“Beatrice” - what associations can cause a name that sounds on the Italian musical language as the magic spell and translated as “feeds bliss”?
Of course, the first association is the immortal Dante's Divine Comedy where Beatrice appears as
Dante's ideal woman guides him through Heaven... Beatrice Portinari a woman, which existed in reality, was married to another and died very young. But the great Dante created a beautiful image so that researchers of his work for a long time did not even want to believe that Beatrice a real person and thought that it was a fruit of fantasy, an allegory of the ideal woman in general, which embodies everything perfection.
After more than five centuries, the other Dante - Dante Gabriel Rossetti, leader of the Pre-Raphaelites, painter and poet created a new image of Beatrice in the portrait “Beata Beatrix”, dedicated to his wife, the poetess Elizabeth Siddal, who died from an overdose of opium. Beatrice is depicted seated, she resides in half-sleep, similar to death, whereas the bird, herald of death, puts on her palm the poppy flower. This is another completely different image of women, painfully exquisite and tragic, the ideal of the Decadence.
Approximately simultaneously with Rossetti's portrait in Charles Baudelaire’s famous cycle “Flowers of Evil”was born a new understanding of the image of Beatrice as “Fallen Beauty”. Angelic image thrown into a hellish abyss and devoted to debauchery.
Now the yard is XXI. Whatever might be the modern Beatrice? The same sublimely beautiful as Beatrice Portinari? Exquisite, bohemian, and not indifferent to worldly pleasures such as wine and opium? Or depraved and vicious women participate in night orgies?
You can find in me any of them - all three Beatrice live in me at the same time ... It all depends on your desire!