| In 1910, composer Victor Herbert and lyricist Rida Johnson Young wrote the song “Ah! Sweet Mystery of LIfe” for their operetta “Naughty Marietta.” In the 1935 film Naughty Marietta, the song was famously performed as a duet by main characters Princess Marie de Namour de la Bonfain (played by Jeanette MacDonald) and Captain Richard Warrington (played by Nelson Eddy). The piece opens with these lines: Ah! sweet mystery of life, At last I've found thee, Ah! I know at last the secret of it all. |  Click the pic above to hear "Ah! Sweet Mystery of Life" |
’Tis true, the princess and the captain discovered the secret of it all, the sweet mystery of life! Do you, dear reader, know the secret of it all? I suspect you do. I’ll reveal the answer at the conclusion of this post so that you can confirm that you do, indeed, know; however, I’d first like to share two sweet mysteries of life painted by Amy Sherald and add a bit about life’s mysteries from the pen of Dickinson.
Concerning Dickinson, Carol Rumens of “The Guardian” wrote this, “There's no poet who's so consistently disconcerting, fascinating, odd-angled. Like Stephen Hawking, Dickinson takes you to the edge of the cosmos – which may be billions of light years away or at your back door….the cosmos in microcosm.”
Quite mysterious, no? I’ll get to some of her lines soon enough.
Concerning Sherald, the two mysterious paintings I’d like to share are “Planes, Rockets, and the Spaces in Between” (below left) and “The Boy with No Past" (below right).
Concerning Dickinson, Carol Rumens of “The Guardian” wrote this, “There's no poet who's so consistently disconcerting, fascinating, odd-angled. Like Stephen Hawking, Dickinson takes you to the edge of the cosmos – which may be billions of light years away or at your back door….the cosmos in microcosm.”
Quite mysterious, no? I’ll get to some of her lines soon enough.
Concerning Sherald, the two mysterious paintings I’d like to share are “Planes, Rockets, and the Spaces in Between” (below left) and “The Boy with No Past" (below right).
 |  |
Let’s begin with “The Boy with No Past.” Now I ask, dear reader, how can it be that this boy has no past? True, Emily Dickinson said, “Forever is composed of nows” – but is it not, in reverse, also composed of “thens”? So what is it that has happened to his “thens”? Why does he have no past?
 | I have two interpretations, one positive and one not so. Let’s examine the optimistic one first. To do so, let me provide some framework from the life of the Belle of Amherst: * In April 1862, Dickinson read an article in “The Atlantic” by editor Thomas Wentworth Higginson offering advice to potential contributors. * That month, Dickinson wrote to him, enclosed four poems, and asked “Are you too deeply occupied to say if my Verse is alive?” * Higginson, intrigued by what he had read, wrote back, and offered Dickinson some advice concerning her poetry. |
* Dickinson replied and thanked him for “the surgery” (i.e., his criticisms): “It was not so painful as I supposed.” She also answered questions posed by Higginson, and for one query she responded with this: “You asked how old I was? I made no verse-but one or two-until this winter - Sir.”
Sooo…is Dickinson, who was 32 years old at the time, saying that her life began that winter – at the time she “made” her verse – that’s when she began living? There is no “past” leading up to that moment?
If that supposition is viable, then perhaps the boy “with no past” has just discovered his passion – and whatever that may be, his “life” begins now, at the onset of this pursuit. The boy’s glasses add emphasis to the fact that his calling has come into clearer focus. From this – experienced here – let months dissolve in further months and years exhale in years; they boy’s celebrated days, his forever, begins – now.
Alas, dear reader, in my other interpretation, I can also read pessimism into the title of the painting related to discussions of blatant bigotry of narrow-minded maggots and the so-called Trump “administration” shared in my two most recent posts, HERE and HERE
Does the boy have no past because our country continues to dismantle, dishonor, and discredit Black history? Instead of illuminating a bright future, do his glasses magnify the injury and insult of injustice?
I prefer my first interpretation, but like an optical illusion, I can also see the alternative. It’s like a contranym, a word with opposite meanings – like “left,” which can mean “to have departed” or “to remain” – and lo and behold, dear reader, that thought brings me to the second of the two paintings shared herein, “Planes, Rockets, and the Spaces in Between.”
Of this painting, Sherald said, “What I hope people carry with them after seeing this painting is that feeling, that in the spaces between what’s real and what’s possible, something new can emerge. A world that feels both familiar and newly invented.” However, once again, I can view this painting in both optimistic and pessimistic light. Are the two individuals on the canvas witnessing what is possible? Or are they being left behind?
Once again, I prefer my first interpretation; however, I see what is happening in the now and here of our society. Is it, in some way, suggested in this painting? Your thoughts?
I'll leave it at that for now, and return to the sweet mystery of life. And what, pray tell, is the secret of it all?
For 'tis love, and love alone, the world is seeking;
And 'tis love, and love alone, that can repay!
'Tis the answer, 'tis the end and all of living,
For it is love a lone that rules for aye!
Yes, 'tis love. See -- I told you you knew the answer! 'Tis love, indeed -- and so for both paintings, I'll regard them with rosy optimism.
Sooo…is Dickinson, who was 32 years old at the time, saying that her life began that winter – at the time she “made” her verse – that’s when she began living? There is no “past” leading up to that moment?
If that supposition is viable, then perhaps the boy “with no past” has just discovered his passion – and whatever that may be, his “life” begins now, at the onset of this pursuit. The boy’s glasses add emphasis to the fact that his calling has come into clearer focus. From this – experienced here – let months dissolve in further months and years exhale in years; they boy’s celebrated days, his forever, begins – now.
Alas, dear reader, in my other interpretation, I can also read pessimism into the title of the painting related to discussions of blatant bigotry of narrow-minded maggots and the so-called Trump “administration” shared in my two most recent posts, HERE and HERE
Does the boy have no past because our country continues to dismantle, dishonor, and discredit Black history? Instead of illuminating a bright future, do his glasses magnify the injury and insult of injustice?
I prefer my first interpretation, but like an optical illusion, I can also see the alternative. It’s like a contranym, a word with opposite meanings – like “left,” which can mean “to have departed” or “to remain” – and lo and behold, dear reader, that thought brings me to the second of the two paintings shared herein, “Planes, Rockets, and the Spaces in Between.”
Of this painting, Sherald said, “What I hope people carry with them after seeing this painting is that feeling, that in the spaces between what’s real and what’s possible, something new can emerge. A world that feels both familiar and newly invented.” However, once again, I can view this painting in both optimistic and pessimistic light. Are the two individuals on the canvas witnessing what is possible? Or are they being left behind?
Once again, I prefer my first interpretation; however, I see what is happening in the now and here of our society. Is it, in some way, suggested in this painting? Your thoughts?
I'll leave it at that for now, and return to the sweet mystery of life. And what, pray tell, is the secret of it all?
For 'tis love, and love alone, the world is seeking;
And 'tis love, and love alone, that can repay!
'Tis the answer, 'tis the end and all of living,
For it is love a lone that rules for aye!
Yes, 'tis love. See -- I told you you knew the answer! 'Tis love, indeed -- and so for both paintings, I'll regard them with rosy optimism.
BONUS POEM:
| At the start of this post, I quoted Carol Rumens' lines on Dickinson being able to transport readers via "the cosmos in microcosm," and her comments accompanied a "Poem of the Week" in The Guardian back in October 2010, HERE -- and what a poem it is! I AM BLOWN AWAY by the opening image -- the mystery presented by a jar of water seen as a neighbor from "another world" -- deep from the abyss. Rumens says, "It's a strange poem, 'floorless,' in a sense, and perhaps not flawless. The well appears to be a real one, not a metaphysical source of spiritual refreshment, but Dickinson's first stroke in the poem is to defamiliarise it, transform it into a kind of black hole." Even so, amid ghostly and haunted imagery, the grass and sedge stand at the edge and show now signs of timidity. The speaker in the poem wonders, how can they "stand so close and look so bold / At what is awe to me." Am I being hyperbolic if I liken this to the idea of museum goers staring in awe before a painting of mystery and wonder?  |  |
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