Heart-Shaped Sweets and the Heart’s Beats
It wasn’t that obvious at the beginning that the heart would become the symbol of feelings – erotic or else. Thales, who has – as it is popularily believed – discovered seasons of the year, did not state any opinion on the heart; thinkers that followed were undecided and wavered between the stomach and the liver, considering also a few lesser inner organs. Heart was the final choice. This was a bit unfortunate, at least according to Magda Dygat, the author of ... wait a minute, let me look for it, perhaps in the wingdings... in the webdings... here it is! So the title of Dygat's text is The ♥ Is Not a Slave [-grafia, 2 (7!) 2004]. The whole new issue of -grafia – “the first »European« issue”, as they say in the editorial – is devoted to matters of the heart, as the slogan Sercmisja (Heart-mission) indicates. “This time we are dealing with issues connected with the heart – the most frequent symbol in the world’s visual culture and the bodily organ we most associate with mentally”. As regards this mental association, I would perhaps argue that in my case, the organ in question is the mind. But surely -grafia illustrates that there aren’t any bodily organs (inner, one might add), which could compete with the heart in the representational sphere.
In my opinion the mini-essay by Magda Dygat is very moving - perhaps because it is full of thoughts not unfamiliar to me. “As far as I’m concerned – says Dygat – the heart is associated with anxiety, fear, or weariness. It beats fast in the moments of panic, almost bursts when you’re walking uphill with a heavy bag and of course fails when you’re overworked. It can't be counted upon when it is needed most”. The author claims that as a child she was torured mentally by parents who, with sadistic persistence, read to her Amicis' The Heart of a Boy. I understand her perfectly well; I myself have hidden this work, together with Andersen’s fairy tales, from my children, in order to spare them the depression, which had once tormented me after these morally enriching readings. Brilliant are also the remarks on the heart as a symbol of romantic feeling and patriotism. Dygat recounts the repulsion which appeared on the faces of her American friends after she’d excitedly reported to them the story of importing Chopin’s heart to Poland. Only then did she realize the physical aspect of this last journey. “For the first time I realized that - so far - I have visualized this heart lying on a satin pillow in a crystal casket, as a symbolic shape of ♥. Suddenly before my eyes appeared the real thing”. I have to admit that the moment of comparing the plastic red heart with the picture of a real one became very memorable for me too. How we have distilled heart's visual image is incredible.
A theoretician and artist Jerzy Olek has performed a voodoo-like act: After receiving a CD with pictures recorded by a mini-camera inside his veins he had manipulated these images. „After leaving the clinic I decided to improve the state of my vessels, if only graphically on my computer. I concluded that they'd function better if I erased all organic obstacles". The effects of this intervention can be viewed on 4 illustrations showing subsequent phases of the process. One has to agree with the artist’s conclusion: "The final thing is to make my system believe in the effectiveness of this endeavour”. Two pages later other works of art, weird plastic objects of various shapes turn out to be real medical replacements for various fragments of the ♥. Ewa Krzak in the cover story Heart-mission devoted to the Zabrze clinic and its hero Zbigniew Religa (who is, by the way, featured on the cover, clad in an overall designed by Małgorzata Malwina Niespodziewana) describes latest achievements in transplantology and the history of the Foundation for Heart Surgery Development, which appeals to hearts in order to give others new ones.
We shouldn’t forget, however, that we’re dealing with a “visual culture magazine”. ♥ is also a playing-card symbol (Krzysztof Radoszek presents a choice of playing cards), a fashionable gadget (“Alluring us with its round shape, provoking with its colour and playing with the object it decorates, the St. Valentine’s heart is associated with February 14th” – Aleksandra Robakowska), a frequent motif in painting (as the same author reminds us in the article Sometimes I’m classy, sometimes I’m pop and Łucja Malec in the profile of Frida Kahlo), a symbol of religious cult (“Only the heart still exists in the common consciousness, even ripped of the sancticity. The Holy Heart of Jesus” – Jarosław Trybuś). The heart often appears on the outside of our bodies in the tattoo form. The popular gingerbread cake is also heart-shaped. No wonder that the image of the heart is used in logos of institutions and organizations - both commercial and charitable.
The heart occupies a lot of space in our lives. Sometimes it looks pretty, sometimes repulsive, may be broken or unbreakable, golden or made of stone... It looks at us from pictures and advertisements, it is referred to in classic poetry (pompously) and the contemporary one (ironically); painfully or playfully, it reminds us of itself in folk sayings and proverbs. We can make fun of it, get mad at it, but – as it turns out – we cannot live without it. Figuratively and metaphorically.
Klara Kopcińska
Translated by Marta Malina Moraczewska
Discussed journals: -grafia