Apareçam!

Nice weather for ducks! (My mum tells me)

On a lousy day like today, this is what my garden looks like:

This is what I wish I could see out of my window instead:

Grande bailarina!

10.2006 023 hot blooded, originally uploaded by Matilde B..

Sir Jonh Everett Millais (1829-1896)

Ophelia

(1852)

Sempre me fascinou este quadro de Millais que retrata Ophelia, uma personagem da peça Hamlet de Shakespeare, morta a flutuar num ribeiro. A composição é tão perfeita que apesar do minucioso detalhe com que cada planta foi pintada é-nos difícial desviar o olhar do ponto focal.

Ophelia enlouquece quando o noivo, Hamlet, assassina o pai Polonius. Morre muito nova de desgosto e loucura.

A cena retratada por Millais não aparece na peça quando representada em palco mas faz referência a uma passagem da obra em que a Rainha Gertrude relata ao irmão de Ophelia, Laertes, o que aconteceu a sua irmã. É possivel ouvir aqui esta parte da peça transcrita abaixo:

Hamlet, Act 1V, Scene V11

Laertes: Drowned! O, where?

Queen Gertrude:

There is a willow grows askant the brook,

That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream.

There with fantastic garlands did she make

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 pendent boughs her crownet weeds

Clambering 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 chanted snatches of old tunes,

As one incapable of her own distress,

Or like a creature native and induedUnto that element.

But long it could not be

Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,

Pulled the poor wretch from her melodious lay

To muddy death.

Laertes: Alas, then she is drowned?

Queen Gertrude: Drowned, drowned

(source: Tate.org.uk)