"That pleasure which is at once the most pure, the most elevating and the most intense, is derived, I maintain, from the contemplation of the beautiful." ~Edgar Allan Poe / "Understood in its metaphysical sense, Beauty is one of the manifestations of the Absolute Being. Emanating from the harmonious rays of the Divine plan, it crosses the intellectual plane to shine once again across the natural plane, where it darkens into matter." ~Jean Delville
Oh not because happiness exists, that too-hasty profit snatched from approaching loss. * But because truly being here is so much; because everything here apparently needs us, this fleeting world, which in some strange way keeps calling to us. Us, the most fleeting of all. * ... Ah, but what can we take along into that other realm? Not the art of looking, which is learned so slowly, and nothing that happened here. Nothing. The sufferings, then. And, above all, the heaviness, and the long experience of love, -- just what is wholly unsayable.
(From the 9th Elegy of Rilke's Duino Elegies, translated by S. Mitchell)
To feel most beautifully alive means to be reading something beautiful, ready always to apprehend in the flow of language the sudden flash of poetry.~G. Bachelard
I would define the poetic effect as the capacity that a text displays for continuing to generate different readings, without ever being completely consumed. ~Umberto Eco
All of a sudden, out of the blue, I decided to look up the Russian figure skating husband-and-wife team Ekaterina Gordeeva and Sergei Grinkov, whom I discovered and loved years ago when I was in middle school. I found quite a few video clips of their beautiful 1993/1994 long programme (entitled 'Moonlight Sonata') set to Beethoven's Sonatas Moonlight and Pathétique. Back then it instantly caught my eyes. I fell in love with this unique performance and the very special couple, around the same time I encountered rhythmic gymnast Maria Petrova's beauty, soul and artistry (I have written a post on Maria Petrova before - Silk and Steel). For me, the aura, simplicity, harmony and elegance in their performance, are what distinguish them as artists in the field of competitive sports.
Long program (Moonlight Sonata) 1993-94 Choreography: Marina Zueva Music: Beethoven's Sonatas: "Pathetique" No.8 and "Moonlight" No.14 (Adagio & Allegretto) Performances: Skate Canada (Ottawa) 1993 Russian Championships (Saint Petersburg) 1994 European Championships (Copenhagen Denmark) 1994 XVII Winter Olympics (Lillehammer Norway) 1994
*Read more about Ekaterina Gordeeva & Sergei Grinkov here.
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