The Lovers’ Chronicle 16 February – time – birth of Octave Mirbeau – photography by Edward S. Curtis

16 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,

straight to joe jackson
got it tick, tick, tickin’ in my head
“Do the days pass faster now”
what about this debate:
is it a friend passin’
along with us,
or a stalkin’ enemy
“I’ll take friend for $2000 Alex”
you should to balance us
cuz Carson said it best,
the endless idiot
“As long as now is the…”

a tree covered hilltop
against the Carolina sky
where the scene is painted
by two who have waited
a very long time

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

I was going to say you should go get a cup of coffee. Shut your door turn your volume down and pull up the ” you should leave your hat on” video. In the movie nothing seemed to matter but the two of them. She couldn’t even do her job. Sometime I wish I could get lost in that.

Today is the birth and death day of Octave Mirbeau (Trévières, Normandy 16 February 1848 – 16 February 1917 Paris); novelist, art critic, travel writer, pamphleteer, journalist and playwright, who achieved celebrity in Europe and great success among the public, whilst still appealing to the literary and artistic avant-garde with highly transgressive novels that explored violence, abuse and psychological detachment. His work has been translated into 30 languages.

Mirbeau ghostwrote ten novels, including three for the Swiss writer Dora Melegari. He made his own literary debut with Le Calvaire (Calvary, 1886), in which writing allowed him to overcome the traumatic effects of his devastating liaison with the ill-reputed Judith Vinmer (1858-1951), renamed Juliette Roux in the novel.

In 1888, Mirbeau published L’Abbé Jules (Abbé Jules), the first pre-Freudian novel written under the influence of Dostoyevsky to appear in French literature; the text featured two main characters: l’abbé Jules and Father Pamphile. In Sébastien Roch (1890) (English translation: Sébastien Roch, 2000), Mirbeau purged the traumatic effects of his experience as a student at a Jesuits school in Vannes. In the novel, the 13-year-old Sébastien is sexually abused by a priest at the school and the abuse destroys his life.

Mirbeau then underwent an existential and literary crisis, yet during this time, he still published in serial form a pre-existentialist novel about the artist’s fate, Dans le ciel (In the Sky), introducing the figure of a painter (Lucien), directly modeled on Van Gogh. In the aftermath of the Dreyfus Affair — which exacerbated Mirbeau’s pessimism — he published two novels judged to be scandalous by self-styled paragons of virtue: Le Jardin des supplices (Torture Garden (1899) and Le Journal d’une femme de chambre (Diary of a Chambermaid) (1900), then Les Vingt et un Jours d’un neurasthénique (The twenty one days of a neurasthenic person) (1901). In the process of writing these works, Mirbeau unsettled traditional novelistic conventions, exercising collage techniques, transgressing codes of verisimilitude and fictional credibility, and defying the hypocritical rules of propriety.

Mirbeau lies buried in the Passy Cemetery, in the 16th arrondissement of Paris. See The Final Footprint for more.

Quotes

”Ceux qui se taisent disent plus de choses que ceux qui parlent tout le temps.”

And today is the birthday of Edward Sherriff Curtis (Whitewater, Wisconsin; February 19, 1868 – October 19, 1952 Los Angeles); photographer and ethnologist whose work focused on the American West and on Native American people. Sometimes referred to as the “Shadow Catcher”, Curtis traveled the United States to document and record the dwindling ways of life of various native tribes through photographs and audio recordings.

Gallery