MERRY CHRISTMAS 2022 & HAPPY NEW YEAR
From Darkness to Light…
Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita mi ritrovai per una selva oscura…la diritta via era smarrita. « In the midst of the path of our life I found myself in a dark forest …the straight path had disappeared. » To walk from Darkness to Light should be the initiatory path of all human life, the first verses of Dante’s Divina Commedia are with me ever since I took the path of self-discovery, that is the path of Truth and Knowledge. The creative power in me required to channel this force and energy into a path of work that would enlighten me on human destiny. I had to go back in time, return to the sources in a Socratic philosophical and metaphysical quest, « Know thyself and thou shalt know the secret of the Gods. » The path could only be long, arduous, solitary, and tortuous. It took me to different horizons, spurred on by the memory of former lifetimes, masculine or feminine. Their echo still resonates in me and guides me towards the countries or people I have already known in a near or distant past. I extract their quintessence in my writing since it is my present destiny to give life to the memory of the past through the magical use of words in my different languages.
For some years now Dante’s allegory of the dark forest has concretized for me in the Royal Forest of Fontainebleau, still vibrating with so many echoes of the past, in a site of natural beauty, an inspiration to many poets and artists. This year it crystallized in the book LA VIE DE BOHÈME À BOIS LE ROI. ART, POLITIQUE ET NATURALISME, published in November. It closed the circle on my initiatory quest bringing me back through the alchemy of words and images to my childhood. I found some peers in these Bohèmes, their luminous, rebellious, and visionary spirit had nurtured my soul and heart in my readings as a child.
This analysis of man’s creative genius is mine since my marriage and my husband’s death, he was a multi-talented visionary who had let go of his dream, ‘To be a bridge between East and West’, and let go of life as a result. I carried on this work with Mario Praz through the studies realized at the Warburg Institute in London by Fritz Saxl, Aby Warburg’s assistant, Panofsky, Klibansky, Rudolf and Margot Wittkower on the interplay of Light and Darkness in the human soul, an inherent part of creativity. In this light I analyzed the work of a young French contemporary artist with a dark tormented soul, in a book published in French and English last February, Clément Denis. Ut pictura poesis. The study of the Bohèmes in Bois-le-Roi completes this route, I have found myself in them, and this year ends for me with a sense of plenitude, I have achieved what is my destiny in recovering my national heritage to go forward in a new life. May this New Year bring us all this peace of mind and soul, this serenity of having done one’s duty, despite all the difficult circumstances darkening our world. And may the Light of Hope and Love shine in our hearts this Christmas Day. The wealth of riches in man’s heart and soul is infinite, one needs only hear their call beyond the uproar, the chaos, and the triviality of everyday life. Thus said in 1895 Charles Castellani, painter and bard of the Bohèmes in Bois-le-Roi : « before half a century, poets, artists…shall not find any longer a corner to dream and contemplate,…This horrible locomotive, this engine defined as progress, threatening to level all and everything, man’s intellect as well as forests, shall deprive mankind even of the dream of happiness and freedom. »
JOYEUX NOËL & HEUREUSE ANNÉE NOUVELLE. December 2022, Monique Riccardi-Cubitt
