THE IMPERFECTIONISTS
By Tom Rachman 272 pages.
To advance, to transpire, to transcent, through music, through space, from mountain to mountian, ocean to ocean, one night club to one religious retreat...
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Salzberg |
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Mozart Piano, May 2012 |
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| Tom Rachman |
| Canabel |
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| Millais |
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| Waterhouse |
Perhaps it may be granted...that what makes a woman a whore in the Hamlets' estimation is her sexual use by not one man but by more than one man.... what seems to enrage [Hamlet] in the 'nunnery' interlude is that Ophelia has put her sense of love and duty for another man above her sense of love and duty for him, just as Gertrude put her sense of love and duty for her new husband above her sense of love and duty for her old. Gertrude chose a brother over a dead Hamlet; Ophelia chooses a father over a living Hamlet: both choices can be read as additionally sexually perverse in being, to Hamlet, 'incestuous'. (Stanton,New Essays on Hamlet 168-9)
Hamlet: ...I did love you once.Her frailty and innocence work against her as she cannot cope with the unfolding of one traumatic event after another. Ophelia's darling Hamlet causes all her emotional pain throughout the play, and when his hate is responsible for her father's death, she has endured all that she is capable of enduring and goes insane. But even in her insanity she symbolizes, to everyone but Hamlet, incorruption and virtue. "In her wanderings we hear from time to time an undertone of the deepest sorrow, but never the agonized cry of fear or horror which makes madness dreadful or shocking. And the picture of her death, if our eyes grow dim in watching it, is still purely beautiful". (Bradley, Shakespearean Tragedy 132-3). The bawdy songs that she sings in front of Laertes, Gertrude, and Claudius are somber reminders that the corrupt world has taken its toll on the pure Ophelia. They show us that only in her insanity does she live up to Hamlet's false perception of her as a lascivious woman.
Ophelia: Indeed, my, lord, you made me believe so.
Hamlet: You should not have believed me...I loved you not.
Ophelia: I was the more deceived.
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| Palmer 1994, Romanee 1996, Bollinger at Stay, Taipei 101 The Restaurant Stay at Taipei 101 serves the best French Cuisin in Taipei !! |
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| Beautiful and colorful Macaron at Ballavita Salone De Joel Robucheon, Bellavita, Taipei |

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| At MoCA Taipei |
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| Goldener Saal of the Musikverein |
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| May, 2012 |
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Aphrodite and Eros, by Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini, from the late 17th century. |
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| Diana of Versailles |
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| The Judge of Paris, Athena And Aphrodite |