International Womens’ Day: 8th March 2012 – Διεθνης Ημερα της Γυναικας: 8η Μαρτιου 2012


Salvador Dali: Muchacha en la ventana, 1925

L’amour, la folie

Order of the day, from Bonaparte, First Counsul, to his guard:

“Greadier Gobain has committed suicide for love: moreover he was a very fine soldier. This is the second event of this kind which has occurred within the corps in a month. The First Counsul orders the guard to be notified: that a soldier must conquer the pain and melancholy of the passions; that there is as much true courage in suffering steadfastly the pangs of the soul as in standing fast under the fire of a battery…”.

(Quoted in “Roland Barthes, by Roland Barthes”.)

Edward Hopper: Cape Cod Morning, 1950

Memory and Dusk

A poem by George Sarantaris

They come by slowly

In the garden that accepted us

And was our hideout for life

The hours the women the pigeons…

My photo: Woman in Lisboa, 1992

The Arrows

A poem by Andreas Empeirikos

A girl in a garden

Two women in a tub

Three girls in my heart

Without limits without conditions…

Caspar David Friedrich: Frau am Fenster, 1822

“When I was kissing her, I believed I was taking her soul from her lips, and I was offering her the whole of my soul. It was the sky, the universe.”

(Gamiani, Alfred de Musset)

Savas Haratsidis: Two female figures

“- Why are you slipping away from my hands? Where are you? I have new tatoos to show you. Do not wake up… Exactly the way you are, I will put your figure on the stern… Little girl. Take my hand and show me the world.

– I do not have a hand. There is no world.”

Nikos Kavadias, The Watch

Edvard Munch: The girl by the window, 1893

“What was making me furious was the fact that although I did not love Cecilia, the circumstances were forcing me to have the feelings and the behaviour becoming to a person in love. I wanted to liberate myself from these instances like an animal wanting to take the noose off its neck…”

Alberto Moravia, Boredom

Edward Monet: The Red Kerchief, 1873

Don’t wish too hard, or you will get what you want.

Jewish proverb

Jan Vermeer: Girl reading a letter at an open window, 1659

Desires

A poem by Constantine Cavafy

Like beautiful bodies of the dead, who had not grown old
and they shut them with tears, in a magnificent mausoleum,
with roses at the head and jasmine at the feet —
that is how desires look that have passed
without fultillment; without one of them having achieved
a night of sensual delight, or a moonlit morn.

Henri Matisse: Young woman at the window, 1921

I lost everything

A poem of Giuseppe Ungaretti

I remember how I used to tremble for you,

And look at me now I am lost

In the night’s infinity

Roy Lichtenstein: Collage for still life with reclining nude, 1997

“Hanold had chosen archaeology as a retreat from love. But it was an archaeological object, the sculpture of Gradiva, that aroused his desire. Thus his repressed sexuality used the very instrument of its repression (archaeology) to gain access to consciousness. The symptom of his disorder, the delusion that the sculpture was a real woman, was a compromise formed between the sexual drive and the repression.”

Freud Museum

Gradiva: The Cure Through Love, An exhibition on Freud as archaeological literary critic

Pamela Hanson: Monica Bellucci, 1994

ISOLDE

Do I alone
hear this melody
which, so wondrous
and tender
in its blissful lament,
all‑revealing,
gently pardoning,
sounding from him,
pierces me through,
rises above,
blessedly echoing
and ringing round me?
Resounding yet more clearly,
wafting about me,
are they waves
of refreshing breezes?

(continued…)

Henri Cartier Bresson, Calle Cuauhtemo, Mexico City

Are they clouds
of heavenly fragrance?
As they swell
and roar round me,
shall I breathe them,
shall I listen to them?
Shall I sip them,
plunge beneath them,
to expire in sweet perfume?

In the surging swell,
in the ringing sound,
in the vast wave
of the world’s breath –
to drown,
to sink
unconscious –
supreme bliss!

Isolde’s Death Song, Tristan and Isolde

2 comments

  1. Θα έλεγα να μετονομασθεί σε ημέρα της ανοικτής κοινωνίας και να εορτάζεται καθημερινά. Στην ανοικτότητα χωράει ο διαφορετικός, η γυναίκα, ο έγχρωμος, ο αλλόδοξος. Τρόπος της ανοικτότητας η αποδόμηση του κλειστού, της βεβαιότητας, της αποκλειστικότητας, της ασφάλειας, η αποδοχή ότι το εδώ και τώρα της ύπαρξης πιστοποιείται στο βλέμμα του άλλου, του άλλου που μας βάζει στην θέση μας. Μόνο που το άνοιγμα είναι η δεξίωση του αγνώστου, του απείρου, της αγωνίας. Αγωνίας που η αποφυγή της θα συνεχίσει να μας κλείνει, αντί να παραδίδει την παράδοση σε εμάς, να παραδίδει εμάς στην παράδοση.

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