artistreader: take two: “…an odd sense of comfort in our small squalid flat: two rooms,
artistreader:take two:“…an odd sense of comfort in our small squalid flat: two rooms, a hazy view in one window, a brick wall in the other, a tiny kitchen, a shoe-shaped bath tub, within which i felt like marat but with no white necked maiden to stab me” (v. nabokov, lolita, part i, chapter 8)‘death of marat’ painted by jacques-louis david 1793and charles baudelaire on david’s painting, from “the divine marat”, written 1846:“the drama is there, alive in all its pitiful horror, and by a strange stroke of brilliance, which makes this David‟s masterpiece and one of the great treasures of modern art, there is nothing trivial or ignoble about it. What is most astonishing in this exceptional poem is the fact that it is painted extremely quickly, and when one considers the beauty of its design, it is all the more bewildering. It is the bread of the strong and the triumph of the spiritual; as cruel as nature, this picture has the heady scent of idealism. What has become of that ugliness that Death has so swiftly erased with the tip of its wing? Marat can henceforth challenge Apollo; Death has kissed him with loving lips and he rests in the peace of transformation. There is in this work something both tender and poignant, a soul hovers in the chilled air of this room, on these cold walls, around the cold and funereal bath.” -- source link
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