A poor man - rich of stories?

Here is a very famous German picture from Carl Spitzweg:







We can see some daylight falling through the small window in the background into a dark room. So we cannot clearly see the fitting out of this room, but it gives us the impression of poverty and neglect.

In the center of the picture we see an old man lying in a bed and holding some papers in his left hand. Some books are lying in the near of the bed on a small table. The man seemed to be in a relaxed mood!

So what is going on with that man? Is he sick or lazy? Or tired of normal life and has retired into the privacy? We do not know. Many reasons are possible. But the painter has given us a hint. He called the picture

"The poor poet"!

So we can presume, that he is a writer. Perhaps a thinker or a philosoph. Perhaps someone who has lived an exciting, extraordinary life. We do not know!

But in my phantasy he is someone, who is filled with stories. And now the time has come to write them down.-

What is your phantasy?

Suffering and ignorance -part ouf our nature?

Someone suffers, but normal life goes on. Is that normal, part of our nature? I think it is?

I am always fascinated, when in docufilms of Africa an animal is chased by beasts, and the members of its herd are going on with eating as if nothing would happen.-

***

I was looking for something in wikipedia according to the theme suffering and found this:

Landscape with the Fall of Icarus

This Breughel's painting is among those that inspired W.H. Auden's poem Musée des Beaux Arts :

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
(...)
In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; (...) ^[7]

And it remembered me at a scene yesterday at night. On my way home I came along an asyl of "homeless men" and I saw firemen and police in front of it . Obviously there had be some burning inside, but nothing too seriously.

So police and firemen were doing in a blocked off area their jobs and some people including me were watching it curiously.

Suddenly two young girls came along and one of them discovered a girl friend standing there. Cheers, big hellos, hugging and exciting small talk without looking at the building anymore. I think you can imagine the scene quite well ...

During that time out of the building came two sanitaries with a half-naked man and lead him to an ambulance, unnoticed by the cheerful girls ...

So, how would Breughel have painted his picture today?