Poetry and Medicine: Rembrandt's Good Samaritan, Then and Now.

This month, I offer a poem, the third in a series, by Adele Ne Jame, a firstgeneration Lebanese American who has lived in Hawai'i since 1969. She and her artist daughter, Melissa Chimera, served as the 2022 Mikhail Series Lecturers at the University of Toledo. The accompanying image is by her daughter. The poem presented, "Rembrandt's Good Samaritan, Then and Now," considers two etchings by Dutch Baroque painter and printmaker Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669). A prolific master in three media, Rembrandt produced about three hundred paintings, three hundred etchings, and two thousand drawings. He was one of the greatest visual artists in the history of art, and arguably, the greatest etcher that ever lived. Perhaps, most importantly, Rembrandt was an expert story teller, able to craft a narrative in works on canvas and on paper. Here, inspired by the narratives of two etchings, the poet comments on the artist's life, marked by suffering and loss; his artistic innovation; and his message of compassion and humility that is particularly relevant to today's healthcare professionals. Rembrandt "suffered / the loss of three children," who died shortly after birth, and he lost his beloved wife Saskia to tuberculosis after just nine years of marriage. While Rembrandt gained financial success through his artwork, he "died poor," and like Mozart, was buried "in an unmarked grave." Yet, he was "the master who harnessed the forces of light and dark," perfecting the technique of chiaroscuro, and "who plunged so deeply into the mysterious" that post-impressionist painter Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890) "thought him a magician." The son of a miller, Rembrandt was born into humble beginnings and thus was sensitive to suffering, tolerated diversity, and deeply empathized with the human condition. He was a social outsider who associated with lowborn people, "happy in the company of workers and street people," and "wiped his dirty brushes on his clothes / not caring a whit what others might think." As an artist, he was a nonconformist, a revolutionary who flaunted the rules of the Academy in favor of a psychological realism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]