Metamorphosis

Once upon a time, there were Adam and Noah.
Their story was direr than the Messiah.
One got robbed of a fraction of rib; 
The other suffered tides of rips. 

Sick of Bishop's "One Art"? Try this!

Out of sight, out of mind.
This is how I want to die.
I have tried; I would fight.
I miss you one thousand and one nights.

He's a verbal wizard par excellence.
Ambivalent rhetoric does he breed.
As for relationship, beyond question,
He speaks thousandfold louder than his deeds.

She lit his cigarette, sniffed his pomade, 
Touching the writing desk that reeks of him.
She slipped into his flat while he's away,
And left in time before her will grew limp.

Deriving from Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur, the Lady of Shalott, through Lord Alfred Tennyson's rendition, becomes a mythological figure. Confined to an isle upstream from King Arthur's Camelot, she weaves what she sees in the mirror into tapestries. Later on when Pre-Raphaelitism was at its height, "The Lady of Shalott," due to its medieval aura, its tragic beauty, and its artist trope, gained popularity among painters like William Holman Hunt (1827-1910) and John William Waterhouse (1849-1917). While most people read this fictional character as a tragic yet beautiful heroine--Poe's poetic taste indeed--contemporary critics also start to interpret this consummate weaver as a prototype for artistic representation. The tapestry as text(ile) especially attracts feminists, poststructuralists, and postmodernists.

The first painting here was finished by Hunt between 1889 and 1892; it was actually his last major painting recorded. Due to Hunt's failing eyesight, he completed this painting with the help of an assistant. Noticeably, this ornate painting--beyond its iridescent colors--abounds with symbolism. Here the bare-footed Lady of Shalott poses like a deity, her red hair twitching as vigorously as that of the serpentine Medusa. While one critic comments that she is almost hanged by her unrestrained lock--a foreshowing of her later suicide--I am inclined to interpret the hair as an emblem of her creative power. Engrossed in her tapestry, the Lady of Shalott observes her work with a critical eye, her right hand holding the needle which will eventually turn threads into tours de force. Outdoors the field is sunny and serene; indoors she is perfectly in harmony with her medieval setting. Apparently, what Hunt had in mind is an ingenious artist, not a forlorn lover.

W. G. Sebald, who is referred to as the Einstein of memory, devoted himself to the exploration of loss, exile, and emigration in the twentieth century. In Austerlitz, he captures the Holocaust as an indirect witness, a non-Jewish survivior, and a descendant of the German in shame.

In addition to his verbal mastery, I am particularly fascinated by the elusive genre of Austerlitz. It seems that both the narrator and the protagonist Austerlitz are easily transported by images they see, and that their past experiences are not "illuminated"--if you may call their vague recollections illuminations--until they later come across some specific passages or photographs.