by maureen coffey

In the center of the middle panel, Bosch illustrates a pool of women being circled by men on various animals. In Reindert Falkenburg’s “In Conversation with The Garden of Earthly Delights,” he describes how the naked women in the center pool could represent the physical embodiment of the soul or human consciousness, but they also do not take the form of one concrete interpretation– their place in the painting is ambiguous. Falkenburg furthers this interpretation when he contends that the women could stand for “both the physical world we live in and a dream world, in which all matter and form can transform into something else” (141). Falkenburg alludes to the fact that Bosch is a post structuralist and believes that part of human consciousness is recognizing that there is not one single truth, but that we define our own truths based on our experiences. With the ambiguity of the women in the pool, Bosch creates a realm where the viewer’s imagination, experiences, and memories can shape their personal understanding of the painting. In a more general sense, Bosch prompts me to think about how one cannot separate the subconscious (the soul and the memories and feelings that it is made up of) from the physical because our subconscious is what defines the physical. To explain this further, in merging the physical, language and its connotations, experiences, and other aspects of human consciousness, we are creating meaning and a perspective on the world that is unique to us. In dialogue with other people's perspectives, we gain a more complete and genuine understanding of the world. 
To illustrate this phenomenon, I include the river from Thomas Cole’s painting The Oxbow. In literature, rivers simulate human consciousness, but in our society they are also the centerpoint of infrastructure and civilization– for centuries, cities and towns have been built around rivers. The duality of the symbolism behind rivers, being that they can represent aspects of the world that are non physical and physical, goes hand in hand with the intention behind the ambiguity of the women, meaning that the physical and the nonphysical are intertwined and interdependent on each other. I add another layer to this phenomenon by including the bridge from Claude Monet’s painting, The Argenteuil Bridge. This is an impressionist painting, meaning it is a painting that emulates real life and natural light but seeks to enhance it with more vibrant colors, imitating the real thing but not truly depicting the real thing. In putting this bridge over the pool and river that connects consciousness to the physical, I allude to the fact that people nowadays are searching for one universal language– or one universal truth– that is only capable of emulating real life, not actually depicting it because it is not rooted in experience. In other words, people seek a universal truth through reading on social media, accepting what scientists say is real life, and inventing AI that can talk to us, but they are actually only interpreting reality through one set of vocabulary that reflects one person’s perspective and experiences. It is not genuinely all encompassing because your truth is unique to your experiences. Finally, I included the diver from The Tomb of the Diver, an ancient painting that symbolizes a diver leaping into death. The swimmer appears to be headed right for the bridge, indicating that if you choose the path seeking one universal truth you will be killing the endless other perspectives on the world that will expand your perception of reality.