Eugène Carrière, Above All Else, a Man Still in Love With His Wife, by Maria Mocerino

Les âges de la vie: les jeunes mères, by Eugène Carrière (France) 1897-1900

​Eugène Carrière, Above All Else, a Man Still in Love With His Wife 
 
Sitting down to put pen upon a paper  
Eugène Carrière was first a Man 
Above all else.
            — Gabriel Seailles
 
The city of Paris wondered, what would I paint? On these walls, in this room, where two make a commitment in a neighbourhood in the universe. What did I think? About it? The painter of motherhood. Marriage. A man with seven children, still in love with his wife. From the smoke, she becomes. Sophie. What did it mean to me, you mean. She always gave me the strength to go further in life…and so, I speak from the heart, a mysterious idea.
 
From the landscape, the universal soul, we emerge — a shape, shapes, with depth, bare, some markers there, with sweeping clothes, brown. Brown, brown, brown. Earth, dirt. Spirit, yes, free associate, but from here. I just detest sentimentality. This is about the evolution of the spirit. Not sentiment. My family a microcosm of mankind. The social contract meant little to me, but the gift of life, did, mean something to me. A human responsibility. 
 
A bird flies, a clean objective: movement, pure. Time, can hardly see it pass, how fast, but then, I detest sentimentalism. But it does move us, doesn’t it? Life, love, responsibility…
 
Sweeping into form behind her, a girl less formed for she will become, on the road, a mother caring for the same idea head-to-head at different stages. We are so many ages, sparkling from the other side, and dare I say, more sensual with time in the limelight, maybe moon. A fully realized person. My wife. Her hand, a tender touch, a babe, the tiniest thing. Not so much ghostly though we are all apparitions. My youngest died, the first, tragically, young. My son, a shock, a cleanse, lots of things. 
 
Born from her, I painted her, made her, watched her, loved her, sparkling from the other side, the painter of motherhood. Though the individual, not exactly the point, unity. In the middle of all that smoke, my greatest joy. Maybe the deepest, most universal, essential, yearning…unity, what we might be missing, the most. We return in a crescendo, a symphony, not sentimental. The illusion of separation dissolves, real, nonetheless, but the gift of life continues… as an unfinished masterpiece for us all. The matter.
 
What mattered to me was not money or success but the only veritable acquisition: the evolution of my spirit. I accomplished nothing extraordinary. In the middle of all that smoke, I never made a mark that I did not want to make. The brume, the dust, the ephemeral nature captured forever, if they survive the test of time, I suppose they will, stirring, isn’t it? 
 
“Love each other wildly,” I said, to my family, in the end, on my deathbed. 
 
“Love each other wildly…” 

I owed my mother, my thoughtful spirit, subsumed.

At my funeral, Rodin, my friend, who holds my painting in his house, spoke. “My very dear and very great Eugene Carrière, who left us so soon, showed genius in painting his wife and children. It was enough for him to celebrate maternal love to be sublime…”
 
Maria Mocerino
 
Maria Mocerino is finishing her first book between Italy and Turkey. She's currently writing about Barbara Harris, a stage and screen legend. Her work has been published in Bending Genres, Star 82 Review. The Rogue Mag, The Irish Examiner, and Reality Sandwich.