Calm • Serenity
Keep Going
It’s early morning in the middle of winter and we’re in a northern suburb of Paris in 1880. It’s been snowing all night and now the day has begun with a leaden grey sky and the air with the preternatural cleanliness and hush that follows a heavy fall. One can hear with new clarity the crows in the trees and the trains as they cross the viaduct. We’re up above the scene, in the company of the painter, a now largely forgotten Neapolitan called Giuseppe de Nittis, taking in the view from a second storey window.
What draws our eye is a solitary woman in black, armed with nothing but a broom against the whiteness. There is something quietly heroic about her presence. While others remain sensibly indoors, adding logs to the fire and postponing their encounters with the cold, she has ventured out to perform her near Sisyphean task. Her broom will make only the most temporary impression on the snow’s glacial insistence.
The woman isn’t depicted as either a victim or a warrior; she’s just doing what needs to be done, like billions before and after her. Lacking any grandeur, there’s nevertheless a distinct nobility about her. Here is humanity as we seldom allow ourselves to see it: neither triumphant nor defeated, but doggedly persisting – despite so many arguments against it.
Perhaps what we’re really looking at is a portrait of hope – the quiet, daily kind that sends us out into the elements to face dispiriting odds. It’s an image that nudges us to be a little kinder to ourselves and others, to recognise that merely continuing, merely showing up with our inadequate brooms against the cold, deserves to be counted as a victory of sorts. We’ll sweep even if the path will be covered again by nightfall.
