Ophelia

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Listen to this if your going to read all of the following.. cat power it may soften the agony of words...

 

We are all responding to a past concept, nothing is new, its all just repeated but with a new lease of life.

The Shakespearean character Ophelia was the concept for one of the greatest Pre-Raphaelite works of all by John Millais. For anyone that has been lucky enough to see this painting in The Tate Britain, you will understand how beautiful the original oil painting is( I usually sit in front of it for ages). I have been meaning to respond to this (as thousands have before me) for a while now, but did not have the time or inspiration.

This shows Ophelia floating down the river into which she has cast herself, feeling rejected by Hamlet. Her hair fans out in the stream, a necklace of violets around her neck and a loose bouquet of many different flowers drifting away from her slightly raised hands(These had drifted away already out of the shot)

 

There is a willow grows aslant a brook,

That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream.

There with fantastic garlands did she come

Of crowflowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples,

That liberal shepherds give a grosser name,

But our cold maids do dead men’s fingers call them.

There on the pendant boughs her coronet weeds

Clamb’ring to hang, an envious sliver broke,

When down her weedy trophies and herself

Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide

And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up;

Which time she chaunted snatches of old tunes,

As one incapable of her own distress,

Or like a creature native and indued

Unto that element; but long it could not be

Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,

Pull’d the poor wretch from her melodious layTo muddy death

(Queen Gertrude – Act 4 scene seven of Hamlet)

 

Done