The Song of Songs tells us that love is as strong as death, but immediately adds that jealousy is as cruel as the grave, and sexual relations in themselves appear to be inseparable, according to the testimony of the poets, from the tension of egos, the sense of ownership and possession, the panics of status.
Northrop Frye, Words With Power
image by Marc Chagall
12 comments:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEhjFVK9_lQ
The The's "Love Is Stronger Than Death".
Oh boy. The The really freaked me out most pleasantly all those years ago.
I thank you for the reminder of the redeeming weirdness.
What do you mean by 'redeeming'?
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=FgMn2OJmx3w
Grace Jones "Corporate Cannibal"
is this redeeming in any way?
if it's not, pray for me-i can't get enough bread...
in equal measure, i love and am haunted by this image and the accompanying words. good post mr. dark.
redeeming. re-valuing. reevaluating (or driving me to reevaluate). The The was one of those bands that freaked me out as a teenager, but i think i had the feeling they knew something i needed to know. something i was missing. i believe the feeling was right. i'm glad i didn't dismiss them because they had blood on their album cover or because i couldn't figure out what they were up to. i'm glad i gave them a moment's thought. a rethink. they made me reconsider the world the way _raising arizona_ did. the way these things still do.
i find the "corporate criminal" video redeeming. or rather, i believe the work redeems. it works. it does a redeeming work.
glad to hear from you, angela. i got myself all manner of northrop frye (books, quotes, the lowdown) if'n you're interested.
the bible really wiggs out sometimes i think - relly odd bunch of books...
hope you are well
How did you come by the pairing of image & words?
Thanks for asking, AnnaBanana,
The words came thru my regular, everyday marking stuff I read and often transcribing it for insertion in some something or other somewhere along the line. A googleimage search of the phrase "Song of Songs" brought me around to marc chagall (though not--I don't think--this particular image). And then I threw "chagall" next to "Song of Songs" (if memory serves) rolled the googleimage dice again and found this. the fruits, as ever, of constructive procrastination.
let love rule,
jdd
constructive procrastination. nice. the MO for post-modern scholarship? more often than not.
Chagall and I share the same birthdate (7/7), and I blogged a bit about him that day last year. Here's some of what I said, followed by four choice Chagall quotes I thought you might enjoy. I will leave it to better minds than my own to reconcile the Frye words with the Chagall image.
Ahnalog: [Chagall] painted the pain of his people. He painted the joy of lovers. He painted the hope of those who know there is something More to see than what we can see. His paintings make me feel like I am able to see what music looks like.
Chagall:
I work in whatever medium likes me at the moment.
My name is Marc, my emotional life is sensitive and my purse is empty, but they say I have talent.
In our life there is a single color, as on an artist's palette, which provides the meaning of life and art. It is the color of love.
We all know that a good person can be a bad artist. But no one will ever be a genuine artist unless he is a great human being and thus also a good one.
Post a Comment