I’ve often wondered where the body ends and the soul begins. How is it contained within our flesh? Where do our thoughts come from? How do we have personality, show emotion, love, feel the presence of others, believe in a higher power, have context of the past/present/future, and dream? Are we shackled by this skin? If we were free of it would we find boundless knowledge? Do we need it in order to keep us grounded and sane? Do our senses actually provide the information our souls need in order to stay active and healthy? Would our souls grow wary of not having a counterpoint? Is the physical realm necessary to enjoy the spiritual?

I searched for some poetry and found A Dialogue Between The Soul and Body by Andrew Marvell. I think it somewhat matches the age of the image. The bars in front of the wheat paste graffiti of the child sitting in the chair, reinforce the prisoner nature of ourselves, dressed up in finery out for the world to decipher their own meaning of themselves and the clothes that guard them.

On to the poem:

Soul
O Who shall, from this Dungeon, raise
A Soul inslav’d so many wayes?
With bolts of Bones, that fetter’d stands
In Feet ; and manacled in Hands.
Here blinded with an Eye ; and there
Deaf with the drumming of an Ear.
A Soul hung up, as ’twere, in Chains
Of Nerves, and Arteries, and Veins.
Tortur’d, besides each other part,1
In a vain Head, and double Heart.

Body
O who shall me deliver whole,
From bonds of this Tyrannic Soul?
Which, stretcht upright, impales me so,
That mine own Precipice I go;
And warms and moves this needless Frame:
(A Fever could but do the same.)
And, wanting where its spight to try,
Has made me live to let me dye.
A Body that could never rest,
Since this ill Spirit it possest.

Soul
What Magic could me thus confine
Within anothers Grief to pine?
Where whatsoever it complain,
I feel, that cannot feel, the pain.
And all my Care its self employes,
That to preserve, which me destroys:
Constrain’d not only to indure
Diseases, but, whats worse, the Cure:
And ready oft the Port to gain,
Am Shipwrackt into Health again.

Body
But Physick yet could never reach
The Maladies Thou me dost teach;
Whom first the Cramp of Hope does Tear:
And then the Palsie Shakes of Fear.
The Pestilence of Love does heat :
Or Hatred’s hidden Ulcer eat.
Joy’s chearful Madness does perplex:
Or Sorrow’s other Madness vex.
Which Knowledge forces me to know;
And Memory will not foregoe.
What but a Soul could have the wit
To build me up for Sin so fit?
So Architects do square and hew,
Green Trees that in the Forest grew.