The Flaming Sword

Nobody stays in the garden of Eden… they have scarcely seen their garden before they see the flaming sword. Then, perhaps, life only offers the choice of remembering the garden or forgetting it. Either, or: it takes strength to remember, it takes another kind of strength to forget, it takes a hero to do both. People who remember court madness through pain, the pain of the perpetually recurring death of their innocence; people who forget court another kind of madness, the madness of the denial of pain and the hatred of innocence; and the world is mostly divided between madmen who remember and madmen who forget.

Text: James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room, New York: Dial Press, 1956
Image: Jan Brueghel the Younger, The Expulsion from Paradise, oil on copper, 17th century, private collection

De verzoeking van de Heilige Antonius

Domenicus van Wijnen
oil on canvas, 1680s
National Gallery of Ireland

Mariä Tempelgang

Johann Koerbecke
oil on panel, 1456-57
Muzeum Narodowe w Krakowie

San Francisco en meditación

Francisco de Zurbarán
oil on canvas, 1632
Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires

Nesso rapisce Deianira

Guido Reni
oil on canvas, 1617-21
Musée du Louvre

Autoritratto

Annibale Carracci
oil on canvas, c. 1604
The Hermitage

Dejanira (Automne)

Gustave Moreau
oil on panel, c. 1872-73
The J. Paul Getty Museum

Tre Capricci

Pietro Paltronieri
oil on canvas, c. 1740
private collection
via

Il sogno di Costantino

Piero della Francesca
fresco, 1454-58
Basilica di San Francesco, Arezzo

Saint Crispin’s Day

If we are mark’d to die, we are enough
To do our country loss; and if to live,
The fewer men, the greater share of honour.
God’s will! I pray thee, wish not one man more.
By Jove, I am not covetous for gold,
Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost;
It yearns me not if men my garments wear;
Such outward things dwell not in my desires.
But if it be a sin to covet honour,
I am the most offending soul alive.
No, faith, my coz, wish not a man from England.
God’s peace! I would not lose so great an honour
As one man more methinks would share from me
For the best hope I have. O, do not wish one more!
Rather proclaim it, Westmorland, through my host,
That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart; his passport shall be made,
And crowns for convoy put into his purse;
We would not die in that man’s company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.
This day is call’d the feast of Crispian.
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam’d,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say “To-morrow is Saint Crispian.”
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,
And say “These wounds I had on Crispin’s day.”
Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
But he’ll remember, with advantages,
What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,
Familiar in his mouth as household words—
Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester—
Be in their flowing cups freshly rememb’red.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be rememberèd—
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.

Text: William Shakespeare, Henry V,  Act IV Scene iii
Image: Ambrosius Francken I, Het martelaarschap van de HH. Crispinus en Crispanianus, oil on canvas, c. 1600, Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten Antwerpen