FountainScape: Bless Me, Father
Click to enlarge. Photo by Walker DeVille
This has long been my favorite sculpture in downtown Charleston for its natural curves and soothing affect (in the psychological sense). But the fountain above, found on the plaza beside the Roman Catholic Co-Cathedral on the corner of Leon Sullivan Way and Virginia Street, is coming on strong. Its rectilinear homage to Euclid and nod to the Naiads, is so inviting that on a wicked-hot August afternoon one must say a silent novena to resist stripping off one’s clothes for a baptismal plunge into its inviting coolness. Wishing to avoid a venial sin, one resists the urge.
P.S. Former altar boys and freelance nuns, can you translate the Latin on the base?
August 29th, 2007 at 11:59 pm
Not a former altar boy or a freelance nun….however:
Domine, da mihi hanc aquam! LORD GIVE ME THIS WATER!
comes from John 4:15, I think, about when Jesus met the woman at the well… he’d never seen her before, but he told her everything about herself — a miracle….
and, convinced, the woman said to him something like: Sir, give me this water that I may not thirst, nor go to draw from the fountain of this world … (could mean, partly: Give me the real water of grace, not the counterfeit stuff). Water of truth, I suppose.
Now, what was the question again?
August 30th, 2007 at 9:57 am
Why thank you, Father Vic! Collective wisdom rules. WD