Romeo loved/lost Juliet

Reality dazzles when it is pruned and presented in style. Truth tempts when it is narrated by a master raconteur. Beauty blazes when it walks away in the night…Truth, beauty, and reality makes magic with the mind when it is young.

An epigram is a pithy saying – a witty ‘tweet’ that encompasses a moment of truth, or a piece of reality, almost iconic in its essence in the way it is told. Up close, it is mostly found lacking in its sagacious appeal, but by then the point has been made, and the argument won. Nobody enquires after a nine-day’s wonder; nobody forgets those nine days either.

The prince of tweets is, who else, but the crown prince of storytellers – the marvelous Oscar Wilde, and his quips are as addictive as Lucy in the sky with diamonds. If you get to know his epigrams while in school/college, they are sure to come back and haunt you like the memory of the girl with kaleidoscope eyes from time to time.

Sample this sparkler from his treasure trove – In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it. Vintage Wilde, it is a show stopper of an epigram, the only catch being, after the show ends, when you look for it to take home - it is missing. But say this while you are having beer with your buddies in a proper context, you shall probably get the middle finger, and also a silent and grudging admiration for saying what is probably going on in their minds at the time.

Oscar Wilde came out with epigrams with the same fecundity as that of a ten-year-old shooting pebbles from a catapult on a summer afternoon. The only difference being the child had to stop when its stock of pebbles ran out. It is not for nothing, that he famously wrote, I can resist everything but temptation.

I could not resist the temptation of trying my hands at it, and what I came up with was at best a one line summary of the two stories that they were based on. One was the Beauty and the Beast, and my take was Beauty saw beast and became more beautiful. The other one was Romeo loved Juliet/ Romeo lost Juliet.

Neither of them is strictly an epigram, and the second one is appalling. Then why have I chosen this as the title of this post, you may ask. Epigrams, quotations, lyrics, or anything that you remember are enriched with the years that pass by while they are sitting in your minds, and when they stand up, they become imposing by the virtue of association. Memory is a time machine; you get back to the beginning in a trice.

And no matter how much razor-sharp your memory is, you are bound to have forgotten something of the actual and got it replaced by a reminiscence of a latter day. When the mind, and the memory do a tango together, you sit back and enjoy. My riff on the Shakespeare classic represents to me the electrifying times when I was getting acquainted with epigrams and other facets of literature. It was a moment of celebration, and the title is a reflection of that festival of youth, that festival of first love – an ode to all Remembrance of things past.

Oscar Wilde almost always had the last word, but witdom is not exclusive, and nobody can win them all. Once while appreciating the aphorism of the painter Whistler (Yes, the same artist whose celebrated work Whistler’s Mother, Rowan Atkinson vandalized in Mr Bean) at his table, Wilde said, I wish I had said that. Whistler replied famously, You will, Oscar, You will.

Wilde died in 1900, and even a century later his epigrams are top of the charts. Some of them are :-Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes, There is only one thing in the world worse than not being talked about, and that is not being talked about, Nothing that is worth knowing can be taught, The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius

If Oscar Wilde lived a life of the dandy, the French nobleman La Rouchefoucauld was in the thick of things in palace intrigues and had crossed the path of the authoritarian Cardinal Richlieu ( yes, the same person who turns up as a mighty foe for The Three Musketeers in Dumas’ eponymous novel) more than once. He witnessed loss of fortune, regained it and earned the respect of the literary world with his Maxims, his observations on mankind.

Laced with wit, and backed by first hand experiences of the ups and downs  of life, Rouchefoucauld’s wisdom is sought and quoted even today. A handful of them are :-In love there is always one who  loves, and one who is loved, How can you expect another to keep a secret if we have been unable to keep it ourselves?, We are so accustomed to disguise ourselves to others, that in the end, we become disguised to ourselves,It is easier to be wise for others than for ourselves, Gratitude is merely the secret hope of further favors, Few things are impracticable in themselves; and it is for want of application, rather than of means, that men fail to succeed

Romeo loved Juliet/Romeo lost Julie is not an epigram at all. But if you want to head a piece on the love of something that was mindblowing while it lasted then there are few things on earth as apt for it as the careergraph of Romeo.

He loved Juliet, and he lost her, you see?

N.B. Lucy in the sky with diamonds is a Beatles song on the effect a particular mood enhancer which can make one visualize Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.

Here is the lyric:

Picture yourself in a boat on a river,
With tangerine trees and marmalade skies.
Somebody calls you, you answer quite slowly;
A girl with kaleidoscope eyes.

Cellophane flowers of yellow and green
Towering over your head;
Look for the girl with the sun in her eyes,
And she’s gone.

Lucy in the sky with diamonds!
Lucy in the sky with diamonds!
Lucy in the sky with diamonds!

Follow her down to a bridge by a fountain,
Where rocking horse people eat marshmallow pies.
Everyone smiles as you drift past the flowers
That grow so incredible high.

Newspaper taxis appear on the shore,
Waiting to take you away.
Climb in the back with your head in the clouds,
And you’re gone.

Lucy in the sky with diamonds!
Lucy in the sky with diamonds!
Lucy in the sky with diamonds!

Picture yourself on a train in a station,
With plasticine porters with looking-glass ties.
Suddenly, someone is there at the turnstile:
The girl with kaleidoscope eyes.

Lucy in the sky with diamonds!
Lucy in the sky with diamonds!
Lucy in the sky with diamonds!