any comments?

[D_Anton_Pavlovich_Jerkhov]

This is a tentative translation of a excerpt from a larger text by Fernando Pessoa, Portuguese author. It may not be an easy piece, but I hope it can make some sense. I would like to have tentative comments from other members. I am not sure if a man can be graceful and strong at the same time, but it is for any of you to say.


<< Among the three forms through which we can conceive of physical beauty – grace, strength, and perfection – the female body only possesses the first one, because it cannot have the beauty of strength without breaking its femininity, that is, without the loss of its own character. The male body can, without breaking its masculinity, combine grace and strength. Perfection can only belong to the bodies of the gods, if ever they exist. If guided by sexual instinct rather than by aesthetical instinct, a man, as a poet, will sing only the feminine body. Such an attitude represents an exclusively moral preoccupation. … However, since an aesthete sings beauty without an ethical preoccupation, he will therefore sing it just where he is more likely to find it, and not where … sexual suggestion might induce him to look for it. As he is, thus, guided only by beauty, an aesthete will sing rather the masculine body, for this is the human body that can possess more elements of beauty, from among the very few that there are. >>

 

[D_Tim McGnaw]

Sexist rubbish. Natural feminine beauty can contain plenty of physical strength, woman in her natural primitive state would have needed to be as strong and fit as man in his natural primitive state.

 

[Water dragon]

I never try to categorize people's emotions to one another but I belong to a circus and when I look at the aerialist performers such as Aerial silks, Spanish Webb, and trapeze; my instructor who is a woman is stronger than anyone in the circus but she still holds her feminine beauty in the show and down on the ground; she has great body and skill that beauty and strength creates her own aura of perfection (for she trains so hard). In her shows she controls her body into every position and no one seems to stop gazing from her, in an encapsulating trance.

As for my slight attraction to men, I find that it is because they are fit and strong and then isn't strength then a form of beauty as it makes the attraction of an ideal figure one we could position greater than ourselves and possible look up to as a role model?

 

[avg_joe]

This is a tentative translation of a excerpt from a larger text by Fernando Pessoa, Portuguese author. It may not be an easy piece, but I hope it can make some sense. I would like to have tentative comments from other members. I am not sure if a man can be graceful and strong at the same time, but it is for any of you to say.


<< Among the three forms through which we can conceive of physical beauty – grace, strength, and perfection – the female body only possesses the first one, because it cannot have the beauty of strength without breaking its femininity, that is, without the loss of its own character. The male body can, without breaking its masculinity, combine grace and strength. Perfection can only belong to the bodies of the gods, if ever they exist. If guided by sexual instinct rather than by aesthetical instinct, a man, as a poet, will sing only the feminine body. Such an attitude represents an exclusively moral preoccupation. … However, since an aesthete sings beauty without an ethical preoccupation, he will therefore sing it just where he is more likely to find it, and not where … sexual suggestion might induce him to look for it. As he is, thus, guided only by beauty, an aesthete will sing rather the masculine body, for this is the human body that can possess more elements of beauty, from among the very few that there are. >>

I like the quote that you are talking about. I am attracted by the beauty of masculine body and handsome faces.