poems: 1912-1944; “A Dead Priestess Speaks,” / art source / Angela Carter / Jana Brike / Medea; Euripides / Gleipnir (2012) / José Olivarez / Carol Ann Duffy / Miki Kim / vulnerability - a.j.
