Okay, for those of you - there may be more than one - who don’t know how the story ends, this is one version, very briefly. Seeing Antony’s inevitable defeat, Cleopatra flees to the safety of her monument. Antony follows her and is told - wrongly - that she has killed herself. Consumed with grief, he orders one of his guards to run him through. Too late, he is told that Cleopatra lives. Mortally wounded, he is reunited with his queen, but dies from his wounds. Broken-hearted, but convinced they will be reunited in death, Cleopatra commits suicide, exposing her breast to the bite of a venomous snake. Thus, in spite of the tribulations their love has brought them, Antony and Cleopatra remain passionately in love to the end. Which sort of brings me to the point of these two posts - the cost of falling in love. If you knew then what you know now, would you have fallen in love with the same person. Or don’t we really get the choice? [Did you spot the rabbit, by the way?]Archive for November 2010
Okay, for those of you - there may be more than one - who don’t know how the story ends, this is one version, very briefly. Seeing Antony’s inevitable defeat, Cleopatra flees to the safety of her monument. Antony follows her and is told - wrongly - that she has killed herself. Consumed with grief, he orders one of his guards to run him through. Too late, he is told that Cleopatra lives. Mortally wounded, he is reunited with his queen, but dies from his wounds. Broken-hearted, but convinced they will be reunited in death, Cleopatra commits suicide, exposing her breast to the bite of a venomous snake. Thus, in spite of the tribulations their love has brought them, Antony and Cleopatra remain passionately in love to the end. Which sort of brings me to the point of these two posts - the cost of falling in love. If you knew then what you know now, would you have fallen in love with the same person. Or don’t we really get the choice? [Did you spot the rabbit, by the way?]
Not that you would notice, but this picture of Cleopatra is a composite, with Emma’s head cloned onto the queen’s body. I have been rereading Baudelaire‘s Fleurs du Mal, revisiting my schooldays. The anthology includes the short poem Antoine et Cleopatra - and an image which took my breath away when I first read it as an impressionable teenager, in love for the first time. Turning her beautiful face towards Marc Antony, Cleopatra “offers her mouth and her clear eyes.” And as he bends over to kiss her, he sees, reflected in those large eyes flecked with gold, the vast sea and the Roman fleet sailing towards Egypt. End of poem. But we know - as Marc Antony must always have known - what would be the consequence of his falling in love with the Egyptian queen. In 31 BC Antony’s forces faced the Romans in a naval action he was bound to lose. His nemesis Octavian went on to invade Egypt, as Antony’s armies deserted him. [You can read the rest of the tragedy elsewhere if you don’t already know the sad ending.] That’s love for you.
