Estado Sentido

(Caravaggio, Saint Jerome Writing)

Montaigne, Essays, "That to philosophize is to learn to die":

«Let us learn to meet it steadfastly and to combat it. And to begin to strip if of its greatest advantage against us, let us take an entirely different way from the usual one. Let us rid it of its strangeness, come to know it, get used to it. Let us have nothing on our minds as often as death. At every moment let us picture it in our imagination in all its aspects. At the stumbling of a horse, the fall of a tile, the slightest pin prick, let us promptly chew on this: Well, what if it were death itself? And thereupon let us tense ourselves and make an effort. Amid feasting and gaiety let us ever keep in mind this refrain, the memory of our condition; and let us never allow ourselves to be so carried away by pleasure that we do not sometimes remember in how many ways this happiness of ours is a prey to death, and how death's clutches threaten it. Thus did the Egyptians, who, in the midst of their feasts and their greatest pleasures, had the skeleton of a dead man brought before them, to serve as a reminder to the guests. 

Look on each day as if it were your last,

And each unlooked-for hour will seem a boon.

(Horácio) 

It is uncertain where death awaits us; let us await it everywhere. Premeditation of death is premeditation of freedom. He who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave. He who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave. Knowing how to die frees us from all subjection and constraint. There is nothing evil in life for the man who has thoroughly grasped the fact that to be deprived of life is not an evil.»

Caravaggio, A incredulidade de São Tomé

a exposição, organizada pelo museu Van Gogh, de Amesterdão, « Rembrandt / Caravaggio », em que se realçava a convergência da técnica pictórica entre os  dois grandes pintores do Barroco , que nunca se tinham encontrado: nem no tempo, nem sequer no espaço, holandês o primeiro, italiano o segundo. E não queríamos perder a mostra, que se previa, talvez, acontecimento único.

             Mas a Margarida, a sobrinha, estava cansada. Acabáramos de chegar de Delft, aonde foramos logo de manhã, e aí andáramos durante todo o dia, debaixo de um sol escaldante. Queria descansar.

Propusemos-lhe então ir eu e a mãe, à vez, visitar a exposição, enquanto a outra ficava com ela sentada no grande relvado. Que estava bem.

Eu seria a primeira a ir para a enorme fila do museu, tão grande que o museu  achara por bem alargar o horário.

Não tinham passado ainda  dois minutos, quando vi a Margarida, com a mãe, juntar-se-me na espera.

Que pensara melhor, e, depois de nos ter ouvido acentuar a  importância da exposição, tivera medo de depois arrepender-se se não fosse...