La Chanson de Frida
Frida’s Song
I was browsing carelessly a magazine worn out from the use, when I noticed the statue of Anteros [1] peeping from a snapshot of Piccadilly Circus in London. The glare of the statue was enlightening. I was struck by an idea. Love is Light. This is a profound and incontrovertible truth. Love is a universal force, the most powerful that exists, it has no limits, illuminates our lives and triggers the spark of life in living beings. Light is the presence of love, whether it's a God’s [2] or a lover's gaze. Anteros is the God of non-returned love, brother of Eros. The two brothers were inseparable. A legend says that one day Aphrodite complained to the Goddess Temis about the fact that little Eros did not grow, so the wise Temis told her that Eros would never grow unless he had the love of a brother. Aphrodite joined together with Ares and begot Anteros and from that moment the two brothers grew up together, but each time Anteros turned away from Eros, the latter returned a turbulent and restless child. This myth teaches that love needs to be returned in order to grow. A character who is the symbol of the light and its combination with the dark was the painter Frida Kahlo, "a dove with a broken leg '. Her existence was a poignant and passionate love song, addressed to her companion Diego Rivera. Her physique, the polio (when she was six years old) and then a terrible accident (when she was eighteen years old) in which she was seriously wounded, did not prevent her to live an ardent and lively life, animated by her love for painting, her land and especially her husband Diego. "True love is like a lighted window on a dark night. True love is a burning calm "[3]. Love was experienced by Frida Kahlo’s eyes, troubadour of the twentieth century, with the violence of lightning, which penetrates through the window of a tower and devastates all that is in it [4]. Frida’s life was an alternation of betrayals and reconciliations with her constant companion, an uncertain match between returned and unreturned love. Like in the story from “Decameron” of Nastagio degli Onesti [5]. The young man, being rich at a young age, was in love with a girl belonging to a rival noble family. To get her attention, Nastagio began to squander his money on banquets and parties organized in her honor. The girl, however, did not reciprocate Nastagio’s love, or rather found it amusing to reject it coldly, and for this reason, many times he set out to commit suicide, or hate her or forget her, but without success. Seeing that Nastagio was wearing himself out because of an unreturned love, his friends and relatives advised him to go away from Ravenna. The young man thus moved in the pine forest near Classe. One Friday in early May, at dusk, walking in the pine forest, Nastagio saw a girl, in tears and wailing, running naked, chased by two dogs that were biting her and a black knight with a sword that threatened her to death. Nastagio tried to defend her, but the knight, who introduced himself as Guido of Anastagi, told him how he had once loved madly this woman whom he was now chasing, but, because she had not wanted to return his love, he had committed suicide. When the girl also died, without any remorse for the torment he had inflicted on her lover, she was sentenced to the punishment of his cruel hunting: every Friday, the girl would have to undergo her killing and then her resurrection and start the painful getaway again, for as many years as the months of her sweetheart rejection had been. Nastagio decided to take advantage of the situation: he prepared a lavish banquet in the same place in the woods the next Friday, inviting his relatives and his beloved together with her parents. As Nastagio had predicted, at the end of the lunch the harrowing and dramatic scene repeated. With this stratagem, he got the desired effect: after the hunter explained again his condemnation to the people there, the girl loved by Nastagio, for fear of suffering the same fate of the hapless, changed her attitude and readily consented to the marriage, turning her hatred into love.
I was browsing carelessly a magazine worn out from the use, when I noticed the statue of Anteros [1] peeping from a snapshot of Piccadilly Circus in London. The glare of the statue was enlightening. I was struck by an idea. Love is Light. This is a profound and incontrovertible truth. Love is a universal force, the most powerful that exists, it has no limits, illuminates our lives and triggers the spark of life in living beings. Light is the presence of love, whether it's a God’s [2] or a lover's gaze. Anteros is the God of non-returned love, brother of Eros. The two brothers were inseparable. A legend says that one day Aphrodite complained to the Goddess Temis about the fact that little Eros did not grow, so the wise Temis told her that Eros would never grow unless he had the love of a brother. Aphrodite joined together with Ares and begot Anteros and from that moment the two brothers grew up together, but each time Anteros turned away from Eros, the latter returned a turbulent and restless child. This myth teaches that love needs to be returned in order to grow. A character who is the symbol of the light and its combination with the dark was the painter Frida Kahlo, "a dove with a broken leg '. Her existence was a poignant and passionate love song, addressed to her companion Diego Rivera. Her physique, the polio (when she was six years old) and then a terrible accident (when she was eighteen years old) in which she was seriously wounded, did not prevent her to live an ardent and lively life, animated by her love for painting, her land and especially her husband Diego. "True love is like a lighted window on a dark night. True love is a burning calm "[3]. Love was experienced by Frida Kahlo’s eyes, troubadour of the twentieth century, with the violence of lightning, which penetrates through the window of a tower and devastates all that is in it [4]. Frida’s life was an alternation of betrayals and reconciliations with her constant companion, an uncertain match between returned and unreturned love. Like in the story from “Decameron” of Nastagio degli Onesti [5]. The young man, being rich at a young age, was in love with a girl belonging to a rival noble family. To get her attention, Nastagio began to squander his money on banquets and parties organized in her honor. The girl, however, did not reciprocate Nastagio’s love, or rather found it amusing to reject it coldly, and for this reason, many times he set out to commit suicide, or hate her or forget her, but without success. Seeing that Nastagio was wearing himself out because of an unreturned love, his friends and relatives advised him to go away from Ravenna. The young man thus moved in the pine forest near Classe. One Friday in early May, at dusk, walking in the pine forest, Nastagio saw a girl, in tears and wailing, running naked, chased by two dogs that were biting her and a black knight with a sword that threatened her to death. Nastagio tried to defend her, but the knight, who introduced himself as Guido of Anastagi, told him how he had once loved madly this woman whom he was now chasing, but, because she had not wanted to return his love, he had committed suicide. When the girl also died, without any remorse for the torment he had inflicted on her lover, she was sentenced to the punishment of his cruel hunting: every Friday, the girl would have to undergo her killing and then her resurrection and start the painful getaway again, for as many years as the months of her sweetheart rejection had been. Nastagio decided to take advantage of the situation: he prepared a lavish banquet in the same place in the woods the next Friday, inviting his relatives and his beloved together with her parents. As Nastagio had predicted, at the end of the lunch the harrowing and dramatic scene repeated. With this stratagem, he got the desired effect: after the hunter explained again his condemnation to the people there, the girl loved by Nastagio, for fear of suffering the same fate of the hapless, changed her attitude and readily consented to the marriage, turning her hatred into love.
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