The Lovers’ Chronicle 26 February – chances – verse by Christopher Marlowe – art by Honoré Daumier & Annie Swynnerton – verse and art by Victor Hugo

26 February 2024 By Rhett 0 In Random

Dear Zazie, Here is today’s Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag dedicated to his muse. Follow us on twitter @cowboycoleridge. Rhett

The Lovers’ Chronicle

Dear Muse,

-i’m gonna try to put myself
back in that place again-
always starts with
london homesick blues
“I know that song”
sure have taken
some fancy ones
“I’m glad you did
because they led you here”
absolutely, the good,
the bad and the ugly
“The necessary”
well put, now
what are my chances

oh where do i go

let me count the ways

premonition or dream

chances taken now come

round and i hardly know

how, when, or even what

this was never supposed

to happen, this destiny

i wrote so often, but never

thought could save me

and yet i turn to look

and there you are

oh, here comes that dream

a good place here

knowin’ what lies ahead

embracin’ these feelin’s,

closer every day

so fortunate

to have found

someone wonderful,

and deeply groundin’

and this undeniable

bond, woven together

through the years

belief undid disbelief

and restored faith

to the verse,

to us

passeth away
frail, our words
shall play the parts

what will be
hath not limits
where we are
must we ever be

turnin’ an eye to the past
inconsolable otherwise
i keep lookin’
at that moment

Hugo said,
aimer c’est agir

shall we

“C’est ici le combat
du jour et de la nuit…
Je vois de la lumière noire”
this is the battle
between day and night…
i see black light

what makes night
within us
may leave stars…
come make night
with me

jouir en bien
literally,
enjoy in good
idiomatically…
well, come with me
and together
we will find out

after all,
time gits away

time, too much perhaps,
spent turnin’ an eye
towards the past
the broken trail behind
the chances taken
and not taken
not so much
a review of regret
have those stacked
up like cord wood,
dealt and done with

but, there is one
chance not taken,
one regret, one moment
i keep lookin back on

i will see that moment
clearly, for whatever
is left of my days,
you walkin’ away
on that stormy evenin’

a struggle
for damn sure
between light and dark
i see black
time gits away
and life is frail

Christopher Marlowe
An anonymous portrait in Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, believed to show Christopher Marlowe.

Today is the baptismal day of Christopher Marlowe, also known as Kit Marlowe (Canterbury, Kent; baptised 26 February 1564 – 30 May 1593 Deptford, Kent); playwright, poet and translator of the Elizabethan era. Marlowe was the foremost Elizabethan tragedian of his day. He greatly influenced William Shakespeare, who was born in the same year as Marlowe and who rose to become the pre-eminent Elizabethan playwright after Marlowe’s mysterious early death. Marlowe’s plays are known for the use of blank verse and their overreaching protagonists.

A warrant was issued for Marlowe’s arrest on 18 May 1593. No reason was given for it, though it was thought to be connected to allegations of blasphemy—a manuscript believed to have been written by Marlowe was said to contain “vile heretical conceipts”. On 20 May, he was brought to the court to attend upon the Privy Council for questioning. There is no record of their having met that day, however, and he was commanded to attend upon them each day thereafter until “licensed to the contrary”. Ten days later, he was stabbed to death by Ingram Frizer. Whether the stabbing was connected to his arrest has never been resolved.

Verse

Come live with me and be my Love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That hills and valleys, dales and fields,
Or woods or steepy mountain yields.

And we will sit upon the rocks,
And see the shepherds feed their flocks
By shallow rivers, to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.

And I will make thee beds of roses
And a thousand fragrant posies.

The Passionate Shepherd to His Love (unknown date), stanzas 1 and 2

Tamburlaine (c. 1588)

Time passeth swift away;
Our life is frail, and we may die to-day.
- Mycetes, Act I, scene i, line 68

Our swords shall play the orators for us.
- Techelles, Act I, scene ii, line 132

Accurst be he that first invented war.
- Mycetes, Part 1, Act II, scene iv, line 1

Let Earth and Heaven his timeless death deplore,
For both their worths shall equal him no more.
- Amyras, Part 2, Act V, scene iii, lines 252–253

Doctor Faustus (c. 1593)

Che serà, serà:
What will be, shall be.
- Faustus, Act I, scene i, lines 47–58

Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscrib’d
In one self place; but where we are is hell,
And where hell is, there must we ever be.
- Mephistopheles, Act II, scene i, line 118

When all the world dissolves,
And every creature shall be purified,
All places shall be hell that are not heaven.
- Mephistopheles, Act II, scene i, line 120. In the first line, Marlowe references Isaiah in Isaiah 24:19 and 34:4; in the second line, he references Daniel in Daniel 12:10.

Was this the face that launch’d a thousand ships,
And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?
Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss!
- Faustus, Act V, scene i, lines 91–93

Pray for me! and what noise soever ye hear, come not unto me, for nothing can rescue me.
- Faustus, Act V, scene ii, lines 57–58

He that loves pleasure, must for pleasure fall.
- Evil Angel, Act V, scene iv

Hero and Leander (published 1598)

A pleasant-smiling cheek, a speaking eye,
A brow for love to banquet royally.
- First Sestiad

It lies not in our power to love or hate,
For will in us is overruled by fate.
- First Sestiad

Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?
- First Sestiad. The same statement occurs in As You Like It (1600) by William Shakespeare, and a similar one in The Blind Beggar of Alexandria (1596) by George Chapman.

Like untuned golden strings all women are,
Which long time lie untouch’d, will harshly jar.
Vessels of brass, oft handled, brightly shine.
- First Sestiad

All women are ambitious naturally.
- First Sestiad

Love always makes those eloquent that have it.
- Second Sestiad

Above our life we love a steadfast friend.
- Second Sestiad

Victor Hugo
Woodburytype of Hugo by Étienne Carjat, 1876

Today is the birthday of Victor Marie Hugo (Besançon, Doubs; 26 February 1802 – 22 May 1885 Paris); poet, novelist, and dramatist of the Romantic movement. In my opinion, one of the greatest and best-known French writers. Outside France, his best-known works are the novels Les Misérables, 1862, and The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (French: Notre-Dame de Paris), 1831. In France, Hugo is known primarily for his poetry collections, such as Les Contemplations (The Contemplations) and La Légende des siècles (The Legend of the Ages). He produced more than 4,000 drawings and also campaigned for social causes such as the abolition of capital punishment.

Though a committed royalist when he was young, Hugo’s views changed as the decades passed, and he became a passionate supporter of republicanism; his work touches upon most of the political and social issues and the artistic trends of his time. He is buried in the Panthéon in Paris. His legacy has been honoured in many ways, including his portrait being placed on French currency.

Verse

Hélas ! vers le passé tournant un œil d’envie,
Sans que rien ici-bas puisse m’en consoler,
Je regarde toujours ce moment de ma vie
Où je l’ai vue ouvrir son aile et s’envoler!

Je verrai cet instant jusqu’à ce que je meure,
L’instant, pleurs superflus !
Où je criai : L’enfant que j’avais tout à l’heure,
Quoi donc ! je ne l’ai plus !

Alas! turning an envious eye towards the past,
inconsolable by anything on earth,
I keep looking at that moment of my life
when I saw her open her wings and fly away!

I will see that instant until I die,
that instant—too much for tears!
when I cried out: “The child that I had just now—
what! I don’t have her any more!”

C’est ici le combat du jour et de la nuit… Je vois de la lumière noire.

This is the battle between day and night… I see black light.

Aimer, c’est agir

To love is to act
- Last words of his diary, written two weeks before his death, published in Victor Hugo : Complete Writings (1970)

La musique…est la vapeur de l’art. Elle est à la poésie ce que la rêverie est à la pensée, ce que le fluide est au liquide, ce que l’océan des nuées est à l’océan des ondes.
- Music…is the vapour of art. It is to poetry what revery is to thought, what the fluid is to the liquid, what the ocean of clouds is to the ocean of waves.
  - Part I, Book II, Chapter IV

Ce qu’on ne peut dire et ce qu’on ne peut taire, la musique l’exprime.
- Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent.
  - Part I, Book II, Chapter IV

Victor Hugo in 1853

Portrait of “Cosette” by Émile Bayard, from the original edition of Les Misérables (1862)

Among the Rocks on Jersey (1853–55)

Photogravure of Victor Hugo, 1883.

Juliette Droucet

Hugo on his deathbed, 1885

Catafalque below the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, 1 June 1885

Tomb of Victor Hugo at the Panthéon

His faithful mistress, Juliette Drouet, died in 1883, only two years before his own death.

Two days before dying, he left a note with these last words: “Aimer, c’est agir” (To love is to act). Hugo’s death from pneumonia at the age of 83, generated intense national mourning. He was not only revered as a towering figure in literature, he was a statesman who shaped the Third Republic and democracy in France. More than two million people joined his funeral procession in Paris from the Arc de Triomphe to the Panthéon, where he was buried. He shares a crypt within the Panthéon with Alexandre Dumas and Émile Zola.

Hugo left five sentences as his last will, to be officially published:

Je donne cinquante mille francs aux pauvres. Je veux être enterré dans leur corbillard.
Je refuse l’oraison de toutes les Églises. Je demande une prière à toutes les âmes.
Je crois en Dieu.

“I leave 50,000 francs to the poor. I want to be buried in their hearse.
I refuse [funeral] orations of all churches. I beg a prayer to all souls.
I believe in God.”

C’est ici le combat du jour et de la nuit… Je vois de la lumière noire.

This is the battle between day and night… I see black light.
- Last words

Gallery

Crépuscule (“Twilight”), Jersey, 1853–1855.
Ville avec le pont de Tumbledown, (“Town with Tumbledown Bridge”),1847.
Pieuvre avec les initiales V.H., (“Octopus with the initials V.H.”), 1866.
Le phare (“The Lighthouse”)
Gavroche a onze ans, (“Gavroche is eleven years old”).

And today is the birthday of Honoré-Victorin Daumier (February 26, 1808 – February 10, 1879); painter, sculptor, and printmaker, whose many works offer commentary on the social and political life in France, from the Revolution of 1830 to the fall of the second Napoleonic Empire in 1870. He earned a living throughout most of his life producing caricatures and cartoons of political figures and satirizing the behavior of his countrymen in newspapers and periodicals, for which he became well known in his lifetime and is still known today. He was a republican democrat who attacked the bourgeoisie, the church, lawyers and the judiciary, politicians, and the monarchy. He was jailed for several months in 1832 after the publication of Gargantua, a particularly offensive and discourteous depiction of King Louis-Philippe. Daumier was also a serious painter, loosely associated with realism.

Gallery