Thursday, May 17, 2012

arabesque of the spine



 A woman’s beauty lies, not in any exaggeration of the specialized zones, nor in any general harmony that could be worked out by means of the sectio aurea or a similar aesthetic superstition; but in the arabesque of the spine. The curve by which the back modulates into the buttocks. It is here that grace sits and rides a woman’s body. 


― John Updike, Pigeon Feathers: And Other Stories

11 comments:

  1. What was he smoking when he wrote that?

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  2. I don't know, but I want some...

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  3. I just love this! There is a man who knows the woman's body.

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  4. I love the word arabesque, so seldom used now but grounded in the soil of Byzantium and written and danced into modernity. An appropriate term for an unchanging element of beauty.

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  5. DCW, arabesque is, indeed, such a lovely word...I've jotted it in my notebook...

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  6. Ah, John Updike, he truly loved woman and knew how to write about them!

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  7. Love the shoes!

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  8. I'd say Updike has got it about right.

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Inject a few raisins of conversation into the tasteless dough of existence.
― O. Henry (and me)