can and can’t exist
i am tired of being
de chirico’s bastard son
i am tired of being some
complete stranger’s
vague idea of salvation
and i’m an asshole, sure,
but i’m not an idiot
i know to fear death
i know to deny both the
truth of christ
and the gospel of judas
not the middle lane,
but the farthest
barren field
not the endless desert,
but the one
that lies beyond it
a burning house in the
kingdom of nil, and
always the question
of who to save
always the weight of
who to remember
with guilt and regret
and we will all
get our chance
soon enough
Le chant d'amour -- Giorgio de Chirico
Early in the 20th century Giorgio de Chirico founded the scuola metafisica art movement, a precursor to surrealism. In a 1909 manuscript he wrote of the "host of strange, unknown and solitary things that can be translated into painting ... What is required above all is a pronounced sensitivity." By 1913 he was exhibiting his paintings in the Salon des Indépendants and Salon d’Automne in Paris, the leading avant-garde venues, and by 1918 he was extensively exhibited throughout Europe. André Breton bought "Il cervello del bambino" (The Child's Brain) after getting off a bus upon seeing it in a gallery window in the early 1920s. Painted in 1914, it portrayed his nude father standing behind a table; a yellow book on the table had a red bookmark positioned to represent a phallus. Breton's surrealists accepted de Chirico into their group in 1924, but by 1926 the painter began to regard them as "cretinous and hostile" after they publicly disparaged his new works. He remained prolific well into his 80s and died in 1978 at 90.
ReplyDelete"The Gospel of Judas" was a Gnostic gospel probably composed in the 2nd century. A series of conversations between Judas and Jesus, it asserted that Judas was actually the only disciple who belonged to the "holy generation" and the only one to whom Jesus revealed the truth: God is essentially a "luminous cloud of light" who exists in an imperishable realm, where Adamas, the spiritual father of humanity, also lived; at the beginning of time God created 12 angels, who created Adam, who was Adamas' physical form. Jesus was later sent to teach mankind that salvation was to be achieved by those who (like Judas) had an immortal soul and thus could connect with the God within and then return to the imperishable realm when they died; everyone else, including the other 11 disciples, who were obsessed with the physical world of the senses would die physically and spiritually. In "Adversus haereses," Bishop Eirenaios (Irenaeus) of Lugdunum (Lyons, France) denounced the book as "fictitious history."