No. 15
China Mail
HOME SUPPLEMENT
HONG KONG, SATURDAY, JUNE 22. 1935
A
No. 15
FAMOUS WOMEN IN HISTORY. III.
Impressions
E cannot help reading,
W behind a certain com
placency in man, the fear that woman is engaged in sex-war- fare. He seems to ‘interpret, in the desire of women for more liberty of thought and action. a deliberate attack upon man's prerogatives. He takes pains to assure us that this freedom we demand is but a phantom. Well, agree that freedom and inde pendence are relative ferms, None is entirely free, note entirely independent. Bot cach sex is entirely dependent on the other for a matehood of companionship.
we
Can it be then man's "supre- macy" that he fears is challeng
Is wuz he has zeglected about to be taken from him?
Actually, it is neither. Women seek to advance, to develop by a faller education and wider in- teret. Once allow the mind to rasp the possibilities of its own expansion and no power can keep it back Her development is not extraordinary: it is extraordinary that she so long delayed her for- ward move. Is it not an astrac- tive prospect that the average household of the future will con sist in all probability of a man and a woman married, but both ecunomically, and intellectually free?
-Ben that cannot while wo- men are denied the right to have a life-work that will allow them to develop their brains. Good kaké fade, children grow up, and the first thrill of the home goes: but an educated mind will always.
and offer a source of interest. pleasure to its possessor.
Man must consider, too, that against the warfare of nation nation cannot but stand "pre- eminent in the mind of woman as discouragement against mother- hood and devotion to the home.. It is the things that men have done the name of liberty, of nation and pride of faz, smash- ing everything that woman holds dear, that have foreced her into an attitude of challenge. A wo- man's instinet to live is perhaps far stronger than man's, since it is her body that must yield the future of the race. Inevitably the stronger will rule: but she cares little about that.
A woman in the business world very soon develops a protective veneer against the knocks which, after all, do not affect her inte-
gral life. With her versatile
character she is even more than man to stand these knocks But the knock that hits at the centre of the home, hits at the To the very core of her life. woman whose outside interests. have not been developed it may mean everything.
What woman wants is freedom of choice, a mental independence unfettered by a purely sex bar- rier. She seeks not the suċjec- tion of man, but rather his co- operation to work for the health and security of the human race..
Phyllis Juky.
The Story Of Francesca Da Rimini
TN the year of 1323, three
Dante, according to the gen- eral theory of the students of his life and work the In- ferno, the first 34 songs of the Divine Comedy, was publish- ed: and so one of the family tragedies of the Middle Ages Vecame part of the European literature. And still to-day, after 600 years. the names and fate of Paolo Malatesta and
Francesca da Rimini live in the immortal poetry of Dante's Apotheosis.
In the Inferno Dante pictures the passage through the terrors and penalities of Hell with the deepest feeling and unbelievable creative force. From the crowds of the damned, with their sighs, tears and lametations, emerge Francesca and her lover Paolo; and Francesca, in a moment when there is a lui in the hot storm of Hell, tells the poet how she was brought by sin and love to the land of time and endless. suffering.
Francesca' was the daughter of Gaido di Polenta, whose ances Italy from tors migrated to Germany. One of her brothers was the father of a certain Guido Novello who gave the last shelter to the banished Dance. A seventeen Francesco married Gianciotto Malatesta Their married life was unhappy. The marriage ceremony, which was performed by proxy-a custom of that time was arranged by the two families to end a long-stand- ing feud between the houses of
Maletesta Polenta and
Her husband was rough, and had a lame leg. He was involved in never-ending quarrels and wars. He was the lord of the Castle of Verracchia near Rimini where in a dungeon
his he tortured prisoners of war to death. In that same prison he strangled the two noblemen Cassero and Cagnano with his own hand. Ee had made peace with thern but thought it safer to do away with them The gentle Francesca, whose delicate and pleasant fea- tores can be seen on a fresco in Ravenna, hated her husband for these cruelties. His absence, lasting often for weeks, was a likely reason why Francesca be- came a close friend of her bro-. ther-in-law Paolo.
In the earliest writings he is called "I Bello," the beautiful, the elegant, the aristocratic. He was the type which the early Renaissance considered beautiful: fair skin, blonde, eyes of a light colour, Paolo's marriage was
also loveless; he was seventeen married to a girl of fifteen. This
PAOLO AND FRANCESCA
From an oil painting by„ Anselm Feuerbach
in the Munich State Galleries
marriage was arranged in simi- lar manner, and for like reason as his brothers'.
Paolo was, in November 1282, military commander in Florence. He returned next to Rimini, when his brother had already been away at war for three months. Franceses at that time bad reached her full womanhood, and through the prolonged absence of Ler husband seemed more amen- able toward, her brother-in-law.
For details of the happenings. especially the tragic ends of both lovers whom the betrayed hus- band surprised and killed, we can thank Boccacio, the first inter-
Divize preter of the
Comedy. According to him, the tragedy occurred in the year of 1285 on the 4th of September. Gia ciotto was warned by his third brother Pandolfo and returned unexpectedly to Rimini, deter- mined to kill the two lovers.
Dante created of this historical platitude something of enduring In Francesef poetical beauty.
and Paolo be shows as a love which is eternal, a love which finds happiness. even in Hell in being allowed to suffer together.
Dante attempts to justify Fran- cesca to some extent. No words --of complain: leave-Francesca's lips. The all-important thing to her in her fate is the eternal union with her lover, and the storms of Hell drive them through the underworld together. Dante, in accordance with the cruel teaching of the Church, had to show the unfortunate pair as -damned forever, as, having died without confession and without gaining absolution, they were in deadly six
Dante pictures them reading a book together and over this book both become aware of their feel- ings and finally they meet in a kiss. The book is the story of Lancelot and Guinevere, which was the favourite literature of the nobles of the time,
Ae Francesca tells the story, they come in the book to the part where Lancelot kisses the Queen; they were so deeply touched by the poem that they lost them- selves in it. Ciandiotto surpris. ed and killed them during this kiss: "And from that day on they never read".
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