Pensive in the Rain. Dante Alighieri and Auguste Rodin in Seoul, South Korea
I arrived here in Seoul in the rain and it rained still in the morning, and in the afternoon, and in the evening. Regardless I went out, of course. On my way to the dripping forests of Namsan Hill, I was walking along this street on to which open out countless alleyways with myriad often miniscule eateries from whence drift both known and unknown cooking aromas and vapors. Everyone always seems to be eating... Then suddenly Dante Alighieri, the greatest Medieval Poet, was thrust upon me, and the third circle of the Inferno of his Commedia. That's where the lovers of too much food, the gluttons, writhe in eternal, cursed, cold rain:
Io sono al terzo cerchio, de la piova /
etterna, maladetta, fredda e greve; /
regola e qualità mai non l'è nova.
(I am the third circle of eternal, cursed, cold and heavy rain; measure and quality are not 'innovation' [as we today might say...]).
There across the street hangs a picture of great sculptor Auguste Rodin's 'The Thinker' (his plaster version). Rodin had taken his inspiration for this 'thinking' man from his admiration for Dante Alighieri and the latter's vision of the human condition. Now rain and cold, then purification and finally Paradise, and at the end the love that moves the sun and the other stars.
There's a great retrospective exhibition here in the Seoul Museum of Art of a vast number of Rodin's (and his lover Camille Claudel's [1864-1943]) works. Hence many references in the streets and 'cultural' places of this most hospitable and friendly city to that French sculptor.
Pensive in the Rain. Dante Alighieri and Auguste Rodin in Seoul, South Korea
I arrived here in Seoul in the rain and it rained still in the morning, and in the afternoon, and in the evening. Regardless I went out, of course. On my way to the dripping forests of Namsan Hill, I was walking along this street on to which open out countless alleyways with myriad often miniscule eateries from whence drift both known and unknown cooking aromas and vapors. Everyone always seems to be eating... Then suddenly Dante Alighieri, the greatest Medieval Poet, was thrust upon me, and the third circle of the Inferno of his Commedia. That's where the lovers of too much food, the gluttons, writhe in eternal, cursed, cold rain:
Io sono al terzo cerchio, de la piova /
etterna, maladetta, fredda e greve; /
regola e qualità mai non l'è nova.
(I am the third circle of eternal, cursed, cold and heavy rain; measure and quality are not 'innovation' [as we today might say...]).
There across the street hangs a picture of great sculptor Auguste Rodin's 'The Thinker' (his plaster version). Rodin had taken his inspiration for this 'thinking' man from his admiration for Dante Alighieri and the latter's vision of the human condition. Now rain and cold, then purification and finally Paradise, and at the end the love that moves the sun and the other stars.
There's a great retrospective exhibition here in the Seoul Museum of Art of a vast number of Rodin's (and his lover Camille Claudel's [1864-1943]) works. Hence many references in the streets and 'cultural' places of this most hospitable and friendly city to that French sculptor.