#and undoubtedly was something sculptors knew of when sexualizing him?

[gayregis]

dandelion’s family

dandelion’s relationship to his family is such an interesting one that was never expanded upon. all we know is that he’s a viscount, as he’s referred to as viscount in tower of the swallow/lady of the lake, and he comes from a place of high birth,

he describes his family as distinguished to geralt in lady of the lake, 

“(...) it’ll probably surprise you, but I’m not from the hoi-polli. My people, the de Lettenhoves, come from—”

(i did have to look the term hoi-polli up, and it just means “common people.” so the de lettenhoves are nobility, basically).

dandelion refers to himself as noble in this quote from a little sacrifice, which just simply rings of his personality,

“I offer my congratulations and extend my wishes of happiness to the betrothed couple. How may I be of help? Does it concern jus primae noctis? I never decline that.”

i also had to look up what jus primae noctis means, and it’s “a legal right in medieval Europe allowing feudal lords to have sexual relations with women on their wedding nights.” apologies for the unfortunate quote choice of dandelion being himself, but why would he be referring to himself casually as having the rights or status of a feudal lord?

in addition, dandelion tries to bargain for his and geralt’s lives with the elves in edge of the world, before geralt scolds him for trying to do so.  but his mention to his ‘friends’ in such high places that they could pay for two men’s lives in ransoms is intriguing

“I’ve got friends. People who’ll pay ransom for us. In the form of provisions, if you like, or any form. Think about it.”

he has a background of knowledge fitting for someone of a high position on the continent, as we learn in the voice of reason as soon as he is introduced,

Dandelion knew all the kings, princes, lords, and feudal lords from the Jaruga to the Dragon Mountains. 

and later on in baptism of fire when the company is travelling and is about to meet the rivian corps,

“A lozenge,” Dandelion, who was well-versed in heraldry, said in astonishment.

plus, he attended oxenfurt academy, which is high education in the context of the continent, and as he boasts in baptism of fire, studied all seven liberal arts and graduated summa cum laude.

in addition, he has the social background of a noble, and attended court when he was young, as geralt repeats dandelion’s own words,

“But as well as I know, for you’ve often told me about it, you only began seriously rhyming and composing melodies when you were nineteen, inspired by your love for Countess de Stael.”

dandelion was close enough to other nobility in his youth to have budding relationships with a countess. and later on in his life, he spends months with anna henrietta, the duchess of toussaint, before being chased out by the duke.

how curious, is it then, that he’s constantly starving. 

i can understand why dandelion travels, out of a curiosity and artistic passion for the world and like many musicians, his great purpose in life is to run around the world with only his instrument on his back and optimism in his heart. but he really does not need to be so poor as to not be able to afford food, or have to sleep in barns at night. why doesn’t he just ask his family for money and continue to travel and perform, but upon three full meals a day and with lodging in inns? he’s constantly looking for benefactors, such as the halfling bibervelt in eternal flame, and in the same story he’s mentioned to never pay his tab at taverns. if he is of such high birth, then why is he so poor?

one might argue that sapkowski just hadn’t developed dandelion’s character entirely in his mind to be part of a noble family by the time he wrote all of the short stories in which dandelion is a starving artist, but the mention of dandelion knowing all of the royals of the north from the voice of reason and his attempted bribe to the elves in the edge of the world makes me think otherwise.

plus, in season of storms, we actually meet a member of his family, his cousin, ferrant de lettenhove. in contrast to dandelion, he seems a very serious and might i add, boring, man, but he does hold a high position, he’s the royal instigator of the minor northern kingdom of kerack. and yet...

Dandelion put Geralt up at the inn. The room the bard was occupying was cosy. In the literal sense - they had to cosy up to pass each other. Fortunately, the bed was big enough for two (...) although it creaked dreadfully and the paissse had been impacted by travelling merchants, well-known enthusiasts of extramartial sex.

if dandelion literally has connections to the members of the court here in kerack, why did he not have a nicer setup? with his family’s connections, he should be rooming in the royal castle or one of their properties. he should have even been possibly able to get geralt his own rooming.

the thing is that ferrant doesn’t seem overly fond of dandelion... or as he knows him as julian. cousins in general are usually not too close (in relativity to siblings) but if they were from the same court, they probably knew each other as children. but he doesn’t really engage him in conversation, he leaves him...

it’s so easy to see dandelion as just the outsider in his family... the rest of his kin being stuffy nobility content with staying in their manors and in royal courts, attending administrative legislative jobs. but julian, he wants nothing but to sing and see the world and wear bright colors and befriend every kind of riff-raff in the north. don’t give him money, because he’ll just squander it on bathhouse and brothel entry fees, and he’ll buy rounds of beer and ale for all the patrons in a tavern. no, the irresponsible, flighty, and at times, downright disgraceful member of the family doesn’t deserve recognition as one of us... give him enough for oxenfurt, because it will get him out of our court, but by the gods, don’t let him use his real name when he performs shamelessly, allow him to choose some pseudonym and convince him that it’s a necessity since his real name is ‘too famous.’

this also makes sense because if the witcher follows real life examples of medieval and ancient europe as it often does, the performing arts were socially looked down upon for much of history and seen as similar to prostitution by some, since one is being paid to show their physicality to an audience (sorry can’t find a source for this, but learned it in class at uni, and it may only apply to women, though women in professional performing arts in this time were rare because only men were allowed in acting, iirc)

on the other hand, dandelion seems much closer to other musicians such as essi daven, who he says is like a younger sister to him in a little sacrifice. he randomly befriends passing musicians on the road in time of contempt and befriends zoltan and his company in a similar manner in baptism of fire. plus, he invites all sorts to the wedding in something ends, something begins, which serves to represent the usual kinds of people that dandelion hangs around,

No one expected nor invited the colorful rabble, which was marked as "Dandelion's friends and acquaintances." It was mostly poets, musicians and troubadours, plus an acrobat, a professional dice player, a crocodile-breaker and four overly made-up dolls out of which three looked like prostitutes and the fourth one, who didn't look like a prostitute, was undoubtedly one, too. The group was complemented by two prophets, out of which one was fraudulent, one sculptor, one blonde and ever drunken female medium. 

and we know that he spends a considerable amount of time around geralt, too.

above it all, he seems content not being so close to his family of birth, but won’t hesitate to invoke or benefit from noble privileges if the time comes for it (like with anna henrietta). he can’t count on them to support him financially, which proves his life difficult sometimes. but his bonds with those he’s found in his travels seem much more fulfilling and i think support him more than his birth family ever did. a huge theme in this series is found family, and i’m glad dandelion echoes that even if it’s not at all a focus of the series or a point that’s ever elaborated upon.

[yosoyloqueveo]

1903 - Rainer Maria Rilke with Clara Westhoff, the sculptor whom Rilke would later marry and repeatedly abandon on his vocational wanderings around Europe. 

+ (quite) a few extracts so far from Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet...

“To be an artist is this: not to count or to reckon: to ripen like a tree which does not force its sap, but in the storms of spring stands confident without being afraid that afterwards no summer may come. The summer comes all right. But it only comes to the patient, to those who are there as carefree and quiet and immense, as if eternity lay before them. Daily I learn, learn it through my sufferings [to which I am grateful] that patience is everything.

“have patience with all unsolved problems in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms, or books that are written in a foreign tongue. Do not search now for the answers, which cannot be given you, because you could not live them. That is the point, to live everything. Now you must live your problems. And perhaps gradually, without noticing it, you will live your way into the answer some distant day.”

“Richard Dehmel:  You characterised him very well with the expression: "sensual life and sensual poetry"—and it is undoubtedly a fact that artistic experience has such an inconceivably close connection with sexual experience, with its pain and its desire, that the two phenomena are actually nothing but two different forms of one and the same yearning and bliss. And if instead of sensuality one could say sex—sex in its great, wide and pure sense, free from the suspicion cast upon it by errors of the Church—then his art would be very great and infinitely important. His poetical power is great and strong as a primeval impulse. It has its own independent rhythms, and breaks forth from him like a stream from the mountains.”

“Bodily pleasure is an experience of the senses, exactly like pure seeing or the pure feeling with which a lovely fruit fills the tongue; it is a great and infinite experience which is given to us, a knowledge of the world, the fulfilment and glory of all knowledge. And it is not our receiving it that is bad; what is bad is that nearly everybody misuses and squanders this experience and, instead of storing it up for supreme moments, uses it as an allurement and a distraction at the tired moments of his life. Eating, too, has been turned by mankind into something else; want on the one hand and excess on the other have rendered turbid the clearness of this need, and all the deep and simple necessities in which life renews itself have in like manner become turbid. But the individual man can make them clear for himself and live clearly [or if not the individual who is too dependent, at any rate the solitary man]. He can remember that all beauty in animals and plants is a quiet and lasting form of love and longing, and he can see the animal, as he sees the plant, patiently and willingly synthesising and increasing itself and growing net out of physical desire or physical pain, but bending to necessities which are greater than desire and pain and mightier than will and resistance.”

“And those, who come together in the night and are twined in quivering pleasure, are performing a serious work and are heaping up sweetness, depth and force for the song of some coming poet, who will arise to express inexpressible ecstasies.”

“Therefore, dear Sir, love your solitude, and bear the pain which it causes you with euphonious lament. For you say that those who are near to you are far away, and that shows that your outlook is beginning to be wide. And if your foreground is far from you, then your horizon is already beneath the stars and very great. Rejoice in your growth, into which you can take no one with you, and be good to those who remain behind. Be assured and peaceful in their presence, do not torture them with your doubts and do not frighten them with your confidence or your joy, which they could not comprehend. ”

“Avoid adding new material to that strained drama which- is ever played between parents and children. It uses up much of the children's strength and consumes the love of the parents, which is always active and warm, even if it does not understand. Do not ask them for any advice and reckon on no understanding from them, but believe in a love which is stored up for you as a heritage, and have confidence that in this love there is a force and a blessedness, which you need never leave behind even in your furthest journeys.”

“I know that your profession is hard and full of opposition to yourself; I foresaw your complaint and knew that it would come. Now that it has come I cannot soothe it. I can only advise you to consider whether all professions are not like that, full of claims, full of enmity for the individual, and at the same time fully imbued with the hate of those who submit dumbly and surlily to monotonous duty. The position in which you must now live is no more heavily burdened with conventions, prejudices and errors than other positions, and if there are some which carry with them a greater outward freedom, there is none that in itself is wide and spacious and connected with the great things of which real life consists.”

“What you are experiencing now as an officer, you would have felt in like manner in any of the existing professions, and even if apart from any position, you had sought easy and independent contact with society alone, this feeling of constraint would still not have been spared you. Everywhere it is the same, but that is no reason for anxiety or sadness. If there is no intercourse between you and mankind, try to get nearer to "things." They will not desert you; there are still the nights and the winds which blow through the trees and over many lands; with "things" and with animals, everything is still full of happenings in which you can take part; and children are still the same as you were as a child, so sad and so happy—and when you think of your childhood, then you live again among them, among the lonely children, and the grown-ups are nothing and their dignity has no value.”

“With the help of conventions, people have solved all problems according to what is easy and according to the easiest side of what is easy, but it is clear that we must attach ourselves to what is difficult. All living things attach themselves to it, everything in nature grows and defends itself after its manner and is an entity in itself, and strives to be so at any price and against all resistance. We know little, but that we must attach ourselves to what is difficult is a certainty that never deserts us. It is good to be lonely, for loneliness is difficult. The fact that a thing is difficult must be for us the more reason for doing it.

To love, too, is good, for love is difficult. Loving between human being and human being, that is perhaps the most difficult thing with which we have been charged, the extreme possibility, the last test and trial, the work for which all other work is but preparation.”

“Love is not at first anything that can be called merging or surrender or union with another, for what would the union be of what is unclean, unready, and still subordinate? It is an exalted occasion for the individual to ripen, to become something in himself, to become a world, to become a world in himself for another's sake; it is a great and even arrogant claim upon him, something that chooses him out and calls him to what is far. ”