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Just like Solomon Picasso slept with many women. Solomon actually slept with over 1000 women ( Eccl 2:8, I Kings 11:3), and both men ended their lives bitter against all women.
HEMINGWAY:This is Gil Pender, Miss Stein.He’s a young American writer. I thought you two should know each other.
GERTRUDE STEIN:I’m glad you’re here.You can help decide which of usis right, and which of us is wrong.I was just telling Pablo that thisportrait doesn’t capture Adriana.It has a universality,but no objectivity.
PICASSO: Non, non, non. Vous ne le comprenez pas correctement.(No, no ,no. You don’t understand correctly.)Connaisez pas Adriana. Regardez…(You don’t know Adriana. Look…)Regardez le mouvement, le tableau.(Look at the motion, the painting.)C’est exactement ce qu’elle représente!(It’s exactly what she represents!)Non. Tu n’as pas raison.(No. You’rewrong.)
GERTRUDE STEIN: Look how he’s done her:dripping with sexual innuendo,carnal to the point of smoldering,and, yes, she’s beautiful, butit’s a subtle beauty;an implied sensuality.I mean, what is your firstimpression of Adriana?Exceptionally lovely.Belle, mais trop subtile. Plus implicite, Pablo!(Beautiful, but too subtle. More defined, Pablo!)Yes, you’re right, MissStein. ‘Course…uh…you can see why he’slost all objectivity.He’s made a creature of Place Pigalle.A whore with volcanic appetites.Non, non! C’est ce qu’elle vraiment si vous laconnaissez! (No, no! It’s true if you know her!)Yes, avec toi, au privé,(Yes, with you, in private,)because she’s your lover, butwe don’t know her that way!So you make a petit-bourgeois judgmentand turn her into an object of pleasure.- It’s more like a still-life than a portrait. – Non.Non. Non. Je ne suis pasd’accord. (No. No. I do not agree.)And what’s this book of yours I’ve been hearing about? Is this it?-
GIL PENDER: Yeah, this is…uh…-
GERTRUDE STEIN: I’ll take a look.Have you read it, Hemingway?
HEMINGWAY:No, this I leave to you. You’ve always been a fine judge of my work.”
GERTRUDE STEIN:”Out of the Past” was the name of the store,””and its products consisted of memories.””What was prosaic and even vulgar to one generation,””had been transmuted by the mere passing of years””to a status at once magical and also camp.“
ADRIANA:I love it.I’m already hooked. Hooked!
GERTRUDE STEIN: I’ll start it tonight,but first, you and I have something to talk about.I’ve been waiting for two months for a reply from that editor.I sent him the piece you andI looked at, plus four others,plus four shorter pieces. And this guy, I gave him a copy of the…- Nevertheless, two months: nary a word.-
GIL PENDER: Right.So were you really hookedwith those opening lines?
ADRIANA: Oh, the past has always had a great charisma for me.Oh, me, too. Great charisma for me.I always say that I was born too late.Mmm. Moi aussi. (Mmm. Me, too.)For me, la Belle ÉpoqueParis would have been perfect.-
GIL PENDER: Really? Better than now?-
ADRIANA: Yes.Another whole sensibility,the street lamps, the kiosques,the…horse and carriages,and Maxim’s then.
GIL PENDER:You speak very good English.-
ADRIANA:No, not really.-
GIL PENDER: No, you do! How long have you been dating Picasso?My God, did I just say that?Pardon?I don’t mean to…I didn’t meanto pry…. Were you born in Paris?
ADRIANA:I was born in Bordeaux.I moved here to study fashion.But you don’t want to hear all this.
GIL PENDER: Yes, I do.Yes, continue.You moved here to study fashion..
ADRIANA: .I…came here to study with Coco Chanel,and I fell in love with Paris,and also,a very dark-eyed, hauntedJewish-Italian painter.And I knew Amedeo had another woman, but still, I couldn’t resist moving into his apartment when he asked,and it was a beautiful six months.
GIL PENDER: M..M…Modigliani?You lived with… Youlived with Modigliani?
ADRIANA: You asked me, so I’mtelling you my sad story.With Braque, though,there was another woman.Many.And now,with Pablo.I mean, he’s married, but…every day, it’son-again, off-again.I don’t know how any woman canstay with him. He’s so difficult.
GIL PENDER: My God, you take “art groupie” to a whole new level!-
ADRIANA:Pardon?-
GIL PENDER: Nothing. I was just saying that…
ADRIANA: But tell me about yourself.-
GIL PENDER: What? Well, what can I say…-
ADRIANA: So, have you come to Paris to write?Because, you know,these days, so many Americansfeel the need to move here.Isn’t Hemingway attractive?I love his writing.
GIL PENDER: I know. Actually, I’m just here visiting.
ADRIANA: Oh, you must stay here.-
GIL PENDER: Really?-
ADRIANA: Yeah. It’s a wonderful city, for- writers, artists.-
GIL PENDER: M I know. I’d like to, but it’s not that easy.
ADRIANA: And,I didn’t fall in love madly with your book…-
GIL PENDER: Really?-
ADRIANA: …so I want to hear the rest of it.-
GIL PENDER: You really like? Because I’m still kind of tinkering…
HEMINGWAY: – Pender?-
GIL PENDER: Yeah,
HEMINGWAY: let’s go up to Montmartre. Let’s get a drink, OK?
GIL PENDER: – Uh…yeah.
GERTRUDE STEIN: I’ll discuss your book with you as soon as I’ve finished it. Where can I reach you?
GIL PENDER: Why don’t I drop back by, instead of you trying to find me, if that’s all right?-
GERTRUDE STEIN: We run an open house.-
HEMINGWAY: Are you coming with us?
GIL PENDER: I wish that I could. I cant, but hopefully I’ll see you again eventually.
ADRIANA: That would be nice.-
HEMINGWAY: Let’s go!- One of these days, I plan to steal you away from this genius who’s great, but he’s no Joan Miró
Pablo Picasso: Midnight in Paris
Woody Allen made it known that his pessimistic view on life started at a young age when he learned about man’s mortality. But in the Bible Solomon’s first book was the SONG OF SOLOMON which was written in his early 20’s and is very upbeat. The Book of PROVERBS was written probably when he was in the middle of his life. Finally, the Book of ECCLESIASTES was written at the end of his life and is extremely pessimistic!!
Just like Solomon Picasso slept with many women. Solomon actually slept with over 1000 women ( Eccl 2:8, I Kings 11:3).
Gertrude Stein (Kathy Bates) and Marical e Fonzo Bo (Picasso) in ‘Midnight in Paris’.
(In the movie MIDNIGHT IN PARIS you have the may character Gil Pender very interested in Picasso’s mistress Adriana, played by Marion Cotillard. PICTURED ABOVE.)
Francis Schaeffer pictured below:
Concerning the Book of Ecclesiastes Francis Schaeffer noted:
Solomon was searching for a meaning in the midst of the details of life. His struggle was to find the meaning of life. Not just plans in life. Anybody can find plans in life. A child can fill up his time with plans of building tomorrow’s sand castle when today’s has been washed away. There is a difference between finding plans in life and purpose in life. Humanism since the Renaissance and onward has never found it and it has never found it. Modern man has not found it and it has always got worse and darker in a very real way.
Ecclesiastes is the only pessimistic book in the Bible and that is because of the place where Solomon limits himself. He limits himself to the question of human life, life under the sun between birth and death and the answers this would give.
Ecclesiastes 2:4-11
4 I enlarged my works: I built houses for myself, I planted vineyards for myself; 5 I made gardens and parks for myself and I planted in them all kinds of fruit trees; 6 I made ponds of water for myself from which to irrigate a forest of growing trees. 7 I bought male and female slaves and I had homeborn slaves. Also I possessed flocks and herds larger than all who preceded me in Jerusalem. 8 Also, I collected for myself silver and gold and the treasure of kings and provinces. I provided for myself MALE AND FEMALE SINGERS AND THE PLEASURES OF MEN–MANY CONCUBINES.
9 Then I became great and increased more than all who preceded me in Jerusalem. My wisdom also stood by me. 10 All that my eyes desired I did not refuse them. I did not withhold my heart from any pleasure…
If one would flee to alcohol, then surely one may choose sexual pursuits to flee to. Solomon looks in this area too.
Ecclesiastes 7:25-28
25 I directed my mind to know, to investigate and to seek wisdom and an explanation, and to know the evil of folly and the foolishness of madness. 26 And I discovered more bitter than death the woman whose heart is snares and nets, whose hands are chains. One who is pleasing to God will escape from her, but the sinner will be captured by her.
27 “Behold, I have discovered this,” says the Preacher, “adding one thing to another to find an explanation, 28 I have looked for other answers but have found none. I found one man in a thousand that I could respect, but not one woman. (Good News Translation on verse 28)
One can understand both Solomon’s expertness in this field and his bitterness.
I Kings 11:1-3 (New American Standard Bible)
11 Now King Solomon loved many foreign women along with the daughter of Pharaoh: Moabite, Ammonite, Edomite, Sidonian, and Hittite women, 2 from the nations concerning which the Lord had said to the sons of Israel, “You shall not associate with them, nor shall they associate with you, for they will surely turn your heart away after their gods.” Solomon held fast to these in love. 3 He had seven hundred wives, princesses, and three hundred concubines, and his wives turned his heart away.
An expert but also the reason for his bitterness. Certainly there have been many men over the centuries who have daydreamed of Solomon’s wealth in this area [of women], but at the end it was sorry, not only sorry but nothing and less than nothing. The simple fact is that one can not know woman in the real sense by pursuing 1000 women. It is not possible. Woman is not found this way. All that is left in this setting if one were to pursue the meaning of life in this direction is this most bitter word found in Ecclesiastes 7:28, “I have looked for other answers but have found none. I FOUND ONE MAN IN A THOUSAND THAT I COULD RESPECT, BUT NOT ONE WOMAN.” (Good News Translation on verse 28) He was searching in the wrong way. He was searching for the answer to life in the limited circle of that which is beautiful in itself but not an answer finally in sexual life. More than that he finally tried to find it in variety and HE DIDN’T EVEN TOUCH ONE WOMAN AT THE END.
How Picasso who called all women goddesses or doormats drove his lovers to despair and even suicide with his cruelty and betrayal
By ANNABEL VENNING FOR MAILONLINE
UPDATED: 06:17 EST, 7 March 2012
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2111329/How-Picasso-called-women-goddesses-doormats-drove-lovers-despair-suicide-cruelty-betrayal.html#ixzz42LQPHDkL
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Even in his 70s, Pablo Picasso’s sexual appetite was irrepressible, though his seduction technique was unusual to say the least. If a pretty young girl caught his eye, he would present her with a gold figurine of a little man with a huge phallus.
It was a sign he wanted to sleep with her. And he would give these gifts right under the nose of his second wife, Jacqueline. She would immediately ban the woman from their home, but her furious jealousy did little to deter the artist.
Fidelity was simply not in his nature. He had scores, perhaps hundreds, of lovers. The extraordinary energy he devoted to his paintings and sculptures — he created some 25,000 original works, more than any other artist in history — was matched only by the dedication with which he pursued women.
Passion: Picasso with lover Dora who once told him: ‘As an artist you may be extraordinary, but morally speaking you are worthless.’
A new exhibition at Tate Britain of the work of Pablo Picasso, perhaps the world’s greatest modern artist — co-founder of the Cubist movement, painter, sculptor and ceramicist — reveals the impact these women, particularly his eight long-term lovers, had upon his work, and the price they paid for having been Picasso’s muse.
Two were driven to mental breakdowns and two committed suicide.
Picasso was a man of many contradictions: often kindly and sensitive, he could also be selfish, tyrannical and domineering.
To women in particular he had an almost schizophrenic attitude. As one of his biographers, Patrick O’Brian, observed: ‘Picasso’s feeling for women oscillated between extreme tenderness on the one hand and violent hatred on the other, the mid-point being dislike — if not contempt.’
And yet he was obsessed by women and could not bear to be without a female companion, ideally several.
In fact, his main requirements of a mistress were that she should be both submissive and shorter than him — a somewhat stringent stipulation given that Picasso was a mere 5ft 4in.
He resented his dependence on women, however, and so tried to overcome it by dominating them, often to the point of cruelty. He famously informed one of his mistresses: ‘For me, there are only two kinds of women — goddesses and doormats.’
It was a Jekyll-and-Hyde attitude that may have been shaped by his early years.
Pablo Picasso was born in 1881 in Malaga, Spain. His father, Don José Ruiz, an artist and art teacher, would go to the brothel on a Sunday after Mass. The young Pablo followed his father’s example, losing his virginity at the age of 13 or 14 in one such establishment.
Pablo Picasso pictured with his second wife Jacqueline Picasso. Picasso was a man of many contradictions: often kindly and sensitive, he could also be selfish, tyrannical and domineering
The idea that women existed largely for his convenience and pleasure permeated not just his life but his work.
Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, his famous paintings of five naked prostitutes, one squatting in a pornographic manner, is often cited as evidence of his contempt for the opposite sex. Yet he adored his mother, eventually taking her maiden name, Picasso, instead of his father’s surname, Ruiz.
The family were short of money for much of Picasso’s childhood, and this poverty etched itself on Picasso’s heart.
In later life, he was generous to a fault, but he hated to be preyed upon by those keen to exploit his growing fortune.
His artistic talent was obvious from an early age. After art school in Madrid, he left Spain for Paris in 1900, aged 19, with two fellow Spanish painters. One of them fell in love with a girl named Germaine, but, being impotent, was unable to consummate his love.
‘The idea that women existed largely for his convenience and pleasure permeated not just his life but his work’
Picasso, it seems, stepped into the breach and slept with Germaine himself, only for his heartbroken friend to shoot himself.
The tragedy precipitated Picasso’s Blue Period as he poured his grief for his friend into a series of melancholy canvases.
For a time, Picasso moved between Paris, Madrid and Barcelona, where he became obsessed with a striptease artist, drawing a series of delicate, explicit nudes of her that were never displayed.
By 1904, he had settled permanently in Paris, taking a studio in a rundown building on the Seine. It was here that he met Fernande Olivier, an artists’ model who had striking red hair, almond eyes and a voluptuous figure.
Picasso was entranced by this beautiful, liberated woman. Hitherto he had met only pious Spanish ladies or prostitutes. Fernande, meanwhile, was magnetised by his dark, compelling eyes and incredible vitality, which made up for his short stature and far-from-handsome features. She moved into his squalid little studio.
This signalled the end of his Blue Period and the start of his Rose Period as he painted her sensuous pink body on canvas after canvas.
Fernande was gloriously lazy, so Picasso was forced to do all the housework, a contrast with his later relationships in which his mistresses tended to his domestic needs. Yet he was content. Years later, he pointed to the dingy building saying: ‘That is the only place where I was ever happy.’
In 1909, Picasso left this shabby contentment for a smarter studio. He now had patrons — wealthy American art collectors Gertrude and Leo Stein — and his work was being exhibited. But Fernande was becoming irritated by his intense possessiveness. In 1912, she left him for an Italian painter.
Picasso retaliated by taking up with one of her friends, Marcelle Humbert, a frail, slender young woman whom he called Eva. Their love affair was intense, but Picasso’s passion did not preclude dalliances with other women.
Picasso and Jacqueline. To women in particular he had an almost schizophrenic attitude
When Eva contracted tuberculosis in 1915, he cared for her devotedly, but between visits to her bedside he was secretly sleeping with a young woman named Gaby, depicting her in a series of intimate paintings and sketches.
After Eva’s death in 1916, he attempted to console himself with a series of lovers, but his unhappiness made him impossible to live with.
Eventually, he was shaken out of his misery by the poet Jean Cocteau, who persuaded Picasso to paint the scenery for a ballet. So Picasso left war-torn France for Rome, where the Ballets Russes was touring.
He soon fell in love with one of the ballerinas, a Russian girl named Olga Koklova. Inflamed by her lithe body and her aloofness — she refused to succumb to his advances — Picasso was determined to possess her. She eventually weakened and became his mistress, and in 1918, his wife.
They set up home in Paris and the marriage was happy at first, despite their differences. Picasso was Bohemian, unconventional and indifferent to social status. Olga was bourgeois, a social climber and pathologically jealous.
She bore him a son, Paulo, whom Picasso adored. The birth provided a catalyst for a series of tender paintings — called Maternité — of nursing babies.
But domestic bliss was short-lived. Picasso was now wealthy enough to employ servants, and Olga found she had nothing to do.
Bored, unfulfilled and bitter at the loss of her career, she had, said one of Picasso’s friends, ‘only one aim left in life — to make her husband’s existence unbearable — and she even gave up her social activities to devote herself entirely to this exhilarating task’. A more likely explanation was that her husband’s serial infidelities had driven her to the verge of a nervous breakdown.
A woman looks at an artwork entitled The Man with the Hands in His Pockets, by Picasso in an exhibition at the Picasso Museum in Barcelona
Picasso’s paintings soon began to be filled with grotesque, distorted-looking women.
Baigneuse Assise Au Bord De La Mer depicts a monstrous female figure seated like a preying mantis with huge toothy jaws.
He soon found a means of escape from Olga’s clutches. In 1927, he met a beautiful blonde girl, Marie-Thérèse Walter, on a Parisian street.
Within a week they had become lovers, although at just 17 — he was then 46 — she was under the age of consent.
Apart from his second wife, she was the most enduring love of his life, perhaps the only woman who made him truly happy.
Intelligent but not intellectual, she was submissive and tolerant. She put up with his need for other women because she knew that he loved her best.
In 1928, he took his family on holiday to the fashionable seaside resort of Dinard and arranged for Marie-Thérèse to attend a summer camp for girls nearby. Every morning, leaving his wife and son, he and his young lover would entertain each other in a nearby beach hut.
Years later, Marie-Thérèse described his lovemaking as at times ‘intimidating and terrible’. But Picasso’s paintings of her, while highly sensual, are suffused with a tenderness absent from his paintings of other women.
Unable to bear her husband’s infidelities any more, Olga took their son and left the artist to live in the South of France.
In 1927 Picasso met Marie-Thérèse Walter, a 17 year old girl with whom he sought solace from his wife Olga, and went on to have a child
In 1935, Picasso fathered a daughter with Marie-Thérèse, named Maya. He was overjoyed, yet his happiness with his lover did not deter him from plunging into another affair, with a half-Yugoslavian, half-French photographer, Dora Maar. Intellectual, gifted and beautiful, at 29 she was nearly half his age.
For a while, he managed to keep his two young mistresses apart. Then one day they met by accident in his studio. He later described the ensuing scene.
‘Marie-Thérèse turned to me and said: “Make up your mind. Which one of us goes?” I was satisfied with things as they were. I told them they’d have to fight it out for themselves. So they began to wrestle. It’s one of my choicest memories.’
He immortalised the moment in a painting, Birds In A Cage, in which a black dove (Dora) fights with a beautiful white dove (Marie-Thérèse). The black dove won. Dora moved in with Picasso and he installed Marie-Thérèse and their daughter Maya in a nearby flat.
Dora Maar was an intellectual equal and collaborator — she photographed his famous painting of the Spanish Civil War, Guernica — but one woman was never enough. Only a harem would have satisfied Picasso.
In 1943, with Paris under Nazi occupation, he saw two pretty young girls in a café, and invited them to come to his studio. One of the two, 21-year-old Françoise Gilot, was a law student and aspiring painter. He wooed her for months before she finally surrendered her virginity to him.
When Dora heard about this new affair, she was shattered. Ignoring her distress, Picasso packed her off to a nearby apartment, where she would wait by the telephone for the ‘master’ to summon her round to his studio.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, in 1945 she suffered a total mental collapse. Picasso sent her to a nursing home to recover and Françoise moved in with him. Dora Maar never took another lover, famously pronouncing: ‘After Picasso, God.’ The artist now turned his attention — for a time at least — fully on his young lover Françoise.
They spent much of their time in the Mediterranean resort of Antibes, but their happiness was marred by the frequent appearances of his rejected wife, Olga, who had settled nearby.
By now mentally unstable, and apparently unable to accept Picasso’s adultery, she would burst into his home and attack Françoise, pinching and scratching her.
But such dramatic interventions must by then have become rather run of the mill for Picasso, and were certainly not enough to dissuade him from continuing his new passion.
Françoise bore him two children, a son, Claude, and a daughter, Paloma. Picasso was delighted, but Françoise soon became resentful of the domestic drudgery that living together with children entailed.
Picasso rigorously adhered to a doctor’s advice to always have ‘plenty of sex and red wine’
Picasso made her get up at dawn to light the stoves in his studios.
She hated the philandering he still refused to give up, and sunk into a bitter gloom, which so depressed Picasso that he contemplated suicide.
Salvation — for him at least — came, once again, in the form of another young mistress. Geneviève Laporte, a poet whom he had first met when she was a schoolgirl in war-time Paris, became his lover in 1951.
He was now 70, she 24. Since he was by now an international celebrity, he had to keep the affair secret to avoid scandal, yet it all came to nothing after she left him in 1953 over some petty misunderstanding.
A heartbroken Picasso hung around nightclubs on the Cote d’Azur hoping to find her. That same year, Françoise finally left him for a Greek lover.
Wretched with rejection, Picasso buried himself in his work. One of his favourite models was Jacqueline Roque, an exotic-looking 27-year-old.
Jacqueline Roque worshipped Picasso when she first met him as a 27-year-old woman – but he was at first indifferent. He went on to marry her in 1954 and the two were together for 20 years
She called him her ‘god’, kissed his hands and worshipped him devotedly. At first he was indifferent, but they soon became lovers. In 1961, he married her — first wife Olga had died of cancer in 1954 — though, his sex drive undiminished, he continued to take other lovers.
During his 20 years with Jacqueline, he painted more than 400 pictures of her. It was a period of intense creativity — but at the expense, some thought, of his happiness.
Towards the end of his life he became almost a hermit, which his friends blamed on the possessive Jacqueline, who barred his children and grandchildren from the house.
Throughout his life, Picasso had rigorously adhered to a doctor’s advice to always have ‘plenty of sex and red wine’.
But in 1966, aged 85, he developed prostate problems, which was devastating for one so priapic.
He died aged 92 in April 1973 with Jacqueline at his side. A statue of Marie Thérèse, perhaps his greatest love, was placed over his grave. Four years later, she hanged herself, unable to bear the world without him. Jacqueline turned to drink and in 1986, bereft without her ‘god’, she shot herself.
For all his adoration of women and his inability to live without them, Picasso had brought misery to those who loved him.
It is hard to disagree with Dora Maar, who once told him: ‘As an artist you may be extraordinary, but morally speaking you are worthless.’
■ Picasso and Modern British Art is at Tate Britain until July
__
INEZ: We’re meeting Paul and Carol at the museum for the private showing.-
GIL PENDER: OK. Yeah. Right.
INEZ: You know, Paul happens to be an expert in Monet,so you’ll find it enlightening, I think.Yeah.
GIL PENDER: OK.Let’s get some culture.
PAUL: The juxtaposition of color is amazing.This man was the real father of abstract expressionism.I take that back. Maybe Turner.I mean, I love Turner,but, I just find this…overwhelming.If I’m not mistaken, it took him 2 years to complete this.He worked out of Giverny,where he was frequently.
GIL PENDER: ..I heard that Monet, one of thethings that he used to try to…
INEZ: Shh! I’m trying to hear Paul say it.
PAUL: Well, he was frequently visited by Caillebotte,an artist who I personally feel was underrated.Ah. Now.Here’s a superb Picasso.If I’m not mistaken, he painted this marvelous portrait of his French mistress Madeleine Brissou in the ’20s.
GIL PENDER: Paul, I’m gonna have to differ with you on this one.-
INEZ: Really.- Gil, just pay attention.You might learn something.
GIL PENDER: OK, well, if I’m not mistaken,this was a failed attempt to capture a young French girl named Adriana,from Bordeaux, if my art history serves me,who came to Paris to study costume design for the theater.I’m pretty sure she had an affairwith Modigliani, then Braque,which is how Pablo met her. Picasso.Of course, what you don’t getfrom this portrait is the subtlety,and her beauty. She was just a knock-out.
INEZ: What have you been smoking?
GIL PENDER: I’d hardly call this picture marvelous,it’s more of apetit-bourgeois statement on how Pablo sees her. Saw her.He’s distracted by the fact that she was a absolute volcano in the sack.
This series deals with the Book of Ecclesiastes and Woody Allen films. The first post dealt with MAGIC IN THE MOONLIGHT and it dealt with the fact that in the Book of Ecclesiastes Solomon does contend like Hobbes and Stanley that life is “nasty, brutish and short” and as a result has no meaning UNDER THE SUN.
The movie MIDNIGHT IN PARIS offers many of the same themes we see in Ecclesiastes. The second post looked at the question: WAS THERE EVER A GOLDEN AGE AND DID THE MOST TALENTED UNIVERSAL MEN OF THAT TIME FIND TRUE SATISFACTION DURING IT?
In the third post in this series we discover in Ecclesiastes that man UNDER THE SUN finds himself caught in the never ending cycle of birth and death. The SURREALISTS make a leap into the area of nonreason in order to get out of this cycle and that is why the scene in MIDNIGHT IN PARIS with Salvador Dali, Man Ray, and Luis Bunuel works so well!!!! These surrealists look to the area of their dreams to find a meaning for their lives and their break with reality is only because they know that they can’t find a rational meaning in life without God in the picture.
The fourth post looks at the solution of WINE, WOMEN AND SONG and the fifth and sixth posts look at the solution T.S.Eliot found in the Christian Faith and how he left his fragmented message of pessimism behind. In the seventh post the SURREALISTS say that time and chance is all we have but how can that explain love or art and the hunger for God? The eighth post looks at the subject of DEATH both in Ecclesiastes and MIDNIGHT IN PARIS. In the ninth post we look at the nihilistic worldview of Woody Allen and why he keeps putting suicides into his films.
In the tenth post I show how Woody Allen pokes fun at the brilliant thinkers of this world and how King Solomon did the same thing 3000 years ago. In the eleventh post I point out how many of Woody Allen’s liberal political views come a lack of understanding of the sinful nature of man and where it originated. In the twelfth post I look at the mannishness of man and vacuum in his heart that can only be satisfied by a relationship with God.
In the thirteenth post we look at the life of Ernest Hemingway as pictured in MIDNIGHT AND PARIS and relate it to the change of outlook he had on life as the years passed. In the fourteenth post we look at Hemingway’s idea of Paris being a movable feast. The fifteenth and sixteenth posts both compare Hemingway’s statement, “Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know…” with Ecclesiastes 2:18 “For in much wisdom is much vexation, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow.” The seventeenth post looks at these words Woody Allen put into Hemingway’s mouth, “We fear death because we feel that we haven’t loved well enough or loved at all.”
In MIDNIGHT IN PARIS Hemingway and Gil Pender talk about their literary idol Mark Twain and the eighteenth post is summed up nicely by Kris Hemphill‘swords, “Both Twain and [King Solomon in the Book of Ecclesiastes] voice questions our souls long to have answered: Where does one find enduring meaning, life purpose, and sustainable joy, and why do so few seem to find it? The nineteenth post looks at the tension felt both in the life of Gil Pender (written by Woody Allen) in the movie MIDNIGHT IN PARIS and in Mark Twain’s life and that is when an atheist says he wants to scoff at the idea THAT WE WERE PUT HERE FOR A PURPOSE but he must stay face the reality of Ecclesiastes 3:11 that says “God has planted eternity in the heart of men…” and THAT CHANGES EVERYTHING! Therefore, the secular view that there is no such thing as love or purpose looks implausible. The twentieth post examines how Mark Twain discovered just like King Solomon in the Book of Ecclesiastes that there is no explanation for the suffering and injustice that occurs in life UNDER THE SUN. Solomon actually brought God back into the picture in the last chapter and he looked ABOVE THE SUN for the books to be balanced and for the tears to be wiped away.
The twenty-first post looks at the words of King Solomon, Woody Allen and Mark Twain that without God in the picture our lives UNDER THE SUN will accomplish nothing that lasts. The twenty-second post looks at King Solomon’s experiment 3000 years that proved that luxuries can’t bring satisfaction to one’s life but we have seen this proven over and over through the ages. Mark Twain lampooned the rich in his book “The Gilded Age” and he discussed get rich quick fever, but Sam Clemens loved money and the comfort and luxuries it could buy. Likewise Scott Fitzgerald was very successful in the 1920’s after his publication of THE GREAT GATSBY and lived a lavish lifestyle until his death in 1940 as a result of alcoholism.
In the twenty-third post we look at Mark Twain’s statement that people should either commit suicide or stay drunk if they are “demonstrably wise” and want to “keep their reasoning faculties.” We actually see this play out in the film MIDNIGHT IN PARIS with the character Zelda Fitzgerald. In the twenty-fourth, twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth posts I look at Mark Twain and the issue of racism. In MIDNIGHT IN PARIS we see the difference between the attitudes concerning race in 1925 Paris and the rest of the world.
The twenty-seventh and twenty-eighth posts are summing up Mark Twain. In the 29th post we ask did MIDNIGHT IN PARIS accurately portray Hemingway’s personality and outlook on life? and in the 30th post the life and views of Hemingway are summed up.
In the 31st post we will observe that just like Solomon Picasso slept with many women. Solomon actually slept with over 1000 women ( Eccl 2:8, I Kings 11:3), and both men ended their lives bitter against all women.
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The Characters referenced in Woody Allen’s “Midnight in Paris” (Part 4 Ernest Hemingway)
June 16, 2011 – 9:08 am
By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)
The Characters referenced in Woody Allen’s “Midnight in Paris” (Part 3 Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald)
June 16, 2011 – 3:46 am
By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)
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June 15, 2011 – 7:40 am
By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)
The Characters referenced in Woody Allen’s “Midnight in Paris” (Part 1 William Faulkner)
June 13, 2011 – 3:19 pm
By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)
MUSIC MONDAY Cole Porter “Let’s Do it, Let’s Fall in Love” in the movie MIDNIGHT IN PARIS
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