There's a painting of Stanley Spencer's that hangs in the Tate, a double nude portrait of Spence and his wife in their mid forties. It's the quintessence of directness about cohabitation, about the sexes living together over time. Spencer is seated, squatting, beside his recumbent wife. He is looking ruminatively down at her from close range through his wire-rimmed glasses. We, in turn, are looking at them from close range: two naked bodies rightin our faces, the better for us to see how they are no longer young and attractive. Neither is happy. Ther is a heavy past clinging in the present. For the wife particularly, everything has begun to slacken, to thicken, and greater rigors than striating flesh are to come. At the edge of the table, in the immediate foreground of the picture, are two pieces of meat, a large leg of lamb and a single small chop. The raw meat is rendered with physiological meticulousness, with the same uncharitable candor as the sagging breasts and the pendent, unaroused prick displayed only inches back from the uncooked food. You could be looking through a butcher's window, not just at the meat but the sexual anatomy of the married couple.
Philip Roth, The Dying Animal ("O Animal Moribundo", tradução portuguesa)
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário