The creature there has never been
Of Bluebirds, Dragons, Velveteen Rabbits and other possibilities

I’m just a fan in love with Beauty and the Beast, not a scholar. So, I don’t pretend to write an essay about the literature I’m going to quote – I’d just like to share some fragmented thoughts to celebrate Vincent and Catherine’s love on their anniversary, and to see if it may be inspiring also for me, for us.

I take it for granted that we all are in awe of a show that dared – dares – to exalt Classic literature and music. This has its own value even without considering the texts chosen to be quoted in the episodes, and for the blockbuster that was the Of Love and Hope recording, with more poetry read by Ron Perlman in Vincent’s voice.

Apart from rekindling – or generating – the love for the beautiful Classics in general, I can perceive and would like to point out this leitmotif spread along the episodes: “the possibility of being”. We all know that the show is about seeing more than what the eyes can see, and we strongly feel the rightness of this approach, we do want to believe it’s possible, we want to see and be seen that way. But it’s not only that. It’s not only about seeing, it’s about being.

We are not perfect. It’s not just a matter of seeing beyond our looks, as if we were a pure jewel in wraps. We must become that pure jewel, and it’s a hard and difficult journey. The loving eyes that see beyond our look will help us to start that journey, possibly will accompany us, but, like Vincent and Catherine, we must struggle to become the creature there has never been, the masterpiece we can be, the pure jewel that the truly loving eyes can imagine beyond knowledge, the truth that only love can see.

We are reminded of this in the episode Temptation, thanks to the Letters to a young poet by the German-language poet Rainer M. Rilke. The Dragon, waiting to be seen as a princess and to see us once beautiful and brave… the helpless that wants help… the courage to face the darkness.

We are reminded of this in the episode Orphans, where The Velveteen Rabbit struggles to become real, thanks to the fierce, consuming, exacting love of a child.

We are reminded of this in the episode When the blue bird sings, thanks to Oscar Wilde’s visionary nostalgia for the beautiful things that are not and that should be, the impossible, unsung things that need to be sung by Bluebirds daring to follow their hearts.

And we are reminded of this in the wonderful reading of one of the Sonnets to Orpheus by Rilke. It’s not included in the episodes, it’s from the Of Love and Hope recording, and, in the words of a dear friend whose sight is deep, “it’s the very soul of the story”. It’s extraordinary. With its magical words, Rilke depicts in front of our inner eyes the power of faith, summarizing what the other fantastic creatures have suggested. There’s a strength in what we believe, and thanks to that strength and to our faith in its possibility of being, what we believe may become real and spread its wings, to become an Unicorn… or Vincent. Or it may become a better ourselves, and it may give the power to those we love to become better. Fed with our faith in the possibility of being, what we believe can work a wonderful, nurturing, inspiring magic.

We can’t be enough grateful to the blessed Powers That Be, those who’re not wearing suits, for reminding all this to us through an everyday, familiar thing like a TV show, through that wonderful TV show that is Beauty and the Beast.