Eleonora Manca – [←] Inventario #659 (2016); [→] Inventario #665 (2016)

Great images have both a history and a prehistory; they are
always a blend of memory and legend, with the result that we never
experience an image directly. Indeed, every great image has an
unfathomable oneiric depth to which the personal past adds special
color. Consequently it is not until late in life that we really revere
an image, when we discover that its roots plunge well beyond the history
that is fixed in our memories. In the realm of absolute imagination, we
remain young late in life. But we must lose our earthly Paradise in
order to actually live in it, to experience it in the reality of its
images, in the absolute sublimation that transcends all passion. A poet
meditating upon the life of a great poet, that is Victor-Emile Michelet
meditating upon the life of Villiers de l’Isle-Adam, wrote: “Alas! we
have to grow old to conquer youth, to free it from its fetters and live
according to its original impulse.”
 
 ―
   Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space