Thursday, February 12, 2009

Beautiful ugly

The muses work in labyrinthine ways, and creativity spirals in and yet out of itself like a nautilus.

I found a poem by Mark Doty that was inspired by Jean Cocteau's film La Belle et la Bete, which was in turn inspired by who knows what version of the fairy tale Beauty and the Beast.

He captures that nagging sense of unease over the Beast's transformation into the prince, even as we are all awaiting that pivot point, anxiously waiting to hear Beauty proclaim her love and thus enable the Beast to shed his so-called ugliness and prove himself worthy of her love (...but didn't he already do that?) No one remembers the prince, but the

"...heady onrush
of the transformation...

...the moments
disruptive and lush, before the breaking through

...not to the kingdom itself, where nothing happens,
but the approach to the kingdom:
everything, the coming to love."
(from La Belle et la Bete - read it here)

What do you think?

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