Two movies that draw on Rabindranath Tagore’s life.
The first, Kadambari, is on his sister-in-law Kadambari Devi who committed suicide at an early age. Pics 1 and 2 are of Konkona Sen-Sharma and Parambrata Chatterjee as Kadambari and Rabindranath in the movie.
The second, Jeevan Smriti, is a documentary based on Tagore’s life and made for Doordarshan for the author’s 150th death anniversary by Rituparno Ghosh. The documentary spans Tagore’s life from his childhood to his death. Raima Sen and Samadarshi Dutta play Kadambari and Rabindranath.
Both films draw on the many images of the Tagore family for costuming, the latter more so it would appear from the stills.
William Harnett (1848-1892) “Still Life with Flute, Vase and Roman Lamp” (1885) Oil on wood Located in the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut, United States
Thispainting is a meditation on love; it depicts Dante’s Divine Comedy, pages from a 1680 Roman prayer book, the cover of Giuseppe Verdi’s opera La traviata, sheet music from the 1859 French opera Dinorah hangs over the edge of the cabinet. The primary themes of these literary and musical works assert that true love is able to transcend the temptations of the material world.
This painting portrays a scene from one of the only stories in the Old Testament to focus on the strong love bond between two women, the Book of Ruth. Calderon shows Naomi returning to her native land from Moab. She is trying to dissuade her two daughters-in-law, Ruth and Orpah, both Moabite women, from accompanying her. Orpah, the figure on the right, stays behind in Moab but Ruth, the central figure, insists on going with Naomi. She is shown passionately embracing her mother-in-law and asserting her continued commitment to her. This is the moment described in the book where Ruth declares: ‘where you go I will go, and where you lodge, I will lodge; your people will be my people and your God my God’ (Ruth 1: 16). Some scholars and historians have recently noted the closeness of this speech to contemporary wedding vows.
The story of Ruth and Naomi has traditionally been treated as a story of devoted but platonic friendship between two women. More recently it has been suggested that the love between the two women might have been better described as a romance, or even sexual in nature. Trevor Dennis, Vice Dean of Chester Cathedral, for example, described the relationship between Ruth and Naomi as ‘the great love story of the bible’.* The story has become particularly important for members of the Jewish lesbian community seeking historical role models of female romantic love. This painting could be interpreted as reflecting these views. The embrace between the two women, certainly suggests an eroticism or passion that exceeds the normal bounds of friendship.
