FRANCOIS BOUCHER
Madame de Pompadour, about 1757
oil on canvas 13 3/4 x 17 1/4 in.
Edinburgh, NAtional Gallery of Scotland

Gone is now the royal oasis-life of old France. You cannot find the Versailles of the dreams of this beautiful person anymore But all that belongs to the holy archetypes of the great nations! In France: dream you my Pompadour eternally in my arms while the night is thick and rude, for there is enough might in the portrait of Napolean at Arcola for that, for every dream of every woman in the realm of the ideals, in the kingdom of the ideals. What is the secret of the difference between the feminine values real and low, ugly and beautiful, it is the life of the dignity, it is the dreamy or hard-working life of the dignity, it making the difference that always is, that does not disappear. The beauties like she of the old courts are not dearer to us than any other women are, but they make our innermosts to live deeper and faster. We want to find Napoleon as young and brilliant, not as old and foolish, beaten and smashed at Waterloo because of it. It is in his youth like through this Arcola masterportrait, where we can see the military manhood that is high, that wills to protect the women in their real, not unreal, destinies. I said: dream you in my arms eternal in the night that is so thick and rude. Why? Because there is behind the cosmic forces linked to Mahdi, to the cosmic manhood of the primordial, to the primitive and wild manhood of the archetypes.

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updated 1.6.2003
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