Tuesday, January 29, 2008

An Enthusiastic Soul

In order to know intense joy...one must have an enthusiastic soul...

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It is an uneasy lot at best, to be what we call highly taught and yet not to enjoy: to be present at this great spectacle of life and never to be liberated from a small hungry shivering self -- never to be fully possessed by the glory we behold,

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never to have our consciousness rapturously transformed into the vividness of a thought,

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the ardour of a passion, the energy of an action,

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but always to be scholarly and uninspired, ambitious and timid, scrupulous and dim-sighted.


The words are George Eliot, from her great novel Middlemarch, which I am currently reading and loving the hell out of. (I am a sucker for a 19th-century English novel.) The clothes are John Galliano for Christian Dior, from the F/W Haute Couture show last week.

Ya know, I yak and I yak and I yak about Galliano and why I think he's a genius, but photos of clothes like these really beggar language. It's pointless to talk about shape and line and cutting and all that other fashion-y stuff -- these clothes are quite simply imagination run rampant, and they are glorious. I don't think you need a fashion education to appreciate them, just a desire for beauty and a willingness to be amazed. An enthusiastic soul.


Photos: Style.com

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4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Just brilliant - I'm going to print this out so I can read it every morning. Thank-you

Susan B said...

Way to dovetail narrative and pictures, perfect!!!

Now I'm going to have to add Middlemarch to my reading list.

Sian said...

Excellent post, thank you.

Anonymous said...

You, those Galliano gowns, and George all together -- I can't decide if I'm about to faint or orgasm. Thank you!