Tuesday, October 23, 2007

"And in a church..." (Creative Writing Assignment #15)

When I enter a church in Rome I have certain expectations about what I am about to see. When there is something other than the usual penitent saints, unnatural flying cherub heads, crucified Christs, and chaste virgins, I am surprised, and more often than not, confused. So you can guess what my reaction might have been when I turned a corner in the Church of San Francesco a Ripa and was assaulted by the sight of a gaping, moaning mouth. And this mouth did not belong to a homely martyr, finally vocalizing the pain that the love of God so long kept imprisoned. No, decidedly not. This mouth belonged to a woman lying not upon a cross, nor upon the blood soaked steps of a pagan temple, but upon a resplendent sofa.

My eyes stared at that singular, dark orifice, the upper lip slightly drawn back to show the irregular winding of ivory teeth. The face of the woman is bathed in light, and the contrast between shining marble and shadows held my attention for some time to this inexplicable expression of emotion. The next feature I looked to was the eyes. This was an obvious step; I was after all intensely interested in deciphering the strange frisson that the woman was currently experiencing. I have found that in statues as well as live humans the eyes are good place to look to identify emotion.

I started when I found them to be not only discomforting, but even more provocative than the mouth. They are open, but only slightly so. They resembled the condition of eyes that are at ease when sight is no longer a necessity, when some other sense has usurped the concentration of the mind. The pupils inside are also absent. The marble is smooth where these symbols of consciousness, attention, and regularity would have dwelt. I have seen enough Bernini statues to know that he tends to carve pupils into his figures. This can only mean then that the woman’s eyes have rolled back in their sockets. In pleasure, in pain, or in that strange country that is a mixture of these both of these. The entire face is disconcerting and I have already begun to feel a sense of guilt at seeing this depiction of such a personal moment.

Traveling away from the light I survey the entire body. A neck limply bent, the beginning of a flowing garment, and then I come upon the next shock. It is the hand of the woman, or rather the position of the woman’s hand. It clutches at her breast as if to alleviate the unbearable lightness that she must be feeling in her chest. Now I truly do wish to turn away. But I do not, for now I am a servant to the mystery that the statue is revealing. I look again at the hand, its fingers splayed to gain the entire diameter of the breast. Her wrist is bent in surprise. It also redirects my attention toward her body, in case it had begun to drift elsewhere. And in case you wondered, her hand is sadly on the wrong side to be clutching at her heart.

So I continue down this futile voyage of discomfort, passing down through the luscious folds of the woman’s gown. When I reach her legs I no longer have any expectations. I see that they are slightly parted, enough so that the folds of her blankets are visible between them. She is apparently unable to hold her head up but she is capable of keeping her body slightly turned such that her knees are almost a foot apart. Beyond this, the sculpture sits in shadow.

What does the light illuminate? Our three favorite pieces of course; the face that I would tell you was glazed with a gentle dew of sweat, except I know it is only smooth marble, the grasping hand that bites like a cobra into the woman’s breast, and the conspicuously parted knees that look so intentional and yet remain profoundly unpleasant. As if to add to this surreal image, above the woman fly a flock of that deranged creation of the baroque, the flying cherub heads. They watch her, their small wings barely able to support the girth of their melon-sized craniums.

I eventually leave the church, turning finally away from this sculpture that is so appropriately titled, “The Ecstasy of Beata Ludovica Albertoni”. While a description of this marble paradox might suggest that it is unique, I later discover to my surprise that this is not to be the case. In fact, Beata has an older sister named St. Theresa.

When I enter the church that holds “The Ecstasy of St. Theresa”, Santa Maria della Vittoria, I feel as if I have entered a beehive. The coffered, honeycombed ceiling glows with sweet gold. The church is crowded with objects and adornment, stores for the coming winter. My mind tries to imagine how Beata might fit into this more glamorous and cluttered atmosphere. Better than she did in the austere Church of San Francesco a Ripa. The obvious attention that has been paid to the appearance of the church makes the expression of emotion seem more appropriate. I can better imagine the dramatic, sexual, Beata here than I can in San Francesco a Ripa.

Theresa also sits in a chapel off to the left side as one walks in. This time as I walk forward, my mind swiftly constructs possible arrangements. Will the light again strike from behind her, illuminating the contours of here slightly bulbous nose, revealing the absence of a pupil? Will she recline in a too secular, too sexual bed? Will my first impression again be a moaning mouth? But when I turn the corner to the chapel, it is not St. Theresa that first holds my attention. It is a captivated young boy, supposedly an angel, who kneels upon the mound of fabric that is St. Theresa. His head is slightly cocked so that the light that shines from above can bleach his chubby face. In his hand, he holds an arrow that he gently points toward St. Theresa’s reclining body. Looking at the face that seems to take so much pleasure from staring at Theresa, I try to restrain myself from identifying him with Eros. Again it feels as if we are being tempted to begin down a path of interpretation different than the one that we might voice in a church.

St. Theresa herself no longer rests on a bed. She instead sprawls upon a cloud, her weight causing her to sink into the light woolpack. One foot rests upon a puff, but the other dangles over what I imagine to be a patchwork of farmland and forests. Does her altitude reflect what she is feeling? Lofty, spiritual exultation? I only hope so. This time the light falls from a window above, hitting St. Theresa’s almost directly. Because of this, I see with a strange sense of disappointment that the black, gaping mouth has been dulled. The light is brighter and instead of highlighting only the most suggestive parts of the statue, it is indiscriminate. It is for this reason that St. Theresa seems buried in her garments, why I had to search for her head among the maze of folds.

Again retreating from the light, my gaze cascades down the ridged garment like a stream winding its way down the channels in the side of a mountain slope. I pass by the location where a hand might have asserted itself, but surprisingly does not. It also is concealed in a sea of fabric. There is nothing of significance past the face until I see the foot. The excessive, masculine foot that emerges from the edge of the robe and falls downward. The size makes me imagine that this statue might have originally been intended to sit somewhere higher up. But there is something of more significance than just the size of the foot. The largest toe is slightly splayed. It is subtle, but once the attention catches it, this detail delivers a pulse of comprehension. This tiny detail sent my mind back to where it had been when I had viewed Beata. I imagine the ecstasy that slips downward through the body, contracting each muscle as it passes, and ending the lowly toes.

But besides this detail, I find the sculpture to be uninteresting. This surprises me since I had thought that I had been hoping for a piece like this. Something that would seem appropriate for a church. But the light is too bright and undirected, the golden ornamentation too distracting, the face is lost in folds. Only the toe interests me. As I turn to leave, I note old, bearded men looking on from the wings. They are pointing and it seems to me that they are discussing the considering the piece just as I have been. I can imagine one of them whispering, “do you really think that is what it is?” Whoever placed St. Theresa must have had a sense of humor.

So I go to Beata and I am embarrased by what I think exists in the sculpture. Then I see St. Theresa and I am bored precisely because the sculpture does not as well convey what I had before felt so uncomfortable with. This is a strange chain of interactions.

No comments: