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Dear Zazie,  Here is today’s Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag.  What are you tryin’ to get down to?  What is the heart of the matter for you?  Rhett

The Lovers’ Chronicle

Dear Muse,

first used in a pre-2016
long dramatic poem
“Not, once bitten”
ha, no but i could go there
“Maybe next time”
right, but it is not true
“You didn’t know”
nope, never did
wrote about it often,
never had a clue
so a better title would be;
never known till you

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indeed and then
it was torn away

remind me again,
why you allowed yourself
to get close enough, and why,
here is the part that kills me,
did you believe it could happen

still do not know what the hell

that should have stamped
on your forehead and drilled
into your soul: not to be

© copyright 2020.2023 mac tag/cowboycoleridge all rights reserved

in this vision,
once known upon,
the sight and touch,
keeps as is
the dawnin’

how memories
pursue, cling

temptin’, as if designed
for so she was and since
only wishes remain

a callin’,
to do this
to become
to seek

to see how far

come will you join
and we will have again

© copyright 2019 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

Pale Love, Pale Rider

twilight on the high plains
watchin’ the changin’ tableau

weave together
dreams, reality

the wispy char, the shadows
rise, the edges of the vision

from somewhere,
a sound spreads,
the words form
a whisper catches
a ride on the wind

listen, tryin’ to understand
what could it be about
somethin’ once known
then forgotten, left behind

search in vain, nothin’ in sight
search all points in between
and say… no answers await

in this place,
dear solitudes
the presence,
or the lack thereof,
awaits, insists
the answer is here

there is no beginnin’ or end
only an indifferent view from here
in a dark sky, what is the difference
expectin’ nothin’ of the days

followin’ the Revelator,
eyes could see
but of what illuminated,
had not the strength to believe

yet perhaps, beyond this fear,
is a place where we can be

if only temporary, for awhile
would appear what i have dreamed

there, envision the source
there, find redemption,
and this truth
that has no name

what can i,
focus on the dream of you
wave on wave of wishes,
why still i
with the will,
can the way be found

weary, the sun rises on the prairie
the mornin’ wind rises
dreams, carry away

and the whispered words,
full of meanin’

that which was once known,
like a half remembered dream
the heart of the matter
if only the will can be summoned

© copyright 2018 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

My will gets weak and my thoughts seem to scatter.  Then everything changes and my friends seem to scatter and my flesh will get weak and the ashes will scatter, but I am tryin’ to get down to……

The Heart of the Matter

Often on the mountain, I sit
At sunset, randomly walkin’
My gaze over the plain below,

The changin’ tableau at my feet

Over there the flowin’ river
Windin’ its way into the distance
Where we wove ourselves together
Where dreams wound round reality

At the top of this mountain, crowned
With twilight, stars throw a last light,

And the wispy char of the Queen of shadows
Rises, and the edges of the vision are visible

Dartin’ from the dark depths,
A delicate sound spreads in the air,
The Traveler stops, and the words form
A whisper catches a ride on the wind

Listen, tryin’ to understand
What could it be all about
Somethin’ that was once known
Then forgotten and left behind

Hill in hill in vain within sight,
West from dawn to sunset,
Search all points of the immense
And say… nowhere do answers await

In this valley, this place, this ranch,
River, grass, dear solitudes
The presence, or the lack thereof,
Awaits, insists the answer is here

But there is no beginnin’ or end
Only an indifferent view from here
In a dark sky, what is the difference
Expectin’ nothin’ of the days

When I followed the Revelator,
My eyes could see across the void
But of what was illuminated,
I had not the strength to believe

Yet perhaps, beyond this terminal fear,
In a place where other skies shine,
If only temporary, for awhile
Would appear what I have dreamed

There, I envision the source of aspiration
There, I find myself and redemption,
And this ideal truth that every soul desires
That has no name in the land of exile

What can I, focused on the dream of you
Wave on wave of wishes, wash me up,
In the land of exile why still I
With the will, can the way be found

Weary now, the sun sets on the prairie
The night wind rises in the valley
My dreams, similar to the fallin’ snow
Carried away by the stormy north wind

And the whispered words as well,
Carried away but not before
Finally, their meaning, clear now
As I stare over the craggy cliff

That which was once known long ago,
Like a half remembered dream
The heart of the matter: Forgiveness…
If only the will can be summoned

© Copyright 2013 Mac Tag/Cowboy Coleridge All rights reserved.

The Song of the Day is “The Heart of the Matter” by Don Henley.  We do not own the rights to this song.  All rights reserved by the rightful owner.  No copyright infringement intended.

 

Today is the birthday of Charles Cotton (Alstonefield, Staffordshire, England; 28 April 1630 – 16 February 1687); poet and writer, best known for translating the work of Michel de Montaigne from the French.

In 1656 he married his cousin Isabella Hutchinson. She died in 1670. At the request of his wife’s sister, Miss Stanhope Hutchinson, he undertook the translation of Pierre Corneille’s Horace in 1671. In 1675, he married the dowager Countess of Ardglass; she had a jointure of £1500 a year, but he did not have the power to spend it.

Here is an interesting epitaph that Cotton wrote for “M.H.”, a prostitute (spacing, spelling and capitalisation as originally printed):

Epitaph upon M.H

In  this cold Monument  lies one,
That I know who has lain upon,
The happier He : her Sight would charm,
And Touch have kept King David warm.
Lovely, as is the dawning East ,
Was this Marble’s frozen Guest ;
As soft, and Snowy, as that Down
Adorns the Blow-balls  frizled Crown;
As straight and slender as the Crest,
Or Antlet  of the one beam’d Beast;
Pleasant as th’ odorous Month  of May :
As glorious, and as light as Day .

Whom I admir’d, as soon as knew,
And now her Memory pursue
With such a superstitious Lust,
That I could fumble with her Dust.

She all Perfections had, and more,
Tempting, as if design’d a Whore ,
For so she was; and since there are
Such, I could wish them all as fair.

Pretty she was, and young, and wise,
And in her Calling so precise,
That Industry had made her prove
The sucking School-Mistress  of Love :
And Death , ambitious to become
Her Pupil , left his Ghastly home,
And, seeing how we us’d her here,
The raw-bon’d Rascal  ravisht her.

Who, pretty Soul, resign’d her Breath,
To seek new Letchery in Death.

 

Today is the birthday of José Vital Branco Malhoa, known simply as José Malhoa (Caldas da Rainha, Portugal; 28 April 1855 – Figueiró dos Vinhos, Portugal; 26 October 1933); painter.

Malhoa was, with Columbano Bordalo Pinheiro, the leading name in Portuguese naturalist painting, in the second half of the 19th century. He painted often popular scenes and subjects, like his two most famous paintings, The Drunks (1907) and Fado (1910). He always remained faithful to the naturalist style, but in some of his works, there are impressionist influences, like in his Autumn (1918), that can be considered as an “impressionist exercise”.

He saw at the end of his life, the inauguration of the José Malhoa Museum, in Caldas da Rainha.

Malhoa’s House, also known as the Dr. Anastácio-Gonçalves House-Museum, in Lisbon, was originally built in 1905 as a residence and studio for the artist. It was bought by Dr. Anastácio-Gonçalves, an art collector, a year before the painter’s death, and it became a museum in 1980, showcasing several items from his collection, namely works from Portuguese painters of the 19th and 20th century.

Gallery

Senhora entre os Vidros,

“Ilhas dos Amores” (1908)
Museu Militar de Lisboa

Camponesa 1903

O Fado, 1910.

Portrait of Laura Sauvinet (a pupil of the artist), Museum José Malhos, Caldas da Rainha, Portugal

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Today is the birthday of Harper Lee (Nelle Harper Lee, Monroeville, Alabama, April 28, 1926 – February 19, 2016 Monroeville); novelist widely known for To Kill a Mockingbird, published in 1960.  It won the 1961 Pulitzer Prize and has become a classic of modern American literature.

“I’d rather you shot at tin cans in the back yard, but I know you’ll go after birds. Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit ‘em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.” That was the only time I ever heard Atticus say it was a sin to do something, and I asked Miss Maudie about it.
“Your father’s right,” she said. “Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”

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Dear Zazie,  Here is today’s Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag.  Have you been into the silence?  Rhett

The Lovers’ Chronicle

Dear Muse,

another from the drama files
“Well if you had to go”
oh i did, the strongest
want and need ever known
“So you could understand”
not sure i knew that initially
but it was the only way for me
to make sense of it all
“We all have stuff to process”
right, thus into the silence
though now i prefer to go
into your arms

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© copyright 2022.2023 mac tag/cowboycoleridge all rights reserved

© copyright 2021 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

© copyright 2020 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

Pale Love, Pale Rider

all over now
return to the house
to the bedroom
her dress,
hangin’ by the bed

in the silence,
with what was left
lost

how could it be
that nothin’
ever came of carin’

must have made a mistake,
maybe a misunderstandin’

tried hard
to discover what
denoted ‘joy and passion’
words that looked
so fine in books

it was as if everything
must need minister
to personal longin’s,
as if thrust aside
as of no account
whatever did not
instantly contribute
to stir emotions

sentimental temperament
seekin’

what was it
that would not allow

blinded by lust
no thoughts beyond
but then,
once indispensable
afraid of losin’
yet could not tell

in cold dark moments
when feelin’s grip
clasp all the tighter;
in the darkenin’ gloom

a sigh more profound,
a touch more intense,
and in the stillness
a word would float
upon their breath
tremblin’, into silence

© copyright 2019 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

© copyright 2018.2023 mac tag/cowboycoleridge all rights reserved

Another one for the Dark Muse.  Inspired by a passage from Gustave Flaubert‘s Madame Bovary (1857).  Hope you like……

Into The Silence

Today is the birthday of Theodor Kittelsen (Theodor Severin Kittelsen, Kragerø 27 April 1857 – 21 January 1914); artist. He is one of the most popular artists in Norway. Kittelsen became famous for his nature paintings, as well as for his illustrations of fairy tales and legends.

Kittelsen’s style had elements of Neo-Romantic and naïve painting. As a national artist he is highly respected and well known in Norway, but doesn’t receive much international attention, which is the reason that his name is often not included in registers of internationally recognized painters and artists.

Black metal and folk metal bands such as Burzum, Empyrium, Otyg and Satyricon have used some of his pictures as album art, notably illustrations taken from Kittelsen’s book Svartedauen (The Black Death). Musician Phil Elverum named the tenth song on his 2017 album A Crow Looked at Me after Kittelesen’s painting “Soria Moria” specifically, using it as an illustration of his grief. Kittelsen’s 160th birthday was celebrated in a Google doodle on 27 April 2017, giving him some exposure outside of Norway.

Gallery

The Princess picking Lice from the Troll (1900)

 

Soria Moria from Norske Folkeeventyr

 Ship in Storm by a Lighthouse (1892), black and white sketch

• 

  Nøkken, 1887–92 (The Water Spirit)

• 

  Ekko (Echo), 1888

• 

  Huldra forsvant (The Fairy That Disappeared)

• 

  Hakkespett, 1912 (Woodpecker)

• 

  Kornstaur i måneskinn, c. 1900 (Stooks of Grain in Moonlight)

• 

  Trollet som grunner på hvor gammelt det er, 1911 (Troll wonders how old he is)

• 

  Det rusler og tusler rasler og tasler, 1900 (Creepy, Crawly, Rustling, Bustling)

• 

  Skogtroll, 1906 (Forest Troll)

• 

  En uheldig bjørnejakt (An Unfortunate Bear Hunt)

• 

  Kvitebjorn – Kong Valemon, 1912 (The Polar Bear King)

• 

  Op under Fjeldet toner en Lur, 1900 (Up in the Hills a Clarion Call rings out)

• 

  Nøkken som hvit hest, 1909 (The Nix as a white horse)

• 

  Juletroll .1907 (Christmas Troll)

• 

  12 villender .1897 (The 12 wild ducks)

• 

  Streik, 1879 (Strike action)

• 

  Gutt på hvit hest (Boy on white horse)

• 

  selvportrett, 1891 (Self Portrait)

Illustrations for Svartedauen (Black death)

• 

  Fattigmannen, 1894–95 (The Pauper)

• 

  Pesta i trappen, 1896 (Plague on the Stairs)

• 

  Pesta Kommer, 1894–95 (Plague’s Coming)

• 

  Musstad, 1896

And today is the birthday of Cecil Day-Lewis (or Day Lewis) (Ballintubbert, County Laois, Ireland; 27 April 1904 – 22 May 1972 Hadley, Greater London); poet and the Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom from 1968 until his death in 1972.  He also wrote mystery stories under the pseudonym of Nicholas Blake.  Father of actor Daniel Day-Lewis and documentary filmmaker and television chef Tamasin Day-Lewis.

Tempt me no more, for I
Have known the lightning‘s hour,
The poet‘s inward pride,
The certainty of power.

Is it far to go? (1963)

“Is it far to go?” in Modern English poetry (1963) edited by N. Das Gupta, Vol. 2, p. 92

• Shall I be gone long?
  For ever and a day
  To whom there belong?
  Ask the stone to say
  Ask my song.

• Who will say farewell?
  The beating bell.
  Will anyone miss me?
  That I dare not tell —
  Quick, Rose, and kiss me.

Requiem for the Living (1964)

• I have had worse partings, but none that so
  Gnaws at my mind still. Perhaps it is roughly
  Saying what God alone could perfectly show —
  How selfhood begins with a walking away,
  And Jove is proved in the letting go.
  • “Walking Away” (1962), p. 33

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Dear Zazie Lee,

Here is today’s Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag.

Rhett

The Lovers’ Chronicle

Dear Muse,

before, when knowin’
what was wanted
was thought
to be certain

a life spent knowin’
exactly what they wanted
without realizin’ that want
is about givin’
and not takin’

then you
then want became you

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Pale Love, Pale Rider

© copyright 2020 mac tag/cowboycoleridge all rights reserved

but since you

no longer wantin’
nor wanted

and all that is left
plays out in dreams
all that is left of you,
is in the wantin’

and the waitin’
till want goes away

© 2019 copyright mac tag/cowboycoleridge all rights reserved

George Romney ‘Lady Hamilton as a Bacchante’ 1785

Today is the birthday of Emma Hamilton, Lady Hamilton (born Amy Lyon; Neston, Cheshire, England 26 April 1765 – 15 January 1815 Calais, France); maid, model, dancer and actress. She began her career in London’s demi-monde, becoming the mistress of a series of wealthy men, culminating in the naval hero Lord Nelson, and was the favourite model of the portrait artist George Romney.

In 1791, at the age of 26, she married Sir William Hamilton, British ambassador to the Kingdom of Naples, where she was a success at court, befriending the queen, the sister of Marie Antoinette, and meeting Nelson.

At 15, Emma met Sir Harry Fetherstonhaugh, who hired her for several months as hostess and entertainer at a lengthy stag party at Fetherstonhaugh’s Uppark country estate in the South Downs. She is said to have danced nude on his dining room table.  Fetherstonhaugh took Emma there as a mistress, but frequently ignored her in favour of drinking and hunting with his friends. Emma soon befriended the dull but sincere Honourable Charles Francis Greville (1749–1809). It was about this time (late June-early July 1781) that she conceived a child by Fetherstonhaugh.  Greville took her in as his mistress, on condition that the child was fostered out.

Seeing an opportunity to make some money by taking a cut of sales, Greville sent her to sit for his friend, the painter George Romney, who was looking for a new model and muse.  It was then that Emma became the subject of many of Romney’s most famous portraits, and soon became London’s biggest celebrity.  So began Romney’s lifelong obsession with her, sketching her nude and clothed in many poses that he later used to create paintings in her absence. Through the popularity of Romney’s work and particularly of his striking-looking young model, Emma became well known in society circles, under the name of “Emma Hart”. She was witty, intelligent, a quick learner, elegant and, as paintings of her attest, extremely beautiful. Romney was fascinated by her looks and ability to adapt to the ideals of the age. Romney and other artists painted her in many guises, foreshadowing her later “attitudes”.

In 1783, Greville needed to find a rich wife to replenish his finances, and found a fit in the form of eighteen-year-old heiress Henrietta Middleton. Emma would be a problem, as he disliked being known as her lover (this having become apparent to all through her fame in Romney’s artworks), and his prospective wife would not accept him as a suitor if he lived openly with Emma Hart. To be rid of Emma, Greville persuaded his uncle, younger brother of his mother, Sir William Hamilton, British Envoy to Naples, to take her off his hands.

Greville’s marriage would prove useful to Sir William, as it relieved him of having Greville as a poor relation. To promote his plan, Greville suggested to Sir William that Emma would make a very pleasing mistress, assuring him that, once married to Henrietta Middleton, he would come and fetch Emma back. Sir William, then 55 and newly widowed, had arrived back in London for the first time in over five years.  Emma’s famous beauty was by then well known to Sir William, so much so that he even agreed to pay the expenses for her journey to ensure her speedy arrival. He had long been happily married until the death of his wife in 1782, and he liked female companionship. His home in Naples was well known all over the world for hospitality and refinement. He needed a hostess for his salon, and from what he knew about Emma, he thought she would be the perfect choice.

Greville did not inform Emma of his plan, but instead in 1785 suggested the trip as a prolonged holiday in Naples while he (Greville) was away in Scotland on business, not long after Emma’s mother had suffered a stroke.  Emma was thus sent to Naples, supposedly for six to eight months, little realising that she was going as the mistress of her host. Emma set off for Naples with her mother and Gavin Hamilton on 13 March 1786 overland in an old coach, and arrived in Naples on her 21st birthday on 26 April.

After about six months of living in apartments in the Palazzo Sessa with her mother (separately from Sir William) and begging Greville to come and fetch her, Emma came to understand that he had cast her off. She was furious when she realised what Greville had planned for her, but eventually started to enjoy life in Naples and responded to Sir William’s intense courtship just before Christmas in 1786. They fell in love, Sir William forgot about his plan to take her on as a temporary mistress, and Emma moved into his apartments, leaving her mother downstairs in the ground floor rooms.

They were married on 6 September 1791 at St Marylebone Parish Church, then a plain small building, having returned to England for the purpose and Sir William having gained the King’s consent.  She was twenty-six and he was sixty.  Although she was obliged to use her legal name of Amy Lyon on the marriage register, the wedding gave her the title Lady Hamilton which she would use for the rest of her life. Hamilton’s public career was now at its height and during their visit he was inducted into the Privy Council. Shortly after the ceremony, Romney painted his last portrait of Emma from life, The Ambassadress, after which he plunged into a deep depression and drew a series of frenzied sketches of Emma.  The newly married couple returned to Naples after two days.

Sharing Sir William Hamilton’s enthusiasm for classical antiquities and art, she developed what she called her “Attitudes”—tableaux vivants in which she portrayed sculptures and paintings before British visitors.  Emma developed the attitudes, also known as mimoplastic art, by using Romney’s idea of combining classical poses with modern allure as the basis for her act.

With the aid of her shawls, Emma posed as various classical figures from Medea to Queen Cleopatra, and her performances charmed aristocrats, artists such as Élisabeth-Louise Vigée-Le Brun, writers—including the great Johann Wolfgang von Goethe—and kings and queens alike, setting off new dance trends across Europe and starting a fashion for a draped Grecian style of dress.

As wife of the British Envoy, Emma welcomed Nelson (who had been married to Fanny Nisbet for about six years at that point) after his arrival in Naples on 10 September 1793, when he came to gather reinforcements against the French.  When he set sail for Sardinia on 15 September after only five days in Naples, it was clear that he was smitten with Emma.

Nelson returned to Naples five years later, on 22 September 1798 a living legend, after his victory at the Battle of the Nile in Aboukir, with his step-son Josiah Nisbet, then 18 years old. By this time, Nelson’s adventures had prematurely aged him; he had lost an arm and most of his teeth, and was afflicted by coughing spells.  Emma and Sir William escorted Nelson to their home, the Palazzo Sessa.

Emma nursed Nelson and arranged a party with 1,800 guests to celebrate his 40th birthday on 29 September. After the party, Emma became Nelson’s secretary, translator and political facilitator. They soon fell in love and began an affair. Hamilton showed admiration and respect for Nelson, and vice versa; the affair was tolerated. By November, gossip from Naples about their affair reached the English newspapers. Emma Hamilton and Horatio Nelson were famous.

Eugène Delacroix est un peintre français né le 26 avril 1798 à Charenton-Saint-Maurice et mort le 13 août 1863 à Paris

Gallery

Femme caressant un perroquet

Les Femmes d’Alger dans leur appartement

La Mort de Sardanapale (1827-1828, musée du Louvre)

Chevaux sortant de la mer 1860 The Phillips Collection

Jeune orpheline au cimetière 1824 Louvre

Edmund Tarbell

Gallery

Woman with a blue veil

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Dear Zazie,  Here is today’s Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag.  Are you unforgiven too?  Rhett

The Lovers’ Chronicle

Dear Muse,

there can only be
one song for today,
actually three
versions I, II, and III
“Metallica baby”
absolutely
i like that i can swing
from “Nessun Dorma”
to “Enter Sandman” with ease
“You seem to be drawn to extremes”
i believe so, not sure how or why
“Speaking of drawn…”
oh yes, come here bébé

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© copyright 2021 Mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

Pale Love, Pale Rider

is anybody there,

© copyright 2020 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

a word without rhyme
except for near ones
which do not count
came to learn
how not to believe in it

real and imagined
witnessed
none the wiser
for dyin’, for leavin’
for what was done
and what was not done
for not bein’
what was wanted
true to upbringin’,
learn to include amongst

searchin’,
carryin’ all that
into torrid affairs
spectacularly flawed,
endin’ not well every time
packin’ and leavin’
turnin’ the page
sowin’ and reapin’
cultivatin’ and endin’
up alone

for that is the price paid
to live the life chosen

come to know
that which some
had not the capacity,
nor the will,
nor way to know…
it begins with self
but cannot allow that
thus continue to be

are you too

© copyright 2019 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

Another for the Dark Muse.  This is a true story.  He is.  Are you……

Unforgiven

© Copyright 2013 Mac Tag/Cowboy Coleridge All rights reserved

The Songs of the Day are “The Unforgiven I, II and III” by Metallica.  We do not own the rights to these songs.  All rights reserved by the rightful owner.  No copyright infringement intended.

Today is the birthday of Walter John de la Mare (Charlton 25 April 1873 – 22 June 1956 Twickenham); poet, short story writer and novelist.  Perhaps best remembered for his works for children, for his poem “The Listeners”, and for subtle psychological horror stories, amongst them “Seaton’s Aunt” and “Out of the Deep”.

The Listeners (1912)

• “Is anybody there?” said the Traveler,
  Knocking on the moonlit door;
  And his horse in the silence champed the grasses
  Of the forest’s ferny floor.

• “Tell them I came, and no one answered,
  That I kept my word,” he said.

• Never the least stir made the listeners,
  Though every word he spake
  Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house
  From the one man left awake:
  Aye, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,
  And the sound of iron on stone,
  And how the silence surged softly backward,
  When the plunging hoofs were gone.

• Here lies a most beautiful lady,
  Light of step and heart was she;
  I think she was the most beautiful lady
  That ever was in the West Country.
  • An Epitaph.
• But beauty vanishes; beauty passes;
  However rare—rare it be;
  And when I crumble, who will remember
  This lady of the West Country?
  • An Epitaph.

• Look thy last on all things lovely,
  Every hour—let no night
  Seal thy sense in deathly slumber
  Till to delight
  Thou hast paid thy utmost blessing.
  • Fare Well, st. 3 (1918).

• ‘Who knocks?’ ‘I, who was beautiful,
  Beyond all dreams to restore,
  I from the roots of the dark thorn am hither,
  And knock on the door.’
  • The Ghost.

• A face peered. All the grey night
  In chaos of vacancy shone;
  Nought but vast sorrow was there—
  The sweet cheat gone.
  • The Ghost.

Today is the birthday of Karel Appel (Christiaan Karel Appel; 25 April 1921 – 3 May 2006); painter, sculptor, and poet. He started painting at the age of fourteen and studied at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam in the 1940s. He was one of the founders of the avant-garde movement CoBrA in 1948. He was also an avid sculptor and has had works featured in MoMA and other museums worldwide.

Gallery

Sitting girl

The cover of the score printed by Ricordi

Today is the premier date in 1926 of Turandot, an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini, posthumously completed by Franco Alfano in 1926, and set to a libretto in Italian by Giuseppe Adami and Renato Simoni. Its best-known aria is “Nessun dorma”.

Though Puccini first became interested in the subject matter when reading Friedrich Schiller’s 1801 adaptation, he based his work more closely on the earlier play Turandot (1762) by Count Carlo Gozzi. The original story is one of the seven stories in the epic Haft Peykar; a work by twelfth-century Persian poet Nizami (c. 1141–1209). Nizami aligned his seven stories with the seven days of the week, the seven colors, and the seven planets known in his era. This particular narrative is the story of Tuesday, as told to the king of Iran, Bahram V (r. 420–438), by his companion of the red dome, associated with Mars. In the first line of the story, the protagonist is identified as a Russian princess. The name of the opera is based on Turan-Dokht (daughter of Turan), which is a name frequently used in Persian poetry for Central Asian princesses.

The opera’s version of the story is set in China. It involves Prince Calaf, who falls in love with the cold Princess Turandot. In order to obtain permission to marry her, a suitor must solve three riddles. Any single wrong answer will result in the suitor’s execution. Calaf passes the test, but Turandot refuses to marry him. He offers her a way out: if she is able to guess his name before dawn the next day, he will accept death. In the original story by Nizami, the princess sets four conditions: firstly “a good name and good deeds”, and then the three challenges. As with Madama Butterfly, Puccini strove for a semblance of authenticity (at least to Western ears) by integrating music from the region. Up to eight of the musical themes in Turandot appear to be based on traditional Chinese music and anthems, and the melody of a Chinese song “Mò Li Hūa (茉莉花)”, or “Jasmine”, became a motif for the princess.

Puccini left the opera unfinished at the time of his death in 1924; Franco Alfano completed it in 1926. The first performance took place at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan on 25 April 1926, conducted by Arturo Toscanini. The performance included only Puccini’s music without Alfano’s additions. The first performance of the opera as completed by Alfano was performed on the next evening, 26 April, although it is disputed whether the second performance was conducted by Toscanini or by Ettore Panizza.

“Nessun dorma” (let no one sleep), has long been a staple of operatic recitals. Luciano Pavarotti popularized the piece beyond the opera world in the 1990s following his performance of it for the 1990 World Cup, which captivated a global audience. Both Pavarotti and Plácido Domingo released singles of the aria, with Pavarotti’s reaching number 2 in the UK. The Three Tenors performed the aria at three subsequent World Cup Finals, in 1994 in Los Angeles, 1998 in Paris, and 2002 in Yokohama. Many crossover and pop artists have performed and recorded it. In what the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences called “the greatest last-second substitution act in Grammy history”, Aretha Franklin sang a “soul-infused” version of the aria in place of Pavarotti when throat problems caused him to withdraw from the 1998 40th Annual Grammy Awards show.

The aria has been used in the soundtracks of numerous films often appearing at a central moment in the film—sometimes with the aria’s moment of musical resolution aligned with the film’s narrative climax, giving symbolic meaning to the aria’s rich emotional impact. Films in which the aria plays a significant role in the soundtrack include The Killing Fields, New York Stories, The Sea Inside, The Sum of All Fears, The Mirror Has Two Faces, Bend It Like Beckham, No Reservations, Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation (with the scene set within a performance of Turandot itself), and The Upside. It was sung by Pavarotti himself as part of his fictional role in the film Yes, Giorgio. When all of Italy was under lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a video of opera singer Maurizio Marchini performing “Nessun dorma” from his balcony in Florence went viral.

As the final act opens, it is now night. Calaf is alone in the moonlit palace gardens. In the distance, he hears Turandot’s heralds proclaiming her command. His aria begins with an echo of their cry and a reflection on Princess Turandot:

Nessun dorma! Nessun dorma! Tu pure, o Principessa, nella tua fredda stanza, guardi le stelle che tremano d’amore, e di speranza!	None shall sleep! None shall sleep! Not even you, oh Princess, in your cold bedroom, watching the stars that tremble with love, and with hope!
Ma il mio mistero è chiuso in me; il nome mio nessun saprà! No, No! Sulla tua bocca, lo dirò quando la luce splenderà!	But my secret is hidden within me; no one will know my name! No, no! On your mouth, I will say it when the light shines!
Ed il mio bacio scioglierà il silenzio che ti fa mia!	And my kiss will dissolve the silence that makes you mine!

Just before the climactic end of the aria, a chorus of women is heard singing in the distance:

Il nome suo nessun saprà, E noi dovrem, ahimè, morir, morir!

No one will know his name, and we will have to, alas, die, die!

Calaf, now certain of victory, sings:

Dilegua, o notte! Tramontate, stelle! Tramontate, stelle! All’alba, vincerò! Vincerò! Vincerò!

Vanish, o night! Fade, you stars! Fade, you stars! At dawn, I will win! I will win! I will win!

And today is the birthday of Cy Twombly (Edwin Parker Twombly Jr.; April 25, 1928 – July 5, 2011); painter, sculptor and photographer. He belonged to the generation of Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns.

His best-known works are typically large-scale, freely-scribbled, calligraphic and graffiti-like works on solid fields of mostly gray, tan, or off-white colors. His later paintings and works on paper shifted toward “romantic symbolism”, and their titles can be interpreted visually through shapes and forms and words. Twombly often quoted poets such as Stéphane Mallarmé, Rainer Maria Rilke and John Keats, as well as classical myths and allegories, in his works. Examples of this are his Apollo and The Artist and a series of eight drawings consisting solely of inscriptions of the word “VIRGIL”.

Twombly’s works are in the permanent collections of modern art museums globally, including the Menil Collection in Houston, the Tate Modern in London, New York’s Museum of Modern Art and Munich’s Museum Brandhorst. He was commissioned for a ceiling at the Musée du Louvre in Paris.

Gallery

Sunset

Light and dark

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Dear Zazie,

Here is the Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag.

Rhett

The Lovers’ Chronicle

Dear Muse,

no idea
where this theme came from
though, again,
they all could be about this
“Yes I see a common thread”
kinda surprised i did not go
with one of my favorite
RPW poems
i call myself a poet but
i have said storyteller
may be more accurate
“I like your tales, especially
the ones with us”
since you are here in my arms
let me tell you another story
with me and you and how
we came to feel again

© copyright 2023 mac tag/cowboycoleridge all rights reserved

recallin’ what i started to tell you,
how night-long i have written
heard from visions in their sleep
stories remember and go about
in slow, steady strokes tellin’ us
there is somethin’ here to hold
so lean into our belief, headlong
that we can touch and it comes

© copyright 2021.2023 mac tag/cowboycoleridge all rights reserved

© copyright 2020 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

“Tell me a story,
of moments and mania.
Make it of need,
long delayed.
We will know the name
of the story, without ever
having to say it.
Tell me a story
of mutual ardor.”

then let us turn,
our fable will be
of two who know
and on each other,
gaze in belief

© copyright 2019 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

clingin’
to memories
commutin’
between dream
and reality,
not yet arrived
fortune give way
always more to say
but little damn time
we all come to learn
somethin’, i that i
ignored the warnin’s
and it cost dearly,
put one across on me
lost and alone
Soy yo. Me sientes?

© copyright 2018 bret mosley & mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

not really a drinkin’ thing
more like a thinkin’ thing
cain’t stop thinkin’ about you

© copyright 2017 mac tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved

Today is the birthday of Denys George Finch Hatton (24 April 1887 – 14 May 1931 Voi, Kenya); aristocratic big-game hunter and the lover of Baroness Karen Blixen (also known by her pen name, Isak Dinesen), a Danish noblewoman who wrote about him in her autobiographical book Out of Africa, first published in 1937.  One of my favorite books.  In the book, his name is hyphenated: “Finch-Hatton”.  The book was made into a movie of the same name in 1985, directed by Sydney Pollack and starring Meryl Streep as Blixen and Robert Redford as Finch Hatton.  One of my all time favorite movies.

Willem de Kooning
De Kooning in his studio in 1961

Today is the birthday of Willem de Kooning (Roatterdam April 24, 1904 – March 19, 1997 East Hampton, New York); abstract expressionist artist. He moved to the United States in 1926, and became an American citizen in 1962. On December 9, 1943, he married painter Elaine Fried.

In the years after World War II, de Kooning painted in a style that came to be referred to as Abstract expressionism or “action painting”, and was part of a group of artists that came to be known as the New York School. Other painters in this group included Jackson Pollock, Elaine de Kooning, Lee Krasner, Franz Kline, Arshile Gorky, Mark Rothko, Hans Hofmann, Adolph Gottlieb, Anne Ryan, Robert Motherwell, Philip Guston, Clyfford Still, and Richard Pousette-Dart.

de Kooning (1968)

De Kooning met his wife, Elaine Fried, at the American Artists School in New York. She was 14 years his junior. Thus was to begin a lifelong partnership affected by alcoholism, lack of money, love affairs, quarrels and separations. They were married on December 9, 1943.

It was revealed toward the end of his life that de Kooning had begun to lose his memory in the late 1980s and had been suffering from Alzheimer’s disease for some time. This revelation has initiated considerable debate among scholars and critics about how responsible de Kooning was for the creation of his late work.

Succumbing to the progress of his disease, de Kooning painted his final works in 1991. He died in 1997 at the age of 92 and was cremated.

Elaine had admired Willem’s artwork before meeting him. In 1938 her teacher introduced her to de Kooning at a Manhattan cafeteria when she was 20 and him 34. After meeting, he began to instruct her in drawing and painting. They painted in Willem’s loft at 143 West 21st Street. When they married in 1943, she moved into his loft and they continued sharing studio spaces.

Elaine and de Kooning had what was later called an open marriage; they both were casual about sex and about each other’s affairs. Elaine and Willem both struggled with alcoholism, which eventually led to their separation in 1957. While separated, Elaine remained in New York, struggling with poverty, and Willem moved to Long Island and dealt with depression. Despite bouts with alcoholism, they both continued painting. Although separated for nearly twenty years, they never divorced, and ultimately reunited in 1976.

Gallery

Woman series

Women Singing II (1966)

Marilyn Monroe

Woman III, 1953, private collection

Today is the birthday of Robert Penn Warren (Guthrie, Kentucky April 24, 1905 – September 15, 1989 Stratton, Vermont); American poet, novelist, and literary critic and was one of the founders of New Criticism.  He was also a charter member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers.  Warren founded the influential literary journal The Southern Review with Cleanth Brooks in 1935.  He received the 1947 Pulitzer Prize for the Novel for his novel All the King’s Men (1946) and the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1958 and 1979. Warren is the only person to have won Pulitzer Prizes for both fiction and poetry.

So little time we live in Time,
And we learn all so painfully,
That we may spare this hour’s term
To practice for Eternity.

• “Bearded Oaks”, Eleven Poems on the Same Theme (1942)

For fire flames but in the heart of a colder fire.
All voice is but echo caught from a sound-less voice.
Height is not deprivation of valley, nor defect of desire.
But defines, for the fortunate, that joy in
which all joys should rejoice.

• “To a Little Girl, One Year Old, in a Ruined Fortress” (1956)

I cannot recall what I started to tell you, but at least
I can say how night-long I have lain under the stars and
Heard mountains moan in their sleep. By daylight,
They remember nothing, and go about their lawful occasions
Of not going anywhere except in slow disintegration. At night
They remember, however, that there is something they cannot remember.
So moan. Their’s is the perfected pain of conscience that
Of forgetting the crime, and I hope you have not suffered it. I have.

• “A Way to Love God”, New and Selected Poems 1923–1985 (1985)

Tell me a story.
In this century, and moment, of mania,
Tell me a story.
Make it a story of great distances, and starlight.
The name of the story will be Time,
But you must not pronounce its name.
Tell me a story of deep delight.

• “Tell me A Story”

Then let us turn now — you to me
And I to you — and hand to hand
Clasp, even though our fable be
Of strangers met in a strange land
Who pause, perturbed, then speak and know
That speech, half lost, can yet amaze
Joy at the root; then suddenly grow
Silent, and on each other gaze.

• Love’s Voice

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Dear Zazie,  Here is today’s Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag.  How do you celebrate beauty and the Bard?  Who do you see walkin’ down the street?  I see a pretty woman!  Rhett

The Lovers’ Chronicle

Dear Muse,

© copyright 2021 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

© copyright 2020 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

a sonnet that tells
how still as it was
on the day
when first seen

or a song that asks
how to compare
what knows
no comparison

perhaps some verse

that speaks,
but soft, of light
that breaks
all ’round
and none as fair

of dreams
and fond adieu
till we meet again

© copyright 2019 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

Today marks Shakespeare’s birth
Plus or minus a day
But the date matters not
The question before us;
To celebrate or not
To celebrate? We shall!

© Copyright 2011 Mac Tag.  All rights reserved.

Today is the day that Shakespeare’s birthday is traditionally celebrated.  We do not know for certain when he was born but we know he was baptised on 26 April 1564.  Back then infants were usually baptised two or three days after birth.  We have Shakespeare to thank for the now common phrase, “love is blind”.  Indeed, it can be.  I often quote him in my writing and speech.  A few of the best;

Today is the birthday of Ruggero (or Ruggiero) Leoncavallo (Naples 23 April 1857 – 9 August 1919 Tuscany); opera composer and librettist. Although he would produce numerous operas and other songs throughout his career it is his two-act work Pagliacci (1892) that remains his lasting contribution.  Pagliacci, is one of the most popular works in the opera repertory.  His other well known works include the song “Mattinata”, popularized by Enrico Caruso, as well as the symphonic poem La nuit de mai.

Pagliacci (meaning “Clowns”) is an Italian opera in a prologue and two acts, with music and libretto by Leoncavallo.  It is the only Leoncavallo opera that is still widely performed.  It is often staged by opera companies as a double bill with Cavalleria rusticana by Pietro Mascagni, known as Cav and Pag.  Pagliacci premiered at the Teatro Dal Verme in Milan on 21 May 1892, conducted by Arturo Toscanini, with Adelina Stehle as Nedda, Fiorello Giraud as Canio, Victor Maurel as Tonio, and Mario Ancona as Silvio.  Nellie Melba played Nedda in London in 1892, soon after the Italian premiere, and it was given in New York on 15 June 1893, with Agostino Montegriffo as Canio.

Cover of the first edition of Pagliacci

“Vesti la giubba” (“Put on the costume”, sometimes translated as “On With the Motley”) is a tenor aria from Pagliacci.  “Vesti la giubba” is sung at the conclusion of the first act, when Canio discovers his wife’s infidelity, but must prepare for his performance as Pagliaccio the clown because “the show must go on”.  The aria is often regarded as one of the most moving in the operatic repertoire.  The pain of Canio is portrayed in the aria and exemplifies the entire notion of the “tragic clown”: smiling on the outside but crying on the inside.  This is still displayed today, as clown makeup sometimes features the painted-on tear running down the cheek of the performer.  The 1902 recording of the aria, sung by Enrico Caruso, was the first million-selling record in history.

	“Vesti la giubba” Performed by Enrico Caruso, recorded on March 17, 1907

Recitar! Mentre preso dal delirio, non so più quel che dico, e quel che faccio! Eppur è d’uopo, sforzati! Bah! Sei tu forse un uom? Tu se’ Pagliaccio! Vesti la giubba e la faccia infarina. La gente paga, e rider vuole qua. E se Arlecchin t’invola Colombina, ridi, Pagliaccio, e ognun applaudirà! Tramuta in lazzi lo spasmo ed il pianto in una smorfia il singhiozzo e ‘l dolor, Ah! Ridi, Pagliaccio, sul tuo amore infranto! Ridi del duol, che t’avvelena il cor!

Act! While in delirium, I no longer know what I say, or what I do! And yet it’s necessary… make an effort! Bah! Are you not a man? You are a clown! Put on your costume, powder your face. The people pay to be here, and they want to laugh. And if Harlequin shall steal your Columbina, laugh, clown, so the crowd will cheer! Turn your distress and tears into jest, your pain and sobbing into a funny face – Ah! Laugh, clown, at your broken love! Laugh at the grief that poisons your heart!

Today is the birthday of singer and songwriter, the Big O, the Caruso of Rock, Roy Orbison (1936), born Roy Kelton Orbison in Vernon, Texas.  By the time he was seven, he knew that music was his calling.  He later said, “I was finished, you know, for anything else.”  Clearly one of my songwriting heroes.  My list of favorite Orbison songs includes; “Only the Lonely”, “Crying”, “Oh, Pretty Woman”, “Running Scared”, “Blue Bayou”, and “In Dreams”.

His career ignited in 1960 with a song that had been turned down by Elvis Presley and the Everly Brothers. “Only the Lonely” was the antithesis of the typical rock and roll song of the period, with no driving beat or teenage defiance; it was mournful and plaintive, with a string section backing up Orbison’s operatic voice.  He had severe stage fright, and performed dressed all in black, hiding behind a pair of thick prescription Wayfarer sunglasses.  He said: “I wasn’t trying to be weird, you know? … But  the image developed of a man of mystery and a quiet man in black, somewhat of a recluse, although I never was, really.”

One day, during a songwriting session with his partner Bill Dees, Orbison asked his wife, Claudette Frady Orbison, if she needed any money for her upcoming trip to Nashville.  Dees remarked, “Pretty woman never needs any money.”  Forty minutes later, Orbison’s most famous hit, “Oh, Pretty Woman,” had been written.

Of Orbison, Bruce Springsteen said; “He was the true master of the romantic apocalypse you dreaded, and knew was coming after the first night you whispered ‘I Love You’ to your first girlfriend. You were going down. Roy was the coolest uncool loser you’d ever seen. With his Coke-bottle black glasses, his 3-octave range, he seemed to take joy sticking his knife deep into the hot belly of your teenage insecurities.”

Today is the birthday of Lee Miller (Elizabeth “Lee” Miller, Lady Penrose; Poughkeepsie, New York; Chiddingly, East Sussex, Great Britain; April 23, 1907 – July 21, 1977); model, muse, photographer, and photojournalist. She was a fashion model in New York City in the 1920s before going to Paris, where she became a fashion and fine art photographer. During the Second World War, she was a war correspondent for Vogue, covering events such as the London Blitz, the liberation of Paris, and the concentration camps at Buchenwald and Dachau.

In 1929, Miller traveled to Paris with the intention of apprenticing herself to the surrealist artist and photographer Man Ray. Although, at first, he insisted that he did not take students, Miller soon became his model and collaborator (announcing to him, “I’m your new student”), as well as his lover and muse.

In 1934, Miller abandoned her studio to marry the Egyptian businessman and engineer Aziz Eloui Bey, who had come to New York City to buy equipment for the Egyptian National Railways. Although she did not work as a professional photographer during this period, the photographs she took while living in Egypt with Eloui, including Portrait of Space, are regarded as some of her most striking surrealist images. In Cairo, Miller took a photograph of the desert near Siwa that Magritte saw and used as inspiration for his 1938 painting “Le Baiser.”

By 1937, Miller had grown bored with her life in Cairo and returned to Paris, where she met the British surrealist painter and curator Roland Penrose, whom she later would marry.

At the outbreak of World War II, Miller was living in Hampstead in London with Penrose when the bombing of the city began. Ignoring pleas from friends and family to return to the US, Miller embarked on a new career in photojournalism as the official war photographer for Vogue, documenting the Blitz. She traveled to France less than a month after D-Day and recorded the first use of napalm at the siege of St. Malo, as well as the liberation of Paris, the Battle of Alsace, and the horror of the Nazi concentration camps at Buchenwald and Dachau.

After returning to Britain from central Europe, Miller started to suffer from severe episodes of clinical depression and what later became known as Post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). She began to drink heavily, and became uncertain about her future. In 1946, she traveled with Penrose to the United States, where she visited Ray in California. After she discovered she was pregnant by Penrose with her only son, she divorced Bey and, on May 3, 1947, married Penrose. Their son, Antony Penrose, was born in September 1947.

In 1949, the couple bought Farley Farm House in Chiddingly, East Sussex. During the 1950s and 1960s, Farley Farm became a sort of artistic Mecca for visiting artists such as Picasso, Ray, Henry Moore, Eileen Agar, Jean Dubuffet, Dorothea Tanning, and Max Ernst. While Miller continued to do the occasional photo shoot for Vogue, she soon discarded the darkroom for the kitchen, becoming a gourmet cook. According to her housekeeper Patsy she specialized in “historical food” like roast suckling pig as well as fare such as marshmallows in a cola sauce (especially made to annoy English critic Cyril Connolly who told her Americans could not cook).  She also provided photographs for biographies Penrose wrote on Picasso and Antoni Tàpies. However, images from the war, especially the concentration camps, continued to haunt her and she started on what her son later described as a “downward spiral”. Her depression may have been accelerated by her husband’s long affair with the trapeze artist Diane Deriaz.

Miller was investigated by the British security service MI5 during the 1940s and 1950s, on suspicion of being a Soviet spy.

In October 1969, Miller was asked in an interview with a New York Times reporter what it was that drew her to photography. Her response was that it was “a matter of getting out on a damn limb and sawing it off behind you.”

Gallery

Man Ray & Ady Fidelin

Photo by George Hoyningen-Huene, 1932

Women with Fire Masks and Whistles, London 1941

Portrait by Picasso

HItler’s Bathtub

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Dear Zazie,

Today’s Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag.

Rhett

The Lovers’ Chronicle

from a 2016 poem
a micro-story
about the one not found
“Oh, I thought you said,
just a swinging”
ha, that is a good song though
no, the same ol’ tune
and where i took it
from there to here
what i knew could be
but from so far away
from the verse to you
just a clingin’

© copyright 2023 mac tag/cowboycoleridge all rights reserved

one of the reasons i come here
is for the spontaneity

structured and rigid
in day-to-day activities
but here
go whichever way the Muse goes
let the words and rhythms
do the work, carry me
from one moment
to the next
no thinkin’
no decisions
just blue on white
me and you

© copyright 2022.2023 mac tag/cowboycoleridge all rights reserved

half pleasure, half-pain, whenever in this ecstasy, to kiss, with a soft movement almost woeful, caught and slackened again, quiverin’ mouth, with a sibilant intake of breath come near, lips pressed, then again, ready to offer everything, mutual, at once, crept into waitin’ arms

© copyright 2021 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

© copyright 2020 mac tag/cowboy coleridge

light, fire, sin, soul
tip of the tongue
takin’ a trip

in the mornin’,
in my arms,
usually
a precursor

there might have,
had it been at all

one thing remains
you can count on

what some never see
cling to this

the dance has hold
and time is turnin’
and the future
is possible

© copyright 2019 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

thanks Bret

Soy yo. Me sientes?

seriously y’all
trust me on this one
every sign leads
to not meant to be

mention trenchancy,
came across more than one
what stood in my way
with nothin’ to say
so give over to my
callin’ it done
i have come about
found my lines
slogged the reasons
borne the time
and we are even
and i am leavin’
meant to be behind

© copyright 2018 bret mosley & mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

then… silence
lookin’ at each other,
thoughts, minglin’ together,
same anguish of mind…
cling close to one another

© copyright 2016 Mac tag all rights reserved

Today is the birthday of Laura Gilpin (Austin Bluffs, Colorado April 22, 1891 – November 30, 1979 Santa Fe); American photographer.  She is known for her photographs of American Indians, (particularly the Navajo and Pueblo), and southwestern landscapes.  Gilpin began taking photographs as a child in Colorado, and formally studied photography in New York in 1916-1917 before returning to her home in Colorado to begin her career as a professional photographer.

Gallery

Georgia O’Keeffe

The prelude

Francis Nakai & Family

Georgia O’Keeffe

Footprints in the Sand

Rancho de Taos Mission, New Mexico

Vladimir Nabokov
Nabokov in Montreux, 1973

Today is the birthday of Vladimir Nabokov (Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov; Saint Petersburg; 22 April [O.S. 10 April] 1899 – 2 July 1977 Montreux); novelist, translator and entomologist. His first nine novels were in Russian, but he achieved international prominence after he began writing English prose.

Perhaps best known for his novel Lolita (1955). Other notable works include, his novel Pale Fire (1962) and his memoir, Speak, Memory (1951). He was a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction seven times.

In 1922, Nabokov became engaged to Svetlana Siewert; she broke off the engagement in early 1923, her parents worrying that he could not provide for her. In May 1923, he met a Russian-Jewish woman, Véra Evseyevna Slonim, at a charity ball in Berlin and married her in April 1925.

Nabokov wrote Lolita while travelling on butterfly-collection trips in the western United States that he undertook every summer. Véra acted as “secretary, typist, editor, proofreader, translator and bibliographer; his agent, business manager, legal counsel and chauffeur; his research assistant, teaching assistant and professorial understudy”; when Nabokov attempted to burn unfinished drafts of Lolita, it was Véra who stopped him. He called her the best-humored woman he had ever known.

 grave at Cimetière de Clarens near Montreux, Switzerland

After the financial success of Lolita, Nabokov was able to return to Europe and devote himself exclusively to writing. On 1 October 1961, he and Véra moved to the Montreux Palace Hotel in Montreux, Switzerland. From his sixth-floor quarters he conducted his business and took tours to the Alps, Corsica, and Sicily to hunt butterflies. In 1976 he was hospitalised with a fever doctors were unable to diagnose. He was rehospitalised in Lausanne in 1977 suffering from severe bronchial congestion. He died on 2 July in Montreux surrounded by his family. His remains were cremated and are buried at the Clarens cemetery in Montreux.

in the 1960s

in 1973

Monument in Montreux

Lolita

Part One

• Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta. She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita. Did she have a precursor? She did, indeed she did. In point of fact, there might have been no Lolita at all had I not loved, one summer, an initial girl-child. In a princedom by the sea. Oh when? About as many years before Lolita was born as my age was that summer. You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, exhibit number one is what the seraphs, the misinformed, simple, noble-winged seraphs, envied. Look at this tangle of thorns.
  • Opening lines, Ch. 1

• You have to be an artist and a madman, a creature of infinite melancholy, with a bubble of hot poison in your loins and a super-voluptuous flame permanently aglow in your subtle spine (oh, how you have to cringe and hide!), in order to discern at once, by ineffable signs—the slightly feline outline of a cheekbone, the slenderness of a downy limb, and other indices which despair and shame and tears of tenderness forbid me to tabulate—the deadly little demon among the wholesome children; she stands unrecognized by them and unconscious herself of her fantastic power.
  • Ch. 1

• My very photogenic mother died in a freak accident (picnic, lightning) when I was three, and, save for a pocket of warmth in the darkest past, nothing of her subsists within the hollows and dells of memory, over which, if you can still stand my style (I am writing under observation), the sun of my infancy had set…
  • Ch. 2

• There are two kinds of visual memory: one when you skillfully recreate an image in the laboratory of your mind, with your eyes open (and then I see Annabel in such general terms as: “honey-colored skin,” “thin arms,” “brown bobbed hair,” “long lashes,” “big bright mouth”); and the other when you instantly evoke, with shut eyes, on the dark innerside of your eyelids, the objective, absolutely optical replica of a beloved face, a little ghost in natural colors (and this is how I see Lolita).
  • Ch. 3

• I also know that the shock of Annabel’s death consolidated the frustration of that nightmare summer, made of it a permanent obstacle to any further romance throughout the cold years of my youth. The spiritual and the physical had been blended in us with a perfection that must remain incomprehensible to the matter-of-fact, crude, standard-brained youngsters of today. Long after her death I felt her thoughts floating through mine. Long before we met we had had the same dreams. We compared notes. We found strange affinities. The same June of the same year (1919) a stray canary had fluttered into her house and mine, in two widely separated countries. Oh, Lolita, had you loved me thus!
  • Ch. 4

• I have reserved for the conclusion of my “Annabel” phase the account of our unsuccessful first tryst. One night, she managed to deceive the vicious vigilance of her family. In a nervous and slender-leaved mimosa grove at the back of their villa we found a perch on the ruins of a low stone wall. Through the darkness and the tender trees we could see the arabesques of lighted windows which, touched up by the colored inks of sensitive memory, appear to me now like playing cards-presumably because a bridge game was keeping the enemy busy. She trembled and twitched as I kissed the corner of her parted lips and the hot lobe of her ear. A cluster of stars palely glowed above us, between the silhouettes of long thin leaves; that vibrant sky seemed as naked as she was under her light frock. I saw her face in the sky, strangely distinct as if it emitted a faint radiance of its own. Her legs, her lovely live legs, were not too close together, and when my hand located what it sought, a dreamy and eerie expression, half pleasure, half-pain, came over those childish features. She sat a little higher than I, and whenever in her solitary ecstasy she was led to kiss me, her head would bend with a sleepy, soft, drooping movement that was almost woeful, and her bare knees caught and compressed my wrist, and slackened again and her quivering mouth, distorted by the acridity of some mysterious potion, with a sibilant intake of breath came near to my face. She would try to relieve the pain of love by first roughly rubbing her dry lips against mine; then my darling would draw away with a nervous toss of her hair, and then again come darkly near and let me feed on her open mouth, while with a generosity that was ready to offer her everything, my heart, my throat, my entrails, I gave her to hold in her awkward fist the scepter of my passion.
  • Ch. 4

• All at once we were madly, clumsily, shamelessly, agonizingly in love with each other; hopelessly, I should add, because that frenzy of mutual possession might have been assuaged only by our actually imbibing and assimilating every particle of each other’s soul and flesh; but there we were, unable even to mate as slum children would have so easily found an opportunity to do so.
  • Ch.4

• Now I wish to introduce the following idea. Between the age limits of nine and fourteen there occur maidens who, to certain bewitched travelers, twice or many times older than they, reveal their true nature which is not human, but nymphic (that is, demoniac); and these chosen creatures I propose to designate as “nymphets.”
  • Ch. 5

• Overtly, I had so-called normal relationships with a number of terrestrial women having pumpkins or pears for breasts; inly, I was consumed by a hell furnace of localized lust for every passing nymphet whom as a law-abiding poltroon I never dared approach. The human females I was allowed to wield were but palliative agents. I am ready to believe that the sensations I derived from natural fornication were much the same as those known to normal big males consorting with their normal big mates in that routine rhythm which shakes the world. The trouble was that those gentlemen had not, and I had, caught glimpses of an incomparably more poignant bliss. The dimmest of my pollutive dreams was a thousand times more dazzling than all the adultery the most virile writer of genius or the most talented impotent might imagine.
  • Ch. 5

• Oh, my Lolita, I have only words to play with!
  • Ch. 8

• All I want to stress is that my discovery of her was a fatal consequence of that ‘princedom by the sea’ in my tortured past. Everything between the two events was but a series of gropings and blunders, and false rudiments of joy.
  • Ch. 10

• Then she crept into my waiting arms, radiant, relaxed, caressing me with her tender, mysterious, impure, indifferent, twilight eyes–for all the world, like the cheapest of cheap cuties. For that is what nymphets imitate–while we moan and die.
  • Ch. 27

• While eager to impress me with the world of tough kids, she was not quite prepared for certain discrepancies between a kid’s life and mine. Pride alone prevented her from giving up; for, in my strange predicament, I feigned supreme stupidity and had her have her way — at least while I could still bear it. But really these are irrelevant matters; I am not concerned with so-called “sex” at all. Anybody can imagine those elements of animality. A greater endeavor lures me on: to fix once for all the perilous magic of nymphets.
  • Ch. 29

Part Two

• Lolita, when she chose, could be a most exasperating brat. I was not really quite prepared for her fits of disorganized boredom, intense and vehement griping, her sprawling, droopy, dopey-eyed style, and what is called goofing off — a kind of diffused clowning which she thought was tough in a boyish hoodlum way. Mentally, I found her to be a disgustingly conventional little girl. Sweet hot jazz, square dancing, gooey fudge sundaes, musicals, movie magazines and so forth — these were the obvious items in her list of beloved things. The Lord knows how many nickels I fed to the gorgeous music boxes that came with every meal we had.
  • Ch. 1

• And so we rolled East, I more devastated than braced with the satisfaction of my passion, and she glowing with health, her bi-iliac garland still as brief as a lad’s, although she had added two inches to her stature and eight pounds to her weight. We had been everywhere. We had really seen nothing. And I catch myself thinking today that our long journey had only defiled with a sinuous trail of slime the lovely, trustful, dreamy, enormous country that by then, in retrospect, was no more to us than a collection of dog-eared maps, ruined tour books, old tires, and her sobs in the night — every night, every night — the moment I feigned sleep.
  • Ch. 3

• I am sufficiently proud of my knowing something to be modest about my not knowing all.
  • Ch. 25

• Wanted, wanted: Dolores Haze.
  Hair: brown. Lips: scarlet.
  Age: five thousand three hundred days.
  Profession: none, or “starlet”.
  • Ch. 25

• Dying, dying, Lolita Haze,
  Of hate and remorse, I’m dying.
  And again my hairy fist I raise,
  And again I hear you crying.
  • Ch. 25

• In Kasbeam a very old barber gave me a very mediocre haircut: he babbled of a baseball-playing son of his, and, at every explodent, spat into my neck, and every now and then wiped his glasses on my sheet-wrap, or interrupted his tremulous scissor work to produce faded newspaper clippings, and so inattentive was I that it came as a shock to realize as he pointed to an easelled photograph among the ancient gray lotions, that the moustached young ball player had been dead for the last thirty years.
  • p. 215

• All of a sudden I noticed that he had noticed that I did not seem to have noticed Chum protruding from beneath the other corner of the chest. We fell to wrestling again. We rolled all over the floor, in each other’s arms, like two huge helpless children. He was naked and goatish under his robe, and I felt suffocated as he rolled over me. I rolled over him. We rolled over me. They rolled over him. We rolled over us.
  • Ch. 35

• The following decision I make with all the legal impact and support of a signed testament: I wish this memoir to be published only when Lolita is no longer alive.
  Thus, neither of us is alive when the reader opens this book. But while the blood still throbs through my writing hand, you are still as much part of blessed matter as I am, and I can still talk to you from here to Alaska. Be true to your Dick. Do not let other fellows touch you. Do not talk to strangers. I hope you will love your baby. I hope it will be a boy. That husband of yours, I hope, will always treat you well, because otherwise my specter shall come at him, like black smoke, like a demented giant, and pull him apart nerve by nerve. And do not pity C. Q. One had to choose between him and H.H., and one wanted H.H. to exist at least a couple of months longer, so as to have him make you live in the minds of later generations. I am thinking of aurochs and angels, the secret of durable pigments, prophetic sonnets, the refuge of art. And this is the only immortality you and I may share, my Lolita.
  • Ch. 36

And today is the birthday of Bettie Page (Betttie Mae Page; Nashville; April 22, 1923 – December 11, 2008 Los Angeles); model who gained notoriety in the 1950s for her pin-up photos.  She was often referred to as the “Queen of Pinups”: her long jet-black hair, blue eyes, and trademark bangs have influenced artists for generations. After her death, Playboy founder Hugh Hefner called her “a remarkable lady, an iconic figure in pop culture who influenced sexuality, taste in fashion, someone who had a tremendous impact on our society”.

Page lived in California in her early adult years before moving to New York City to pursue work as an actress. There, she found work as a pin-up model, and she posed for several photographers throughout the 1950s. Page was “Miss January 1955”, one of the earliest Playmates of the Month for Playboy magazine. After years in obscurity, she experienced a resurgence of popularity in the 1980s.

In 1959, Page converted to evangelical Christianity and worked for Billy Graham, studying at Bible colleges in Los Angeles and Portland, Oregon, with the intent of becoming a missionary. The latter part of Page’s life was marked by depression, mood swings, and several years in a state psychiatric hospital with paranoid schizophrenia.

Gallery

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laura gilpin, the lovers almanac, the lovers chronicle, vladimir nabokov

Dear Zazie,

Here is today’s Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag.

Rhett

The Lovers’ Chronicle

Dear Muse,

this one from a Jimmy Buffett song
“I thought it might be in reference
to how far away your dreams were”
that is one reason the song stuck to me
how removed i had become from feelin’
anything, how i could hardly remember
what it felt like to be held by someone
who just wanted to hold you
“That is no longer distantly
for you my love”

© copyright 2023 mac tag/cowboycoleridge all rights reserved

may as well for if not who is to say what would become, these words will make you, repeated often enough, heard and held when nothin’ else came ’round, here bury where belong or disappear, the only possible sense that can be made, remember, focus, still unique not distantly removed

© copyright 2022.2023 mac tag/cowboycoleridge all rights reserved

feelin’s… clamour, soothe, save, tell you and you will be, who cares for you, by what you do, still the reply: for thee, the more sustained, the more to hold this, worth believin, verse streamin’ and tempo beatin’ faster, comes in throes, unique and no longer distant

© copyright 2021.2023 mac tag/cowboycoleridge all rights reserved

“I can’t help but be
ruled by my own philosophy
not unique just distantly in love”

© copyright 2020 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

write through this April’s day,
poetry here and there,
streamin’ melodies, the feel
of wonder runnin’ about,
between purpose and clarity
verse provides all measures
and the means of gettin’
carried completely away

what will become of you and me

© copyright 2019 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

“Someone’s gonna git hurt
before your through”
too late
“Someone’s gonna pay
for the things you do”
yeah they did

“How many hearts must break
How many will it take
to satisfy you
Just to satisfy you”
i hope no more

need
ah hell nah
it done died thank god
never brought about
anything but trouble

want,
well now,
that is a whole
‘nother story
tryin’ my best
to deny that

“I can’t help but be
ruled by my own philosophy
not unique just distantly in love”

actually, quite unique
ruled by beauty and sorrow
and intrigued with every aspect
of have and have not

© Copyright 2018 Mac Tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved

“Does she like you?”
i think so
“Do you like her?”
yes
“Have you told her?”
oh no
“Why not?”
someone has
not been payin’
attention i see

© copyright 2017 mac tag/cowboycoleridge all rights reserved

Today is the birthday of Ludovico (or Lodovico) Carracci (Bologna 21 April 1555 – 13 November 1619 Bologna); early-Baroque painter, etcher, and printmaker.  His works are characterized by a strong mood invoked by broad gestures and flickering light that create spiritual emotion and are credited with reinvigorating Italian art, especially fresco art, which was subsumed with formalistic Mannerism.

Gallery

Bacco e Arianna

Medea, Palazzo Fava, Bologna

• 

  Lamentation of Christ (ca. 1582).

• 

  Madonna and Child with St Francis of Assisi (1591) – known as “La Carraccina” due to the admiration of the young Guercino

• 

  Madonna and Child with Saints

• 

  Annunciation

• 

  Transfiguration

• 

  Abraham and the Three Angels

Today is the birthday of Charlotte Brontë (Thornton, West Riding of Yorkshire, England; 21 April 1816 – 31 March 1855 Haworth, West Riding of Yorkshire, England); novelist and poet, the eldest of the three Brontë sisters who survived into adulthood and whose novels became classics of English literature.

She enlisted in school at Roe Head in January 1831, aged 14 years. She left the year after to teach her sisters, Emily and Anne, at home, returning in 1835 as a governess. In 1839 she undertook the role as governess for the Sidgwick family, but left after a few months to return to Haworth where the sisters opened a school, but failed to attract pupils. Instead they turned to writing and they each first published in 1846 under the pseudonyms of Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell. Her first novel The Professor was rejected by publishers, her second novel Jane Eyre was published in 1847. The sisters admitted to their Bell pseudonyms in 1848, and by the following year were celebrated in London literary circles.

Before the publication of her third novel, Villette, Brontë received an expected proposal of marriage from Arthur Bell Nicholls, her father’s curate, who had long been in love with her. She initially turned down his proposal and her father objected to the union at least partly because of Nicholls’s poor financial status. Elizabeth Gaskell, who believed that marriage provided “clear and defined duties” that were beneficial for a woman, encouraged Brontë to consider the positive aspects of such a union and tried to use her contacts to engineer an improvement in Nicholls’s finances. Brontë meanwhile was increasingly attracted to Nicholls and by January 1854 she had accepted his proposal. They gained the approval of her father by April and married in June. Her father Patrick had intended to give Charlotte away, but at the last minute decided he could not, and Charlotte had to make her way to the church without him. The married couple took their honeymoon in Banagher, County Offaly, Ireland. By all accounts, her marriage was a success and Brontë found herself very happy in a way that was new to her.

Brontë experienced the early deaths of all her siblings. She became pregnant shortly after her marriage in June 1854 but died on 31 March 1855, almost certainly from hyperemesis gravidarum, a complication of early pregnancy which causes excessive nausea and vomiting.

Jane Eyre (1847)

Most true is it that “beauty is in the eye of the gazer.” My master’s colourless, olive face, square, massive brow, broad and jetty eyebrows, deep eyes, strong features, firm, grim mouth, — all energy, decision, will, — were not beautiful, according to rule; but they were more than beautiful to me; they were full of an interest, an influence that quite mastered me, — that took my feelings from my own power and fettered them in his. I had not intended to love him; the reader knows I had wrought hard to extirpate from my soul the germs of love there detected; and now, at the first renewed view of him, they spontaneously arrived, green and strong! He made me love him without looking at me.

• Jane (Ch. 17)

“Are you anything akin to me, do you think, Jane?”
I could risk no sort of answer by this time; my heart was full.
“Because,” he said, “I sometimes have a queer feeling with regard to you — especially when you are near to me, as now: it is as if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly and inextricably knotted to a similar string situated in the corresponding quarter of your little frame. And if that boisterous Channel, and two hundred miles or so of land, come broad between us, I am afraid that cord of communion will be snapped; and then I’ve a nervous notion I should take to bleeding inwardly.”

• Mr. Rochester and Jane (Ch. 23)

• Do you think I am an automaton? — a machine without feelings? and can bear to have my morsel of bread snatched from my lips, and my drop of living water dashed from my cup? Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong! — I have as much soul as you — and full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you. I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom, conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh: it is my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed through the grave, and we stood at God’s feet, equal — as we are!
  • Jane to Mr. Rochester (Ch. 23)

• I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will, which I now exert to leave you.
  • Jane to Mr. Rochester (Ch. 23)

• My bride is here… because my equal is here, and my likeness.
  • Mr. Rochester to Jane (Ch. 23)

• I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself.
  • Jane (Ch. 27)

• Feeling… clamoured wildly. “Oh, comply!” it said. “… soothe him; save him; love him; tell him you love him and will be his. Who in the world cares for you? or who will be injured by what you do?” Still indomitable was the reply: “I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself. I will keep the law given by God; sanctioned by man. I will hold to the principles received by me when I was sane, and not mad—as I am now. Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation… They have a worth — so I have always believed; and if I cannot believe it now, it is because I am insane — quite insane: with my veins running fire, and my heart beating faster than I can count its throbs.
  • Jane (Ch. 27)

• Gentle reader, may you never feel what I then felt? May your eyes never shed such stormy, scalding, heart-wrung tears as poured from mine. May you never appeal to Heaven in prayers so hopeless and so agonized as in that hour left my lips; for never may you, like me, dread to be the instrument of evil to what you wholly love.
  • Jane (Ch. 27)

• I can but die… and I believe in God. Let me try and wait His will in silence.
  • Jane (Ch. 28)

• “I scorn your idea of love,” I could not help saying, as I rose up and stood before him, leaning my back against the rock. “I scorn the counterfeit sentiment you offer; yes, St. John, and I scorn you when you offer it.”
  • Jane to St. John Rivers (Ch. 34)

• I have not much pride under such circumstances: I would always rather be happy than dignified.
  • Ch. 34

• God did not give me my life to throw away.
  • (Ch. 35)

• I recalled the voice I had heard; again I questioned whence it came, as vainly as before: it seemed in me — not in the external world. I asked, was it a mere nervous impression — a delusion? I could not conceive or believe: it was more like an inspiration.
  • Jane (Ch. 36)

• Reader, I married him.
  • Jane (Ch. 38)

And today is the birthday of Alfred Henry Maurer (April 21, 1868 – August 4, 1932); American modernist painter.  He exhibited his work in avant-garde circles internationally and in New York City during the early twentieth century.  Highly respected today, his work met with little critical or commercial success in his lifetime, and he died, a suicide, at the age of sixty-four.

“Self portrait” (1897)

Gallery

Two sisters

Portrait of a Woman, 1908, Honolulu Museum of Art

 Carousel, c. 1901-1902, Brooklyn Museum

 “An Arrangement“. 1901; oil on cardboard

Landscape of Provence, c. 1912–1922, Reynolda House Museum of American Art

Four Sisters

Mac Tag

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alfred henry maurer, Charlotte Brontë, ludovico carracci, the lovers almanac, the lovers chronicle

Dear Zazie,

Here is today’s Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag.

Rhett

The Lovers’ Chronicle

Dear Muse,

“Like a tea bag”
ha, no, another origin unknown
first used in a 2016 poem
“From the melodramatic years”
yes well, drama did as drama does
“Oh I had that coming”
it is an apt verb for any of this verse
the gamut was run from the depths
of without to the culmination of with
“Steeped in this romance”
together we are

© copyright 2023 mac tag/cowboycoleridge all rights reserved

in ways formed by routine
comin’ now on five years
sanctuary here, free from
pretendin’, pursuin’
all that matters
tunin’ these voices
from the past
visions help focus
resonate across years
an affirmation of purpose
reasons why and who
memories resumed
reachin’ out, do you hear

© copyright 2022.2033 mac tag/cowboycoleridge all rights reserved

© copyright 2021 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

© copyright 2020 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

for the one
who prefers,
often somehow
to damn near always

imagine, no longer
torn between with
and without, no more
may as well, may as not

discoverin’

that the hardness was necessary
to allow, to know and want again

that this does not begin to tell the story

© copyright 2019 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

Pale Love, Pale Rider

writin’ what might sound
like boastin’ of lack thereof,
which the unforgiven
well sighed
who laid aside joy
with haughtiness,
and learned to weep
with that weepin’ sans tears
who leaned into his hardness
and called in a languid sound,
who does not listen to her
and takes her pain

© copyright 2018.2023 mac tag/cowboycoleridge all rights reserved

been ridin’ since first light
my restin’ place for the night
a ruin… cabin and corral

after hours of pushin’
on through silence,
still to have silence,
still to eat, to sleep in it,
perfectly fits the mood

the great levels around me
lay chilly and the air
smells of wet weather

far in front the mesas rise
through the rain, indefinite

i want this isolation
not to be near anyone
steeped in reverie

© copyright 2016 mac tag all rights reserved

Today is the birthday of Pietro Aretino (Arezzo 20 April 1492 – 21 October 1556 Venice); author, playwright, poet, satirist and blackmailer who wielded immense influence on contemporary art and politics and may have invented modern literate pornography.

He was a lover of men, having declared himself “a sodomite” since birth. In a letter to Giovanni de’ Medici written in 1524 Aretino enclosed a satirical poem saying that due to a sudden aberration he had “fallen in love with a female cook and temporarily switched from boys to girls…” (My Dear Boy). In his comedy Il marescalco, the lead man is overjoyed to discover that the woman he has been forced to marry is really a page boy in disguise. While at court in Mantua he developed a crush on a young man called Bianchino, and annoyed Duke Federico with a request to plead with the boy on the writer’s behalf.

Safe in Venice, Aretino became a blackmailer, extorting money from men who had sought his guidance in vice. He “kept all that was famous in Italy in a kind of state of siege”, in Jakob Burckhardt’s estimation. Francis I of France and Charles V pensioned him at the same time, each hoping for some damage to the reputation of the other. “The rest of his relations with the great is mere beggary and vulgar extortion”, according to Burckhardt. Addison states that “he laid half Europe under contribution”.

Aretino is said to have died of suffocation from “laughing too much”.  The more mundane truth may be that he died from a stroke or heart attack.

 

Verse

Io vorrei dir la donna ch’ebbe il vanto
di leggiadra et angelica bellezza,
la qual l’amato ben sospirò tanto
che depose la gioia e l’alterezza,
et imparato a pianger con quel pianto
che ad altri insegnò già la sua durezza:
Medor pur chiama in suon languido e fioco,
che non l’ascolta e ‘l suo mal prende a gioco.

Today is the birthday of Odilon Redon (born Bertrand-Jean Redon;Bordeaux April 20, 1840 – July 6, 1916 Paris); symbolist painter, printmaker, draughtsman and pastellist.

Early in his career, both before and after fighting in the Franco-Prussian War, he worked almost exclusively in charcoal and lithography, works referred to as noirs. He started gaining recognition after his drawings were mentioned in the 1884 novel À rebours (Against Nature) by Joris-Karl Huysmans. During the 1890s he began working in pastel and oils, which quickly became his favourite medium, abandoning his previous style of noirs completely after 1900. He also developed a keen interest in Hindu and Buddhist religion and culture, which increasingly showed in his work.

He is perhaps best known today for the “dreamlike” paintings created in the first decade of the 20th century, which were heavily inspired by Japanese art and which, while continuing to take inspiration from nature, heavily flirted with abstraction. His work is considered a precursor to both Dadaism and Surrealism.

 Gallery

Self-Portrait, 1880, Musée d’Orsay

Arbres sur un fond jaune, one of the panels painted in 1901 for the dining room of the Château de Domecy-sur-le-Vault

La Cellule d’or (1892), Londres, British Museum

La Naissance de Vénus (1912), New York, Museum of Modern Art

Butterflies, around 1910 (Museum of Modern Art) 

• 

  Caliban, 1881 (Musée d’Orsay)

• 

  “Guardian Spirit of the Waters”, 1878

• 

  The Trees, c. 1890s (Museum of Fine Arts, Houston)

• 

  Lady of the Flowers, c. 1890–95 (Honolulu Museum of Art)

• 

  The Port of Morgat, 1882, Dallas Museum of Art

• 

  The Cyclops, 1898 (Kröller-Müller Museum)

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  Ophelia, 1900–1905 (Dian Woodner Collection)

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  Baroness Robert de Domecy, 1900 (Musée d’Orsay)

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  Vase of Flowers, ca. 1900-10, (Princeton University Art Museum)

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  Flower Clouds, 1903 (The Art Institute of Chicago)

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  The Buddha, 1904 (Musée d’Orsay)

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  Initiation to Study: Two Young Ladies (vers 1905) Dallas Museum of Art, oil on canvas 93 x 65 cm

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  Apparition, 1905-10, (Princeton University Art Museum)

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  Flowers, 1909

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  Chariot of Apollo, c. 1910 (Musée d’Orsay)

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  Portrait of Violette Heymann, 1910 (Cleveland Museum of Art)

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  Saint Sebastian, 1910–1912, (National Gallery of Art)

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  Coquille, 1912 (Musée d’Orsay)

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  Pandora, c. 1914 (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

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  Evocation, undated, private collection

   

  Today is the birthday of Joan Miró i Ferrà (Barcelona; 20 April 1893 – 25 December 1983 Palma (Majorca)); painter, sculptor, and ceramicist. A museum dedicated to his work, the Fundació Joan Miró, was established in his native city in 1975, and another, the Fundació Pilar i Joan Miró, was established in his adoptive city of Palma de Mallorca in 1981.

  Earning international acclaim, his work has been interpreted as Surrealism, a sandbox for the subconscious mind, a re-creation of the childlike, and a manifestation of Catalan pride. In numerous interviews dating from the 1930s onwards, Miró expressed contempt for conventional painting methods as a way of supporting bourgeois society, and declared an “assassination of painting” in favour of upsetting the visual elements of established painting.

  Miró married Pilar Juncosa in Palma on 12 October 1929.

  Gallery

  

  desnudo de pie

  

  Retrato de Juanita Obrador 1918

  

  Retrato de una bailarina española (1921)

  

   April 1917, Portrait of Vincent Nubiola (Portrait de Vincenç Nubiola), oil on canvas, 104 x 113 cm, Folkwang Museum

  

   1918, La casa de la palmera (House with Palm Tree), oil on canvas, 65 x 73 cm, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía

  

   1918, Portrait of Heriberto Casany (Le chauffeur), oil on canvas, 70.2 x 62 cm, Kimbell Art Museum

  

   1919, Nu au miroir (Nude with a Mirror, Naakt met mirror), oil on canvas, 113 x 102 cm, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen

  

   1920, Les cartes espagnoles (The Spanish Playing Cards), oil on canvas, 63.5 x 69.5 cm, Minneapolis Institute of Arts

  

   1920, Horse, Pipe and Red Flower, oil on canvas, 82.6 × 74.9 cm, Philadelphia Museum of Art

   

  

   Carrer de Pedralbes, drawing, published in Troços, Segona sèrie, N. 4, March 1918

  

   Dona i Ocell, 1982, Barcelona, Spain

  

   Pájaro lunar (Moon Bird), 1966, Reina Sofia Museum, Madrid

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    The mosaic Pla de l’Os by the artist on the Ramblas of Barcelona

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    Interior views of Museo Reina Sofía

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    Hakone open-air museum

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    Grande Maternite

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    Sculpture at Fundació Joan Miró

  Mac Tag

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joan Miró, odilon redon, pietro aretino, the lovers almanac, the lovers chronicle