Modernity is the transitory, fugitive, contingent, is but one half of art, of which the other half is the eternal and immutable. - Charles Baudelaire

Your eyes, brilliant as shop windows Or as blazing lamp-stands at public festivals, Insolently use a borrowed power Without ever knowing the law of their beauty. Blind,

And yet
to wine, to opium even, I prefer
the elixir of your lips on which love flaunts itself;
and in the wasteland of desire
your eyes afford the wells to slake my thirst.

Delacroix était passionnément amoureux de la passion, et froidement déterminé à chercher les moyens d'exprimer la passion de la manière la plus visible. Dans ce double caractère, nous trouvons, disons-le en passant, les deux signes qui marquent les plus solides génies, génies extrêmes.