Hylas and the Nymphs / 修拉斯和水妖
The temperature was 23 degrees then.
Never have I had any interests in gardening, but the little yards in front and at back of my house of about 100 square meters had to be filled with something. Although there were not too many flowers, I still could not just stand to watch them wilt under the hot sun. So one day I linked up water pipes and started to act as a gardener. Meanwhile our next door neighbor, an old Dutch couple was also doing the same thing in their garden. So we greeted each other and chatted for a while.
Sunny days always made people feel comfortable and relaxed. To breath the transparent and non-polluted air under the sun light, and to smell the scent of flowers, I felt like living in paradise.
So I stood there leisurely in carefree trance, while listened to the sound of sprinkle water on leafs and flowers… At that moment I felt myself like an old man with the same age as my neighbors. Just imagine the scene, in the sunlight a guy wearing a pair of shorts busy with weeding and watering in the garden, wasn’t it a funny thing?
The spring here was too beautiful and too fragrant. During the daytime I could hardly paint anything attentively for I was always attracted by things outside the studio. From time to time, I’d wish to go out to turn around as I loved so much to stay in nature. Therefore during the beautiful season like this, I had to change my working time to night and worked till dawn. Only in this way could I resist the temptation outside.
I remembered an ancient Greek myth, it said a young man could not resist the temptation of the girls in water, and followed them into the lake then disappeared. The British classical artist Waterhouse described this scene of the myth in his painting named as Hylas and the Nymphs. I had seen the printed copy of his work during my school time. At that time I though I understood why Hylas had been tempted, for the girls in water were so beautiful that one could hardly resist the temptation. In fact I was tempted too at the very moment when I saw the beauties in the painting and I’d even wished to walk into the painting, then kick that young man away and follow the girls into the lake…
Beautiful things might make people intoxicated and cultivate people’s mind and feelings, beautiful things might make people nostalgic infinitely and beautiful things might also make people stuck and unable to extricate themselves or even lose themselves as well as to lose the momentum of marching forward.
