|
Forgive Us Two centuries after their creation, Bernardo Bellotto’s Landscapes helped reconstruct European cities destroyed by World War II. Rubble, empty tram cars, boards and girders reaching upward, limbs without a heaven to hold onto, a cast of vertical shadows: the lonely spires, the minarets, the men in winter coats, their long white mufflers silk and wool from creatures stripped of innocence. The soul knows war, Europe devasted, without splendor in the plazas, horses and carriages, buildings and cathedrals, families with children, details waiting in the war-torn light. To rebuild. To heal the crippled girders, to set up ladders in bombed light, hearts crushed beneath the scale of sky: Forgive us, for we have trespassed on the boundaries of the imagined, for we are modern and existential, for we are imperfect and romantic and we have wept before the masterpiece could be recaptured. Forgive us, unloved, for we are love and hands and broken art, night on fire inside a sacred shadow. |
|
