The Lovers’ Chronicle 31 July – bear away – art by Jacques Villon

31 July 2023 By Rhett 0 In Love, Quotes, Random, Songs

Dear Zazie, Here is today’s Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag to his muse. Follow us on twitter @cowboycoleridge. Have you experienced these three forms of love; exalted, erotic and unconditional? Rhett

The Lovers’ Chronicle

Dear Muse,

full of hidden meanin’
recallin’ past images
reawakenin’ memories

in the far away

they were presentiments
of an existence to come
future incarnation
expectation of marvels
answers to the indefinable
expectations, horizons to open

ardently longed for, borne away with

this could do it

it begins,

with your head in my lap

readin’ what i have written

for you, so you can hear

how it should flow, how

it feels as my breath

rises and falls

only then can we be

where i intended

it ends,

with two entwined

where curiosity

and anticipation merge

quiet place, where dreams come

on the mesa, mute against time

impartial clouds pattern the valley

view and sky goin’ on and thoughts,

so rewardin’ this long vista of lucidity

light, words go to form rhythm

drawn from this source

the first light streakin’ your hair

recallin’ past images

not all that i do

but it leads to you

in the rearview,

their were signs

of what could be

future incarnations

the answers are there

to the expectations,

indefinable

some horizons have closed

others have opened

now that understandin’

is at hand

certain, some regret

is borne away

for all that is lost,

for all not found

but just look

at what was discovered

and of you

what could be

Pale Love, Pale Rider

full of hidden meanin’
recallin’ past images
reawakenin’ memories

in the far away,
they were presentiments
of existences to come
future incarnations
expectations of marvels

but there are no answers
to the indefinable expectations
all has narrowed and darkened
vague recollections now blurred

the horizons have closed
without ever havin’ understood
the cause of those mirages

and i bear away the regret
for i know not what lost home
i failed to find, for the unknown
ardently longed for, but never embraced

Three Duchamp brothers, left to right: Marcel Duchamp, Villon, and Raymond Duchamp-Villon in the garden of Jacques Villon’s studio in Puteaux, France, 1914, (Smithsonian Institution collections.)

Le Petit Manège, rue Caulaincourt, 1905, University of Michigan Museum of Art

Today is the birthday of Jacques Villon (Emile Méry Frédéric Gaston Duchamp; Damville, Eure, Haute-Normandie; July 31, 1875 – June 9, 1963 Puteaux); Cubist painter and printmaker. Villon was the elder brother of: sculptor Raymond Duchamp-Villon, painter, sculptor, author Marcel Duchamp, and painter Suzanne Duchamp-Crotti. To distinguish himself from his siblings, Gaston Duchamp adopted the pseudonym of Jacques Villon as a tribute to the French medieval poet François Villon.

Gallery

1912, Girl at the Piano (Fillette au piano), oil on canvas, 129.2 x 96.4 cm (51 x 37.8 in), oval, Museum of Modern Art, New York.

1912, The Dining Table, oil on canvas, 65.7 × 81.3 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

1914, Portrait de M. J. B. peintre (Jacques Bon), oil on canvas, 121.92 x 81.28 cm, Columbus Museum of Art

It was on this day in 1886, that Hungarian composer and virtuoso pianist Franz Liszt died. Among my favorite Liszt compositions are the Liebesträume (German for Dreams of Love), a set of three solo piano works, published in 1850. Originally the three Liebesträume were conceived as songs after poems by Ludwig Uhland and Ferdinand Freiligrath. The two poems by Uhland and the one by Freiligrath depict three different forms of love. Uhland’s Hohe Liebe (Exalted Love) is saintly, or religious, love: the “martyr” renounces worldly love and “heaven has opened its gates”. The second song Seliger Tod (Holy Death) is often known by its first line (“Gestorben war ich”) (“I was dead”), and evokes erotic love; “dead” could be a metaphor here referrin’ to what is known as “la petite mort” in French (“I was dead from love’s bliss; I lay buried in her arms; I was wakened by her kisses; I saw heaven in her eyes”). Freiligrath’s poem for the famous third Notturno is about unconditional mature love, and warnin’ that love lost is miserable: “Love as long as you can! The hour will come when you will stand at graves and mourn” (“O lieb, so lang du lieben kannst”).

And it was on this day in 1944 that Antoine de Saint-Exupéry disappeared on a reconnaissance flight over the Mediterranean off the coast of Marseille. I previously wrote to you about Saint Ex and his muse.

My love for you was exalted, erotic and unconditional. And I can confirm, sadly, that the warnin’ of the Notturno is all too real.

Mac Tag

The song of the day is Liebesträume by Franz Liszt

Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go. – Oscar Wilde

We all live in our own dream-worlds and make and re-make our own personal realities with tender and loving care. – Sylvia Plath

I’m hunting for the truth. It might be a kind of poetic truth, and not just a factual one because behind everything that happens to you, there is another truth, a secret life. – Anne Sexton

The only wisdom we can hope to acquire is the wisdom of humility: humility is endless. – T.S. Eliot

Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Pray for us now and at the hour of our death. – T.S. Eliot

Sermons and creeds and theology . . . . but the human brain, and what is called reason, and what is called love, and what is called life? – Walt Whitman

I wish that every human life might be pure transparent freedom. – Simone de Beauvoir

O little did they care who danced between,

And little she by whom her dance was seen

So she had outdanced thought.

– W.B. Yeats

If it doesn’t look easy, you aren’t working hard enough. – Fred Astaire

I forced myself to contradict myself in order to avoid conforming to my own taste. – Marcel Duchamp

The muses’ decision to sing or not to sing is not based on the elevation of your moral purpose. – John Barth

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