lightness
“All the diversity, all the charm, all the beauty of life is made up of light and shadow.”
“The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become. Conversely, the absolute absence of burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements as free as they are insignificant. What then shall we choose? Weight or lightness?”
“Dark, dark! The horror of darkness, like a shroud,
Wraps me and bears me on through mist and cloud.”
Words I · Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina is a crucial and symbolic work to this compendium, representing humans' unending desire to break free from life's inescapable linear nature through giving decisions and occurrences heaviness, or meaning.
Photographs · Man Ray is perhaps the master of capturing light and shadow to articulate eroticism and
Words II · In this passage from Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being, we get at the core of our struggle to ascertain meaning from life. Can we only experience fulfillment through the weight of burden?
Film · The beautiful film portrayal directed by Philip Kaufman of Kundera's masterpiece by the same leaves more of our musings unsaid. Instead, we focus more on the concrete and sometimes unexpected effects our actions may or may not have.
Words III · Sophocles' fatal hero Oedipus Rex welcomes the darkness, casting himself away from the society he tried, without success, to protect and honor.
Paintings · Toyen (born Marie Cerminová) was an influential member of the Czechoslovak Surrealist movement, devoting her life's work to portraying the abstract consciousness of reality and through dreamlike and often erotic symbolism.
Music · Symphony No. 6, also known as the Pastoral Symphony, is perhaps Ludwig van Beethoven's most narrative composition. It embodies the symmetry displayed in the other works within this compendium, the dichotomy between lightness and heaviness, and our eventual return to the earth.