Saturn Devouring His Son

Saturn Devouring His Son while looking the viewers stright in their eyes. Muscular, wild, gory looking saturn eating a tender child. Head and right hand of the child castrated. Blood oozed and froze. Saturn's mouth wide open, doing the misdeed onto his son's left hand. White long hair let loose, flowing in the force of his head movements. The tight grip around the boy's waist. The wide open eyes, at first glance wants us to snap away. Maybe in the fear of being the next victim, or because of pure visceral empathy. But, when looked longer into the eyes of Saturn, empathy shifts. "Saturn is the father, the child he is eating is his own child." Now the eyes tell a different story. What a misfortune? For him to have killed his own son?

His eyes are blazing up in resentment, and his grip is almost like he is trying to protect his son from him. He is weak on his knees and a dog is laying it's head on his lap, closing it's eyes shut in pain. Well, it is true. Saturn feared the prophecy of Gaea, that his son would overpower him, or out shine him. He is saturn. He could sit with that prophecy. He killed. But the father in him is showing the restraint in Saturn's body. Saturn won. The need to be powerful won over the love. But the friction is painful to watch. How would he have lived with himself?

Goya interpreted the inner conflicts of a person during war, and how the need to incline to power, duty, and the selfish need to protect oneself, or his country, or his pride, portrays a dark animal that lives in each one of us. Goya was painting the Saturn in him, the darkness he witnessed during war, and his illness eating him up. He painted this on the all of his own dining room. He sat across from it every single day and ate his meals in front of it. That was a choice, the father in him living with the Saturn in him. If we were to portray our Saturns and be empathetic about it, would the world be a better place or a graveyard? If we had to acknowledge it, how would we live with ourself?

What about the human system that enables us to be a Saturn and hide it in the unknown abyss? Was empathy the foundation of civilisation? Has civilisation made empathy a performance after being drilled for ages? Because there are still wars, and Saturn winning over love and empathy quite a few times. Saturn was feasting on his son, while the father in him was killing himself. Saturn did not win. Because, albeit the prophecy was broken, he is dead. Would Saturn bear a little less pain while his son out threw him? We will never know until we let the love in us win.