The Lovers’ Chronicle 28 March – certainty – death of Virginia Woolf – art by Raphael & Abraham Walkowitz – birth of Nelson Algren

28 March 2024 By Rhett 1 In Love, Poems, Random, Songs

Dear Zazie, Here is today’s Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag. What is your certainty? Rhett

The Lovers’ Chronicle

Dear Muse,

this has a dark origin,
shockin’ i know,
from the note Virginia Woolf left
before she drowned herself
“Such a tragic, desperate act
I can see there was drama
you couldn’t resist”
as we have discussed,
because you had your share
of darkness, writin’ verse
was the only way i had
to poke it and prod it
“Processing it is important ”
and i have to the point
that can be said,
with certainty,
here with you
is the only probin’
that needs doin’

i understand
absolutely
i do not condone it
but i understand

i never got close
i could see
but i did not get close

now
that can be said
sittin’ here
lookin’ back
at the trail of verse

had that not
been there…

all bets are off
and i might have
found some rocks

the effect is all consumin’

time spent searchin’ words

to send to you

nights at best with you

over and over again

just bein’, not havin’ to be

without such pleasure

bein’ wanted…

can you see here, now,

all we will ever need

journeys end

in lovers meetin’

to be with you

just a man who

tried to believe

again

a blessin’

and a curse…

not that kinda madly

the good kind;

devotedly,

unconditionally

however it will be had

on my favorite kinda night

and verse, lit by the light

of a fire pit and memories

that will sustain

i go there because
you are there
because it is
the only place
i know with certainty

sometimes the specter comes
She is silent but She knows
i have done this to myself

She feels, She sees
it is not me anymore,
but the hurt itself
that moves her

i stop and think
how to forget
how can this be

for if i choose
what will that take of me
cannot touch, make conscious
it would cost too much

but to look
and not turn away,
to see and all
hesitation gone,
i god, i think,
it has to be here
it has to include you

of somethin’
for certain

a quest
part way there
at least
though it was
a helluva late start

time at last
to focus
on what matters

origins, vision,
inspiration, desire
the reasons for bein’

and of course,
you

the effect is all consumin’
time spent searchin’ words
to send to you

and survivin’
nights at best, in dreams, with you
weavin’ in and out of time and places
laughin’, livin’, and lovin’,

over and over again
just bein’, not havin’ to be apart
such pleasure bein’ wanted…
until the totem wobbles

can you see
here, now, all you will ever need
journeys end in lovers meetin’

to be without you,
what to come is certainty
in delay there lies no comfort
mine is a time that endures not

dancin’ with madness

on the trails i roam,
go through this again
recover and go again
i hear verse; concentrate
so i am doin’ what seems best to do
you see

what i want to say…

i owe to you
whatever hope I have
and only you could have been
but it is as is and comes down

to degrees of acceptance
and the certainty

Virginia_Woolf_1927 Today marks the anniversary of the death of Virginia Woolf (25 January 1882 – 28 March 1941). She put on her overcoat, filled its pockets with stones, walked into the River Ouse near her home in Lewes, East Sussex, England, and drowned, at the age of 59.

So what happens when the Dark Muse demands and you combine a love note from Woolf, another Inception reference, Shakespeare and Woolf’s suicide note? Read on……

Certainty Of Nothin’

The effect of you was all consumin’
All day I would search my most charmin’ words
To send to you in the longest letters
All night in dreams, explorin’ each other
Weavin’ in and out of time and places
Tossin’ ourselves together, undressin’,

Playin’, teasin’, flirtin’, laughin’, livin’,
And lovin’, over and over again
Just bein’, not havin’ to be apart
Such enormous pleasure bein’ wanted…
Then the totem would wobble and topple

On what path and when did you roam
Can you see your true love is here
Here, now, all you will ever need
No need to look any further
Journeys end in lovers meetin’,
This I know and commit to you

Hereafter, to be without you,
Without mirth and without laughter
What is to come is certainty
In delay there lies no comfort,
Then come kiss me, if only once
Mine is a time that endures not

At last, I feel certain I have gone mad
I feel I cannot go through this again
And this time, there is no recoverin’
I hear voices; I cannot concentrate
So I am doin’ what seems best to do
I cannot fight any longer, you see
I cannot write properly, cannot read
What I want to say is I owe to you
Whatever happiness I had in life
And if anybody could have saved me
It would have been you, but all is gone
From me but the certainty of nothin’

Today is the birthday of painter and architect of the High Renaissance, Raphael (Urbino 6 April or 28 March 1483 – 6 April 1520 Rome). Together with Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, he forms the traditional trinity of great masters of that period. Raphael was quite productive, running an unusually large workshop and, despite his death at 37, leaving a large body of work. Many of his works are found in the Vatican Palace, where the frescoed Raphael Rooms were the central, and the largest, work of his career. Perhaps, the best known work is The School of Athens in the Vatican Stanza della Segnatura. After his early years in Rome, much of his work was executed by his workshop from his drawings.

His career falls naturally into three phases and three styles, first described by Giorgio Vasari: his early years in Umbria, then a period of about four years (1504–1508) absorbing the artistic traditions of Florence, followed by his last hectic and triumphant twelve years in Rome, working for two Popes and their close associates.

Gallery

Portrait of Guidobaldo da Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino from 1482 to 1508, c.1507. (Uffizi Gallery)

The Mond Crucifixion, 1502–3, very much in the style of Perugino (National Gallery)
The Coronation of the Virgin 1502–3 (Pinacoteca Vaticana)
The Wedding of the Virgin, Raphael’s most sophisticated altarpiece of this period (Pinacoteca di Brera)
Saint George and the Dragon, a small work (29 x 21 cm) for the court of Urbino (Louvre)

Madonna of the Pinks, c. 1506–7, National Gallery, London

The Ansidei Madonna, c. 1505, beginning to move on from Perugino
The Madonna of the Meadow, c. 1506, using Leonardo’s pyramidal composition for subjects of the Holy Family.
Saint Catherine of Alexandria, 1507, possibly echoes the pose of Leonardo’s Leda
Deposition of Christ, 1507, drawing from Roman sarcophagi

The Fire in the Borgo, 1514, Stanza dell’incendio del Borgo, painted by the workshop to Raphael’s design

The Miraculous Draught of Fishes, 1515, one of the seven remaining Raphael Cartoons for tapestries for the Sistine Chapel (Victoria and Albert Museum)

Triumph of Galatea, 1512, his only major mythology, for Chigi’s villa (Villa Farnesina)
Il Spasimo 1517, brings a new degree of expressiveness to his art. (Museo del Prado))
Transfiguration, 1520, unfinished at his death. (Pinacoteca Vaticana))
The Holy Family, 1518 (Louvre)

Portrait of Elisabetta Gonzaga, c. 1504
Portrait of Pope Julius II, c. 1512
Portrait of Bindo Altoviti, c. 1514
Portrait of Baldassare Castiglione, c. 1515

Lucretia, engraved by Raimondi after a drawing by Raphael.

Study for soldiers in this Resurrection of Christ, ca 1500.
Red chalk study for the Villa Farnesina Three Graces
Sheet with study for the Alba Madonna and other sketches
Developing the composition for a Madonna and Child

Drawing for a Sibyl in the Chigi Chapel.
The Massacre of the Innocents, engraving by (?) Raimondi from a design by Raphael. The version “without fir tree”.
Judgement of Paris, still influencing Manet, who used the seated group in his most famous work.
Galatea, engraving after the fresco in the Villa Farnesina

La Fornarina, Raphael’s mistress

Self-portraits

Probable self-portrait drawing by Raphael in his teens
Self-portrait, Raphael in the background, from The School of Athens
Possible Self-portrait with a friend, c. 1518
Portrait of a Young Man, 1514, Lost during the Second World War. Possible self-portrait by Raphael

Sistine Madonna (1512)

Today is the birthday of Abraham Walkowitz (Siberia March 28, 1878 – January 27, 1965 New York City); painter, usually grouped in with early American Modernists working in the Modernist style. Walkowitz’ close relationship with the 291 Gallery and Alfred Stieglitz placed him at the center of the modernist movement. His early abstract cityscapes and collection of over 5,000 drawings of his muse, Isadora Duncan also remain significant art historical records.

Walkowitz’s dedication to Duncan as a subject extended well past her untimely death in 1927. The works reveal shared convictions toward modernism and breaking links with the past. In 1958, Walkowitz told Lerner, “She (Duncan) had no laws. She did not dance according to the rules. She created. Her body was music. It was a body electric.”

Gallery

Les Baigneuses

Isadora duncan

Nelson Algren
Nelson Algren, 1956

Today is the birthday of Nelson Algren (born Nelson Ahlgren Abraham, Detroit, Michigan, March 28, 1909 – May 9, 1981 Long Island, New York); writer. Perhaps best known for The Man with the Golden Arm, a 1949 novel that won the National Book Award and was adapted as the 1955 film of the same name. The lover of French writer Simone de Beauvoir, he is featured in her novel The Mandarins, set in Paris and Chicago.

He is considered a sort of bard of those down on their luck, based on this book and his novel A Walk on the Wild Side (1956). The latter was adapted as the 1962 film of the same name (directed by Edward Dmytryk, screenplay by John Fante).

Nelson Algren married Amanda Kontowicz in 1937. He had met her at a party celebrating the publication of his book, Somebody in Boots. They eventually would divorce and remarry before divorcing a second and final time.

Algren and Beauvoir summered together in Algren’s cottage in the lake front community of Miller Beach, Indiana, and also traveled to Latin America together in 1949. In her novel The Mandarins (1954), Beauvoir wrote of Algren (who is ‘Lewis Brogan’ in the book):

At first I found it amusing meeting in the flesh that classic American species: self-made leftist writer. Now, I began taking an interest in Brogan. Through his stories, you got the feeling that he claimed no rights to life and that nevertheless he had always had a passionate desire to live. I liked that mixture of modesty and eagerness.

Algren expected the world’s most famous feminist to love him in a traditional way, with the man being dominant, but Beauvoir’s relationship with Jean-Paul Sartre dominated her life. Algren and Beauvoir eventually became disenchanted with each other.

In 1965, he met Betty Ann Jones while teaching at the University of Iowa’s Writers Workshop. They married that year and divorced in 1967. According to Kurt Vonnegut, who taught with him at Iowa in 1965, Algren’s “enthusiasm for writing, reading and gambling left little time for the duties of a married man.”

In 1980, he moved to a house in Sag Harbor, Long Island where he died of a heart attack at home.

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[...] songs and it played a part in the Poem of the Day. Since I became fascinated with the movie…

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