melancholy

i heard that introductory posts are in order, so here’s mine - what does one even say in those?

🪐 info: i’m sarah (she/her), and i’m a 20 year old lesbian in some corner of the world. i’m also a med student. as you can probably tell, my star sign is libra (september), virgo moon & aries rising, for what that’s worth. i speak two languages fluently, and i’ve been learning french for some time.

🎞️ interests: i enjoy writing/reading, and i’ve been writing for almost 7 years now. poetry (& any beautiful imagery in any form of writing) are very essential to me. i also LOVE greek mythology (the iliad is my favorite book lol) and art in all its forms - paintings, music, writing, film, the human body etc.

🏹 what to expect here: a lot of poetry, i suppose. mostly from my journal, but also some of my other writings, & definitely poetry that i reblog. there’s art and music and all, and every so often something lesbian. you should know that my blog is definitely a safe blog for anyone and everyone, however there might be a lot of nsfw stuff around here so not exactly for minors.

☕️ asks: anything, anytime!! or hit me up if you want a chat.

now they realize its worth.

what i am is that acropolis, and all that you have is the same apologetic effort of the modern greeks.

it was well loved once, but no one uses that as salve.

[ vestal virgin with wreath of ivy, carl friedrich deckler. ]

— oil on canvas, 1870.

this painting portrays one of the six vestal virgins, a very important pillar in ancient roman society.

the vestal virgins were six virgins chosen with utmost care to be priestesses of the goddess vesta, the roman equivalent of hestia, goddess of family and the hearth. in her temple, their duties included the careful tending to the hearth, the sacred fire on which the entirety of the roman empire depended.

six girls, aged six to ten, were chosen amongst many in the setting of a public lot drawing. afterwards, they’re taken to the roman forum by the temple of vesta to swear an oath of 30 years of chastity, compensated by many rights and privileges the other women of the era did not have. they spent those 30 years tending to the sacred fire in the hearth - lit in march and maintained all the way to the following year. if the fire was put out or any irregularities were to occur, it was a sign of grave sin, usually the unchastity of one of the virgins, or perhaps an assault on one of them, and the whole empire was at risk.

due to their most sacred role, they were held in the highest levels of respect, given many a privilege like owing an estate or testifying in court, and any offense on them was nearly unthinkable. a sight of a vestal virgin on the way of a man led to execution was almost a certain sign of his freedom, if proven coincidental. and in the case that a virgin is found unchaste, willingly, that is, her execution was by bricking and starvation, as the bloodshed of those virgins was not allowed.

this tradition survived for a thousand years, surviving even the fluctuations of the roman empire, and even has some influence on christianity after the fall.

[ leda and the swan, heinrich hofmann. ]

— oil on canvas, 1886.

the painting portrays a scene in greek mythology in which zeus takes the form of an injured swan to gain the affection of leda, a mortal woman who captured his attention.

the oblivious leda finds the swan and nurses it back into health. in the meantime, a bound forms between them, just as the god had intended. the swan continues to be leda’s pet, until in a fateful day, it reveals itself to be the king of gods and shares the couch of leda. on that self same night, leda lies with her husband, to later be pregnant with the twins castor and pollux, better known as the dioscuri, or the twins of gemini.

the painting portrays the moments before their union, in which the swan comes to leda not as pet, but as a lover.

[ the vision of endymion, sir edward john poynter. ]

— oil on canvas, 1902.

the painting is based around the greek myth of the young shepherd endymion (portrayed sleeping in the bottom of the painting) who fell in love with the goddess artemis (also known as diana, selene, goddess of the moon).

he wished for eternal sleep so that his lover goddess would visit him in his dreams, the eternal sleep is symbolized in the work as the red poppies on the sides of the painting. he sleeps, and the goddess descends in her drapery flowing about her, which adds the erotic nature to the dream-like state of the goddess.