#i love when characters have that melting moment together; i love poetical yearning and desire; suggestive details that slowly trail to a

[darabeatha]

I want to reblog an intimacy meme too but then I think; can I truly write paragraphs of yearning and desire today-

[shiredwarf]

okay, so here's the long ass rant that was promised. It's very much centered around Jaime and Brienne/Jaime because apart from Tyrion they're like the only reason I'm still invested (and this blog will stan book!Jaime to the bitter end) though don't expect any sort of Cersei bashing. Jaime/Cersei is complicated and boils down to more than "OMG SHE'S A TOXIC BITCH!!!" but more on that later. Obviously, there will be spoilers behind the cut and speculations regarding the rest of the show + a reference to a potential leak for ep 5 that's basically been going around since even before the show started so I don't know how big of a surprise that is to anyone.

Starting off with a couple of plot points:

The Funeral Scene Dany and Jorah were heartbreaking :( I loved those two together so much :( Jon's speech was fantastic but you know it would have been more moving if literally ANYONE apart from the people in the North + Cersei's gang had been aware of the danger heading their way. Like I bet you could talk to any peasant in King's Landing and they wouldn't even have a clue what White Walker means.

Gendry Baratheon of Storm's End & The Feast A++ scene, would watch again. Loved that Dany gave a shoutout to Arya and drunken Tyrion leaning on drunken Jaime warms my heart. Love my dysfunctional Lannisters. Also as much as I dislike certain aspects of the drinking game (see below) I appreciate Tyrion's match-making. He's a good bro. And seeing Brienne so relaxed with her friends is just... good stuff. Tormund is a cutie as always and Tyrion pouring him a drink after he realizes he has no chance with Brienne was the best. So was the Hound acting as Tormunds relationship counsellor. Poetic cinema. The token and conveniently available Northern women throwing themselves all over any male single character wasn't on the other hand. Loved that Sansa and Sandor finally got a scene together. Didn't love the 'glad I was raped so I could become the woman I am now' bullshit. Gendry is the fucking cutest! Smitten to the core. I am tentatively confident that he and Arya will work it out if they survive.

Tormund's & Sam's Goodbye Glad they got a goodbye with Jon, glad Tormund got Ghost cause Jon sure as hell doesn't deserve him. Like not even a pat. How the direwolves were treated pisses me off so much. At this point, I hope we'll never see them again just so they can be alive and happy wandering around with the best boi.

Missandei & Rhaegal No comment tbh. What's even the point anymore.

Onwards to relationships & characters:

The Starks & Dany I AM SO SICK OF THIS. SO SICK OF IT. Arya did not cut Littlefinger's scheming throat last season so that they can now scheme and bicker amongst themselves. Yes, Sansa has a right to worry about the North. Yes, Dany fucked up more than once since she came to Westeros. But those characters faced a tsunami of undead together and them still being too stubborn to even entertain working together without a hidden agenda to bring down Cersei is stupid and PLAIN BAD WRITING!     Now Tyrion is being dragged into this shitshow as well and I just... ugh Varys why

Dany Listen, I'm not the biggest Dany fan, far from it. But they're treating her like shit! She lost so much during that battle and there she is at the table watching others bond while she's alone. Like jfc Jon I'm not saying I approve of this whole thing but go hug her or something, she's given her all in the battle. Again I don't approve of most of the things she's done since coming to Westeros but can you imagine how isolating this experience must be. Apart from a select few survivors, everyone close to her for the past years is now back in the company of people they've known for far longer. They belong, they have bonds, friendships, loves, family and she's not part of it, has no place in this. She must feel so lonely right now. And instead of highlighting that (or btw dealing with the PTSD that everyone surely suffers from after that battle) they make her go all MAD QUEEN! Because that's how you write female characters isn't it. As soon as they show strong emotions due to trauma you can label them as crazy! jfc Then she loses another dragon, large parts of her fleet and Missandei. I honestly can only feel bad for her. And all that by the hand of fucking Euron the most annoying and flat villain out there. Honestly, at this point, I support "MadQueen!Dany". Just burn everything to the ground, preferably the entire show with the exception of Brienne being knighted.

Jaime & Tyrion Not much to say here except: I love them. I just want to watch them sit around in front of a fire and drink and tease each other for the rest of my life. I just love their sibling dynamic.

Jaime & Tyrion & Bronn I don't know really... usually I love those together but that scene was just... off? I don't know. So Bronn just rode North for a 3-minute talk and then he just... fucks off? (I mean I assume he doesn't, he will be around in some form but it just irks me. Inconsistent writing and people teleporting in and out of the plot.)

Euron & Cersei Yeah, I love watching Euron creep on Cersei. Totally cool. Not like this is what she wanted to escape since the very start. Yeah, it's cool.

Jaime & Brienne Oh boy.... ok, let's start with the stuff I liked

the two of them just enjoying each other's company during the feast and just smiling at each other so free of their usual burdens. seriously Brienne has smiled so many times over the past episodes (and she melts my heart every time she does. Gwen is stunning!). In case it wasn't obvious until now: I really hate so much about season 8 but the absolute avalanche of good Brienne/Jaime content in ep 2 and 3 will be cherished forever.

Jaime's character arc is putting up a good fight at the beginning coming to Brienne's defence when Tyrion asks about her virginity

Jaime was so freaking nervous when he showed up at Brienne's door and I'm so here for that. I'm also here for Brienne doing most of the undressing. Get it, Brienne, you deserve this. No seriously though it matters to me that she pushed his hand away and then started to undress herself. It was her choice. She wasn't passively just taking what he was offering. I appreciate that in a show that has a less than stellar record with consent.

and listen I'm so bitter about so many things but I can't help but love it. I just love those two so much and I will cling to that one moment of happiness.

now the stuff I didn’t like...

right, so this is just a pet peeve of mine but I HATE the whole 'sex jumpstarted by a never-have-i-ever drinking game'-trope. I just hate it. I don't know what it is about that but I just don't like it and whenever I come across it in a fanfic it just throws me off. Now this scene itself was cute, not denying that but I just hate that THAT's the thing that sets it all off. especially since there was no need? and I should know I've read like every Brienne/Jaime fanfic published in the last two weeks. making two people hook up after a battle should be the easiest thing but no they go for this mediocre modern college AU plot? (and I'm not joking, I've read a fic like that a year or so ago...)

I really dislike the fact that they focused on Brienne's virginity because it's not in character for her to be worried about that. Apart from the fact that she is unmarried and highborn and therefore unlikely to have slept with anyone in the first place Brienne has never been ashamed of that. She is ashamed of her looks and her mannerisms and she thinks no one will ever love her or desire her. That's her insecurity. Not the fact that she's a virgin. If that were the case she could have fixed that with Tormund ages ago. Brienne yearns for acceptance (she got that now thanks to the knighting) and love (which can come with sex but is not exclusively tied to it) not some hookup. Now Tyrion doesn't know that so I can kind of understand his line of thought and her reaction I just don't like that this again is what triggers the development of Brienne's and Jaime's relationship. She's not flawed because she's a virgin and he doesn't need to "fix that". What they do need to do instead is face their feelings, share them and if that then leads to sex, all the better but it's not the point! Brienne being loved is the point and I'd have rather had an "I love you" than 10 sex scenes.

Speaking of circumstances... I would have prefered them not to be drunk but I guess I can kind of accept it. Both of them are damaged and insecure and would probably doubt the other's intentions in their sober state. Still... would have been nicer (and at least they weren't like REALLY drunk... to the point where consent would have been debatable)

I am still a bit upset that we didn't get a scene between them talking through what's going on in their heads (e.g. a discussion of what Jaime will do now and what he meant when he didn't finish "I came to Winterfell because....") but then again both Brienne and Jaime have always been more about actions than words so I'll accept it.

Did not get a scene with Brienne taking his hand off and showing him acceptance  :/

Jaime

My first response to the episode was as you can guess very negative. Jaime's been my fave for a decade or so now and it's been beyond painful seeing his character development grind to a standstill for years on end. I was willing to forgive it though. I realize they needed someone to humanise Cersei and a screen partner for Lena that isn't a zombie or a creepy necromancer and when Jaime rode North at the end of S7 I thought: Ok here we go, we're finally back on track. Should have happened years ago during the siege of Riverun but at least it's happening at all. Then we get two episodes of Jaime distancing himself from Cersei and following Brienne around like a puppy. Quality material. Now though there are two options Either D&D decided to fuck him over and just obliterate 9 years of character growth for the sake of shock OR this is a very clumsy attempt at increasing the suspense and making people question whether Jaime is bad after all. Personally, I believe (and will always believe) option 2 BECAUSE THAT'S THE FUCKING BOOK CANON. Realistically though, I'm expecting option one.

Anyway, most of Jaime's scene can be interpreted one way or another and that's the only thing giving me hope here. For example

The sex scene with Brienne could just be him letting off steam, feeling alive after a battle etc and he doesn't truly desire and love her as much as he loves Cersei. BUT Jaime has never been about sex, Jaime has always been about love. Misguided and utterly toxic love from time to time but it's always been about love. He's had women throwing themselves at him left and right and yet he's always been faithful. Always true to Cersei. Why on Earth would he stop being faithful now? I believe sex and love are 100% intertwined for Jaime and he will not have sex with anyone he does not fully love. I always believed Jaime would have to put his relationship with Cersei behind him for anything to happen between him and Brienne (which is why I was so happy they didn't immediately kiss in ep 2). Whether that's the way the show sees it is another question...

When Jaime watched Brienne sleep afterwards that again can be read as regret or him thinking of Cersei and feeling guilty, wondering what he's done.  I'd like to think instead that he's really wrestling with his own demons here (and that btw is why I would have rather had a scene with them having a heart to heart and fucking sorting this shit out once and for all). First of all: Jaime hates himself and I'm 100% sure he doesn't think he deserves Brienne. I think he feels guilty for not being able to keep his distance. I think he's aware that he's still on thin ice both with the Starks and Dany but also with Cersei. A lot of people would rather see him dead. What would that mean for Brienne's reputation? And what would happen if Cersei found out about this? So I'd like to think he's realized that he's involving her in something very dangerous that could leave her dead or emotionally damaged. (And btw why would he be planning and discussing their future with Tyrion later when he's already considering Cersei straight after sex? He would have put a stop to it because again love > sex for Jaime).

I don't know how Jaime staying in Winterfell would make any sense if he was still madly in love with Cersei. And I'm not saying this through my Brienne/Jaime googles. This is completely independent of Brienne. He knows they will go to war against Cersei. He's not part of the war council because obviously they don't trust him and maybe he also doesn't want to be directly involved in the killing of his own blood. No matter what she will do, no matter how much he will fall out of love with her she is still family, still his blood and there will always be a part of Jaime that loves his family and his blood no matter what they do (see Tywin, see Tyrion). Him jumping at the chance to kill Cersei would be out of character regardless of whether he now loves Brienne or not. In any case, Jaime knows what's coming, has no illusions there so if he's truly still bound to Cersei why not leave then. It's been days? I really can't explain this one if the writers go with option 1.

now about the scene with Sansa and Brienne. Could be that he is worried about Cersei and it's only now sinking in that she will die. Could be that Sansa's snide comment triggered something in him. Buuuuuut he does not look happy when he learns about Cersei's success. He looks worried, he looks like he didn't expect that. I'm not saying he's not shook by Sansa's comment. As I said I believe he will never truly not care about Cersei, she has made him who he was, she has been the focus of his life for so many years, you can't just forget that. But there is a difference between him losing it and doing a 180 because he still wants Cersei and him feeling conflicted because he knows what Cersei is and what needs to be done but that doesn't erase their history.

and then finally the goodbye scene. Again this could be in line with option 1, in fact it seems very much in line with it. I'm not saying it's not. But there are signs that it might not be. Like "Have you ever run away from a fight?" for example. Cause that's what he's been doing! He stayed behind in Winterfell because leaving would have meant fighting on one side or the other. He was trying to avoid that I think. And I also think he's now realised he can't. I think he didn't expect Cersei to kill a dragon or capture someone close to Dany. I think he thought it would be easier to take her down but apparently, it's not and I think he's worried now. Worried that Cersei will win and what that will mean for everyone he loves (Tyrion, Brienne). He probably decided that he's got the best chance of finishing this or at least contributing to the end. He might have realized that they do not have the luxury of keeping him out of it. Then Brienne brings her hands to his face and starts to beg and you know what he does? HE NODS TO HIMSELF. You know when Jaime usually nods to himself??? When he realizes how good, and pure, and honourable and true Brienne is. When he realizes he will have to stop her from giving too much because of that (e.g. when she tries to give Oathkeeper back. He does this little nod that says "of course she would do this" and then he has to tell her to keep it!). I honestly think this is him going "right, of course, she would do this. Of course, it's not going to be that easy. Time to bring out the big guns." He then goes on to confess all of his bad deeds and yeah again this could be option 1. Him driving home how much he loves her and not Brienne. But honestly, does it seem like that? He's not gloating, he's not admitting to this easily (the way he used to when Cat had him). To me, it looks like he has to force himself to do this because he hopes that will convince her to a) let him go and b) not follow him. I think he's trying to cut ties because he doesn't want her with him for what he's about to do. I think he's trying to make her hate him because he doesn't expect to come back and he thinks this way will be easier on her. This is Jaime's version of throwing stones at Nymeria. And as much as I try and read this any other way I just can't.  Nevertheless, he made my girl cry and boy that's testing the limits of my love for him^^

What I think should (and could) now happen: I think it would make perfect sense for Jaime to go South on his own, infiltrate the capital, get to Cersei and play some part in her demise. I can even see them dying together as suggested by (unconfirmed) leaks but I doubt it will be in the spirit of  “We came into this world together, we'll leave it together”. If they die together, I think it's more likely that he will stay with her because of the love he still feels for her even though that love is nothing compared to what it used to be. Looking at the episode I feel like this would make so much sense and most importantly it would not butcher his arc.

What I suspect will happen instead: I'm bitter and sad and based on the crap D&D have done to Jaime and others in past seasons, based on this constant need for cruelty and shocking twists I fully expect them to go with option 1. They've had this hard-on for Cersei/Jaime since forever and even though that relationship is way past its expiration date they keep shoving it into our faces. I hate this for many reasons, especially for nullifying Jaime's arc, for turning Brienne into I don't even know what, his rebound I guess. I'm willing to forgive them much but not this. I'm okay with my faves being killed off but not if everything they have become through trauma and hardship is erased within 5 minutes. And the thought that this could very well be the last scene between Brienne and Jaime and that Brienne is either right to believe that Jaime has left her or might never know his true intentions if he does switch but dies beside Cersei is too much. I want to believe guys but I'm so bitter and I don't trust them with Jaime and I do not want to get my hopes up just to be utterly disappointed. So yeah, this is what I'm preparing myself for.

So to summarize: It was not as bad as it could have been and I do think the hate is a bit much but that always happens when you get incomplete spoilers and have HOURS to freak out and hate it even before it starts but jfc they still fucked up. Character assassinations left and right, bad writing and plot holes (Euron anyone???), unnecessary drama and the usual mix of racism and misogyny. In any case, I want to end on a positive note here, so let me just point out the ONLY things I will take away from this episode:

Brienne being beyond precious!

Jaime is GONE, my friends. GONE! (seriously though through the entire thing they kept stealing glances and it's so obvious Jaime talked to her about his family. We missed so much of their relationship in season 4  :( )

Probably not what I'm supposed to be focusing on but that entire scene just screams domestic old married couple. I'm a big fan of Jaime showing weakness in front of her and Brienne accepting and helping without a second thought.

I can't get over how much THEY TOUCH each other. It's been years with nothing but his hand on hers when she was going for the knife and now they're all over each other. And the best thing about it: It's so natural. It's so new but they act as if they've been doing this for years! No hesitation, no doubt and Brienne accepting that she’s allowed to do this now, that he wants it :) (also look at thiiiiiis)

[nastyaphrodite]

Mother Tongue - Demetria Martinez

fyi one of the most poetically written books I’ve ever read, quotes are too good to lose to time.

(will be tagged personal, but this is not personal ...)

pg. 4: and I was one of those women whose fate is to take war out of a man, or at least imagine she is doing so.

pg. 5: before his arrival the chaos of my life had no axis about which to spin, a center far from God that I asked for forgiveness in advance.

pg. 12: Everything else is remembering. Or dismembering. To create a man out of blanks that can never wound me.

pg. 15: From day one I looked for ways to graft a piece of myself onto him, to become indispensable. My gestures were perfectly timed, touching his hand, twisting my hair, excusing myself to touch up my lipstick---ordinary actions that would reverse the tides of my life as in the theories of physicists who say the dance of a butterfly can cause volcanoes to erupt.

pg 16: Love at first sight, this how I explained the urgency that would later shed its skin and reveal pure desperation. Some women fall in love in advance of knowing a man because it is much easier to love a mystery. And I needed a mystery---someone outside of ordinary time would could rescue me from an ordinary life, from my name ... a blessing that had become a curse. At age nineteen, I was looking for a man to tear apart the dry rind of that name so I could see what fruit fermented inside.

pg. 19: Yes, from the very beginning I wanted him. In that time of my life, men were mirrors that allowed me to see myself at different angles. Outside this function, they did not exist. It was a supreme selfishness, the kind that feeds on men’s attentions, a void flourishing in a void. **** In the end, I had no choice but to love him. Desire was not good enough. Love would ripen in the light of time we spent together, like an arranged marriage. Except that I was doing the arranging. And calling it fate.

pg. 20: I swear to God the moment I laid eyes on him I knew he was The One. And it can’t be a coincidence—that he arrived on the scene just as I was asking the universe whether or not there was more to life than just holding down boring jobs. I’d been so depressed. Now everything has changed. Still, I know I should slow these feelings down. Or else I’ll want to act on them—which always ruins everything. I’ve got to remember I can’t “make” anything happen beyond doing the footwork for some greater purpose that may be trying to manifest here. Maybe I’m supposed to just be his friend.

pg. 22: It’s like I’m going for longer and longer periods of time forgetting I’m depressed. Which maybe is a definition of happiness.

pg. 23: Peace. Joy. Openness to the future. How else can I describe what I’m feeling except for the big “L” word, which I don’t dare say out loud. Because it’s like yelling fire in a theater. Men flee and my girlfriends say to me, you fool.

pg. 26: Very often, when I try to remember those days, everything comes to mind except for memories of myself: what I looked like or said or felt. This is where it gets painful. You see, memory does not always serve me. It seeks images and feelings to hook on to, but at times encounters only voids. The facts are easy enough to recite. *** I fled the world, went inside, ceased to feel. You could say I fell asleep. There was no mystery to it. Quite simply, it was easier to sleep and pretend to be awake than to stay awake and pretend to be strong. *** They had words for women like me. Insane fell out of favor as did nervous breakdown. Clinically depressed was, I believe, in vogue. But ask any woman who has had times in her life when she was not all there. She will say she was asleep. And women who fall asleep and don’t know why lack a plot line; this is the secret source of their shame. So I concocted a plot of my own, orchestrating what I could until characters began to say and do things I had never imagined, me included. To prove the gods at least were interested in me, I courted disaster, set out to love a man I knew full well would go away. Falling in love was a way of pinching myself. It proved I was alive only on that thin line between drama and trauma. I handed my body over ... like a torch to help him out of his dark places. I felt no shame. I was utterly unoriginal. To love a man more than one’s self was a socially acceptable way for a woman to be insane.

pg. 32: It was like taking one last look around a hospital room where someone I loved had died. And I cried, I couldn’t stop, it was a surprise. I thought my arroyo of grief had long ago dried up, leaving only an imprint of the storm.

pg. 49: I was young, future tense came naturally to me: Iré, irás.… I will go, you will go. I have always lacked talent for living in the here and now, and back then I was easily transported into luminous, unobtainable futures.

pg. 55: Where others saw indigo, I saw blue; where others saw teal, I saw green. It’s the draining away of color that happens in a woman’s life when she can’t name her own reality. It is only now that I am able to go back and color in the pale places, creating a mural on the walls of the life I now inhabit.

pg. 59-60: The truth is, some of our tenderest moments are the ones I am least likely to remember. It has to do with what I said about sleep, how women like me sometimes flee, letting loving words or glances melt on the hot pavement of some nameless fear. So forgive me if I embellish; even a conjured memory is better than no memory at all if you would dare to give your life what the world did not, a myth, a plot. Besides, I never intended to reconstruct him from memory, just from love, which may be the only way anyone can ever hope to get at the whole truth.

pg. 61: I knew the name but not the man.

pg. 63-64: Now I have reason to improve my Spanish. I have a word and a way of life to conjugate: Quiero, quieres, quiere, queremos.… To want and to love, the same thing! God, make this thing last. Make it last. I sound crazed, I know, but with good reason. My period’s due any moment, and I have found true love. The kind that pulls all of life in one direction. It’s too much. Already, his presence in my life is helping me forget all the sadness (what was it about?) that pulled me down for so long before he came. *** The thought of being with him forever is intoxicating. But I’ve got to be careful. I’ve got to stay in the present. The minute I get hung up on the idea of forever, on what will happen tomorrow, I ruin everything.

pg. 65: But I don’t need sleep, I don’t need food, just you, I answered. I unpeeled myself from him, removed myself like a bandage. The cruelty of limits stung: the need for sleep, food, a paycheck however small. If an hour were a house one could move into for good, I would have built a wall around the 2 o’clock hour, a brick wall arrayed against the disfiguring fury of the future.

pg. 66: We opened each other up like sacred books, Spanish on one side, English on the other, truths simultaneously translated.

pg. 68-69: But I’m deceiving myself again. Lying. For a long time after (he) I continued to believe a man could touch my essence, make me whole. All that time I could have been writing, touching the fires of my being and returning to the world, purified and strong. *** You see, I was one of those women who is at her best when she wants something very badly. The mating dance, the yearning and flirting, surrenders and manipulations—I was good at that, so good at the pursuit that when I actually got what I wanted, terror appeared. Terror that wore the silly mask of disappointment.

pg. 73: The few friends I had during that spell of my life quit calling; the word must have gotten out that (I) was in love. They knew I wouldn’t come out of the house, the house I drew with crayons, a house of primary colors I called love. The first time I fell in love, friends tried to tell me it was not real. To prove them wrong, I drew a keyhole on the front door and invited them to look through to the other side. See for yourselves, I said.

pg. 76: It’s dangerous for a couple to promise to stay married until they die. It’s better to vow to stay together until the marriage dies—and to do everything in their power to keep it alive. If you don’t think of marriage as a plant, fragile and in need of attention, then you’re asking for major trouble.

pg. 77: That’s what I hate about love. Bit by bit you start to give things up. You become like a good parent. But I love him so it’s all worth it. I’ve never felt this way about anyone.

pg. 81-82: Unfortunately (or fortunately?), wounds will often start healing even if you don’t want them to, even if you would rather die quietly in the corner of a cell. The body’s will to live sometimes is greater than that of mind or spirit.

pg. 86: Do I just let things continue until they fall apart? The warmth of her flesh is all I have to make me forget. But alcohol does the same thing. Am I using her? Or is she using me each time she looks at me and loves what is not there?

pg. 87: No, I haven’t forgiven myself for being disappeared from myself any more than I have forgiven him.

pg. 88: He carved that question mark into my heart and kept watch over it until I could wake up and cry out.

pg. 89-90: Things began to happen. There were times he didn’t call, times he didn’t say I love you, nonevents that hurt in little ways, like paper cuts, but that added up. It could be these nonevents had happened all along, the normal ups and downs of relationships. But at a certain point, I began to perceive that he was pulling away from me and thinking about other things. And fear ate at my heart like battery acid. But it’s very likely that I only imagined him pulling away, imagined the whole thing. You see, the fear I am best at is always based upon a myth. *** ... assumption that to survive one sometimes must flee all that is loved. This is what terrified me. His body was branded with the equation, love equals flight.

pg. 94: You see, real love is quiet as snow, without chaos, hard to write about.

pg. 95: They were not like the white God I’d had to kill, that women like me must kill if we are to have any hope of ever finding God. Nothing replaced Him for a long time. But looking back now I can see that the growing chaos inside blazed away dead growth, clearing a space, however violently, for God to be reborn.

pg. 96-97: There were so many moments I would rather not talk about but in this dark night of remembering, they are blooming like night flowers. *** When he didn’t call, my world shriveled. Fetal position. Blistered finger pad. Or when he called and didn’t say, I love you, I shattered, then mistook a piece of me for the whole, a mistake that disfigures women’s lives time and again. But I lacked the nerve to tell him how I was feeling.

pg. 101: Now, as I write this, I can’t remember the real me. It’s terrifying, that you can love someone so much that you lose your own self in the uproar. I can’t remember the me who loves September, who loves to walk or read.

pg. 117: But every woman should have a special place inside where she can think, where no man is allowed, a place that will, you know, endure. Why do you think I took up letter writing? No man is worth falling apart over. Take it from me.

pg. 146: love could not be used like a cage to make a man stay. What if the universe now was telling me that it might take even greater love to let someone go? But I was not capable of detachment.

pg. 155: And as it is at times with bones, my heart needed to be broken and reset properly so it could carry me through life.

pg. 163: I’m tired, frightfully tired. Like snake venom, this story’s medicine had to be drawn from my own body. Maybe you won’t even read this, I don’t know. Long ago I began this tale for reasons I could not yet articulate, maybe for no reason at all. *** Promesas are as dangerous as skydiving, leaps into thin air. Nothing frightens me more than an answered prayer. And nothing taxes a body more than giving something back to God. This is why I am so tired, why I have spent this day crying in my room.

(4-2-19/4-2-19)

[caveartfair]

Klimt’s Iconic “Kiss” Sparked a Sexual Revolution in Art

Kiss, 1907. Gustav Klimt Belvedere Museum

Few artworks are as adored or widely reproduced as Gustav Klimt’s The Kiss (1907–08). The sumptuous, gilded embrace graces dorm-room posters and $10 T-shirts the world over, but there is much more to the painting’s story than its commercial ubiquity today. When Klimt created his masterpiece at the height of the Viennese avant-garde and its psycho-sexual revolution, it was brazenly erotic, politically charged, and artistically revolutionary.

Klimt was already the fearless leader of the Viennese avant-garde when he began painting The Kiss in 1907. He’d made passionate acolytes of young, ambitious artists like Egon Schiele and Oskar Kokoschka, who sought to express raw human feelings. He’d also made bitter enemies of the prudish Austrian art establishment, who balked at the unabashed sensuality and aesthetic decadence of his work.

Gustav Klimt, Judith I, 1901. Image via Wikimedia Commons.

Gustav Klimt, Danae, 1907–08. Image via Wikimedia Commons.

The painter had come of age in a moment of dramatic cultural transition in Austria. Old-guard arts institutions, inspired by Catholic righteousness and Victorian repression, sought to limit creative expression and sexual freedom. At the same time, intellectuals and artists like Klimt, Sigmund Freud, architect Otto Wagner, and composers Gustav Mahler and Arnold Schönberg pushed back with work that boldly expressed their impressions of the world around them.

In 1897, Klimt banded together with a group of forward-thinking artists and designers to found the transgressive movement known as the Secession, a word borrowed from an ancient Roman term defined as a “revolt against ruling powers.” They chose a heroic motto to match: “To each age its art, and to art its freedom.” The Secession artists jettisoned the academic style of their predecessors in favor of work that dismantled the boundaries between art and life, and art and design. Increasingly, Klimt’s paintings foregrounded themes like mortality, desire, and psychological inquiry.

Moving Water, 1898. Gustav Klimt Galerie St. Etienne

Symbolism, allegory, and decoration became a means to veil—albeit thinly—his more radical views. Before The Kiss, the artist explored the life cycle—and the role of sex within it—in several monumental mural projects. In 1900, the University of Vienna commissioned Klimt to create three ceiling paintings on the subjects of philosophy, medicine, and jurisprudence. His sprawling composition for Medicine, in particular, scandalized his patrons when he unveiled it. They took particular issue with the tumult of intertwined bodies and glimpses of female pubic hair (unprecedented at the time) that covered the panel, deriding it as pornographic. Klimt eventually pulled out of the project, sending his critics a potent message in the form of a painting called Goldfish (1901–02), which was originally titled To My Critics. In it, a nymph sticks her bare buttocks into the viewer’s face.

Medicine (Detail: Hygieia), 1900/07. Gustav Klimt Belvedere Museum

Gustav Klimt, Goldfish, 1901–02. Image via Wikimedia Commons.

In Klimt’s renowned Beethoven Frieze (1902), installed in the Vienna Secession building, he was even more explicit, introducing motifs related to love and sex that would arise in The Kiss. In this metaphorical painting, love is the elixir that triumphs over monstrous evils, releasing humanity from suffering. Its final section, dubbed “The Yearning for Happiness finds fulfillment in Happiness,” shows a couple embracing so rapturously that they read as a single being. A golden ovular form encircles them, emphasizing their union. In art historian Patrick Bade’s reading, the composition is blatantly sexual, equating salvation with physical passion and procreation: “The abstract, decorative surround of the couple suggests fairly explicitly the form of an erect phallus within the surrounding vagina,” he wrote in the 2011 book Gustav Klimt.

By this point in his career, Klimt had embarked on his “Golden Phase”—a period in which he decorated paintings with elaborate swaths of gold leaf, inscribing it with patterns that heightened pictures’ sheen and suggestiveness. (As the son of a goldsmith and engraver, working with the material came naturally to him.) While works like Judith and the Head of Holofernes (1901) and the Beethoven Frieze incorporated gold, he ramped up his use of the technique after a 1903 trip to Ravenna, Italy, where he encountered the excessive gold tooling and mosaic work of Byzantine art.

Gustav Klimt, Portrait of Adele Block-Bauer I, 1907. Image via Wikimedia Commons.

Not long after his return to Vienna, Klimt forged the greatest works of his Golden Phase, and arguably of his entire career: Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I (1907) and The Kiss. Both paintings combine gold and silver leaf with swirling patterning that alludes to vigorous life forces and corporeal curves. As art historian Ludwig Hevesi has written, “Klimt’s ornamentation is the figurative expression of primal matter, which is always, without end, in a state of flux, turning and twisting in spirals, entangling itself, a whirlpool that takes on every shape, zebra stripes flashing like lightning, tongues of flame darting forwards, vine tendrils, smoothly linked chains, flowing veils, tender nets.”

Indeed, with these paintings, Klimt reached the apex of his signature style—a fusion of the linear compositions of Art Nouveau, the organic forms of the Arts and Crafts movement, and his own interest in human passions.

In The Kiss,as in the last phase of the Beethoven Frieze, a man and a woman melt into each other. Their bodies are obscured by a thick gold cloak, but Klimt doesn’t hold back from suggesting what lies underneath. A pattern of erect rectangles covers the man, while concentric circles decorate the woman. Again, their individual forms fuse into a single, phallic column, which is shrouded by an oval, vaginal halo. Bade even goes so far as to describe the flowers that cascade down the woman’s side as “spermatozoa-like ornament,” indicating “that the moment of climactic ecstasy has just passed.” Whether or not Klimt was indeed referencing sperm, this patterning certainly illustrates the moments in his work when “the anatomy of the models becomes ornamentation, and the ornamentation becomes anatomy,” as art historian Alessandra Comini has written.

Gustav Klimt, The Kiss (details), 1907. Image via Wikimedia Commons.

The expression and posture of Klimt’s female subject must be taken into consideration. While some historians have read her craning neck and closed eyes as signs of sexual ecstasy, others have noted that she might be attempting to pull away from the man, who could be seen as trying to overtake or eclipse her. During his life, Klimt held a reputation as a Casanova. More recently, his erotic work—especially his drawings—have been labeled as misogynistic. Still, others have noted how tenderly Klimt depicted this woman, as an angelic protagonist rather than a dangerous femme fatale—a typology explored in many of his other paintings, such as Judith and the Head of Holofernes.

While there is a carnal, deeply human quality to the lovers in The Kiss, Klimt’s expansive use of gold also renders them timeless, almost immortal. “It’s hard not to think of a religious icon,” art historian Dr. Beth Harris has said. “I think in some ways, Klimt was trying to create a modern icon—something that suggested a sense of transcendence.” Ultimately, the painting is a pean to the power of love. “Even though Klimt saw mankind as caught in the inexorable grip of the endless cycle of life and death,” according to the Getty, “he found solace in the life-affirming forces of love and procreation, whose sacred character he celebrated with astonishing poetical force.”

When the painting was exhibited in 1908, at Vienna’s annual “Kunstschau,” it was almost universally celebrated as a masterpiece. Before the exhibition had even closed, Austria’s king purchased it for a whopping sum of 25,000 crowns (the equivalent of about $250,000 today). Klimt’s days as a controversial figure were over, but he hadn’t sacrificed his core beliefs: to express the deep, enduring power of human emotion and desire through art.

from Artsy News