I was feeling mildly alienated, as if the whole affair had taken place in a time warp, or in a fête galante by Watteau or Fragonard. It was quite easy to transpose those guests into one of those colloquies in which nothing is explicit but in which ritual exchanges take place. In many of those images there is an outsider, a figure in harlequin costume: a hand is laid on a breast; one assumes that love, or something more savage, is in the air.
Leaving Home, Ch. 15
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| Watteau, 'Harlequin and Columbine (Voulez-vous triompher des belles?)', 1716? Wallace Collection |
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