"Portrait of Greta Garbo"

(collage and oil painting on cardboard, 8X11, 2009)

"Life would be so wonderful if we only knew what to do with it."
Greta Garbo

"There are many things in your heart you can never tell to another person. They are you, your private joys and sorrows, and you can never tell them. You cheapen yourself, the inside of yourself, when you tell them."
Greta Garbo

Greta Garbo certainly had class and I’ve always liked people with class, which is somewhat ironic since I grew up in a country where peasants and workers were glorified and the definition of a member of the so-called ‘intelligentsia’ became an offensive word equivalent to a term describing a weakling combined with a geek. We didn’t have many actresses (if any) equivalent to Garbo. The Soviet censorship wouldn’t allow women with poise and aristocratic features on the screen. Women were supposed to feel average and equal. Women weren’t meant to be beauties, but workers and mothers.

Of course, the human nature can’t be changed and the Soviet women did their best to buy nice clothes and makeup on the black market even if it did cost them their monthly salaries. Because human nature doesn’t change there were people who read forbidden books, retained their good manners and taught their children the value of being well educated and polite, because being educated, polite and descent makes a person feel good about himself. Now I understand why the Soviet machine was trying to eradicate people with manners, intellect and class. It’s because such people could develop a sense of self-worth and a greater self-awareness and a person who knows who he is and what he is worth can’t be as easily manipulated or expected to work for the greater good.

Don’t you just love how I turned a discussion about Greta Garbo into a discussion about individual vs. society? I do! I remember reading in Lewis’ “It can’t happen here” a passage about Windrip (an imaginary American dictator) that went along the lines that he loved the people and detested persons. Well, I love Persons and I’m slightly afraid of the masses, especially if they have no class (meaning poor manners).

Anybody, be it a professor, a worker or a peasant can have class as long as they have self-respect and respect for others. All that class is – is a desire to treat people the way you want to be treated and a desire to be your best at all times. I believe that our society would greatly benefit if all people were striving to have some class!