The sentamentality of romantics

A few years ago I went to my favorite art show I have ever been to, the artist was Dario Robleto. His art has to do with making new things out of old artifacts. He would take old love letters from the civil war or his third grade class and grind them into a powder and fill old aspirin pills with the powder and place them into a 1920s or 30s jar. He also took old voice recordings and stretched them into thirds that looked like hair and braided them into a long braid. He also used powdered herbs, bones and so much more to make potions and boots and dresses and all kinds of things. His show definitely had the atmosphere of a romantic. Most romantics seem to have a strong sense of sentimentality and attachment to old objects. Taking old objects and re-emphasizing the emotions of it in a new form that more easily touches our hearts is a powerful message to experience.

A month later in the middle of my reading of Casanovas memoirs I came across a passage that reminded me of Dario Robletos show. In Casanovas passage he has a very strong attatchment to the object he has obtained to make things to remember his beloved by. Casanovas memoirs have a rich abundance of romantic writings and I am very sure I will be using a bunch of them in this blog seeing as he is my favorite romantic I have come across. I hope you enjoy the intensity of his feelings.
"Rich in the possession of her hair, I consulted the spirit of my love to decide what to do with it. To make up for the fault she had committed by depriving me of the snippets I had picked up, she had given me hair enough to make a braid. It was an ell and a half long. After conceiving my plan, I went to the shop of a Jewish confectioner whose daughter did embroidery. I instructed her to embroider the four initial letters of our names in hair on a green satin armband, and I used all the rest to make a long braid in the form of a very thin cord. At on end there was a black ribbon and as the ribbon at the other end was sewn on a doubled upon itself, it made a loop which was a real running noose, admirably suited to strangle me if love reduced me to despair. I put this cord on my neck next to the skin, winding it four times around. From a small quantity of the same hair I made a sort of powder by cutting it into very small bits with fine scissors. I had the Jew make a paste of it in my presence with sugar combined with essences of ambergris, angelica, vanilla, alkermes, and styrax. I did not leave until he had my sweetmeats, composed of these ingredients, ready to deliver to me. I had others made of the same shape and materials except that they contained no hair. I put the ones with hair in a beautiful rock crystal box and the others in a box of light tortoise shell."-Casanova the history of my life

love,

rose