What makes love perfect? Can it survive when it stops being human? Leslie Tong PO ’29 returns with her weekly column, attempting to answer these two questions through her analysis of Shunkinshō, Junichiro Tanizaki’s 1976 work.
Author: Qinyi Tong
The poem of ecstasy: Finding the meaning of love
In her latest rendition of “The poem of ecstasy,” Leslie Tong PO ’29 takes on the question: What is the meaning of love? She reviews “The Invention of Love” by Tom Stoppard, a play about a fictional encounter between the Latin scholar A. E. Housman and past friends such as Oscar Wilde, his own younger self and an unrequited lover.
The Poem of Ecstasy: Sex, disciplines and society of “Salò”
What can we learn from a provocative film aimed to challenge the audience’s perception on sex and social orders? Leslie Tong PO ’29 delved into the film “Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom” on its central theme of moral deprivation in a modern society. With the humanization of every prevalent feature that constructs a society, we humans embarked on a suspiciously voluntary journey in internalizing disciplines that enforced morality on our conscious behaviors. The result is obvious — our unconscious rejection and avoidance in facing our imperfect desires.