It’s almost too neat that Salomé should have been written in French. The language of Baudelaire, Mallarmé, and decadence itself lent Wilde the perfect tongue for blasphemy dressed in silks. The Victorians expected their theatre to teach morality, to improve the soul, to extol duty. Wilde offered them instead a necrophilic waltz in candlelight, where … Continue reading Wilde’s Salomé: A Decadent Dance with Death
Tag: Christianity
St. George, the Dragon, and the Colours We Raise
There he stands - or rather, rides - our St. George, spear braced, horse rearing, dragon writhing beneath (featured image below). It’s an image both timeless and terribly timely. Though centuries have passed since this tale was first illuminated in parchment or carved into stone, its symbolic force remains more urgent now than ever. For … Continue reading St. George, the Dragon, and the Colours We Raise
Bearing the Broken: Van Gogh’s Good Samaritan and the Art of Endurance
Art imitates life, or so I’m told, but in The Good Samaritan by Vincent van Gogh, life doesn’t just inspire the art - it bleeds into it. You can feel the strain in every brushstroke. This isn’t a tranquil tale of neighbourly virtue. This is what compassion looks like after the cameras stop rolling. After … Continue reading Bearing the Broken: Van Gogh’s Good Samaritan and the Art of Endurance
What Remains After Love: A Reflection on The End of the Affair
There are books that don’t so much entertain as they haunt. They don’t ask for your approval, or even your sympathy - they simply step into the quietest room of your mind and sit there, uninvited, until you are forced to acknowledge them. The End of the Affair by Graham Greene is one of those … Continue reading What Remains After Love: A Reflection on The End of the Affair
“People Ruin Beautiful Things”: On Gibran, Secrecy, and the Sacred Art of Keeping Quiet
“Travel and tell no one, Live a true love story and tell no one, Live happily and tell no one - People ruin beautiful things.” They say Kahlil Gibran wrote that, and perhaps he did. Then again, the internet says many things: that Einstein married Marilyn Monroe, that Churchill coined every popular meme, and that … Continue reading “People Ruin Beautiful Things”: On Gibran, Secrecy, and the Sacred Art of Keeping Quiet
Wording 