The Lovers’ Chronicle 20 April – steeped – verse by Pietro Aretino – art by Odilon Redon & Joan Miró

20 April 2024 By Rhett 0 In Random

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

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

i write, steeped in thoughts of you,

the woman who holds the reins

of so much discovery and beauty,

which the beloved well need

who has lived and learned

to cry and laugh, to enjoy

with depth and intensity

callin’ now, languid desire,

listen to her and this

you must have

the things i write

and say here,

about feelin’ again,

and the wonder of this

i know y’all have heard

it all before

but i do so

not because i think

i am supposed to,

not out of expectation

and damn sure not

because i want somethin’

i do so because

it is how i feel

this is my purpose

i know not else how to be

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

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

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

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)
Ophelia, 1900–1905 (Dian Woodner Collection)
Baroness Robert de Domecy, 1900 (Musée d’Orsay)
Vase of Flowers, ca. 1900-10, (Princeton University Art Museum)
Flower Clouds, 1903 (The Art Institute of Chicago)
The Buddha, 1904 (Musée d’Orsay)
Initiation to Study: Two Young Ladies (vers 1905) Dallas Museum of Art, oil on canvas 93 x 65 cm
Apparition, 1905-10, (Princeton University Art Museum)
Flowers, 1909
Chariot of Apollo, c. 1910 (Musée d’Orsay)
Portrait of Violette Heymann, 1910 (Cleveland Museum of Art)
Saint Sebastian, 1910–1912, (National Gallery of Art)
Coquille, 1912 (Musée d’Orsay)
Pandora, c. 1914 (Metropolitan Museum of Art)
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
- The mosaic Pla de l’Os by the artist on the Ramblas of Barcelona
- Interior views of Museo Reina Sofía
- Hakone open-air museum
- Grande Maternite
- Sculpture at Fundació Joan Miró
Mac Tag