You have to zoom in on her face because these may be the most beautiful eyes ever put on canvas, and once you understand what she is looking at, they become almost unbearable...
The painting is Joan of Arc, made by the French artist Jules Bastien-Lepage in 1879, and it hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. It is enormous, more than eight feet tall, and it shows Joan not as a warrior in armor, but as what she actually was before any of it: a peasant girl of thirteen, standing in her parents' garden in the French countryside.
The Met describes her eyes as wide open and clear blue, her cheeks feverishly flushed, her gaze turned upward and away, and they are right, this is the face of someone who is no longer fully in the garden...
She has just heard the voices and behind her, among the trees, Saints Michael, Margaret, and Catherine have appeared, and they are telling this teenage girl the impossible thing she was born to do: leave home, take up a sword, and drive an army of invaders out of France.
Her eyes are fixed on something the rest of us cannot see, but her bare feet are digging into the earth, and one hand grips a branch beside her. She is being called toward something vast and terrifying, and every muscle in her is trying to stay rooted to the ground she knows.
The artist caught the precise moment a girl is torn between the life she has and the fate she cannot refuse.
And everyone knows how the story ends: she would follow those voices, she would lead armies, crown a king, and be captured, and at nineteen she would be burned alive as a heretic, still insisting the voices were real. Everything that was coming for her is already there, waiting, behind those wide blue eyes in this peaceful garden...
A letter to the West,
Greetings,
Stop confusing cowardice with tolerance. What you see as illegal immigrants is a pre-planned invasion of your country without tanks or soldiers. There are countries that have recently poured billions of pounds into Muslim Brotherhood terrorists who became activists and citizens in your countries, and their job is to defend every criminal, be the lawyer of every rapist, and make sure all those who are illegal become legal and become the next governor or MP, and later, prime minister. This is a long-term plan.
They use democracy as an Uber to power then complain about the destination.
Look around you. They now protest against you and your Western civilization. They call you Islamophobic if you dare to mention Muslim Brotherhood terrorists, such as Hamas terrorists, or Sudan's Muslim Brotherhood-led army, which killed over 2 million Christians and 500,000 African Muslim children and women.
They will control your democracy through dictatorial rules.
They discovered your greatest weakness: your tolerance can be weaponized against you.
They use your freedom of speech to defend Muslim Brotherhood terrorists.
They use your courts to protect Hamas and Iran's networks.
They use accusations of “Islamophobia” to intimidate critics.
They use democracy as a ladder to power, then attack the very values that built that ladder.
Yesterday, Muslim Brotherhood ideology demanded a platform. Today, it demands political influence. Tomorrow, it will demand that you remain silent.
Stop confusing cowardice with tolerance.
Investigate the Muslim Brotherhood. Ban terrorist organizations. Prosecute criminal financing. Deport non-citizens who lawfully qualify for deportation because of serious crimes or terrorism and never allow extremists to turn citizenship into a weapon against the country that welcomed them.
Your children should not inherit a country too frightened to defend its own laws, freedoms, and civilization.
Democracy is not a suicide pact. Tolerance is not surrender. Freedom does not require giving extremists the tools to destroy freedom.
Wake up. Defend your country. Defend your children. Defend your civilization before those who despise it become powerful enough to dictate its future.
Regards,
God bless your beautiful civilization and protect it from extremism, terrorism, and backwardness.
The cult-like worship of certain females, especially by European young men, seems to be a deep archetype of "Minnedienst", "Love-service" in their ethnic memory.
It's not about really being with the woman. It's about praising her beauty and going to battle for her (this part is missing, unfortunately, today; this means posting).
It is the “High Minne” of German Minnesang: the woman is placed socially and symbolically above the man. The singer serves, courts, and suffers. And it is Dantes Dolce Stil Novo.
The unattainability of the woman is necessary. She is celebrated not as a concrete individual but as a perfect ideal. The real person disappears behind that archetype. She must not age or change. Gio becomes like Dante's Beatrice.
Like in older times, this desire must be publicly performed. The point is not to “get the her,” but to appear and perform as her great admirer and lover.
But the troubadour is not only suffering. He gains something from his Minnedienst and unfulfilled desire: it is personal refinement, inspiration, and, before everything, a romantic poetic identity. This also creates a sense of community with other Troubadours - the digital Fedeli di Amore.
Interesting Analogy.