Stendhal Syndrome
Have you ever heard of an “Art Attack”? I’m not talking about the zany, larger-than-life projects on that 1990s TV show starring the inimitable Neil Buchanan. I’m talking about that feeling of being overcome by the beauty of a piece of art.
In his book Rome, Naples and Florence, the French writer Stendhal famously describes his intense psychosomatic response to the “sublime beauty” of his 1817 visit to the tombs of Niccolò Machiavelli, Michelangelo and Galileo Galilei in the Basilica of Santa Croce in Florence, Italy. “Everything spoke so vividly to my soul. Ah, if I could only forget. I had palpitations of the heart, what in Berlin they call 'nerves'. Life was drained from me. I walked with the fear of falling.”
Apparently, it is par for the course for hospital staff at Santa Maria Nuova in Florence to treat tourists for dizzy spells after viewing Michelangelo’s “David”, and in 2018 someone had a heart attack while taking in the beauty of Sandro Botticelli’s “The Birth of Venus.”
But Stendhal Syndrome, as it’s called, isn’t exclusively caused by art. Remember the Double Rainbow Guy? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQSNhk5ICTI
Today, sitting in Trinity Bellwoods by the sakura trees, it seemed I wasn’t alone in really feeling it… everyone passing through gets this beatific smile and you can just tell we’re all giddy and perhaps even dizzied by the beauty of the blossoms. Stendhal Syndrome at its least discomfiting.
CHERRY BLOSSOMS
by Toi Derricotte
I went down to
mingle my breath
with the breath
of the cherry blossoms.
There were photographers:
Mothers arranging their
children against
gnarled old trees;
a couple, hugging,
asks a passerby
to snap them
like that,
so that their love
will always be caught
between two friendships:
ours & the friendship
of the cherry trees.
Oh Cherry,
why can’t my poems
be as beautiful?
A young woman in a fur-trimmed
coat sets a card table
with linens, candles,
a picnic basket & wine.
A father tips
a boy’s wheelchair back
so he can gaze
up at a branched
heaven.
All around us
the blossoms
flurry down
whispering,
Be patient
you have an ancient beauty.
Be patient,
you have an ancient beauty.
