More on Seduction

Detail of The Kiss by Gustav Klimt

Slow down for a moment.  Forget all those things that you absolutely have to do in the next 30 minutes.  Allow yourself the pleasure of getting lost in this painting.

Why is it so widely loved?  Is it the complexity of pattern, the way that the background flows into his garment, which flows into hers without clear demarcations?  Is it the abundance of rich gold, contrasted against the traces of bright blue, red and green?  Is it the slightness of her body pressed against the dominating mass of his body?  Is it the precise molding of her face, the glimpse of her shoulder?

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The Poetry of Seduction

Andrew Marvell said it best back in the 17th century.  I have never come across anything written before or since that more convincingly and beautifully expresses the compelling reasons to indulge in passion.

Alan, my ex-husband, the scientist, would never have come across this poem before meeting me.  I wouldn’t have expected him to know it.  But bless his romantic heart, he learned To His Coy Mistress, and would, when the moment was ripe, pull out a few select lines.   Always with the desired results.

But my own romantic heart hungered for more.  I wanted what he could never have done.  I longed for the man who, in a moment with stillness hanging heavily around us, would recite, unbidden, those lines for me.

I teased Alan that I would give myself, body and soul, to the man who did that.

August Rodin sculpture, the Kiss

French sculptor Auguste Rodin captured how I anticipated responding to an impromptu recitation of “To His Coy Mistress”.

 

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