Walls to hold us in, walls to keep us apart. But walls can also present interesting textures and support plants. Did you walk by a wall today and see some graffiti on it? Did you lean on a wall while waiting for your bus?
A wall keeps Pyramus and Thisbe apart, but they manage to whisper to each other through a crack:
often, when they stood, Thisbe on one side, Pyramus on the other side, and in turn had inhaled the breath of each other’s mouth, they would say, ‘O envious wall, why do you block lovers? how great it would be if you let us be joined in whole body, Or, if this is too much, if you rather lay open for kisses to be 1
Pyramus and Thisbe is also the play within a play of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
This man, with lime and rough-cast, doth present Wall, that vile Wall which did these lovers sunder; And through Walls chink, poor souls, they are content To whisper.
I wonder if the 1968 film ‘Wonderwall’ jogs anyone’s memory. Maybe you owned George Harrison’s album of the same name.
You can even find the movie (directed by Joe Massot) on YouTube.
I like finding interesting textures in walls of all kind. See my photos here.
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from a translation of Pyramus and Thisbe a part of Metamorphoses by Ovid accessed from Wikisource ↩
Click each image here for an enlarged view.