Even by Game of
Thrones standards, Rubens depiction of Saturn devouring his son is
grotesque. There is a matter of factness in the way Saturn is going about his business
that is chilling. Ramsay Bolton would be reminding us of his jaw-dropping
barbarity, but this guy is just doing it. And he has reason, knowing that among
the deities, sons usurp their fathers. Then there’s the ripping of the flesh off
the chest; it’s not the usual “off with his head” approach, but more the way
one might eat chicken (without cutlery, I mean ). Saturn with an old man’s dishevelled
grey hair, bushy eye-brows, loss of body-tone so wonderfully achieved; it’s a
realistic impression, and it’s an impression that stresses that all is being
done with the utmost (albeit depraved) sanity.
Goya’s Saturn , on the other hand is comic-book; he looks
completely ‘out of his tree’; whichever
end of the carcass was topmost would, of
course, be the end that got chewed off first. And since the headless body seems
to be of adult proportions, this Saturn is a giant. As regards which Saturn I’d
prefer to bump into, I suppose I’d take my chances with the first; on the other
hand, since he looks like any old man, I might well run him and not recognise anything different in him; and
that’s serious menace.
It helps me to use images like these to spur ideas in my own
writing. The various different interpretations of Goya’s painting (time
devouring the young, Spanish war efforts devouring its youth, deaths of Goya’s
own children, relations with his son) are
prime fodder for poetry and the images can prepare the stage. But isn’t it intriguing how completely different the poem would end
up if based on one or the other of these two images?
