At the Musée D’Orsay just last week, before all the museums here were definitively closed, I stopped for a long moment of contemplation in an otherwise empty room, before this magnificent painting, named ‘Le Paradis’ – Paradise. It’s by a favorite painter, Maurice Denis (1870-1943).
What was this message of promise, I thought, capturing our very human desire to find future harmony, while at the same time only strictly limited visitors (100 at a time) were allowed to enter this vast temple of art as a threatening mass contagion was being announced?
Today I thought of the lines of Emily Dickinson which give us hope to hear again the sound of bees humming, the vision of unfading flowers and endless shades of green, and the comfort of returning home, in a letter the poet sent to her brother, Austin.
I’ll post it here, followed by a link to a nice track where you can even listen to it being read aloud:
There is another sky,
Ever serene and fair,
And there is another sunshine,
Though it be darkness there;
Never mind faded forests, Austin,
Never mind silent fields –
Here is a little forest,
Whose leaf is ever green;
Here is a brighter garden,
Where not a frost has been;
In its unfading flowers
I hear the bright bee hum:
Prithee, my brother,
Into my garden come!