The House of Pleasure

Poets of the past believed that God made roses without thorns, but when human beings came to live together with all our complexities, roses grew thorns as a response to us. The rose is a symbol of this collection. Its grace, perfume, and shape points to the beauty of love, the thorns point to our dark passions, together they symbolise ecstasy. Poets and mystics also believed that if paradise comes for us, the rose would pull in its thorns so we can have ecstasy without pain. I could quote our beautiful writers in Poland, but here is your famous English poet Andrew Marvell: „The thorn, lest it should hurt her, draws Within its skin, the shrunken claws”.