Lola Koundakjian: In Search of Rilke at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Photo by Lola
Koundakjian, Metropolitan Museum of Art
After a reading of Archaic Torso
A Sunday afternoon, the
final lazy weekend of the summer, I escape to the cool, bright corridors of
that art institution. I am in search of Apollo or Rilke.
In the Hellenistic and Roman
wing I find Hermes, Eros, Heracles, headless torsos of young men and women,
centaurs, athletes and heroes. I turn around each statue and sepulchre, reading
labels and descriptions.
In desperation, I ask a
guard but she’s clueless.
I search for him in a cubiculum
nocturnum (i.e. bedroom), in galleries, in the faces and camera lenses of
tourists, finally finding him through old-fashioned help, the humble assistance
of the information desk clerk.
There are two Apollos here.
One in worse shape than the other, one slightly taller, one still resting
against a marble trunk, one with more genitals intact, more of the hip areas defined,
with both feet, perfect toes and toenails.
***
The Japanese tourist
photographs her friend grabbing, or is it covering, the genitals; I hear the
guard laughing heartily. Men, women and children walk by, few stop by to look
at the headless torso, few read the description, few acknowledge that THIS was
Apollo, this WAS the god of music and poetry, son of Zeus, father of Orpheus,
one of the twelve Olympians, Dii Consentes. Who cares for those lesser
gods and heroes when Apollo is in the room?
And still, I don’t find
Rilke, a man at least in some form or manner representing him, his essence, or
a man who has read his work, a man aware of that dilemma called mid-career or
life crisis.
I wonder if I tear a piece
of paper, write in bold capital letters RILKE, and hold it up, will someone
stop and chat with me, sit and read with me that poem, ask me questions about
it, maybe exchange something about himself, a revelation found through this
encounter.
If any answer to man’s
inner quest is to be found on Earth, it could be at these feet, or another work
of art, at this museum or another like it, in this city or another metropolis
such as the many found on this or other continents.
And
yet his torso
is
still suffused with brilliance from inside,
like
a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,
gleams
in all its power.
Lola Koundakjian, NY, USA
September 2011
Published in Naugatuck River Review
