A secret part of my biography. Here is the true story of how I saw Christopher Marlowe for the first time… really. I still hear someone whisper: “What nourishes me, destroys me…”.
I have always been fascinated by the theatre: the authors, the actors, the directors. I was fifteen when an English teacher learned me everything about the famous playwright William Shakespeare, his life and his work.
Not that long ago, surfing the worldwide web in search of Shakespeare, I stumbled upon a site that was dedicated to Christopher Marlowe, his life and his work. The site was called “Marlowe Lives!” and I guess it all started there and then.
Image via Wikipedia
You see, there was this famous portrait of a young man in Corpus Christi, Cambridge. I had seen it before, but not that good, not so detailed. The young man, supposedly, was Christopher Marlowe, and there was an inscription on the portrait, of which a part was visible in the corner on the upper left, reading:
ANNO DÑI ÆTATIS SVÆ 21 1585 QVOD ME NVTRITME DESTRVIT
Which means this man was 21 years old in the year 1585, his motto being: “That which nourishes me, destroys me.”
Copyright by Patrick Bernauw
Now, this guy of 1585 looked hauntingly like me… as I was looking back in 1985. He had my eyes (we even shared the look in those eyes!) and he had my nose, he had the same thin brown hair, the same small mouth…
This was I!
The rants and raves of Chris Marlowe II are not really disturbing me. It’s not these virtual stalkings I’m afraid of, his threats that he is coming for me, that he is going to get me… No, that is not what I fear most of all.
But that he seems to know what I have experienced years ago, when I looked for the first time in my face on the portrait of a guy who was 21 years old in 1585… Chris Marlowe II put my photograph on his Triond profile page. As if he knew my deepest and darkest fears, as if he could read my mind.
Back then, I must have muttered something like: “Marlowe lives… and he’s me!”
And Chris Marlowe II seems to know it.
“What nourishes me, destroys me!”
And he knows it.
He knows how I stared into the eyes of the 21 year old man I was back in 1585, and that it was something like a déjà-vu. He knows how I lost any idea of time and space while I was looking into my eyes and felt, briefly but definitely, the 16th century poet & playwright creeping into my head.
I was thinking his thoughts now. I was feeling what this undead writer had been going through. And I started writing the sort of crazy stuff I had never written before.
And it was all because of the power of this person who was portrayed there, I thought.
It were the eyes of Christopher Marlowe that did the job…
Image via Wikipedia
The Triond Profile of Chris Marlowe II
Update Two of the Chris Marlowe II Whodunnit
Lovely piece. And quite creepy enough even for me 
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