Just a pot of Basil

A detailed Summary of Just a pot of Basil

At the age of eight one of my favorite things to do was dream about living in a time where gigantic beasts loomed over the earth. Form the gigantasaurus to the brontosaurus I enjoyed anything from the Precambrian period. I grew to appreciate the monstrous creatures even more after I took my first trip to the Carnegie Museum of Pittsburgh. I had never seen such elaborate displays of marvelous full-scale dinosaurs, since I was accustomed to seeing them no larger than the height of a book or television screen. I recall roaming through the many displays pretending that I was one of them. Usually, I pretended to be the Troodon, a species that is thought to have the largest brain in proportion to the rest of its body. Even though I was smaller than the rest of the dinosaurs, I always knew that I could outsmart them if I was a clever Troodon. Of course I would forget that they had been extinct for millions of years, as the plaques in front of the enormous exhibits reminded those who were tall enough to read them. But I carried on in my world of dinosaurs while I was in the museum, free to dream as I cared to. The distance and time between the real dinosaurs and I disappeared when I was in the museum, in my

"The way we see things is affected by what we know or what we believe...When in love, the sight of the beloved has a completeness which no words and no embrace can match"(Berger 106). Perhaps my heart goes out to Isabella, for I myself am in love and can reconcile with what she may have felt. Even if Isabella was just a fictional character for both Keats and Alexander the emotional consequence of such a painting is undeniable. The love between a man and a woman knows no end, and its eternity continues through people of all time and nations. Of course we are all granted different perspectives, but there lies a central burning passion about love which can only be depicted as a fraction of its entirety. Thus, love in fact, "[closes] the distance between the painting of the picture and one's own looking at it"(Berger 125).

There lives some hidden secret inside the woman's soul that lay next to the pot. And sure enough, the small plaque beside the painting described a story that told me that my assumptions were correct. The painting was written as a reflection of a poem written by John Keats. Here, briefly, is the story of Isabella and the Pot of Basil.

Alexander captures Isabella in a moment of perfect stillness. Perhaps she is already dead in the artist's eyes, lying beside her love, their souls reunited. The barren space below the pot could contain the spiritual body of Lorenzo. Alexander seems to have purposefully left the open space on the right side of the painting for his spirit next to her. Isabella has her eyes closed and her hand is gingerly extended. Her two fingertips brush against the side of the pot, as if she's imagining the pot to be his face. Her neck appears slightly extended as if she were giving the curved pot a gentle kiss. The stench that must have emanated from the pot would have been almost unbearable to others, yet somehow the power of love caused Isabella to ignore all reason and sanity as her soul sought for her love and mercy.

Therein lies the significant difference between seeing and imagining, and being told or influenced, that is, being mystified. Mystification, as the art critic John Berger in Ways of Seeing explains, "is the process of explaining away what might otherwise be evident" (Berger 112). I was instantly captivated from the moment I saw the tied-together skeletons stretching as high as my own house; should I have cared about the petty details that would have distracted me from my own imagination?

Being told what is beautiful and what meaning lies behind a painting is the epitome of mystification. According to Berger this "lends [undeserved] authority" (121) to the artist. "The image now illustrates the sentence" (Berger 122). And thus, whatever thoughts a viewer has conjured about a painting or work of art are lost, negated, or skewed, yet it provides a strong basis for interpretation.

White flowers contrast with the overall melancholy of the image yet also add just the right touch of beauty, innocence, and peace. There are several of these flowers directly under the pot and another at the base of Isabella's feet. This white represents the purity of their love that was

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Approximate Word count = 2133
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: English