Sarah Hickey “The Beauty and her Beast” (2011) 90cm x 120cm oil and mixed media on canvas
Right block: the pink: the yellow
Northeast. Massachusetts. New York City. Two blobs of dense population. Stepping on toes. Road rage. Glitter. Striving. Oblivion.
Left block: the pink:
Southwest. Space. Spread. Dotted. Scattered. Breathing room. Distance. Recognition. Acceptance. Surpass.
This image perfectly captures why I plan to move from right to left, from east to west, even though my ultimate goal has always been farther east…
… if the Earth is round, does it really matter which direction I choose?
John Everett Millais
“Ophelia” 1851-52
oil on canvas
Reviving Ophelia: Linking Verdi’s Gilda of Rigoletto and Shakespeare’s Ophelia of Hamlet
On Le roi s’amuse is the greatest plot, and perhaps the greatest drama of modern times. Triboulet is a creation worthy of Shakespeare!!
—In a letter to Cammarano of 1848, Verdi had expressed a wish to be able to blend the comic and the terrible ‘in Shakespeare’s manner.’
By the end of Jean-Pierre Ponnelle’s filmatic version of Verdi’s opera Rigoletto, we witness the beautiful Gilda floating in a boat on the River Mincio at her father’s side. Gilda begs for forgiveness and expresses confidence in her decision to die for her love, the Duke of Mantua, as she breathes her last breaths. Her father holds her expiring body in utter shock, distraught to see death come to the only person in his life and the daughter for whom he has fought to protect throughout the opera. This is not the first time we see a young woman floating into a tragic death as a result of conflicting emotions between her patriarch and her love interest. About 250 years before Verdi completed Rigoletto, Shakespeare’s Hamlet took to the stage, arguably his most famous and densely analyzed play. Hamlet’s teetering sanity and bipolar antics distract from the sorry plight of his love interest, Ophelia. Torn between her family’s expectations and her love for Hamlet, Ophelia strives to please both. Her father ends up murdered at the hand of Hamlet, who in short time rejects her crudely. At this point Ophelia is understood to have gone insane. She meets an untimely end in the waters of a stream where she drowns herself amongst the weeds, flowers, and other foliage she had often picked as gifts for Hamlet. The cruelty of Hamlet drives Ophelia to suicide, though the emotions that lead her to choose death as the only option are largely dependent on the fact that her father is nonexistent when she experiences that rejection.
What is revealed on this pool-side purple chaise, will not leave this pool-side purple chaise… an ancient magic of sorts, how the fountain’s rhythm can absorb even those thoughts unspoken.
I wondered. And I wondered if I became more serious in my wonder, So I poured myself a glass of wine whiled the hours away
more calculated,
if it might start spreading answers before me.
(watered down a trifle, of course)
and I pondered this all,
during which I otherwise could have been laughing.
