THE

UNDENIABLE ALLURE OF THE BEAUTIFUL

THE BEAUTY OF GBEMI SARAKI AND THE CHALLENGES OF AESTHETICS : PART 3
OLUWATOYIN VINCENT ADEPOJU

Acknowledgements Thanks to Gbemi Saraki for being herself and to all who have helped her actualise that beauty that is so striking . Thanks to those who responded in disagreement and agreement with my first essay on Gbemi Saraki. The challenge my critics provided motivated me to dig deeper in order to respond to them. Great thanks to all those who expressed appreciation of these essays. Particularly those who asked when the further installments I promised were coming out. I am particularly inspired by the responses of Yinka Odumakin, for practical help I could not have got on my own and by those of Cyberagbekoya, Benjamina, Godson Offoaro and Abiola Irele for explicit responses suggesting the potential of the project. Image Credits Cover: From Sunrise in Wikipedia. Acessed 18.07.2011. Thanks to the Wikipedia contributor. Picture of Gbemi Saraki with Tope from various sources, including the Nigerian online social network Nairaland, in the thread Jubilation As Saraki Arrives Ilorin For Gbemis Campaign March 10, 2011. Accessed 02/11/2011. Thanks to Angelica Pogoson and Jhalobia Ojemu for permission to use their pictures. Dedicated to All the Women Who Contribute Directly to Shaping my Life to All Lovers of Women and The Manifestations of the Feminine Principle that Inspire Them Particularly Dante and his Beatrice, Ibn Arabi and the Lady Nazim, Tripurasundari and Her Devotees, especially Baskarakaya and the Writer of the Soundaryalahari, Abhinavagupta and Sakti, Christopher Okigbo and Idoto, Mark Dunn and the Inorganic Feminine Intelligence. Your Inspiration Will Never Die November 24, 2011
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CONTENTS Poem 4 Inspiration 8 Should Celebrating Physical Beauty be a Purely Private Affair? 8 Beauty as One of the Supreme Virtues of Existence 9 The Beauty of War and the Beauty of Peace 11 The Judgement of Paris and the Perils of Beauty 11 Beauty, Both Glorious and Perilous : The Amorous and the Erotic Shaping History 12 Sources : Poem 14 References : Essay 15 The Conceptual Workshop 17

 Cheeks like hillocks, with the succulent freshness of the palpitating centre of an orange. Lips that madden one with desire to find oneself between them, lips red with blood from the pulsations of her heart, lips that I dont yet have the words to describe. Perhaps, later, when my mind has grown, I might be able to say something about the effortless grace, created by the meeting of those two wonderful folds of flesh, plump with promise, red with life, meeting in the empty space, where the invisible flow that sustains life is allowed to pass through them. The exquisite skill of nature, effortless, but beyond the reach of the labours of my mind. Even from a distance, separated by an ocean, those delicate tendrils, that snake from the crowning glory within which are the eyes, with which this exquisite beauty looks out on the world, caress one in the inward parts, as those eyes make fortunate whom they glance upon, drawing out tendrils of desire from deep within the soul. The radiance of ten thousand suns concentrated, into the glow of the taut cover of flesh, that projects itself in buxom force, from this embodiment of the glory of life. Those strands that snake delicately from within the crown, flow like the blue waters of the great river, as they converge between the hills, that, softly, stand firm, on the chest of this mind blasting creature, her radiance melting all barriers erected in the mind, as the strands flow downward to the hollow of her navel, drawn bottomward by the power of gravity, into the ovoid that recalls the space from which all erupted into existence at the beginning of time. What is that on that broad meshing of skin over bone atop dark lines above the eyes, the lines of those hairs that rise with the softly rising force of a bird in flight, is that my name I discern on that broad expanse, does the beauty of Ilorin resonate in harmony, with my celebration of the revelation that has shaken me, from the beginning of my life to its continuation beyond earth, 5

 concentrating the day when I first cried out on being exposed, to the air of this wondrous and painful world, and the space within which I fly beyond this planet, all, centred in this moment, as my blood calls out, invigorated by a sight that compels recognition of the fact that I walk this earth?

Does my essence flow into that ear that inclines delicately, all the better to catch within its exquisite folds the sounds that converge to shape my name, the ear fashioned more elegantly by the carefully worked ring that hangs on it, the ring I envy for its nearness to the heat from that form captivating my sight and mind?

There is not a drop of blood in me that does not shake! I feel the embers of the ancient flame!
The air leaving a gap in nature, to gaze on Cleopatra. The Igbo girl, a straight line drawn by God

O my slender boy! Behold a Goddess who is stronger than I, Who in Her coming will govern me. Deep in her veins, the wound is fed, she burns with hidden fire: here is the only man who has moved my spirit, shaken my will. I recognise the marks of an old flame! Imagine if you were not able to appreciate beauty in anything, in nature, in fellow human beings, in yourself, in humanly created objects in the translucent blue of the sky, in the distinctive formations of your body, in the regularities of the bodies of others that convinces one that one is among fellow humans in the serene blaze of the stars in the night sky, in the map of wrinkles in the face of an old person that projects a lifetime of experience, in the short, lovable body of the toddler, in the sheen of hair that crowns a womans face,
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in the carefully bound and strikingly illustrated cover of a book, in the muscle and agility defining the vigorous male body, the beauty of harmony would that not be Death-in- Life? Death, even while seeming to live? Singing the song of departures, rendered with the peculiar beauty of flutes over desolate mountains Speak gently in my ears, as if I were a flower: We are the miracles that God made to taste the bitter fruits of time. Love is crying in my flesh, singing strange songs. The rain is full of flowers and their scent makes me tremble as if I am becoming a real man I see you walking out of the sun. I see gold in your eyes. Your flesh glitters with the dust of diamonds. I see your mother as the most beautiful woman in the world There are beautiful girls here with soft tender voices and eyes that God made with moonlight I too have heard the dead singing. They tell me that life is good. They tell me to live it gently, with fire, and always with hope, my son. Does this life not move you? I would prefer to be the poorest servant of the poorest man, living on iron rations, on the meanest scraps of food comparable to feeding on iron, than be king among the dead. To know Allah, to penetrate into Allah, beyond belief in Allah, to know the essence of beauty that is the creator of the cosmos : love passionately human beauty. Allah is closer to woman and man than their jugular veins.
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Is the beauty that is Allah, and the beauty that is woman and man not one beauty? Does the beautiful human face not radiate the beauty that is Allah? Supersensory Beauty transcending beauty. Beauty so great it escapes vision. May we behold your tendrils, your overwhelming shadow. Reveal yourself clearly and kill me with the beauty you discover. Tripurasundar, mistress of rvidy, the beauty of the Three Cities perceived in waking, sleep, dream and That which is beyond waking, sleep and dream embodying the cosmos and the ultimate reality beyond the cosmos yet is every woman.

Inspiration My first essay on the beauty of the Nigerian female politician Gbemi Saraki ((Blogger, Facebook, Scribd, Listserverves) was received in various ways. I am motivated to write this complementary essay by two of those responses. One is from a reader who claimed that my admiration of the beauty of the woman is a subjective and private affair that should not be posted on a public forum. This same respondent also argued that my essay glorified Gbemi Sarakis familys suppression in Nigerias Kwara State of the healthy competition that enables a democracy to thrive. The second respondent prayed that Gbemi Sarakis beauty would go hand in hand with a vision to provide responsibly for the citizens of Kwara state. Both responses are intriguing beceause they unwittingly provoke philosophical questions in relation to the nature and significance of beauty that have been central to humanity for centuries. This is the third part of this essay series, the second having been posted on Blogger, Facebook, Scribd, Academia.edu,ChatAfrik, and listserves. This series also forms part of an ongoing exploration of the philosophical implications of feminine beauty, previous essays being on Katryn Ezekwesili, Madonna and the Yoruba womens headgear known as gele. Related work in progress includes creating completely original works in Yoruba Orisa female centred spirituality and philosophy as well as new versions of literary landmarks in female centred spirituality and philosophy from Yoruba Orisa, Hindu and Christian traditions, the development of techniques of meditation and ritual in relation to these traditions, along with scholarly explorations in various female centred bodies of thought and practice, such as the Western Tantric daemonology of Mark Dunn, the culturally eclectic work of Susanne Wenger and Carolyn Hillyer, along with the Arthurian Goddess spirituality of Jhennah Tellyndru, Kathy Jones and Marion Zimmer Bradley. Should Celebrating Physical Beauty be a Purely Private Affair? At the centre of the challenge from the first respondent to my essay is the question of whether or not my admiration for Gbemi Saraki's beauty should be purely private. What I find funny in that challenge is that much of art is based on admiration of the physical beauty of women and men. Shakespeare expresses this impulse most memorably in Antony and Cleopatra in his description of the beauty of the legendary Cleopatra, empress of Egypt, in declaring that her magnetism was so potent, it was only the limitations of natural law that prevented that beauty from compelling the air A smile from both the eyes and the lips to leave its place to gaze on Cleopatra [thereby making] evoking radiance of being, within a face crowned by hair depicting the a gap in nature;
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efflorescence of time. Jhalobia Ojemu of Jhalobia Recreation Park and Gardens, Murtala Muhammed Airport Road, Lagos.

a poet in Egudu and Nwogas Igbo Traditional Verse celebrates the sheer perfection of a womans figure as a straight line drawn by God; a Bargirmi poem in Beiers African Poetry continually sounds a refrain O my slender boy! that sums up the compelling beauty of an admired one; Dante, exemplar of the European courtly love tradition in which celebrating women was approached in terms of a combination of distance from the woman and elevation of her person, leaves an indelible account in his The New Life of the transformative effect Beatrices look and greeting had on him, the spirit of life which lives in the most secret room of the heart began to vibrate so fiercely that its effect was dreadfully apparent in the least of my pulses; and trembling, it said these words: Behold a God who is stronger than I, Who in His coming will govern me. Approaching the climax of his journey through the various regions of the cosmos as described in the Divine Comedy and meeting Beatrice again in the central zone of divine radiation that sustains the universe, he exclaims There is not a drop of blood left in me that does not shake! I feel the embers of the ancient flame! Dante had never spoken with this woman while she was alive. He had only seen her and heard her greet him. H.R. Huse rightly describes Dantes words as themselves a translation of his mentor Virgils lines in the Aeneid, in which Dido is described as burning emotionally under the impact of her encounter with Aeneas, igniting her long buried ability to love which she had forsworn on the death of her husband: Deep in her veins, the wound is fed, the sharp, slow-gathering pangs of love out of every pulsing vein nourish the wound and feed its hidden fire. The fire of nature itself, suggesting a unity of human beauty and the beauty of the elements, of the abstract beauty of love and the concrete character of the loved one, seems to agree with her inner flame as a new day dawns, as the sun, the lamp of the divine Phoebus, lights up all lands, and from the vault of heaven, the goddess Aurora dispels the darkness and dew as Dido explains her predicament to her sister: O, were it not immutably resolved in my fixed heart, that to no shape of man I would be wed again here is the only man/ Who has moved my spirit, shaken my will/I recognise/The marks of an old fire. Beauty as One of the Supreme Virtues of Existence Beauty is one of the supreme virtues of existence. It is central to defining the character of the universe. Imagine if you were not able to appreciate beauty in anything, in nature, in fellow human beings, in yourself, in humanly created objects. I am referring to physical beauty, the beauty created through harmony between various aspects of a form, according to one conception of beauty,a rhythm of relationships [that has some similarity] to how the diverse parts of the human body work together, as Robert Dueweke describes the North African thinker St. Augustine of Hippo, on beauty. Beauty that gives pleasure, intangible but most fulfilling, to every moment of human life, as the translucent blue of the sky, ones satisfaction at the distinctive formations of ones body or parts of it, the regularities of the bodies of others that convinces one that one is among
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Manic joy!

Angelica Pogoson giving her best to the terrific joy of being alive. Live life with fire! Osa Meji is a rich, powerful cosmic scream. Ringing bells arrive from the Vault of Origins adapted from Odu Iyaami Osoronga as translated by Falokun Fatumnbi

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fellow humans, the serene blaze of the stars in the night sky, the map of wrinkles in the face of an old person that projects a lifetime of experience, the short, lovable body of the toddler, the sheen of hair that crowns the womans face, the carefully bound and strikingly illustrated cover of a book, the muscle and agility defining the vigorous male body.

Imagine if you are unable to perceive in terms of the beauty represented by such examples. What would happen to you? It would be difficult to wish a more terrible punishment on anyone while the person remains on earth. Adapting Samuel Taylor Coleridges Ancient Mariner, that could be described as Death-in- Life. Azaro in Ben Okris The Famished Road resolves to die on account of the insensitivity of his father who has punished him painfully for an accident that was not his fault. He stops eating and falls into a coma. On the fourth day of being almost dead to the world : singing the song of departures [rendered] with the peculiar beauty of flutes over desolate mountainsDad spoke gently in my ears, as if I were a flower: We are the miracles that God made to taste the bitter fruits of time. Love is crying in my flesh, singing strange songs. The rain is full of flowers and their scent makes me tremble as if I am becoming a real manI see you walking out of the sun. I see gold in your eyes. Your flesh glitters with the dust of diamonds. I see your mother as the most beautiful woman in the worldThere are beautiful girls here with soft tender voices and eyes that God made with moonlightI too have heard the dead singing. They tell me that life is good. They tell me to live it gently, with fire, and always with hope, my son. Does this life not move you? I wanted him to carry on speaking. His words offered me water and food and new breathing

These fantastic lines of Okris testify to his spell binding poetry that makes that book indelible in human history. They encapsulate ages of celebration of the beauty of being alive in terms of the glory of human embodiment, humankind as a form of being that exists on earth primarily through a body. The report from the dead delivered by Azaros father sums it up: I too have heard the dead singing. They tell me that life is good. They tell me to live it gently, with fire, and always with hope, my son.

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The Beauty of War and the Beauty of Peace George Steiner dwells on the difference between the two works by Homer, the ancient Greek epic poet, the Iliad and the Odyssey, in terms of the celebration in the Iliad of the heroic martial ideal, in which heroic action, particularly in combat, is depicted as the acme of existence and the Odyssey, in which life, any kind of life, is portrayed as preferable to death, including death in combat, the kind of death so glorified in the Illiad. The central heroic character of the Iliad, the great warrior Achilles, fights in the Trojan War, the war of the Greeks against the Trojans, knowing that, as prophesied, he will die in battle, but welcomes that death as the most befitting death. In the Odyssey, the war is long over, Achilles has died in battle as prophesied and Odysseus, a commander on the Greek side in that war, is struggling to find his way back home over what eventually becomes a ten year voyage at the end of which he eventually arrives home in Ithaca, washed ashore from a shipwreck, his entire contingent of men lost in the course of the voyage. On that journey, Odysseus was advised to descend to the underworld, the land of the dead, and there seek the advice of the seer Tiresias who would guide him home. In the land of the dead Odysseus meets Achilles and hails him as a great hero whose fame resounds on earth and must also resound down here among the dead. How does Achilles respond?: I would prefer to be the poorest servant of the poorest man, living on iron rations, on the meanest scraps of food comparable to feeding on iron, than be king among the dead!. You need to read the Steiner essay, Homer and the Scholars in Language and Silence, to experience the powerful way Steiner draws out the implications of the contrast between death as a heroic form of existence in the Iliad and life as superior to any kind of death in the Odyssey. His summation is that if such a perspective on the ultimately precious character of life as superseeding miltary valour had prevailed in the gathering storm before the Trojan War, there would have been peace before Troy. The Judgement of Paris and the Perils of Beauty This summation is ironic in relation to this essays celebration of the significance of beauty as an ultimate human value beceause, as superbly summed up by Wikipedias treatment of the iconic motif in the Western imagination, The Judgement of Paris, the TrojanWar is understood in Greek myth to have its roots in the valorisation of beauty over other values. Paris, prince of Troy, was invited by Athena, the goddess of "wisdom, civilization, warfare [in its disciplined, strategic sense in contrast to pure violence, bloodlust and slaughter, "the raw force of war"], strength, female arts, crafts, justice and skill", Hera, "goddess of women and marriage" and Aphrodite, "goddess of love, beauty, and sexuality", to choose who was more beautiful between the three of them. "Hera offered to make him king of Europe and Asia, Athena offered wisdom and skill in war, and Aphrodite, offered the love of the world's most beautiful woman , Helen of Sparta, wife of the Greek king Menelaus".

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Paris chose Aphrodite and in return, the goddess enabled him to secure Helen to himself, removing her to Troy. This outrage moved Menelaus to assemble his Greek allies in war on Troy. These allies are beholden to him beceause, as former suitors of Helen once moved to woo her on account of her fantastic beauty, they had all sworn loyalty to whoever won her hand in the end and that person had been Menelaus. The ensuing ten year war, a theatre of action encompassing a broad span of human experience, from supreme courage, to poignant loss, to determined cunning, to slaughter, ended with the destruction of Troy and the slaughter of the Trojans and with Menelaus getting his wife back. While looking for Helen [during the sack of Troy] Menelaus resolved to kill her. [The dramatist] Euripides [account of the story] tells that when he found her, however, her striking beauty prompted him to drop his sword and take her back. Helen and Menelaus live together reconciled though after their homecoming, Menelaus and Helen's marriage is strained, with Menelaus [continually revisiting] the human cost of the Trojan War. The understanding of feminine beauty as one aspect of a continuum of being that includes pain and destruction is dramatised by the relationship between the sex drive and destructive human experiences, such as the downfall of political figures through scandals of amour or sex. Beauty, Both Glorious and Perilous : The Amorous and the Erotic Shaping History At this point in time, late 2011, the potential Republican candidate for the US Presidency in 2012, Herman Cain, is battling allegations of sexual abuse from women, years after a similar allegation against Clarence Thomas, another prominent Black man at the highest echelons of US public life threatened to derail his nomination as the Black judge of the US Supreme Court chosen in 1991 to replace the iconic Thurgood Marshall, whose name was immortalised by his role in the Brown v Board of Education case of 1954 that ended official segregation in US education. In mid-2011, allegations of questionable sexual encounters with women in the history of Dominique Gaston Andr Strauss-Kahn came home in the form of an allegation of sexual abuse that destroyed his office as Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund and his promise as the strongest contender against the incumbent French President Nicolas Sarkozy. Sexual misconduct allegations, particularly the Monica Lewinsky scandal, marred the 1993 to 2001 tenure of Bill Clinton as US President. In 2007, Paul Wolfowitz had to resign from his job as President of the World Bank Group on account of accusations of professional improprieties in his intimate relationship with his partner, female fellow World Bank staff member Shaha Riza. The Wolfowitz and Shara Riza example is different from the others in the character of the relationship between the men and the women involved, although closer to the Clinton/Lewinsky relationship than to the others on account of the existence of a viable, mutual consent relationships, even though the Wolfowitz/ Riza relationship is a publicly acknowledged long term relationship unlike the clandestine relationship of Clinton and Lewinsky.

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At the heart of all these relationships, however, is the fire of passion as dramatised in the expression of sexual difference and the striving for unity within this difference as opposites are pulled together, a creative tension enblematised, par excellence, by the experience of the different forms of beauty represented by women and men.

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SOURCES Poem 1. Paragraph 9 , lines 1 and 2: adapted from William Shakespeares Anthony and Cleopatra. Act 2, scene 2;lines 3 and 4 from Igbo Oral Poetry by Donatus Nwoga and Romanus Egudu. London: Heinemann, 1973. Quoted as To a Young Lady in Jack Mapanje and Landeg White. ed. Oral Poetry from Africa. Harlow: Longman, 1984. p. 10. 2. Paragraph 10 : from Love Song in Ulli Beir, African Poetry: An Anthology of Traditional African Poems. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1972. p. 51. 3. Paragraph 11 : from Dante Alighieri, The New Life : La Vita Nuova.Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1964.38. 4. Paragraph 12 : adapted from Virgil, The Aeneid. Book IV. Lines 1-2; 20-23. in Brian Wilkie and James Hurt, Literature of the Western World.Vol. 1 : The Ancient World through the Renaissance. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1997. p.997-1103. p.1049; 1050. 5. Paragraph 15 to 21 from Ben Okri, The Famished Road. Ibadan: Spectrum, 1991. p.336;337. 6. Paragraph 22 : adapted from George Steiner in Homer and the Scholars in Language and Silence. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969. 209-226, quoting the by Homers Odyssey.

7. Paragraph 23 : inspired by Sufi Aesthetics : Beauty, Love, and the Human Form in the Writings of Ibn 'Arabi and 'Iraqi by Cyrus Ali Zargar as described by the University of South Carolina Press. Accessed 18/10/2011.

8. Paragraph 25 : last line and paragraph 26: from St.John of the Cross

9. Paragraph 26 : inspired by the Indian religious and philosophical school of Sri Vidya, as described, among other sources, online and offline,in Auspicius Wisdom: The Texts and Traditions of Srividya Sakta Tantrism in South India by Douglas Renfrew Brooks. New York : SUNY Press, 1992.
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REFERENCES Essay General A lot of the time my research for verbal texts and images begins with a Google search with Wikipedia playing a central role. These searches might not be reflected in the list of references but in almost every central idea expressed here, I have spent much pleasurable time surfing cyberspace for information. A key to making sure one is able to sift information for accuracy is to compare various sources, both online and offline, academic and non-academic. I have also gained hugely from print encyclopaedias, particularly the Encyclopaedia Britannica in various editions, principally the 1971 edition. As a teenager discovering for himself the universe of self-directed learning I devoured essays in this encyclopaedia, reading and re-reading even what I did not fully understand but which fascinated me through the passion and conceptual sophistication of the writers, the structural power of the essays, their stylistic brilliance, that the colour of the pages I most frequented pages turned from white to light brown from dust from my fingers. My responses to the idea of total knowledge represented by the Britannica as I encountered it in this edition, the editions strengths and weaknesses, its points of focus and omissions in the pursuit of this goal, have shaped my mental geography. Britannica essays are wonderful constructions of intellect and art, and much of the information remains relevant across editions even though some striking developments do occur between editions. Wikipedia is a unique human achievement, representing a landmark in the development of knowledge as a global resource, but it is not designed for the quality of sheer cognitive polish that a very good encyclopaedia, and particularly the the Britannica, embodies. Specific texts Aesthetics in Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1971 edition. I dont have the volume number and the pages in the volume this essay appears in. Alighieri, Dante, The New Life : La Vita Nuova.Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1964.38. -----------------------The Divine Comedy 2: Purgatorio. Trans. By John D.Sinclair. London: Oxford, 1971. Canto XXX. Lines 46-7. p. 39. [I integrated lines from this translations with a line from another translation the details of which I have forgotten]. Alighieri, Dante, The Divine Comedy. Translated, with interpolated summaries and bracketed
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glosses by H.R. Huse in Brian Wilkie and James Hurt, Literature of the Western World.Vol. 1: The Ancient World through the Renaissance. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1997.p.1384-1550. p.1533n. Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Part II. Lines 192-4 in The Oxford Anthology of English Literature. Volume II: 1800 to the Present. Ed. Harold Bloom at al.New York: Oxford UP, 1973.238-254. Love Song in Ulli Beir, African Poetry: An Anthology of Traditional African Poems. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1972. p. 51. Okri, Ben, The Famished Road. Ibadan: Spectrum, 1991. p.336;337. Shakespeare, William, Anthony and Cleopatra. Act 2, scene 2. Variations in the relevant lines in various editions but they are in a speech of Enobarbus which would be between 200 and 258 in any edition. Steiner, George, Homer and the Scholars in Language and Silence. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969. 209-226. [ Steiner refers to Odyssey, Book II: The Land of the Dead, lines 548- 559. The lines I quote here are adaptations of a translation of the Odyssey the details of which I have forgotten]. To a Young Lady in Jack Mapanje and Landeg White. ed. Oral Poetry from Africa. Harlow: Longman, 1984. p. 10. Quoted from Romanus Egudu and Donatus Nwoga , ed. Igbo Traditional Verse. London: Heinemann, 1973. Virgil, The Aeneid. Book IV. Lines 1-2; 20-23. in Brian Wilkie and James Hurt, Literature of the Western World.Vol. 1 : The Ancient World through the Renaissance. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1997. p.997-1103. p.1049; 1050.

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THE CONCEPTUAL WORKSHOP

Concept cloud Politics; beauty; aesthetics Physical beauty; private; public Kwara State; Gbemi Saraki; the Sarakis Shakespeare; Egudu;Nwoga; St. Augustine of Hippo; Dante;; Samuel Taylor Coleridge; Homer; Ben Okri; George Steiner; Tereisas; Jhalobia Ojemu; Angelica Pogoson Beatrice ; Achilles; Azaro; Odysseus Antony and Cleopatra; New Life, Divine Comedy; The Ancient Mariner; The Famished Road; Iliad ; Odyssey African; Igbo; Trojans; Greeks;Hindu; Oral Poetry; Bargirmi; African Poetry; courtly love Ithaca; underworld; land of the dead; Trojan War; Jhalobia Recreation Park and Gardens, Murtala Muhammed Airport Road, Lagos Spirit; heart; blood; flame ; radiance ; efflorescence ; time. God; cosmos; divine; radiation; universe; nature; human beings; objects Harmony; form; formations; translucent; blue; sky; serene; blaze; stars Lifetime; experience; lovable; toddler; hair; crowns; woman; face; book, muscle; agility Youthful; male; body; terrible; punishment; earth; transmutation Rich, powerful, cosmic, scream Death; Life; flower; miracles; flesh; gold; eyes; glitters;dust;diamonds; soft; tender; voices ; eyes; moonlight ; shipwreck ( Some of these concepts might come from an earlier draft of the essay)

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Concept patterns

Is the admiration of the beauty of the woman is a subjective and private affair ? Competition that enables a democracy to thrive Sarakis beauty would go hand in hand with a vision to provide responsibly for citizens Much of art is based on admiration of the physical beauty of women and men That the air itself would leave a gap in space in order to go and gaze on the beauty of Cleopatra; Celebrates the sheer perfection of a womans figure as a straight line drawn by God; O my slender boy! that sums up the compelling beauty of an admired one Behold a God who is stronger than I, Who in His coming will govern me.. There is not a drop of blood in me that does not shake! I feel the embers of the ancient flame!. Physical beauty, the beauty created through harmony between various aspects of a form Manic joy!, evoking radiance of being, within a face crowned by hair depicting the efflorescence of time.

The translucent blue of the sky, The distinctive formations of ones body or parts of it, The regularities of the bodies of others that convinces one that one is among fellow humans The serene blaze of the stars in the night sky The map of wrinkles in the face of an old person that projects a lifetime of experience The short, lovable body of the toddler The sheen of hair that crowns the womans face The carefully bound and strkingly illustrated cover of a book The muscle and agility defining the youthful male body

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The song of departures [rendered] with the peculiar beauty of flutes over desolate mountains The miracles that God made to taste the bitter fruits of time Love is crying in my flesh, singing strange songs. The rain is full of flowers and their scent makes me tremble as if I am becoming a real man The dust of diamonds Osa Meji is a rich, powerful cosmic scream Ringing bells arrive from the Vault of Origins The heroic martial ideal, in which heroic action, particularly in combat, is depicted as the acme of existence Odyssey, in which life, any kind of life, is portrayed as preferable to death ( This section is incomplete on account of my decision just before posting the essay to include the discussion of the judgementof Paris just before posting the essay)

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