Study of a Woman

"Study of a Woman: The emotion of Beauty (or the shell of it) experienced"

or

"On beholding a certain uncommonly handsome woman, widely known, yet here unnamed; a study of her, and the concomitant emotions thereupon felt"

[Written ex tempore one night.]

Why do these feelings come when I see you?—you, who are someone, a woman, who I say is uncharacteristic of womankind in your allure and classic features. (But are you Beautiful? does what I feel allow for this qualification, this aesthetic valuation? or is this sham as you are a stranger to me and I to you?)

But I do not know you.

Few amongst your sisters have I found and do I find to be like you: with your looks, of your looks (but the question tears: is it just appearance?).

But I do not know you—And you do not know me.

I see you, but from a world-distance away. And because of this great thing I see you as you are framed as portrait—are you hung as yourself? is this really you?—and I view you with the invisible disconnection acting as voyeuristic mask. Do I see you? would your face and looks and features and the yearning and the enchantment wash away were I to place my cold hand on what I wish to be a warm face?

But I do not know you—And you do not know me.

Why do these feelings come when I see you?—could it be that I long for someone like you?: whose sweet visage (that drives poets and master artists to madness!) touches and stirs something that is at my very core: whose character and personality (which I only know vicariously) evokes the greatest unassuageable and poignant affection and amorousness in me.

You dizzying woman; you high woman; you all-woman; you woman's woman; you: Woman. But!: woman-but-not-woman; instead,

Self!

Outwith Me and my Self—You Are a Self in all your glory, and this makes your splendour, and your mystery, resound within me as esoteric symphony upon a cavern-domed crystal lake! Surely then you are Beautiful! and so let my yearning and burning tax me on, for it whets Beauty—yours—to pierce me with such sublimity and rose-thorn proficiency!

Why do I feel this way?: because what is also engendered with all this, but diademed and laureate:

Love

—the capacity (the capacity) to Love!

And so I now look at you, E——, and I have, at the last, resolved why these feelings rise when I behold you:

I do not know you—will never know you—nor you me; but within me there is an inexplicable, ineffable Will to Love,
a will to love you, you whom I do not know—
(I could love you: how inimitable that is!)—

and so these feelings come because I, ready, wait for the one whom
with fullest measure
I Will Love.

M.M. — Aprilis MMX; edited Iulius MMX, Februarius MMXI