The Lovers’ Chronicle 12 December – ever – birth of Gustave Flaubert

The Lovers’ Chronicle 12 December – ever – birth of Gustave Flaubert – art by Edvard Munch

12 December 2023 By Rhett 0 In Love, Poems, Random, Songs

Dear Zazie, Here is today’s Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag dedicated to his muse. Are you askin’ Sandman to let someone come to you in your dreams, to come softly ever the same? Rhett

The Lovers’ Chronicle

Dear Muse,

we are readin’

poetry

to each other

while the wind blows

and the snow falls

i pause from readin’

to look at you

your great eyes

fix on me

we have so much

to say to each other

but in this moment

it does not occur,

to tell each other

how we feel

or wonder why

we just are…

enterin’ solitude,

obsessed

with these thoughts

that you will come

last night it worked

you came and hugged me,

felt myself flowin’ into you

told you it had been so, so long

sayin’ nothin’ you just held on

asked you to stay, but you left

always askin’

ever holdin’ on

all i ask

allow this

my only comfort

to be with you

ever the same

obsessed with these thoughts,
this solitude, ever the same

come, let yourself go
it has been so long

words flowin’, hold on
to what emerges,
to this occurrence
of everything

these feelin’s
at last carry
the meanin’
of all that will be

come to me
the totem spins…

oh hold on,
not sure which way
this one is goin’…

sittin’ by a fireplace
in a mountain cabin
we are readin’
poetry
to each other
while the wind blows
and the snow falls

i pause from readin’
to look at you
your great eyes
fix on me
have we nothin’ more
to say to each other
not hardly
but certainly we know
more meaningful
ways to talk
it does not occur,
to tell each other
how we feel
or wonder why
we just are…

ah, damnit,
losin’ it…

the flames die down
either exhausted or choked
little by little, quenched
by absence
and regret,
smothered
by routine
the fiery glow
vanishes

Come To Me Ever The Same

Enterin’ the dark solitude
Obsessed with this thought, this hope, this…
That you will come to me in dreams
Some nights it works, some it will not
Blessed by the Sandman last evenin’
You came to me and you hugged me
Felt myself flowin’ into you
Told you it had been so, so long
Sayin’ nothin’ you just held on
Asked you to stay but no you left
Always askin’, askin’ Sandman…
All I ask is this, all I ask
Allow this my only comfort:
To plunge into dreams into you
To be with you ever the same
To fall asleep in your shadow
To come to me ever the same
To come softly ever the same
To come to me, to come softly
Ever the same, ever the same

© Cowboy Coleridge

The Song of the Day is “Come to Me Softly” by Jimmy James and the Vagabonds.

Gustave Flaubert

Today is the birthday of Gustave Flaubert (Rouen 12 December 1821 – 8 May 1880 Croisset, Rouen); novelist who, in my opinion, was the leading exponent of literary realism in his country. Perhaps best known for his first published novel, Madame Bovary (1857), for his Correspondence, and for his devotion to his style and aesthetics. The celebrated short story writer Guy de Maupassant was a protégé of Flaubert. Flaubert believed in, and pursued, the principle of finding “le mot juste” (“the right word”), which he considered as the key means to achieve quality in literary art.

From 1846 to 1854, Flaubert had a relationship with the poet Louise Colet. According to his biographer Émile Faguet, his affair with Colet was his only serious romantic relationship. From Rouen, he made occasional visits to Paris and England, where he apparently had a mistress. Flaubert never married.

With his lifelong friend Maxime Du Camp, he traveled in Brittany in 1846. In 1849–50 he went on a long journey to the Middle East, visiting Greece and Egypt. In Beirut he contracted syphilis. He spent five weeks in Istanbul in 1850. He visited Carthage in 1858 to conduct research for his novel Salammbô. Flaubert was very open about his sexual activities with prostitutes in his writings on his travels.

He died from a cerebral hemorrhage at the age of 58. He was buried in the family vault in the cemetery of Rouen. A monument to him by Henri Chapu was unveiled at the museum of Rouen.

Prose

Madame Bovary, 1857

C’est la faute de la fatalité !

Phrase récurrente

Madame Bovary (1857), Gustave Flaubert, éd. Éditions Garnier Frères, coll. « Classiques Garnier », 1955, partie 3, chap. XI, p. 323

[…], la parole est un laminoir qui allonge toujours les sentiments.

Madame Bovary (1857), Gustave Flaubert, éd. Éditions Garnier Frères, coll. « Classiques Garnier », 1955, partie 3, chap. I, p. 218 (texte intégral sur Wikisource).

Le plus médiocre libertin a rêvé des sultanes, chaque notaire porte en soi les débris d’un poète.

Madame Bovary (1857), Gustave Flaubert, éd. Eugène Fasquelle, 1905, p. 264

Cette lâche docilité qui est pour bien des femmes comme le châtiment tout à la fois la rançon de l’adultère

Madame Bovary (1857), Gustave Flaubert, éd. Eugène Fasquelle, 1905, p. 314

Il y a toujours après la mort de quelqu’un comme une stupéfaction qui se dégage, tant il est difficile de comprendre cette survenue du néant et de se résigner à y croire.

Madame Bovary (1857), Gustave Flaubert, éd. Eugène Fasquelle, 1905, p. 379

Il ne faut pas toucher aux idoles, la dorure en reste aux mains.

Madame Bovary (1857), Gustave Flaubert, éd. Éditions Garnier Frères, coll. « Classiques Garnier », 1955, partie 3, chap. VI, p. 263

Edvard Munch
A photograph of Munch.

Today is the birthday of Edvard Munch (Ådalsbruk, Løten; 12 December 1863 – 23 January 1944 Oslo); painter and printmaker whose intensely evocative treatment of psychological themes built upon some of the main tenets of late 19th-century Symbolism and greatly influenced German Expressionism in the early 20th century. One of his most well-known works is The Scream of 1893.

Munch spent most of his last two decades in solitude at his nearly self-sufficient estate in Ekely, at Skøyen, Oslo. Many of his late paintings celebrate farm life, including several in which he used his work horse “Rousseau” as a model. Without any effort, Munch attracted a steady stream of female models, whom he painted as the subjects of numerous nude paintings. He likely had sexual relations with some of them.

To the end of his life, Munch continued to paint unsparing self-portraits, adding to his self-searching cycle of his life and his unflinching series of takes on his emotional and physical states. In the 1930s and 1940s, the Nazis labeled Munch’s work “degenerate art” (along with that of Picasso, Paul Klee, Matisse, Gauguin and many other modern artists) and removed his 82 works from German museums.

Munch died in his house at Ekely near Oslo on 23 January 1944, about a month after his 80th birthday. His Nazi-orchestrated funeral suggested to Norwegians that he was a Nazi sympathizer, a kind of appropriation of the independent artist.

From my rotting body,
flowers shall grow
and I am in them
and that is eternity.

Gallery

Self Portrait with Skeleton Arm, 1895

Munch in 1902

The Scream (1893)

The Sick Child (1907)

Harald Nørregaard (painted by Munch in 1899, National Gallery) was one of Munch’s closest friends since adolescence, adviser and lawyer

Munch in 1912

Munch in 1933

The Scream. 1893. Oil, tempera, and pastel on cardboard. Nasjonalgalleriet, Oslo
The Dance of Life. 1899–1900. Oil on canvas, 49½ × 75 in. Nasjonalgalleriet, Oslo
Ashes. 1894. Oil on canvas. 120.5 × 141 cm. Nasjonalgalleriet, Oslo
Madonna. 1894. Oil on canvas. 90 × 68 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo

The Seine at Saint-Cloud. 1890. 46 × 38 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo
At the Roulette Table in Monte Carlo. 1892. 74,5 × 116 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo
August Strindberg. 1892. Oil on canvas, 120 × 90 cm. Museum of Modern Art, Stockholm, Sweden
Death in the Sickroom. 1893. 134 × 160 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo
Starry Night. 1893. 135.6 × 140 cm. J. Paul Getty Museum.
Vampire. 1895. 91 × 109 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo
Anxiety. 1894. 94 × 74 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo
Death in the Sickroom. c. 1895. Oil on canvas. 59 × 66 in. Nasjonalgalleriet, Oslo
Lady From the Sea (detail). 1896. Oil on canvas. 39½ × 126 in.
Evening. Melancholy I. 1896. 41.1 × 55.7 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo
Separation. 1896. 96 × 127 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo
The Voice / Summer Night. 1896. 90 × 119 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo
The Kiss. 1897. 99 × 81 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo
Inheritance. 1897–99. 141 × 120 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo
Metabolism. 1898–99. 172 × 142 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo
Red and White. 1899–1900. 93 × 129 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo
Train Smoke. 1900. 84 × 109 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo
Consul Christen Sandberg. 1901. 215 × 147 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo
Kiss IV. 1902. 47 × 47 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo
Four Girls in Åsgårdstrand. 1903. 87 × 111 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo
The Brooch. Eva Mudocci. 1903. 76 × 53.2 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo
Shore with Red House. 1904. 69 × 109 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo
Portrait of Friedrich Nietzsche (1906). Thielska Galleriet, Stockholm
Death of Marat I (1907)
Jealousy. 1907. 75 × 98 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo
The Sun. 1910–11. 450 × 772 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo
Galloping Horse. 1910–12. 148 × 120 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo
The Yellow Log. 1912. 129.5 × 159.5 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo
On the Sofa. 1913. 80 × 150 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo
Weeping Nude. 1913–14. 110 × 135 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo
Golgotha.1900.
Workers on their Way Home. 1913–14. 227 × 201 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo

Puberty. 1894-95.
The Hands. 1893.
Seated Nude. 1902.
Weeping woman’. 1907-1909.
Morning Yawn. 1913.
Naked model by the wicker chair. 1919.

Self-Portrait. 1882. 26 × 19 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo
Self-Portrait. 1895. 458 × 314 mm. Munch Museum, Oslo
Self-Portrait in Hell. 1903. 82 × 66 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo
Self-Portrait with Brushes. 1904. 197 × 91 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo
Self-Portrait with a Bottle of Wine. 1906. 110 × 120 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo

Self-Portrait at 53 Am Strom in Warnemünde. 1907. 89 × 89 mm. Munch Museum, Oslo
Edvard Munch at the Beach in Warnemünde. 1907. 83 × 87 mm. Munch Museum, Oslo
Self-Portrait “à la Marat”. 1908–09. 81 × 85 mm. Munch Museum, Oslo
Self-Portrait Somewhere on the Continent I. 1906. 90 × 90 mm. Munch Museum, Oslo
Self-Portrait Somewhere on the Continent II. 1906. 82 × 87 mm. Munch Museum, Oslo
Portrait at 26 years
Portrait of Munch 1902
Portrait of Munch
Portrait of Munch 1929
Rosa Meissner at the Hotel Rohn in Warnemünde. 1907. Photograph. 87 × 73 mm. Munch Museum, Oslo