On Munch's "The Scream": Two Reactions

Two reactions to Munch's picture: English and Romanian

In Oslo

Munch's melancholic

Nordic blues

Infuse his pictures

With colourful gloom.

I am that man

With his face turned away

From the sunlit beach, in shadow.

But alienation has its own limits.

I'll never become

The man in "The Scream".

Moderation in all things.

I'm English, after all.

Munch’s man

What Munch didn’t know

when he looked at his own painting

with his inward eye

was the fact that the portrayed man

turned his face from the beach

to look at a woman.

Munch’s vision, truncated by gloom,

could not incorporate

her form in his space.

Ioana Petrescu