Ok I don’t mean to be doing this too often but I literally just wrote a paper about this so I thought I would comment! The English translation is The Cursed Woman but the original French is La Femme Damnée. “Femmes Damnées” was the title of a Baudelaire poem from his acclaimed 1857 book Fleurs du mal, which was known, among other things, to be a collection that famously dealt with the subject of lesbians. The poem tells the story of the desires and passionate love between two lesbians: Delphine and Hippolyte. As a result of this poem and of the book as a whole, the terms “fleurs du mal” and “femme damnée” became lesbian monikers of the turn of the century. Though some have deemed the term “damned women” to be accusatory of some moral dissonance, the poem it is derived from is actually quite sympathetic to the condition of lesbian love as it is a love which is unable to fully flourish in that time. Regardless, the translated title of Tassaert’s painting is misleading, as the original French is less accusatory and more identifying. The title is more accurately “the lesbian.”
“Here is what the sea smells like.
It is more texture than scent, because the sea is primarily made of two substances that have no smell of their own: water and salt. Salt has no smell, but makes the air sting, and so all of the other smells of the sea are layered upon the pang of salt. Water has no smell but instead a comfort. We feel moisture as life and so the smells of the ocean are layered upon the contentment of the water. Salt is treble and water is bass. I don’t know how I know this is true, but I know it is true.
The sea smells like old wood and wet leaves. Like cold mud and warm stone. Like every creature who has ever lived in it, a churning graveyard and nursery. Like winds from the inland carrying the hot circulation of life and winds from the ocean carrying the distant froth of waves against ships and islands. Like gray, only more so. Like blue, only less so.”
— The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives In Your Home, Joseph Fink & Jeffrey Cranor
I hate to be this guy but that looks waaaay more like an early hominid skull than an anatomically modern human. Check out those brow ridges and cranial capacity. Where’s it gonna fit its frontal lobe???
LOL Space ghouls trying to intimidate H. erectus 100 000 years too late. Get with the program, losers.
