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the
water, then they caress the clay surface again. Suddenly, he is
flooded by a memory, a story his sculpting teacher at the Arts
Student’s League told him once about a figure in a Gustav
Klimt painting. His hands keep working rapidly, independent of
his mind, apathetic to this memory.
The painting discussed in class
was of the famous mythological figure Arnel. A prophet once told
the king that the son of a woman named Arnel would be the one that
would kill him and rule his empire. The king, wanting to avoid
this prophecy at all costs, captured Arnel in the tallest, most
secluded tower of his castle. Servants fed her well, and her mother
and female friends were allowed to visit. However, the king strictly
forbade any male visitors. Only female servants tended to her room.
The king himself never visited Arnel. He didn’t even know
what she looked like. He made sure that once she was captured,
she was brought straight to the tower. This was because the king
had heard of her seductive beauty, and feared that with all his
strength he would be a prisoner to her magic. Arnel was only sixteen
when the king captured her and as the years went by she grew full
of sexual desires. Since she was forbidden to see men, all she
thought of was men: she spent all her days and nights imagining
their smell, fantasizing of their touch on her skin.
Many artists
depicted Arnel in different and contradicting ways. Some saw
her as a virgin in white, never touched by a man; some created
her lustful and seductive, thirsty for a man. James loved Klimt’s
painting of Arnel so much that he asked his professor to retell
her story a few times during class. He would fantasize about
her at night. He was convinced she was full of the magical substance
of life; it surrounded her in the castle tower, filling her prison
with potent aroma, produced and consumed only by Arnel. James
believes that this viscous cycle, living and consuming her own
magic, eventually drove her to madness. |
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