Baroque post-modern

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I begin each day reading the Poetry Daily. Sometimes a poem will catch me, as did the one this morning, "The Dark Figure in the Doorway" by Morton Marcus.


It's a reflective poem about Diego Velázquez's famous painting of the Spanish Infanta, "Las Meninas" —in English, "The Maids"—painted in 1656.

I recommend that you read that poem, but, to summarize, the author talks about the visual tricks in the painting. The Infanta isn't the one being painted, but the King and Queen, reflected in the mirror behind the painter on the left. Only we are the ones standing in their spot; we are the ones the painter in the painting is studying.


The more I learn about Baroque, the more I come to understand its playfulness, it's tricks. As the poet so well put it:

a post-modern  

bit of fun devised 

centuries before  

the modern age  

will have begun.

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