“Old Courtesan”/”Celle qui fut la belle heaulmièr”/”She who was once the helmet-maker’s wife”/”Winter”. Auguste Rodin, 1885.
Anybody can look at a pretty girl and see a pretty girl. An artist can look at a pretty girl and see the old woman she will become. A better artist can look at an old woman and see the pretty girl that she used to be.
But a great artist — a master — and that is what Auguste Rodin was — can look at an old woman, portray her exactly as she is, and force the viewer to see the pretty girl she used to be, and more than that, he can make anyone with the sensitivity of an armadillo, or even you, see that this lovely young girl is still alive, not old and ugly at all, but simply prisoned inside her ruined body.
He can make you feel the quiet, endless tragedy that there was never a girl born who ever grew older than eighteen in her heart, no matter what the merciless hours have done to her.
(Robert A. Heinlein. Stranger In A Strange Land. 1961.)
Posts Tagged ‘Stranger In A Strange Land’
Heinlein Month: Rodin and the merciless hours
July 22, 2011Heinlein Month: The real problem
July 10, 2011
Photograph by John Filo. Mary Vecchio crying over the body of a fellow student slain by National Guardsmen. May 4, 1970. Kent State, Ohio, USA.
“You’re bitching about friendly fornication — do you know what I’m worried about?”
“What?”
“Christ was crucified for preaching without a police permit. Sweat over that, instead.”
(Jubal to Mike. Stranger In A Strange Land.)
Heinlein Month: This just in — kissing girls better than pinochle
July 3, 2011
The lovely and talented Alessandra Torresani.
“Kiss girls all you want to — it beats the hell out of card games.” — Jubal Harshaw.
(Robert Heinlein, Stranger In A Strange Land. 1961.)
I don’t know. Uno is pretty fun.
The Thought Experiment 