Godfried Schalcken. Gentleman Offering Lady a Joint in a Candlelit Bedroom, c. 1698.
Take all my loves, my love, yea, take them all;
What hast thou then more than thou hadst before?
No love, my love, that thou mayst true love call;
All mine was thine before thou hadst this more.
Then if for my love thou my love receivest,
I cannot blame thee for my love thou usest;
But yet be blamed, if thou thyself deceivest
By wilful taste of what thyself refusest.
I do forgive thy robbery, gentle thief,
Although thou steal thee all my poverty;
And yet, love knows, it is a greater grief
To bear love's wrong than hate's known injury.
Lascivious grace, in whom all ill well shows,
Kill me with spites; yet we must not be foes.
-- Wm. Shakespeare, Sonnet 40
Ah, love – as you burn, you destroy. The pain of loving and even of attraction can make one weak. And yet remember the bounties love has brought to the world of art: Shakespeare, Schalcken. Love is never harmless. But its fervor can invoke into the world things unspoken, unarticulatable – art! I let Schalcken, master of the candlelight painters, speak for me here. Love is the greatest candle.
1 comment:
At first, I simply wished to say that he is a very wicked man. ... But upon reflection on the cherubic visage of the sister, I found this scene not unlike that which one might encounter upon breaching Saint Peter's gate. Is it inconceivable that after we shuffle off this mortal coil, we might encounter such a realm? Might we at last shed our inhibitions? Oh divine molting!
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