Lunch break! For those within my horde of readers that don't know this, I love guides in literature. I remember as I was reading I, Claudius I wept when I got to Claudius's description of his second tutor Athenodorus joking about his long white beard--saying that invisible seeds of fire came from his fingers as he stroked it and fed his whiskers. Strange thing to weep at, but there you are. I always wanted a real tutor...not one that beat me and stuff, though...and not an early classical Greek tutor...for other reasons. Athenodorus for me, every time!
Something else I wept at, when I saw it at the MFA in Boston: this sculpture by Baron Henri de Triqueti. It was rather awkward, actually, though fortunately nobody I knew was there to see it--me weeping, I mean. But there it is. The virtuous but still damned Virgil leading the poet Dante through Hell (or Purgatory) and telling him what's what. Look at how much trouble Dante is having with what he's seeing--he's working it out. See his forehead and brows and that frown, how concentrated. His hands curl. Unsure of his own fate, as a man living in exile from his home and his eternal home, but also as a poet. He wears the laurels already, but I think he is unaware of them. Those are for us. And look at the calm and, well, classical expression on Virgil's face. He just knows and accepts, because that's all he can do--without suffering, without hope. But it's his hands that do it--the hands are tender, almost effeminate in their direction, and it softens the sculpture as a whole. Likewise with that hollow at his throat and the delicate lines in his neck and the cloth that hangs from his laurels. And they're looking at us, so we, too, are in doubt. Could be hell, could be Purgatory. It's not exactly how I'd imagined it, but still it's a beautiful piece of art. Cast in 1862, I believe. If you ever go there, you have to see it.
Something else I wept at, when I saw it at the MFA in Boston: this sculpture by Baron Henri de Triqueti. It was rather awkward, actually, though fortunately nobody I knew was there to see it--me weeping, I mean. But there it is. The virtuous but still damned Virgil leading the poet Dante through Hell (or Purgatory) and telling him what's what. Look at how much trouble Dante is having with what he's seeing--he's working it out. See his forehead and brows and that frown, how concentrated. His hands curl. Unsure of his own fate, as a man living in exile from his home and his eternal home, but also as a poet. He wears the laurels already, but I think he is unaware of them. Those are for us. And look at the calm and, well, classical expression on Virgil's face. He just knows and accepts, because that's all he can do--without suffering, without hope. But it's his hands that do it--the hands are tender, almost effeminate in their direction, and it softens the sculpture as a whole. Likewise with that hollow at his throat and the delicate lines in his neck and the cloth that hangs from his laurels. And they're looking at us, so we, too, are in doubt. Could be hell, could be Purgatory. It's not exactly how I'd imagined it, but still it's a beautiful piece of art. Cast in 1862, I believe. If you ever go there, you have to see it.
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