Vivian the Great

The play"Wit", also a film, by Margaret Edson is amazing!! In the play, the protagonist, Vivian Bearing, manages to attain deep personal awareness and consciousness after being diagnosed with stage IV of metastatic ovarian cancer and enduring an extremely strong and experimental chemotherapeutic treatment regimen for it.

Vivian is a professor of seventeenth-century poetry, with a particular interest in the metaphysical poetry of John Donne. She is an academic, who is aware that her abundant knowledge and intellect can be quite intimidating to others. However, knowledge and the search for knowledge itself, seem to be the only two things that provide security and comfort to her lonesome life. Throughout the course of the play, Vivian recites John Donne's poetry as a way of dealing with the very unpleasant and painful side effects of her cancer treatment. Donne's complex ideas, in this case, are representative of Vivian's intricate outlook and perspective on her own existence.

Aside from knowledge, Vivian relies on certain uses of wit throughout the progression of the play in an attempt to maintain herself afloat in the midst of such a trying situation. Wit is connected to intelligence and knowledge, which is a prominent trait that Vivian possesses. Ultimately, her harsh cancer treatment and loneliness help her realize that knowledge and wit, in this case, have no importance whatsoever in her current situation; for they do nothing to alleviate and diminish her pain and agony. Death, very much like a person, slowly makes its way to Vivian, and its smell seems to permeate her every thought, her every action, and her every being. It is a force that eventually catches up to her in the end.

At the beginning of the play, Vivian proclaims to the audience "I think I die in the end", making it quite clear from the very beginning that death, without a doubt, will be a very important and prevalent theme throughout the play. Vivian, as it was previously established, has no family or friends that are able to provide her with ample support and care in order to help her get through her current state of suffering. Death, as it lurks around her, seems to be the only company that Vivian has. She uses such company as a way to channel her inner self, particularly when she recites John Donne's "Holy Sonnet X", which directly addresses death in a personified form. Interestingly enough, this poem seems to provide Vivian with encouragement simply because it presents death as an entirely different entity, one that isn't really the mighty and dreadful one that it is always made out to be. She grabs on to this poem so adamantly simply because it is the one thing that is still within her comfort zone and, at the same time, seems to shed light on the mysteries and obscurity related to death itself.

Over the course of the play, Vivian's very demanding and difficult character clearly changes into a more gentle and compassion-seeking one as a result of her illness and treatment. Once again, Vivian realizes that she really is quite lonely, and the one thing she desires most is to have kindness and love and someone by her side who would keep her company when death does come for her. At the end of her ordeal, Vivian comes out a champion, proving that she is a resilient and unwavering human being.

The Secret Behind Holbein's Ambassadors

I just finished reading Hagi Kenaan's article "The Unusual Character of Holbein's Ambassadors", and I must say, it was quite interesting. In the article, Kenaan seeks to analyze, in a more in depth manner, Hans Holbein's portrait "The Ambassadors" (1533). According to Kenaan, this portrait contains a secret which is only discovered through the "embrace of the visuality of the painting rather than by attempting to transcend it." Kenaan asserts that the various questions that emerge from looking at the painting increases even more as one tries to relate the objects to the overall composition of the painting. Hagi takes on a more philosophical approach when analyzing Holbein's portrait. One important aspect of the painting, according to Kenaan, is its lack of an actual literal understanding or meaning, which as he puts it, has become one of the painting's trademarks. Secondly, the painting itself possesses a very "intriguing and fascinating appearance" that seems to evoke all sorts of questions to its viewers.

Hagi Kenaan goes on to emphasize a few of the painting's many striking characteristics, the first one being its anamorphic composition, which greatly highlights the use of this technique in the sixteenth century. Another important characteristic of the portrait is Holbein's use of the drapery in the background. Kenaan's theory on the drapery is that, not only is it meant to draw attention, but it is also "what divides the original space of the ambassadors into the visible and the invisible." According to Kenaan, the curtains suggest the presence of a depth beyond itself. Through the use of anamorphosis, Kenaan asserts that, not only does the portrait declare the existence of a secret, but also a sort of instructional manual on how to decipher the secret itself. Furthermore, the use of double portraiture intensifies the viewers' curiosity by failing to clarify the relationship between the two men at first glance. Kenaan uses the marriage portrait in order to figure out the true nature of the relationship between the two men in the painting. He focuses on distinct characteristics that are, most of the time, different, such as gestures and body language.

Without a doubt, Holbein's painting has been beautifully executed in my opinion. I greatly believe this is due in part to the inclusion of meticulously rendered objects in the background, such as the globe and the skewed skull. These objects appear to be separate entities within themselves, very much like still lifes. These still lifes seem to add an air of mystery to the overall composition of the painting, which begs the question: what is the secret?