Our last week-end excursion brought us a surprise: superb Venetian masqueraders were promenading in the gardens of Annevoie Castle (mid-XVIIIth century for both gardens and castle, Namur Province, Belgium). I couldn’t stop taking pictures!
We all wear masks, and the time comes when we cannot remove them without removing some of our own skin (author unknown).
“Votre ame est un paysage choisi
Que vont charmant masques et bergamasques,
Jouant du luth et dansant, et quasi
Tristes sous leur deguisements fantasques…”
(Paul Verlaine, ‘Clair de lune’, from ‘Fetes galantes 1’, 1869).
( your soul is a chosen landscape/ charmed by masquers and revellers/ playing the lute and dancing and almost/ sad beneath their fanciful disguise…(translation by Peter Low here).
“There used to be me behind the mask, but I had it surgically removed”, Peter Sellers.
A masquerade party.
To be or not a reflected mask…What is left of self?
Can masks be weary?
louvain95 - Farther than the eye can reach. 