Death's beautiful face

This could be Mumtaz Mahal’s ghost contemplating the work of his dear one

To those who really know that beauty is forever 

Beauty through suffering

In the depths of his pain he could only find one way to overcome it. He would built the most beautiful recreation of heaven that had ever been done. He wanted everyone to notice how beautiful she was, how deep his love for her was and how hard his pain was. The architect proposed several projects, but none of them were what Sha Jahan was looking for. Desperate, he decided to take a drastic decision and gave the order to execute the architect’s wife so that in this way he could share his pain, his sorrow and his project. A few months later the architect, in the depths of his pain, his eyes still tearful by his constant weeping presented the project of the TajMahal to the king. Tagore would define it years later: “One teardrop glistens spotlessly bright on the cheek of time”. Maybe this building inspires us to think that real love, though it is very rare, occasionally sparks between two people.

Facing death

Sha Jahan probably wanted to answer the questions that, years later, the writer Douglas Coupland asks: " Which will be your better memories of the land? What moment will define what it is to be alive in this planet? " What is death? How Murakami deduces very well in his novel Tokyo Blues, death is not the opposite to life, it is a part of it. In spite of the fact that we all know that we are going to die few of us believe it and maybe it is because of this that when we face this reality we suffer a strong impact. Throughout history humanity has established interesting connections between life, death, love and beauty. Love is the only feeling capable of overcoming death and beauty is the way in which we reflect it. The way in which we face death depends on the way in which we have lived.

Art in death

Seeking to overcome death as David did with Goliat, artists  have given us some of the most beautiful masterpieces ever imagined. Giving an example is something pretentious since art is nothing more than an intimate connection between the hands of the author and the soul of the one who enjoys it. I cannot end this post without stopping to comment on any one of the masterpieces that in this sense my soul has experienced with the same force that made the Taj Mahal. This way I will comment that for me, one of the most intense sonnets of love from Spanish literature, was written by a brilliant, eccentric and misogynous Quevedo: “Cerrar podra mis ojos...”. Paradoxically, thanks to death, we can enjoy great beauty while we pass through this life. Thanks to death you can listen to “Lacrimosa” get goose bumps and feel that you are alive.