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28/2/2014

Jacobo Castellano

Galeria Pedro Oliveira, Porto

The poor child`s toy
« I want to suggest an innocent diversion. So few amusements involve no guilt!
When you go out in the morning, determined only to wander up and down the highways, fill your pockets with little gadgets that cost no more that an a penny – like the flat puppet worked by a single string, the blacksmith beating on an anvil, the rider and his horse, with a tail that works as whistle – and in front of taverns, or under the trees, give them out as gifts to the unknown poor children you encounter. At first, they wont dare to take them; they won`t believe their good fortune. But then their hands will eagerly snatch up the present, and off they will flee, as cats do when they go far away to eat the morsel you have given them, having learn to distrust people.

Down one road, behind the gate of an enormous garden, at the back of which could be seen the whiteness of a pretty chateau struck by the sun, stood a fine and fresh child, dressed in those country clothes that are so coyly attractive.

Luxury, the absence of worry, and the habitual spectacle of wealth make these children so pretty that one would think them made from a different mold than the children of mediocrity or poverty.
Next to him on the grass lay a splendid toy, as fresh as its master, gleaming and gilded, wearing a purple outfit, covered with little feathers and glass beads. But the child was not playing with his favourite toy, instead, this is what he was watching:
On the other side of the gate, on the road, among the thistles and nettles, there was another child, dirty, puny, soot-covered, one of those pariah-animals in which an impartial eye would detect beauty if, like the eye of the connoisseur detecting an ideal painting beneath a layer of varnish, he could wash off the repulsive patina of poverty.

Through this symbolic barrier separating two worlds, that of the highway and that of the chateau, the poor child was showing his own toy to the rich one, who examined it eagerly as if it were some rare and unknown object. Now, this toy that the dirty little child was provoking, tossing and shaking in a box with a grate – was a live rat! The parents, through economy no doubt, had taken the toy directly from life itself.
Charles Baudelaire
Paris Spleen (Little poems in prose)

Opening 01.03.2014 4pm

Galeria Pedro Oliveira
Calcada de Monchinque,3 - Porto
Hours: Tuesday – Saturday 3-8pm
Admission free

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