“Sometimes she did not know what she feared, what she desired: whether she feared or desired what had been or what would be, and precisely what she desired, she did not know.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina Photo: Greta Garbo, 1934
It is really curious how men, whom I otherwise look upon as honest, and who in other respects are not my enemies, lie monstrously, and are hardly conscious of it themselves, when they really get into a passion. Passion has an extraordinary power. How foolish, then, is the modern seeking after system upon system, as though help was to be found there; no, passion must be purified. Soren Kierkegaard’s Journal, 1846
“Anaïs, I don’t know how to tell you what I feel. I live in perpetual expectancy. You come and the time slips away in a dream. It is only when you go that I realize completely your presence. And then it is too late. You numb me. This is a little drunken, Anaïs. I am saying to myself “here is the first woman with whom I can be absolutely sincere.” I remember your saying – “you could fool me, I wouldn’t know it.” When I walk along the...
In the absence of a subject with which you are passionately involved, and without the excitement that drives you to grasp it and exhaust it, you may take some beautiful pictures, but not a photographic oeuvre. GEORGE BRASSAI passers-by in the rain , 1935
“What is stronger in us — passion or habit? Or are all the violent impulses, all the whirl of our desires and turbulent passions, only the consequence of our ardent age, and is it only through youth that they seem deep and shattering?” Nicolai Gogol
“It was not the passion that was new to her, it was the yearning adoration. She knew she had always feared it, for it left her helpless; she feared it still, lest if se adored him too much, then she would lose herself, become effaced, and she did not want to be effaced, a slave, like a savage woman. She must not become a slave. She feared her adoration, yet she would not at once fight against it. D.H. Lawrence – Lady Chatterley’s Lover
SENSUALITY IN MUSIC THE TANGO “A Sad thought dancing” that migrated from the brothels of Buenos Aires to the European dance halls. Several great writers have written tango songs, but the greatest and most profound lyricist is Enrique Santos Discepolo. The man who defined the tango as “a sad thought dancing” , “a mixture of anger, pain, faith, and absence” sings of love, death and paradise lost in radically pessimistic poems that express the despair of the thirties, that “infamous decade” where hopes of democracy gave way to coups...
Alfred Stevens (1823-1906) Jeune femme lisant, 1856
I like to share my favorite quote from Ralph Waldo Emmerson, the great 19th century American Philosopher and Poet. “Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm” Add “passion” to that and you have your basic ingredients to create unique beautiful writings and works of Art. Both enthusiasm and passion are always present but only so often your unconsciousness unleashes the exact right mixture of emotions that leads you to “create” … resulting in something brilliant.
