The Winds of Wonder

The smile that knows everything

 सगळे काही जाणणारे स्मित

आले दुरून सगळे काही जाणणारे स्मित

त्याला नसे कारण, त्याला नसे ध्येयही;

त्याचे ज्वलंत रूप आहे निर्मळ आनंदाचे,

जसे काही सोन्याची घागर भरलेली मधाने;

ते आहे म्हणून तर मी आहे, माझे सर्वच,

गुरांचा गोठा, तेथे प्रेमळपणाचे हंबरणे;

रात्री दिवसा, सर्वदा, भरभराटच सर्वत्र, 

क्षण आणि क्षण ओथंबून जाई शाश्वताने;

असत्य खोटेपणा लबाडी पाप दुर्दैव 

नसे त्यांना थारा सृष्टीच्या व्यवहारात;

सौंदर्य हेच आहे त्या गूढत्वाचे  कारण,

आणि तेचि करीन मृत्यूही परिवर्तित. 

११ मे २०२५

Featured Image: The Mother

The smile that will change everything

Le sourire qui changera tout le monde

THE IMAGE

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This most famed of paintings started out in 1503 as the portrait of a bourgeois Florentine woman, Lisa Gheradini, wife of the silk merchant and sharp operator, Francesco del Giocondo.  Over the long period of its gestation it evolved into a ‘universal picture’ into which Leonardo poured his knowledge as a painter. It became a demonstration of the relationship of the body of the woman and the ‘body of the earth’ (with its ‘vene d’acqua’, ‘veins of water’), both living and changeable. It expresses his optical researches into light, shade and colour, and into the progressive blurring of forms.  It manifests his concept of the eye as ‘window of the soul’, which allows us to take in the glories of the visible world, and transmits the sitter’s ‘concetto dell’anima’ (the ‘intention of the soul’) to the viewer.

For a woman to look at the spectator is unusual in portraiture at this time, and to smile is even more radical. The motifs of the beguiling eyes and bewitching lips of the beloved lady consciously emulate the love poetry of Dante, Petrarch and their successors (including Guarini). The divine lady’s eyes and sweet smile inflame our desperate love but she remains eternally beyond the reach of our earthly desires.

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MARTIN KEMP

​https://leonardo.ifagiolini.com/mona-lisa.html

A rendering into English by Akash Deshpande

The distant all-knowing smile has arrived
A smile without cause, a smile without goal
Its flaming form is just unsullied bliss
A golden jar, a jar brimmed with honey
It is so I am, so all that I have
The cowshed, in it the gentle lowing
Day, night, always, everywhere life and growth
Moments overwhelmed by eternity
Falsehood, lies, deceit, sin and misfortune
Have no place in creation’s busyness
Beauty alone the cause of that secret
Beauty that revolutionizes death
—
Translation in 10 syllables per line