Hi Alice! First—thank you for taking the time to read and respond. You’ve answered the question exactly the way I hoped someone might; a lived “beauty-epiphany,” to steal your words. :)
The Keats line arriving to you is serendipitous and perfect. The Romantics (Keats especially) had a gift for inhabiting that cross-section of beauty / emotion.
Your moment with Canova’s cast of Endymion reminded me of a visit I made years ago to an Alphonse Mucha exhibit. The posters were gorgeous—but I found myself stuck in front of his pencil sketches of hands. People were walking around me, and I was standing there thinking, “wait, look here! Hands are so hard to draw, but he made them look so delicate.”
And I love how you put this—how a photo has to be braided with what you lived in your body for it to retain its force. I think even if I missed that photograph of the eclipse, the experience of viewing it was so sublime that it would have stuck with me anyway. The photo becomes an easy way to bring memory to the surface, rather than just a recording.
Please don’t apologize for long comments (I love them!). I’m so glad you shared this. I’ll be thinking of it on my next walk and my next trip to a museum.
Hi Alice! First—thank you for taking the time to read and respond. You’ve answered the question exactly the way I hoped someone might; a lived “beauty-epiphany,” to steal your words. :)
The Keats line arriving to you is serendipitous and perfect. The Romantics (Keats especially) had a gift for inhabiting that cross-section of beauty / emotion.
Your moment with Canova’s cast of Endymion reminded me of a visit I made years ago to an Alphonse Mucha exhibit. The posters were gorgeous—but I found myself stuck in front of his pencil sketches of hands. People were walking around me, and I was standing there thinking, “wait, look here! Hands are so hard to draw, but he made them look so delicate.”
And I love how you put this—how a photo has to be braided with what you lived in your body for it to retain its force. I think even if I missed that photograph of the eclipse, the experience of viewing it was so sublime that it would have stuck with me anyway. The photo becomes an easy way to bring memory to the surface, rather than just a recording.
Please don’t apologize for long comments (I love them!). I’m so glad you shared this. I’ll be thinking of it on my next walk and my next trip to a museum.