Commonly referred to as “Winged Victory”, the sculpture “Spiritualized Life” is the focal point of Memorial Park in Riverside. It is a bronze sculpture that depicts “the winged figure of youth” rising from the “mad maelstrom of earthly passions.” It was executed by Florida sculptor Charles Adrian Pillars and was unveiled on Christmas Day, 1924. Pillars began work on the statue in 1922, and drew inspiration from a sentimental war poem by soldier-poet Allan Seeger, a young New York native who enlisted in the French Foreign Legion and lost his life in WWI.
Surrounded by a fountain, “Spiritualized Life” memorializes soldiers from Florida who made the supreme sacrifice during the First World War.
Sonnet XII
Clouds rosy-tinted in the setting sun,
Depths of the azure eastern sky between,
Plains where the poplar-bordered highways run,
Patched with a hundred tints of brown and green,-
Beauty of Earth, when in thy harmonies
The cannon’s note has ceased to be a part,
I shall return once more and bring to these
The worship of an undivided heart.
Of those sweet potentialities that wait
For my heart’s deep desire to fecundate
I shall resume the search, if Fortune grants;
And the great cities of the world shall yet
Be golden frames for me in which to set
New masterpieces of more rare romance.
Alan Seeger
“This was President John F. Kennedy’s favorite poem, according to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis — though that fact doesn’t seem to be recorded in his published papers. Rather, it was an intimate favorite, his love for it recognized through the look on his face while it was recited. Onassis thought it reminded him of his brother Joe, who died in the Second World War.”
~Adin Dobkin, NYT, 2018
Photo: War Mothers with the Spiritualized Life Sculpture in Memorial Park, 1933 (William Elsner)
