NOTES FROM PARIS, June 8 2017:
MUSÉE DU LOUVRE // PARIS, FRANCE
“In Paris, there is a snake on every corner.
At the Church of St. Sulpice, the Virgin Mary crushes a serpent with her foot while cradling a baby Jesus, symbolizing triumph over evil.
In the Greek galleries at the Louvre, a viper crowns the battle shields of would-be heroes— stouthearted soldiers invoking the warrior power of the Gorgon, transforming opponents to stone. Medusa, with serpents for hair, in a terrorizing incarnation of female power.
Also in the Louvre: Hercules slaying the serpents. Gilgamesh, not sculpted with the snake but whose story is incomplete without it. Who bathes in a river as a serpent steals and eats his plant of immortality, forever preventing him from eternal life (which instead is gained by the snake, shedding its skin).
Both in Eden and the Epic of Gilgamesh, the snake is painted an insidious creature, fruitful in its deception only because of the ignorance and fickle-mindedness of the human resolve. But the serpent is not naturally symbolic of evil. Elsewhere at the Louvre, we study Persian antiquities from the ancient city of Susa, artifacts often adorned by or formed in the shape of a snake. The prizing of such a creature was due to its association with water, a slithering symbol of lush and fertile earth for a people often straining towards green plains and flowing rivers.”
I recount this entry only so that I may offer an imperfect metaphor. Most of life as we have come to live it is halted, and heavy we sigh in collective performance. But perhaps what we have here is a snake. Perhaps it’s something to be overcome, perhaps it’s a blessing in disguise, perhaps it’s a trial of patience or another virtue pressed equally sharp. In my greatest of “perhaps,” perhaps it gives us pause to realize that we ourselves are the snake, the viper in our own bosom. Whatever it is, may we raise a glass to shedding our skins.
Or, in the studied words of one of the most esteemed of all serpents, our dear Monty Python:
And now for something completely different.
3.29.2020