Dear Zazie,  Here is today’s Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag dedicated to his muse.  Follow us on twitter @cowboycoleridge.  Are you without someone?  Rhett

The Lovers’ Chronicle

Dear Muse,

© copyright 2021 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

© copyright 2020 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

givin’ breath to thoughts
to git us to dream

music, moods projected
onto the canvas
arouse sensations
capture these impressions
improvise what we want
a dance on the plains
the light, perspective
the colors, a song

us, on and on

© copyright 2019 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

blizzard comin’ on
plenty wood, food
now just waitin’
and creatin’

the song of you
still matters most
with or without you
still have not much more
than a song to offer
and a promise
to not shy away
from the highest highs
and the lowest lows
and to do all i can
to explore all aspects
of beauty and sorrow
and take you along

© copyright 2018 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

came to the Dakotas,
to the solitude,
the faraway
came out here
with not much more
than a song of you
to sustain me

this is how it is
without you…

open range, miles
from the nearest comfort
campfire, moonlit night
my journals, sketch book
my thoughts,
my visions of you

this is how it is
without you

from sunup
to sundown
and in my dreams
matters not
where i ride or roam
there is but one constant
you on my mind

this is how it is…

© copyright 2017 mac tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved
The Song of the Day is “Without You” by the Dixie Chicks.  We do not own the rights to this song.  No copyright infringement intended.  All rights reserved by the producer/artist.

Lord Byron
Portrait by Richard Westall

Today is the birthday of George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, FRS (London 22 January 1788 – 19 April 1824 Missolonghi, Aetolia, Ottoman Empire (present-day Aetolia-Acarnania, Greece)), commonly known as Lord Byron; poet, politician, and a leading figure in the Romantic movement.  Among his best-known works are the lengthy narrative poems, Don Juan and Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, and the short lyric poem, “She Walks in Beauty”.

In my opinion, Byron is as one of the greatest British poets.  He travelled extensively across Europe, especially in Italy, where he lived for seven years.  Later in his brief life, Byron joined the Greek War of Independence fighting the Ottoman Empire, for which many Greeks revere him as a national hero.

He died in 1824 at the age of 36 from a fever contracted while in Missolonghi.  Often described as the most flamboyant and notorious of the major Romantics, Byron was both celebrated and castigated in life for his aristocratic excesses, including huge debts, numerous love affairs – with men as well as women, as well as rumours of a scandalous liaison with his half-sister – and self-imposed exile.

Byron fell in love with Mary Chaworth, whom he met while at school, and she was the reason he refused to return to Harrow in September 1803.  His mother wrote, “He has no indisposition that I know of but love, desperate love, the worst of all maladies in my opinion. In short, the boy is distractedly in love with Miss Chaworth.”  In Byron’s later memoirs, “Mary Chaworth is portrayed as the first object of his adult sexual feelings.”

Ah! Sure some stronger impulse vibrates here,
Which whispers friendship will be doubly dear
To one, who thus for kindred hearts must roam,
And seek abroad, the love denied at home.

Lord Byron by Henry Pierce Bone

• 

  Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1819

• 

  Mary Shelley, 1840

• 

  Claire Clairmont

Byron left England in April 1816— forever as it turned out.  (Despite his dying wishes, however, his body was returned for burial in England.)  He journeyed through Belgium and continued up the Rhine river.  In the summer of 1816 he settled at the Villa Diodati by Lake Geneva, Switzerland, with his personal physician, the young, brilliant and handsome John William Polidori.  There Byron befriended the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Shelley’s future wife Mary Godwin.  He was also joined by Mary’s stepsister, Claire Clairmont, with whom he had had an affair in London.

Frontispiece to a c. 1825 edition of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage

Kept indoors at the Villa Diodati by the “incessant rain” of “that wet, ungenial summer” over three days in June, the five turned to reading fantastical stories, including Fantasmagoriana, and then devising their own tales.  Mary Shelley produced what would become Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus, and Polidori was inspired by a fragmentary story of Byron’s, Fragment of a Novel, to produce The Vampyre, the progenitor of the romantic vampire genre.

Byron’s story fragment was published as a postscript to Mazeppa; he also wrote the third canto of Childe Harold.  Byron wintered in Venice, pausing his travels when he fell in love with Marianna Segati, in whose Venice house he was lodging, and who was soon replaced by 22-year-old Margarita Cogni; both women were married.  Cogni could not read or write, and she left her husband to move into Byron’s Venice house.  Their fighting often caused Byron to spend the night in his gondola; when he asked her to leave the house, she threw herself into the Venetian canal.

Italy

Byron’s visit to San Lazzaro as depicted by Ivan Aivazovsky (1899)

In 1817, he journeyed to Rome.  On returning to Venice, he wrote the fourth canto of Childe Harold.  About the same time, he sold Newstead and published Manfred, Cain and The Deformed Transformed.  The first five cantos of Don Juan were written between 1818 and 1820, during which period he made the acquaintance of the 18 year old Countess Guiccioli, who found her first love in Byron, who in turn asked her to elope with him.

Led by the love for this local aristocratic and married young Teresa Guiccioli, Byron lived in Ravenna between 1819 and 1821.  Here he continued Don Juan and wrote the Ravenna Diary and My Dictionary and Recollections.  Of Byron’s lifestyle in Ravenna we know more from Shelley, who documented some of its more colourful aspects in a letter: “Lord Byron gets up at two. I get up, quite contrary to my usual custom … at 12. After breakfast we sit talking till six. From six to eight we gallop through the pine forest which divide Ravenna from the sea; we then come home and dine, and sit up gossiping till six in the morning. I don’t suppose this will kill me in a week or fortnight, but I shall not try it longer. Lord B.’s establishment consists, besides servants, of ten horses, eight enormous dogs, three monkeys, five cats, an eagle, a crow, and a falcon; and all these, except the horses, walk about the house, which every now and then resounds with their unarbitrated quarrels, as if they were the masters of it… . [P.S.] I find that my enumeration of the animals in this Circean Palace was defective … . I have just met on the grand staircase five peacocks, two guinea hens, and an Egyptian crane. I wonder who all these animals were before they were changed into these shapes.”

“Byron’s Grotto” in Porto Venere, Italy, named in his honour, because according to a local legend he meditated here and drew inspiration from this place for his literary works.

 

Byron attended the funeral of Shelley, which was orchestrated by Trelawney after Williams and Shelley drowned in a boating accident on 8 July 1822.  His last Italian home was Genoa, where he was still accompanied by the Countess Guiccioli, and the Blessingtons, providing the material for Lady Blessington’s work: Conversations with Lord Byron, an important text in the reception of Byron in the period immediately after his death.

Lord Byron in Albanian dress painted by Thomas Phillips in 1813. Venizelos Mansion, Athens (the British Ambassador’s residence)

Byron was living in Genoa when, in 1823 he accepted overtures for his support from representatives of the movement for Greek independence from the Ottoman Empire.  At first, Byron did not wish to abandon his twenty-two year old mistress Countess Teresa Guiccioli who had abandoned her husband to live with him; ultimately Guiccioli’s father, Count Gamba was allowed to leave his exile in the Romagna under the condition that his daughter return to him, without Byron.  On 16 July, Byron left Genoa arriving at Kefalonia in the Ionian Islands on 4 August.

The reception of Lord Byron at Missolonghi

On 15 February 1824, Byron fell ill, and the usual remedy of bloodletting weakened him further.  He made a partial recovery, but in early April he caught a violent cold which therapeutic bleeding, insisted on by his doctors, aggravated.  It is suspected this treatment, carried out with unsterilised medical instruments, may have caused him to develop sepsis. He developed a violent fever, and died in Missolonghi on 19 April.

Lord Byron on His Deathbed, by Joseph Denis Odevaere (c. 1826). Oil on canvas, 166 × 234.5 cm Groeningemuseum, Bruges. (Note the sheet covering his misshapen right foot.)

Lord Tennyson would later recall the shocked reaction in Britain when word was received of Byron’s death.  The Greeks mourned Lord Byron deeply, and he became a hero.  The national poet of Greece, Dionysios Solomos, wrote a poem about the unexpected loss, named To the Death of Lord Byron.  Βύρων (“Vyron”), the Greek form of “Byron”, continues in popularity as a masculine name in Greece, and a town near Athens is called Vyronas in his honour.

Byron’s body was embalmed, but the Greeks wanted some part of their hero to stay with them.  According to some sources, his heart remained at Missolonghi.  His other remains were sent to England (accompanied by his faithful manservant, “Tita”) for burial in Westminster Abbey, but the Abbey refused for reason of “questionable morality”.  Huge crowds viewed his coffin as he lay in state for two days in London.  He is buried at the Church of St. Mary Magdalene in Hucknall, Nottinghamshire.  A marble slab given by the King of Greece is laid directly above Byron’s grave.

In 1969, 145 years after Byron’s death, a memorial to him was finally placed in Westminster Abbey.  The memorial had been lobbied for since 1907: The New York Times wrote, “People are beginning to ask whether this ignoring of Byron is not a thing of which England should be ashamed … a bust or a tablet might be put in the Poets’ Corner and England be relieved of ingratitude toward one of her really great sons.”

• 

  Lady Caroline Lamb

• 

  Jane Elizabeth Scott “Lady Oxford”

• 

  Augusta Leigh

• 

  Anne Isabella Milbanke in 1812 by Charles Hayter

In 1812, Byron embarked on a well-publicised affair with the married Lady Caroline Lamb that shocked the British public.  She had spurned the attention of the poet on their first meeting, subsequently giving Byron what became his lasting epitaph when she famously described him as “mad, bad and dangerous to know”.  This did not prevent him from pursuing her.

Byron eventually broke off the relationship, and moved swiftly on to others (such as that with Lady Oxford), but Lamb never entirely recovered, pursuing him even after he tired of her. She was emotionally disturbed, and lost so much weight that Byron sarcastically commented to her mother-in-law, his friend Lady Melbourne, that he was “haunted by a skeleton”.  She began to call on him at home, sometimes dressed in disguise as a pageboy, at a time when such an act could ruin both of them socially.  One day, during such a visit, she wrote on a book at his desk, “Remember me!”  As a retort, Byron wrote a poem entitled Remember Thee! Remember Thee! which concludes with the line “Thou false to him, thou fiend to me”.

Eventually Byron began to court Lady Caroline’s cousin Anne Isabella Milbanke (“Annabella”), who refused his first proposal of marriage but later accepted him.  Milbanke was a highly moral woman, intelligent and mathematically gifted; she was also an heiress.  They married at Seaham Hall, County Durham, on 2 January 1815.

The marriage proved unhappy.  He treated her poorly.  On 16 January 1816, Lady Byron left him.  On 21 April, Byron signed the Deed of Separation.  Rumours of marital violence, adultery with actresses, incest with Augusta Leigh, and sodomy were circulated, assisted by a jealous Lady Caroline.  In a letter, Augusta quoted him as saying: “Even to have such a thing said is utter destruction and ruin to a man from which he can never recover.”  That same year Lady Caroline published her popular novel Glenarvon, wherein Lord Byron was portrayed as the seedy character Lord Ruthven.

Reproduction of Portrait of Lord Byron by Thomas Phillips

The Bride of Abydos or Selim and Zuleika. Painting, 1857, by Eugène Delacroix depicting Lord Byron’s work.

The Dream (1816)

• And both were young, and one was beautiful.
  • Stanza 2.

• And to his eye
  There was but one beloved face on earth,
  And that was shining on him.
  • Stanza 2.

• She was his life,
  The ocean to the river of his thoughts,
  Which terminated all.
  • Stanza 2; this can be compared to: “She floats upon the river of his thoughts”, Henry W. Longfellow, The Spanish Student, act ii, scene 3.

• A change came o’er the spirit of my dream.
  • Stanza 3.

• And they were canopied by the blue sky,
  So cloudless, clear, and purely beautiful
  That God alone was to be seen in heaven.
  • Stanza 4

Today is the birthday of Francis Picabia (Paris; born Francis-Marie Martinez de Picabia, 22 January 1879 – 30 November 1953 Paris); avant-garde painter, poet and typographist.  After experimenting with Impressionism and Pointillism, Picabia became associated with Cubism.  His highly abstract planar compositions were colourful and rich in contrasts.  He was one of the early major figures of the Dada movement in the United States and in France.  He was later briefly associated with Surrealism, but would soon turn his back on the art establishment.

Gallery

Femme a fleur jaune

1929: Transparence – Sphinx

Cocolo

• 

  Hera, c. 1929, oil on cardboard, 105 × 75 cm, private collection

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brooks and dunn, cowboy coleridge, francis picabia, john waite, lord byron, love letter, love poem, love song, missin you, missing you, muse, poem of the day, Rhett, song of the day, the dixie chicks, the lovers almanac, the lovers chronicle, tla, twt, Zazie

Dear Zazie,  Here is today’s Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag dedicated to his muse.  Follow us on twitter @cowboycoleridge.  Are you without the one you want?  Rhett

The Lovers’ Chronicle

Dear Muse,

© copyright 2021 mac tag/cowboycoleridge all rights reserved

© copyright 2020 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

another train rollin’ by
plains blanketed in snow
and memories that sustain

of course want remains
in the sleepless hours

in many ways
paint such a phrase

perhaps you feel it
an exquisite
bit of reality

remains quite stark
an essential
clarion call

cannot make this up
no pretendin’ here
breakin’ down
followin’ the words

this mornin’ finds
no less depressed
but no more
the height and depth,
wonderin’ now
at realization

all thoughts
goin’ on like this
and comin’ back
determined,
in every way,
for this alone

© copyright 2019 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

the open plains
blanketed in snow
and thoughts of one
always near

composin’ this verse
to you in the sleepless
hours of the night

seems kinda lame
yet so essential
to say i miss you

do you feel it
if only i could
adorn this space
with somethin’
more becomin’ of you

remains quite stark
more than i imagined
prepared or not
so now, this plea
how essential
memories have become

givin’ myself away
you have no idea
bein’ a pretender,
brought to a fine art,
but i cannot with you
please forgive
this desperateness

just followin’ the words

this mornin’ found me
as they each do,
with a certain sort
of acceptance
of what lies ahead

i do want you
but wantin’
is nothin’
up against
not meant to be

and that is no excuse
for lackin’ a zest for life
there will be none of that
just might have to be done solo

supposin’ you are gittin’ bored
my goin’ on like this

only here is the thing
you keep comin’ back
in my dreams
and the words
are determined
to come as well

© copyright 2018 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

Today is the birthday of Harriet Backer (Holmestrand, Norway 21 January 1845 – 25 March 1932 Oslo); painter who achieved recognition in her own time and was a pioneer among female artists both in the Nordic countries and in Europe generally. She is best known for her detailed interior scenes, communicated with rich colors and moody lighting.

Backer produced just around 180 works of art mostly based upon local themes. Her work was both slow and thorough. In 1880, she debuted in Paris with the painting Solitude, and in 1883 exhibited Blått interiør at the Autumn Exhibition in Oslo. She was influenced by impressionism. She never belonged to any school but her work is often compared with that of her contemporary Eilif Peterssen (1852–1928). Backer worked in the tradition of realism in painting, where she is regarded as both a naturalist and an early Impressionist.

Gallery

Evening interior

Solitude

Now a love story…

Vita Sackville-West

On this day in 1926, 33-year-old novelist Vita Sackville-West wrote an impassioned love letter to 43-year-old novelist Virginia Woolf.  Vita was a distinguished English writer, had been married for more than a decade, loved her husband, and was attracted to other women.  All things she had in common with Woolf.

The two women had met through the Bloomsbury Group of London, which gathered to discuss things like philosophy, literature, and art.  Their romance started cautiously, but by the time Vita composed this letter four years after they had met, she was deeply smitten, languishin’ and lovesick.  She was on a bumpy train ride from Milan to Trieste when she wrote:

“I am reduced to a thing that wants Virginia. I composed a beautiful letter to you in the sleepless nightmare hours of the night, and it has all gone: I just miss you, in a quite simple desperate human way. You, with all your un-dumb letters, would never write so elementary a phrase as that; perhaps you wouldn’t even feel it. And yet I believe you’ll be sensible of a little gap. But you’d clothe it in so exquisite a phrase that it would lose a little of its reality. Whereas with me it is quite stark: I miss you even more than I could have believed; and I was prepared to miss you a good deal. So this letter is just really a squeal of pain. It is incredible how essential to me you have become. I suppose you are accustomed to people saying these things. Damn you, spoilt creature; I shan’t make you love me any the more by giving myself away like this — But oh my dear, I can’t be clever and stand-offish with you: I love you too much for that. Too truly. You have no idea how stand-offish I can be with people I don’t love. I have brought it to a fine art. But you have broken down my defences. And I don’t really resent it. However I won’t bore you with any more.

We have re-started, and the train is shaky again. I shall have to write at the stations — which are fortunately many across the Lombard plain. …The waterfalls in Switzerland were frozen into solid iridescent curtains of ice, hanging over the rock; so lovely. And Italy all blanketed in snow.

We’re going to start again. I shall have to wait till Trieste tomorrow morning. Please forgive me for writing such a miserable letter.”

Virginia Woolf 1927

The following January, a year later, Vita wrote to Virginia:

“My darling, I hoped I should wake up less depressed this morning, but I didn’t. I went to bed last night as black as a sweep. The awful dreariness of Westphalia makes it worse: factory towns, mounds of slag, flat country, and some patches of dirty snow. … Why aren’t you with me? Oh, why? I do want you so frightfully.  I want more than ever to travel with you; it seems to me now the height of my desire, and I get into despair wondering how it can ever be realised. Can it, do you think? Oh my lovely Virginia, it is dreadful how I miss you, and everything that everybody says seems flat and stupid.

I do hope more and more that you won’t go to America, I am sure it would be too tiring for you, and anyway I am sure you wouldn’t like it. …   So we bundle along over Germany, and very dull it is — Surely I haven’t lost my zest for travel? No, it is not that; it is simply that I want to be with you and not with anybody else — But you will get bored if I go on saying this, only it comes back and back till it drips off my pen — Do you realise that I shall have to wait for over a fortnight before I can hear from you? poor me. I hadn’t thought of that before leaving, but now it bulks very large and horrible. What may not happen to you in the course of a fortnight? you may get ill, fall in love, Heaven knows what.

I shall work so hard, partly to please you, partly to please myself, partly to make the time go and have something to show for it. I treasure your sudden discourse on literature yesterday morning, — a send-off to me, rather like Polonius to Laertes. It is quite true that you have had infinitely more influence on me intellectually than anyone, and for this alone I love you.”

Shortly after she received this letter, Woolf came up with the idea for a new novel, inspired by Vita, who often liked to dress up in men’s clothes.  That novel was Orlando: A Biography (1928), about a transgender writer who lives for hundreds of years.  Vita’s son Nigel wrote, “The effect of Vita on Virginia is all contained in “Orlando” … in which she explores Vita, weaves her in and out of the centuries, tosses her from one sex to the other, plays with her, dresses her in furs, lace and emeralds, teases her, flirts with her, drops a veil of mist around her.”  He calls Orlando “the longest and most charming love letter in literature.”

The two ended their affair in the late 1920s but stayed friends until Woolf’s death by suicide in 1941.  There is a book out from Oxford University Press that chronicles their relationship: Vita and Virginia: The Work and Friendship of V. Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf (1993), written by Suzanne Raitt.

Missin’ You (Still)

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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,

© copyright 2021 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

trouble sleepin’ again
“Is there something
on your mind?”
you mean,
besides the ongoin’
ache of missin’ you

© copyright 2019 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

Thanks for inspiration for this one goes to you, the Van Halen song, “Best of Both Worlds” and the novel “Revolutionary Road” by Richard Yates. A must read book, in my opinion.

i will never forget
the first time i saw you
you were different
than all the others
you were special
you still are

i will keep writin’ that
till you understand…

each day, time spent
reflectin’ on choices
made and not made
where it all went wrong

or was gittin’ it wrong
just what had to happen
to finally git it right

i want to be
i want to feel
everything

i knew what i was livin’ on
and it was not enough
“I need more than just words can say
I need everything this life can give me.”

knowin’ what you have
knowin’ what you need
knowin’ what
you can do without

most want in
i just wanted out
to live again
i saw another other future
and i could not stop seein’ it

years spent runnin’
towards or from
emptiness

not sure which

a friend says
i am runnin’ towards
a different kinda
emptiness

perhaps
but i know what lies
in this emptiness

to live life as if it matters
is that too much to ask
to plumb the depths
of every emotion
to chase the light
and the voices
and the visions
of the past
to at least try
to understand

© copyright 2018 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

end of a long hard week
plenty work, not enough sleep
and missin’ what cannot be had
pain wellin’ up inside
just one way
to make it go away

rememberin’…

lookin’ for,
for somethin’
i knew not what

i found,
more than i
could have imagined

you

you, my canvas
upon which
i will sketch a love
unlike anything
you have ever known

© copyright 2016 mac tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved

Yvette Guilbert
Yvette Guilbert in 1913

Today is the birthday of Yvette Guilbert (Paris; 20 January 1865 – 3 February 1944 in Aix-en-Provence); cabaret singer and actress of the Belle Époque.  Guilbert debuted at the Variette Theatre in 1888.  She eventually sang at the popular Eldorado club, then at the Jardin de Paris before headlining in Montmartre at the Moulin Rouge in 1890.  The English painter William Rothenstein described this performance in his first volume of memoirs:

“One evening Lautrec came up to the rue Ravignan to tell us about a new singer, a friend of Xanrof, who was to appear at the Moulin Rouge for the first time… We went; a young girl appeared, of virginal aspect, slender, pale, without rouge. Her songs were not virginal – on the contrary; but the frequenters of the Moulin were not easily frightened; they stared bewildered at this novel association of innocence with Xanrof’s horrific double entente; stared, stayed and broke into delighted applause.”

She was a favorite subject of artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, who made many portraits and caricatures of Guilbert and dedicated his second album of sketches to her.  Sigmund Freud attended performances, including one in Vienna, and called her a favorite singer.  George Bernard Shaw wrote a review highlighting her novelty.

In 1895 she married Dr M. Schiller.  Guilbert made successful tours of England and Germany, and the United States in 1895–1896.  She performed at Carnegie Hall in New York City.

In later years, Guilbert turned to writing about the Belle Époque and in 1902 two of her novels (La Vedette and Les Demi-vieilles) were published.  Guilbert became a respected authority on her country’s medieval folklore and on 9 July 1932 was awarded the Legion of Honor as the Ambassadress of French Song.

Yvette Guilbert died in 1944, aged 79. She was interred in the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.

Twenty years later her biography, That Was Yvette: The Biography of a Great Diseuse by Bettina Knapp and Myra Chipman (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1964) was released.

Gallery

By Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

Guilbert, by Théophile Steinlen

• 

  By Jules Chéret, 1891 Art Nouveau poster for the famous Parisian chanteuse

• 

  By Toulouse-Lautrec

• 

  1894: Singing “Linger Longer, Loo”

• 

  by Toulouse-Lautrec

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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,

© copyright 2021 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

redemption
big word carryin’
a heavy load

would not be
too far wrong
to suggest
some serious time
should be spent
on my knees
seekin’ nothin’ else

so, we get this
all i have left

not searchin’
for higher ground

just tryin’ to find
the ground
where i belong

© copyright 2019 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

the struggle within
continues between
the man who has given up
and the man who still believes

di tale amor
words can hardly describe

stride la vampa
the flames were roarin’
and when they were
the choices made
did not work out
so well, but now,
a certain sort
of welcomed
clarity has come

vedi le fosche notturne
see, the night sky
deserto sulla terra
alone with this vision
if that is meant to be
then so shall it be

but, supposin’,
for the sake of my friends
if nothin’ else, that hope
does exist, then
la luce di un sorriso
the light of a smile,
how could i resist

ah sì, ben mio, coll’essere
ah yes, in bein’ yours
ai nostri monti ritorneremo
to our mountains we shall return

© copyright 2018 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

This is how you help me.  I have always wanted to write somethin’ called “Without You”.  There are so many good songs with that title. I even like Van Halen’s song and Motley Crue‘s (I leave absolutely no stone not turned in my continuin’ and never endin’ search for inspiration and beauty).  This started comin’ the other day when I was drivin’, as they so often do.  I have escaped the past few days by allowin’ myself the luxury of imaginin’ bein’ with the one and this is what I saw:

Without You

Today is the birthday of philosopher Auguste Comte (19 January 1798 – 5 September 1857).  His muse was Clotilde de Vaux.  They met in October 1844 and Comte fell in love with her.  Clotilde was married but her husband had abandoned her.  Yet bein’ a devote Catholic, she firmly rejected Comte.  She agreed to follow up with their correspondence and Comte’s passionate love kept growin’ until Clotilde suddenly died of tuberculosis a year later.  Comte was highly impressed by her moral superiority and he was inspired to form the secular religion, Religion of Humanity.

Edgar Allan Poe
1849 “Annie” daguerreotype of Poe

Today is the birthday of Edgar Allan Poe (Boston; January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849 Baltimore); writer, editor, and literary critic.  Perhaps best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre.  He is widely regarded as a central figure of Romanticism in the United States and American literature as a whole, and he was one of the country’s earliest practitioners of the short story. Poe is generally considered the inventor of the detective fiction genre and is further credited with contributing to the emerging genre of science fiction.  He was the first well-known American writer to try to earn a living through writing alone, resulting in a financially difficult life and career.

In January 1845, Poe published his poem “The Raven” to instant success.  His wife died of tuberculosis two years after its publication.  Poe died at age 40; the cause of his death is unknown and has been variously attributed to alcohol, brain congestion, cholera, drugs, heart disease, rabies, suicide, tuberculosis, and other agents.

Poe and his works influenced literature in the United States and around the world.  Poe and his work appear throughout popular culture in literature, music, films, and television.  The Mystery Writers of America present an annual award known as the Edgar Award for distinguished work in the mystery genre. 

In 1835, Poe, then 26, obtained a license to marry his 13-year-old cousin Virginia Clemm. They were married for eleven years until her early death, which may have inspired some of his writing.

One evening in January 1842, Virginia showed the first signs of consumption, now known as tuberculosis, while singing and playing the piano. Poe described it as breaking a blood vessel in her throat.  She only partially recovered. Poe began to drink more heavily under the stress of Virginia’s illness.  Biographers and critics often suggest that Poe’s frequent theme of the “death of a beautiful woman” stems from the repeated loss of women throughout his life, including his wife.

Poe was increasingly unstable after his wife’s death.  He attempted to court poet Sarah Helen Whitman who lived in Providence, Rhode Island. Their engagement failed, purportedly because of Poe’s drinking and erratic behavior.  Poe then returned to Richmond and resumed a relationship with his childhood sweetheart Sarah Elmira Royster.

On October 3, 1849, Poe was found delirious on the streets of Baltimore, “in great distress, and… in need of immediate assistance”, according to Joseph W. Walker who found him.  He was taken to the Washington Medical College where he died on Sunday, October 7, 1849 at 5:00 in the morning.  Poe was never coherent long enough to explain how he came to be in his dire condition and, oddly, was wearing clothes that were not his own.  He is said to have repeatedly called out the name “Reynolds” on the night before his death, though it is unclear to whom he was referring.  Some sources say that Poe’s final words were “Lord help my poor soul”.  All medical records have been lost, including his death certificate.

Illustration by French impressionist Édouard Manet for the Stéphane Mallarmé translation of “The Raven”, 1875. Digitally restored.

1848 “Ultima Thule” daguerreotype of Poe

Quotes

• A dark unfathom’d tide
  Of interminable pride —
  A mystery, and a dream,
  Should my early life seem.
  • “Imitation”, Tamerlane and Other Poems (1827).

• O, human love! thou spirit given,
  On Earth, of all we hope in Heaven!
  • “Tamerlane”, l. 177 (1827).

• The happiest day — the happiest hour
  My sear’d and blighted heart hath known,
  The highest hope of pride and power,
  I feel hath flown.
  • “The Happiest Day”, st. 1 (1827).

• Sound loves to revel in a summer night.
  • Al Aaraaf (1829).

• Years of love have been forgot
  In the hatred of a minute.
  • To M——— (1829), reported in Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

• From childhood’s hour I have not been
  As others were — I have not seen
  As others saw — I could not bring
  My passions from a common spring —
  From the same source I have not taken
  My sorrow — I could not awaken
  My heart to joy at the same tone —
  And all I lov’d — I lov’d alone —
  • “Alone”, l. 1-8 (written 1829, published 1875).

• And the cloud that took the form
  (When the rest of Heaven was blue)
  Of a demon in my view.
  • “Alone”, l. 20-22.

• Hast thou not torn the Naiad from her flood,
  The Elfin from the green grass, and from me
  The summer dream beneath the tamarind tree?
  • “Sonnet. To Science”, l. 12-14 (1829). — “.

• Helen, thy beauty is to me
  Like those Nicean barks of yore,
  That gently, o’er a perfumed sea,
  The weary, wayworn wanderer bore
  To his own native shore.
• On desperate seas long wont to roam,
  Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,
  Thy Naiad airs have brought me home
  To the glory that was Greece
  And the grandeur that was Rome.
  • “To Helen”, st. 1-2 (1831).

• Yes, Heaven is thine; but this
  Is a world of sweets and sours;
  Our flowers are merely—flowers.
  • “Israfel”, st. 7 (1831).

• If I could dwell
  Where Israfel
  Hath dwelt, and he where I,
  He might not sing so wildly well
  A mortal melody,
  While a bolder note than this might swell
  From my lyre within the sky.
  • “Israfel”, st. 8 (1831).

• Come! let the burial rite be read — the funeral song be sung! —
  An anthem for the queenliest dead that ever died so young —
  A dirge for her the doubly dead in that she died so young.
  • “Lenore”, st. 1 (1831).

• Vastness! and Age! and Memories of Eld!
  Silence! and Desolation! and dim Night!
  I feel ye now — I feel ye in your strength.
  • “The Coliseum”, st. 2 (1833).

• Thou wast that all to me, love,
  For which my soul did pine —
  A green isle in the sea, love,
  A fountain and a shrine,
  All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers,
  And all the flowers were mine.
  • “To One in Paradise”, st. 1 (1834).

• And all my days are trances,
  And all my nightly dreams
  Are where thy grey eye glances,
  And where thy footstep gleams —
  In what ethereal dances,
  By what eternal streams.
  • “To One In Paradise”, st. 4; variants of this verse read “where thy dark eye glances”. ).

• In the greenest of our valleys
  By good angels tenanted,
  Once a fair and stately palace —
  Radiant palace — reared its head.
  • “The Haunted Palace” (1839), st. 1.

• This—all this—was in the olden
  Time long ago.
  • “The Haunted Palace” (1839), st. 2.

• While, like a ghastly rapid river,
  Through the pale door
  A hideous throng rush out forever
  And laugh — but smile no more.
  • “The Haunted Palace” (1839), st. 5.).

• They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.
  • “Eleonora” (1841).

• While the angels, all pallid and wan,
  Uprising, unveiling, affirm
  That the play is the tragedy, “Man”,
  And its hero the Conqueror Worm.
  • “The Conqueror Worm” (1843), st. 5.
  • .By a route obscure and lonely,
    Haunted by ill angels only,
    Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT,
    On a black throne reigns upright,
    I have reached these lands but newly
    From an ultimate dim Thule —
    From a wild weird clime that lieth, sublime,
    Out of SPACE — out of TIME.
    • “Dreamland”, st. 1 (1845).
• Thou wouldst be loved? — then let thy heart
  From its present pathway part not!
  Being everything which now thou art,
  Be nothing which thou art not.
  So with the world thy gentle ways,
  Thy grace, thy more than beauty,
  Shall be an endless theme of praise,
  And love — a simple duty.
  • “To Frances S. Osgood” (1845).
  • Gaily bedight,
    A gallant knight,
    In sunshine and in shadow,
    Had journeyed long,
    Singing a song,
    In search of Eldorado.
    • “Eldorado”, st. 1 (1849).

• “Over the Mountains
  Of the Moon,
  Down the Valley of the Shadow,
  Ride, boldly ride,”
  The shade replied, —
  “If you seek for Eldorado!”
  • “Eldorado”, st. 4.
• You are not wrong, who deem
  That my days have been a dream;
  Yet if hope has flown away
  In a night, or in a day,
  In a vision, or in none,
  Is it therefore the less gone?
  All that we see or seem
  Is but a dream within a dream.
  • “A Dream Within a Dream” (1849).
• O God! Can I not save
  One from the pitiless wave?
  Is all that we see or seem
  But a dream within a dream?
  • “A Dream Within A Dream” (1849).
• Thank Heaven! the crisis —
  The danger is past,
  And the lingering illness
  Is over at last —
  And the fever called “Living”
  Is conquered at last.
  • “For Annie”, st. 1 (1849).
• Keeping time, time, time,
  In a sort of Runic rhyme,
  To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells
  From the bells, bells, bells, bells,
  Bells, bells, bells.
  • “The Bells”, st. 1 (1849).
• Hear the mellow wedding bells
  Golden bells!
  What a world of happiness their harmony foretells
  Through the balmy air of night
  How they ring out their delight!
  • “The Bells”, st. 2 (1849).

The City in the Sea (1831)

• Lo! Death has reared himself a throne
  In a strange city lying alone
  Far down within the dim West,
  Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best
  Have gone to their eternal rest.
  • St. 1.

• So blend the turrets and shadows there
  That all seem pendulous in air,
  While from a proud tower in the town
  Death looks gigantically down.
  • St. 2.

• And when, amid no earthly moans,
  Down, down that town shall settle hence,
  Hell, rising from a thousand thrones,
  Shall do it reverence.
  • St. 5.

The Raven (1844)

• Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
  Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
  While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
  As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
  • Stanza 1.

• Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December;
  And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
  • Stanza 2.

• Sorrow for the lost Lenore —
  For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore —
  Nameless here for evermore.
  • Stanza 2.

• And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
  Thrilled me — filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before.
  • Stanza 3.

• Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing,
  Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.
  • Stanza 5.

• Perched upon a bust of Pallas, just above my chamber door,—
  Perched, and sat, and nothing more.
  • Stanza 7.

• “Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly shore —
  Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night’s Plutonian shore!”
  Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”
  • Stanza 8.

• “Doubtless,” said I, “what it utters is its only stock and store,
  Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster
  Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore.
  • Stanza 11

• “Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil! — prophet still, if bird or devil!”
  • Stanza 15.

• “Get thee back into the tempest and the Night’s Plutonian shore!
  Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!
  Leave my loneliness unbroken! — quit the bust above my door!
  Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!”
  Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”
  • Stanza 17.

• And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
  On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door.
  • Stanza 18.

• And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
  Shall be lifted — nevermore!
  • Stanza 18.

Ulalume (1847)

• The skies they were ashen and sober;
  The leaves they were crisped and sere —
  The leaves they were withering and sere;
  It was night in the lonesome October
  Of my most immemorial year.
  • St. 1.

• Here once, through an alley Titanic,
  Of cypress, I roamed with my Soul —
  Of cypress, with Psyche, my Soul.
  • St. 2.

• Thus I pacified Psyche and kissed her,
  And tempted her out of her gloom.
  • St. 8.

Annabel Lee (1849)

• It was many and many a year ago,
  In a kingdom by the sea,
  That a maiden lived whom you may know
  By the name of Annabel Lee; —
  And this maiden she lived with no other thought
  Than to love and be loved by me.
  • St. 1.

• I was a child and she was a child,
  In this kingdom by the sea,
  But we loved with a love that was more than love —
  I and my Annabel Lee —
  With a love that the wingèd seraphs of Heaven
  Coveted her and me.
  • St. 2.

• But our love it was stronger by far than the love
  Of those who were older than we —
  Of many far wiser than we —
  And neither the angels in Heaven above
  Nor the demons down under the sea
  Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
  Of the beautiful Annabel Lee
  • St. 5.

• In her sepulcher there by the sea —
  In her tomb by the sounding sea.
  • St. 6.

Paul Cézanne
Paul Cézanne, c. 1861

And today is the birthday of Paul Cézanne (Aix-en-Provence; 19 January 1839 – 22 October 1906 Aix-en-Provence); artist and Post-Impressionist painter.  Cézanne’s often repetitive, exploratory brushstrokes are highly characteristic and clearly recognizable.  He used planes of colour and small brushstrokes that build up to form complex fields.  The paintings convey Cézanne’s intense study of his subjects.

Cézanne formed the bridge between late 19th-century Impressionism and the early 20th century’s new line of artistic enquiry, Cubism.  Both Matisse and Picasso reportedly said that Cézanne “is the father of us all.”

One day, Cézanne was caught in a storm while working in the field.  Only after working for two hours under a downpour did he decide to go home; but on the way he collapsed.  He was taken home by a passing driver.  His old housekeeper rubbed his arms and legs to restore the circulation; as a result, he regained consciousness.  On the following day, he intended to continue working, but later on he fainted; the model with whom he was working called for help; he was put to bed, and he never left it.  He died a few days later, on 22 October 1906 of pneumonia and was buried at the Saint-Pierre Cemetery in his hometown of Aix-en-Provence.

Gallery 

Les Baigneuses

Femme au Chapeau Vert (Woman in a Green Hat. Madame Cézanne.) 1894–1895

Les joueurs de cartes (The Card Players), 1892–95, oil on canvas, 60 x 73 cm, Courtauld Institute of Art, London

Les Grandes Baigneuses, 1898–1905: the triumph of Poussinesque stability and geometric balance

Still Life with a Curtain (1895) illustrates Cézanne’s increasing trend towards terse compression of forms and dynamic tension between geometric figures.

Harlequin, 1888–90, oil on canvas, National Gallery of Art

Pyramid of Skulls, c. 1901, The dramatic resignation to death informs several still life paintings Cézanne made in his final period between 1898 and 1905 which take the skulls as their subject. Today the skulls themselves remain in Cézanne’s studio in a suburb of Aix-en-Provence

Madame Cézanne (Hortense Fiquet, 1850–1922) in a Red Dress (1888–90), oil on canvas, 116.5 x 89.5 cm, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

• 

  A Modern Olympia
  1873–1874
  Musee d’Orsay, Paris

  

  The Riaux Valley near L’Estaque
  1883

• 

  The Bay of Marseilles, view from L’Estaque
  1885

• 

  Jas de Bouffan 1885–1887 Minneapolis Institute of Art

• 

  Bather
  1885–1887
  Museum of Modern Art

• 

  The Neighborhood of Jas de Bouffan
  1885-1887
  Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Thannhauser Collection

• 

  Mardi Gras (Pierrot et Arlequin)
  1888
  Pushkin Museum, Moscow

• 

  Boy in a Red Waistcoat
  1888–1890
  National Gallery of Art

• 

  Madame Cézanne in the Greenhouse
  1890–1892
  Musée de l’Orangerie

• 

  The House with the Cracked Walls
  1892–1894
  Metropolitan Museum of Art

• 

  Maison Maria on the way to the Château Noir
  1895
  Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas

• 

  Château Noir
  1900–1904
  National Gallery of Art, Washington, US

• 

  Mont Sainte-Victoire and Château Noir
  1904 – 1905
  Bridgestone Museum of Art, Tokyo, Japan

• 

  The Bathers
  1898–1905
  National Gallery, London, UK

• 

  Still Life with an Open Drawer
  1867 – 1869
  Musée d’Orsay

• 

  Self-portrait
  1895

• 

  Three Pears, ca. 1888-90, Henry and Rose Pearlman Collection on long-term loan to the Princeton University Art Museum

• 

  Pine Tree in Front of the Caves above Château Noir, ca. 1900, Princeton University Art Museum
• 

  Study of a Skull, 1902–04, Henry and Rose Pearlman Collection on long-term loan to the Princeton University Art Museum

• 

  Still Life with Carafe, Bottle, and Fruit, 1906, Henry and Rose Pearlman Collection on long-term loan to the Princeton University Art Museum

• 

  Portrait of Achille Emperaire
  1868
  Musée d’Orsay

• 

  Paul Alexis reading to Émile Zola
  1869–1870
  São Paulo Museum of Art
• 

  Madame Cézanne
  1885–87
  Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
• 

  Madame Cézanne in a Red Dress
  c. 1890-1894
  São Paulo Museum of Art

• 

  Portrait of Gustave Geffroy
  1895
  Musée d’Orsay

  

  Woman with a Coffeepot
  Oil on canvas
  c. 1895
  Musée d’Orsay.

On this day in 1853 – Giuseppe Verdi’s opera Il trovatore receives its premiere performance in Rome.

Anna Netrebko (detail) as Leonora at the Salzburg Festival 2014

Il trovatore (“The Troubadour”) is an opera in four acts by Verdi to an Italian libretto largely written by Salvadore Cammarano, based on the play El trovador (1836) by Antonio García Gutiérrez.

The premiere took place at the Teatro Apollo in Rome, and it soon became popular throughout the operatic world, a success due to Verdi’s work over the previous three years.  It began with his January 1850 approach to Cammarano with the idea of Il trovatore.  There followed, slowly and with interruptions, the preparation of the libretto, first by Cammarano until his death in mid-1852 and then with the young librettist Leone Emanuele Bardare, which gave the composer the opportunity to propose significant revisions.

Today, in its Italian version, Trovatore is given frequently and is a staple of the standard operatic repertoire.

Librettist Salvadore Cammarano

tenor Carlo Baucardé, sang Manrico

Mezzo Emilia Goggi, sang Azucena

Baritone Giovanni Guicciardi sang di Luna

Synopsis

Act 1: The Duel

Scene 1: The guard room in the castle of Luna (The Palace of Aljafería, Zaragoza, Spain)

Ferrando, the captain of the guards, orders his men to keep watch while Count di Luna wanders restlessly beneath the windows of Leonora, lady-in-waiting to the Princess. Di Luna loves Leonora and is jealous of his successful rival, a troubadour whose identity he does not know. In order to keep the guards awake, Ferrando narrates the history of the count (Aria: Di due figli vivea padre beato / “The good Count di Luna lived happily, the father of two sons”): many years ago, a gypsy was wrongfully accused of having bewitched the youngest of the di Luna children; the child had fallen sick and for this the gypsy had been burnt alive as a witch, her protests of innocence ignored. Dying, she had commanded her daughter Azucena to avenge her, which she did by abducting the baby. Although the burnt bones of a child were found in the ashes of the pyre, the father refused to believe in his son’s death; dying, he commanded his firstborn, the new Count di Luna, to seek Azucena.

Scene 2: Garden in the palace of the princess

Leonora confesses her love for the Troubadour to her confidante, Ines (Tacea la notte placida / “The peaceful night lay silent”… Di tale amor / “A love that words can scarcely describe”), in which she tells how she fell in love with a mystery knight, victor at a tournament: lost track of him when a civil war broke out: then encountered him again, in disguise as a wandering troubadour who sang beneath her window. When they have gone, Count di Luna enters, intending to pay court to Leonora himself, but hears the voice of his rival, in the distance: (Deserto sulla terra / “Alone upon this earth”). Leonora in the darkness briefly mistakes the count for her lover, until the Troubadour himself enters the garden, and she rushes to his arms. The Count challenges his rival to reveal his true identity, which he does: Manrico, a knight now outlawed and under death sentence for his allegiance to a rival prince. Manrico in turn challenges him to call the guards, but the Count regards this encounter as a personal rather than political matter, and challenges Manrico instead to a duel over their common love. Leonora tries to intervene, but cannot stop them from fighting (Trio: Di geloso amor sprezzato / “The fire of jealous love” ).

Act 2: The Gypsy Woman

Scene 1: The gypsies’ camp

The gypsies sing the Anvil Chorus: Vedi le fosche notturne / “See! The endless sky casts off her sombre nightly garb…”. Azucena, the daughter of the Gypsy burnt by the count, is still haunted by her duty to avenge her mother (Aria: Stride la vampa / “The flames are roaring!”). The Gypsies break camp while Azucena confesses to Manrico that after stealing the di Luna baby she had intended to burn the count’s little son along with her mother, but overwhelmed by the screams and the gruesome scene of her mother’s execution, she became confused and threw her own child into the flames instead (Aria: Condotta ell’era in ceppi / “They dragged her in bonds”).

Plácido Domingo (di Luna), Anna Netrebko (Leonora), Francesco Meli (Manrico), Salzburg Festival 2014, act 2, sc. 2

Manrico realises that he is not the son of Azucena, but loves her as if she were indeed his mother, as she has always been faithful and loving to him – and, indeed, saved his life only recently, discovering him left for dead on a battlefield after being caught in ambush. Manrico tells Azucena that he defeated di Luna in their earlier duel, but was held back from killing him by a mysterious power (Duet: Mal reggendo / “He was helpless under my savage attack”): and Azucena reproaches him for having stayed his hand then, especially since it was the Count’s forces that defeated him in the subsequent battle of Pelilla. A messenger arrives and reports that Manrico’s allies have taken Castle Castellor, which Manrico is ordered to hold in the name of his prince: and also that Leonora, who believes Manrico dead, is about to enter a convent and take the veil that night. Although Azucena tries to prevent him from leaving in his weak state (Ferma! Son io che parlo a te! / “I must talk to you”), Manrico rushes away to prevent her from carrying out this intent.

Scene 2: In front of the convent

Di Luna and his attendants intend to abduct Leonora and the Count sings of his love for her (Aria: Il balen del suo sorriso / “The light of her smile” … Per me ora fatale / “Fatal hour of my life”). Leonora and the nuns appear in procession, but Manrico prevents di Luna from carrying out his plans and takes Leonora away with him, although once again leaving the Count behind unharmed, as the soldiers on both sides back down from bloodshed, the Count being held back by his own men.

Act 3: The Son of the Gypsy Woman

Today’s ruin of the castle Castellar near Zaragoza

Scene 1: Di Luna’s camp Di Luna and his army are attacking the fortress Castellor where Manrico has taken refuge with Leonora (Chorus: Or co’ dadi ma fra poco / “Now we play at dice”). Ferrando drags in Azucena, who has been captured wandering near the camp. When she hears di Luna’s name, Azucena’s reactions arouse suspicion and Ferrando recognizes her as the supposed murderer of the count’s brother. Azucena cries out to her son Manrico to rescue her and the count realizes that he has the means to flush his enemy out of the fortress. He orders his men to build a pyre and burn Azucena before the walls.

Scene 2: A chamber in the castle

Inside the castle, Manrico and Leonora are preparing to be married. She is frightened; the battle with di Luna is imminent and Manrico’s forces are outnumbered. He assures her of his love (Aria, Manrico: Ah sì, ben mio, coll’essere / “Ah, yes, my love, in being yours”), even in the face of death. When news of Azucena’s capture reaches him, he summons his men and desperately prepares to attack (Stretta: Di quella pira l’orrendo foco / “The horrid flames of that pyre”). Leonora faints.

Act 4: The Punishment

Scene 1: Before the dungeon keep

Manrico has failed to free Azucena and has been imprisoned himself. Leonora attempts to free him (Aria: D’amor sull’ali rosee / “On the rosy wings of love”; Chorus & Duet: Miserere / “Lord, thy mercy on this soul”) by begging di Luna for mercy and offers herself in place of her lover. She promises to give herself to the count, but secretly swallows poison from her ring in order to die before di Luna can possess her (Duet: Mira, d’acerbe lagrime / “See the bitter tears I shed”).

Scene 2: In the dungeon

Manrico and Azucena are awaiting their execution. Manrico attempts to soothe Azucena, whose mind wanders to happier days in the mountains (Duet: Ai nostri monti ritorneremo / “Again to our mountains we shall return”). At last the gypsy slumbers. Leonora comes to Manrico and tells him that he is saved, begging him to escape. When he discovers she cannot accompany him, he refuses to leave his prison. He believes Leonora has betrayed him until he realizes that she has taken poison to remain true to him. As she dies in agony in Manrico’s arms she confesses that she prefers to die with him than to marry another (Trio: Prima che d’altri vivere / “Rather than live as another’s”). The count has heard Leonora’s last words and orders Manrico’s execution. Azucena awakes and tries to stop di Luna. Once Manrico is dead, she cries: Egli era tuo fratello! Sei vendicata, o madre. / “He was your brother … You are avenged, oh mother!”

Geraldine Farrar as Manon

And today is the premiere date of Manon; an opéra comique in five acts by Jules Massenet to a French libretto by Henri Meilhac and Philippe Gille, based on the 1731 novel L’histoire du chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut by the Abbé Prévost. It was first performed at the Opéra-Comique in Paris with sets designed by Eugène Carpezat (act 1), Auguste Alfred Rubé and Philippe Chaperon (acts 2 and 3), and Jean-Baptiste Lavastre (act 4).

Prior to Massenet’s work, Halévy (Manon Lescaut, ballet, 1830) and Auber (Manon Lescaut, opéra comique, 1856) had used the subject for musical stage works. Massenet also wrote a one-act sequel to Manon, Le portrait de Manon (1894), involving the Chevalier des Grieux as an older man.

The composer worked at the score of Manon at his country home outside Paris and also at a house at The Hague once occupied by Prévost himself.

Manon is Massenet’s most popular and enduring opera and, having “quickly conquered the world’s stages”, it has maintained an important place in the repertory since its creation. It is the quintessential example of the charm and vitality of the music and culture of the Parisian Belle Époque. In 1893 an opera by Giacomo Puccini entitled Manon Lescaut, and based on the same novel was premiered and has also become popular.

Mac Tag

L’amour pour principe et l’ordre pour base; le progrès pour but (Love as a principle and order as the basis; Progress as the goal). – Auguste Comte

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edgar allan poe, giuseppe verdi, il trovatore, paul cezanne, the lovers almanac, the lovers chronicle

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,

© copyright 2021 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

i seek that i may discover
what it is to feel

blessed
greater pain
sorrow more intense
conscious life
tremblin’

and dreams
form what wants to be

deep enough
no, not yet
deeper still
further in
lie the answers

not else matters
everything
must bow to this

© copyright 2019 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

the reward is all
for one so brave
to enter

the pull is strong
and comfortin’
feels more and more
like the best destiny

voices from the past
surround, infuse
so weary, perhaps too
not givin’ up, per se
but need has been
so long neglected

yet, so much to offer
for one
if you can hear
i speak to thee
my heart

by the stars above,
so tired and cold
snow stretches
across the plains
darkness, all can be seen

what did Shakespeare
write of dreams and desire
and a kiss from a most
constant heart

would that but come
chimes at midnight toll
bring respite of a sort
dreams of you

© copyright 2018 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

Winter Dream

we will travel by horseback
into the mountains
a warm rendezvous waits
in a cabin in the woods

shut your eyes, to see the dream,
advancin’ shadows of visions,
those swirlin’ memories, a totem spins
realities converge with illusions

then you will feel,
and you will say,
and i will pull you close
and we will take our time
findin’ that place
for those who travel this far…

© copyright 2017 mac tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved

Today is the birthday of Aleksandra Aleksandrovna Ekster (Aleksandra Aleksandrovna Grigorovich; Białystok, in the Grodno Governorate of the Russian Empire (now Poland) 18 January 1882 – 17 March 1949 Paris suburb of Fontenay-aux-Roses), also known as Alexandra Exter; painter (Cubo-Futurist, Suprematist, Constructivist) and designer of international stature who divided her life between Kiev, St. Petersburg, Moscow, Vienna, and Paris.

In 1908, she married a successful Kiev lawyer, Nikolai Evgenyevich Ekster. The Eksters belonged to cultural and intellectual elite of Kiev. She spent several months with her husband in Paris, and there she attended Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Montparnasse. From 1908 to 1924 she intermittently lived in Kiev, St. Petersburg, Odessa, Paris, Rome and Moscow.

Gallery

Three female figures

Woman with birds

Cubist Nude

• 

  Aelita 1924 still
• 

  Aelita
• 

  sketch (Lobanov-Rostovsky coll.)
• 

  sketch (Lobanov-Rostovsky coll.)
• 

  Costume design for Romeo and Juliette 1921
• 

  Drawing, Costume Design for a Boyar, 1921
• 

  Three women figures

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Dear Zazie,   Here is today’s Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag dedicated to his muse.  Follow us on twitter @cowboycoleridge.  Are you sleepin’ in a bed of stones?  Do you dream of someone in a bed of roses?  Rhett

The Lovers’ Chronicle 

Dear Muse,

© copyright 2021 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

Pale Love, Pale Rider

herein
circle of shadows,
the darkenin’ hills,
where the sage
no longer blooms,
nor anything else
speaks as an omen

heavy borne
unmoved
by touch
but,

appears,
now and then,
drawin’ thoughts
from any other
and lingers
in this vision
more certainly
than time

© copyright 2019 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

ok, enough already
i git it, you want
a beach scene
dang you are persistent
where, Belize, St. Kitts
how about Nevis…

from the cottage
on the beach
each evenin’ we went
down to the water
to watch the sun
set on the ocean
to watch the light
dance on the water
we would drink
some Havana Club
and make love
‘neath the stars
of the Caribbean…

that which was once ago
that which lies ahead
and what of sorrow
so much left behind
“Yes, but don’t you
spend too much
time without?”
sure, but it is known
and provides
damn good verse

© copyright 2018 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

© copyright 2017 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

This one was inspired by Dante’s “Sestina” and the Song of the Day.  Middle Age poetry meets rock and roll.  ‘Nuff said.  Hope you like,

Roses and Stones

© Cowboy Coleridge

The Song of the Day is “Bed of Roses” by Bon Jovi (C) 1992 The Island Def Jam Music Group

Today is the birthday of Eugène Anatole Carrière (16 January 1849 – 27 March 1906 Paris); French Symbolist artist of the fin-de-siècle period. Carrière’s paintings are best known for their near-monochrome brown palette and their ethereal, dreamlike quality. He was a close friend of Auguste Rodin and his work likely influenced Pablo Picasso’s Blue Period.  He was also associated with such writers as Paul Verlaine, Stéphane Mallarmé and Charles Morice.

Gallery

Femme appuyée sur une table

Se déshabiller de la femme par derrière

Méditation

Alexander Harrison, 1914.

And today is the birthday of Thomas Alexander Harrison (January 17, 1853 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania – October 13, 1930 in Paris, France); marine painter who spent most of his career in France.

Cecilia Beaux spent the summer of 1888 in Concarneau, working in a nearby studio. She painted a portrait of Harrison, and wrote of him:

Harrison, now at the apex of his strength, had already met the “Daemon” and thrown him, in his two big pictures En Arcadie and The Wave. Tall, lanky, and superbly handsome, he easily won all he appeared to care for, and much that he didn’t want; but he had a religion—it was his art; an industry—it was his painting; and he had an untiring faith toward these. He could not be called a Nature-lover, for he loved Nature perhaps only when married to Art. He saw large and wished to paint large. He was enamoured of the successive opaline surfaces of the low incoming waves and strove for the Sea’s gift as it comes to one facing it on long beaches. His method was searching, and had the quality of science, perhaps because he had been trained as an engineer, which profession he abandoned for painting.

Harrison rented a ramshackle cottage near the Brittany town of Beg-Meil, and each evening raced to the dunes to watch the sun set over the ocean. In late-summer 1896, he was joined there by struggling writer Marcel Proust and composer Reynaldo Hahn. He opened their eyes to how light plays on water.

Gallery

Venice by Moonlight (c. 1885)

Solitude (1893), Musée d’Orsay, Paris

En Arcadie (1885), Musée d’Orsay, Paris

• 

  Castles in Spain (1882), Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City.

• 

  Les Amateurs (1882-83), Brauer Museum of Art, Valparaiso, Indiana.

• 

  En Arcadie (1885), Musée d’Orsay, Paris.

• 

  The Wave (1885), Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia.

• 

  Marine (1892-93), Musée des Beaux-Arts, Quimper, France.

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bed of roses, bon jovi, cowboy coleridge, love letter, love poem, love song, muse, poem of the day, Rhett, roses and stones, song of the day, t alexander harrison, the lovers almanac, twt, Zazie

Dear Zazie,  Here is today’s Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag dedicated to his muse.  Follow us on twitter @cowboycoleridge.  What is it with pretendin’?  Are you lookin’ for redemption?  Has it come upon you wave on wave?  Rhett

The Lover’s Chronicle

Dear Muse,

© copyright 2021 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

finished
played all the parts
wearied, free of fear
scan the thoughts
which are all

come redemption
rise up and give

smile
in the tremblin’
thirst
come and slake

quiver
in the present
pale blue eyes
from the ill suffered
just wish to see

© copyright 2019 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

wave of reflection
lyin’ down, once
full-blooded
body, heaved up,
vast desire
longin’ for the days
of fervent wants
among the waves,
wantin’ to kiss the One
longin’ for the time,
when, softly kissin’,
softly caressin’,
lips formin’ a hymn
standin’ on the plain,
hearin’ the wind

answerin’ the call
longin’ for the time
bein’ half of a whole
body through depths,
streams of life
joyfully at her curves,
strong, gentle, insistent

risin’ in the first light
flesh pulsin’ in the wave,
in rhythm and rhyme
still believe in you
flesh, in you i believe, yes,
yes, even after, wish to live
render divine, bring light
slowly ascend, unbound,
from self imposed exile
times come, and gone
might come again

© copyright 2018 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

This one was inspired by Rimbaud’s poem “Soleil et Chair” (Sun and Flesh) and by the Song of the Day.  Hope you enjoy,

Waves Of Redemption

The Song of the Day is “Wave on Wave” by Pat Green.  (C) 2003 Universal Motown Records, a division of UMG Recordings, Inc

Robert Service
Robert W. Service, c. 1905

Today is the birthday of Robert William Service (Preston, Lancashire, England; January 16, 1874 – September 11, 1958 Lancieux, Côtes-d’Armor, France); poet and writer who has often been called “the Bard of the Yukon”.  Perhaps best known for his poems “The Shooting of Dan McGrew” and “The Cremation of Sam McGee”, from his first book, Songs of a Sourdough (1907; also published as The Spell of the Yukon and Other Verses).

Service left Glasgow,Scotland and moved to Canada at the age of 21 and travelled to Vancouver Island, British Columbia with a Buffalo Bill outfit and dreams of becomin’ a cowboy.  He drifted around western North America, “wandering from California to British Columbia,” takin’ and quittin’ a series of jobs: “Starving in Mexico, residing in a California bordello, farming on Vancouver Island and pursuing unrequited love in Vancouver.”  Rhett told me this sounds like his kind of existence.

The unrequited love Service spoke of was Constance MacLean.  He was workin’ as a farm labourer and store clerk when he first met MacLean at a dance in Duncan, British Columbia, where she was visitin’ her uncle.  MacLean lived in Vancouver, on the mainland, so he courted her by mail.  Though he was smitten, MacLean was lookin’ for a man of education and means to support her, so she was not interested.  It appears that after he became successful from his writin’, she agreed to become engaged to him, but after that she became lost to history.

My friend Jett and I could write volumes on unrequited love.  Jett was once in unrequited love with two different women at the same time.

Verse

Just have one more try – it’s dead easy to die,
It’s the keeping-on-living that’s hard.
*ServiceWise & OtherWise (1942)

Oh it is good to ride and run,
To roam the reenwood
wild and free;
To hunt, to idle in the sun,
To leap into the laughing sea
*ServiceWise & OtherWise (1942)

I count each day a little life,
With birth and death complete;
I cloister it from care and strife
And keep it sane and sweet.
*ServiceWise & OtherWise (1942)

Marriage is a bachelor’s punishment for his sins
*ServiceWise & OtherWise (1942)

The world is full of scribbling Nobodies
who think they’re scribbling Somebodies.
*ServiceWise & OtherWise (1942)

Dignity is a tin god in the temple of bunk.
*ServiceWise & OtherWise (1942)

After fifty don’t go to a funeral if you can avoid it.
It’s bad enough to go to your own when times comes.
*ServiceWise & OtherWise (1942)

Wisdom is peace, peace wisdom.
Both are born of a humble heart and a nourished gratitude.
*ServiceWise & OtherWise (1942)

Nature is the nest professor in the end.
*ServiceWise & OtherWise (1942)

Some praise the Lord for Light,
The living spark;
I thank God for the Night
The healing dark.
*ServiceWise & OtherWise (1942)

Aristarkh Lentulov
Aristarkh Vasilyevich Lentulov, c.1930

Today is the birthday of Aristarkh Vasilyevich Lentulov (Nizhny Lomov in Penza Oblast; January 16, 1882 – April 15, 1943 Moscow); avant-garde artist of Cubist orientation who also worked on set designs for the theatre.

Gallery 

Portrait of four

Milk woman

nude

• 

  Skybell (Nebozvon)

• 

  Woman with Guitar, 1913

• 

  Portrait of Artist’s Wife and Daughter, 1915

• 

  Tverskoi Boulevard , 1917

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aristarkh lentulov, cowboy coleridge, love letter, love poem, love song, muse, pat green, poem of the day, Rhett, robert w service, song of the day, the lovers almanac, twt, wave on wave, waves of redemption, Zazie

Dear Zazie,  Here is today’s Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag dedicated to his muse.  Follow us on twitter @cowboycoleridge.  What would you do for love?  What have you done for love?  Rhett

The Lovers’ Chronicle

Dear Muse,

© copyright 2021 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

per amore,
hai mai speso
tutto quanto,

once ago
under the warm
carolina sun…

“So look forward to your notes.”
so enjoy sendin’ ’em
“Seem to be craving your touch.”

workin’ on another for you
“I will be here ever patiently
awaiting your return.”

“The paths we travel,
to find, and keep, happiness.”
tellin’ things never told
“We did not want to stop ourselves.”

“You inspired me to start
reading again; starting
with Lady Chatterly’s Lover.”
excellent choice
i am readin’ Nin, again
she reminds me of you,
smart and beautiful

“Your honest creativity,
your self expression,
never cease to amaze.
You are brave.”
well, trust is all
you know your thoughts
are safe with me
“In all things
I feel safe with you.”

remember how this all started…

woman appears
no other place
but there to be
no other afternoon
but that one

full woman
so alive
years ago tryin’
to imagine
just such a woman

never seen until then
yet known long ago
your smile, your eyes
that laugh washin’
over in waves
carryin’ away grief

the courage
sensual
preoccupied by feelin’s
in response to you,

to be with you
to know again

carry completely,
the part of me
reflected in you
different all over

dreamin’
seein’ in you
wantin’ to be

tremblin’ unsureness,
enhancin’ all given to you
surrender pride and reason

to share
the same fantasies,
the same madness

© copyright 2019 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

“Have you forgotten?”
no of course not
my feelin’s are not dead
just buried deep
i know what it takes
i know what it was like
i remember
all of it

the tender touch
the shared dreams,
shared visions
that feelin’ of bein’
half of a whole

“Don’t you miss it?”
oh, hell yes
but missin’ and wishin’
ain’t gonna make it happen

“So what are you
going to do?”
all i can do,
keep on livin’
in this, voices from the past,
verse centered, light chasin’ vision

someone will come along
and want to join it, or not
all i can do

© copyright 2018 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

This poem was inspired by our letters and the writin’s of the French-Cuban author Anaïs Nin

Per Amore

Per amore, hai mai speso tutto quanto,
La ragione, il tuo orgoglio fino al pianto
For love, have you ever spent everything,
Reason, your pride, up to the tears

Once ago
Under the warm
Carolina sun…

“So look forward to your notes”
So enjoy sendin’ you notes
“Seem to be craving your touch”

Jottin’ notes on what will become,
A new poem dedicated to you
“Shall be here ever patiently”
Awaitin’ your return

“The paths we travel,
To find, and keep, happiness”
Tellin’ things never told
(We did not want to stop ourselves…)

“You inspired me to start
Reading again; starting
With Lady Chatterly’s Lover”
Excellent choice
I am readin’ Nin, again
She reminds me of you,
Smart and beautiful

“Your honest creativity,
Your self expression,
Never cease to amaze
You are brave”
Well, trust is all
You know your thoughts
are safe with me
“In all things
I feel safe with you”

Remember how this all started…

Woman walks in from the darkness
No other place in the world
But there to be
No other afternoon
But that one

Full woman
So alive
Years ago tryin’
To imagine such beauty
Creatin’ an image
Of just such a woman

Never seen until then
Yet known long ago
Your smile, your eyes
That smile, that laugh
Beauty washin’ over in waves
Carryin’ away grief, bringin’ peace

Anything asked would be done
By the end of that afternoon,
No extrication
From such an admiration

The courage of personality,
Sensual, heavy with nuance
Preoccupied in whirlpools
Of feelin’s in response to you,
Seekin’ whatever you wanted

And now, graspin’ the core of you
Wantin’ to run out and tell
Of your beauty, to shout
To the Carolina sky

To be without you
To never know again who I am,
What I am, what I love, what I want
You stirred me

You carry completely, always
The part of me reflected in you
Beauty struck me, dissolved me
Deep down, I am different all over

Dreamed you, wished for your existence
You are the one I have always wanted
Seein’ in you that part of me which is you
Wantin’ to be the best me that can be

Feelin’ compassion
For your tremblin’ unsureness,
Enhancin’ of all given to you
Surrender pride and reason

To be with you is to share
The same fantasies,
The same madness
The same for love

© copyright 2013 mac tag/Cowboy Coleridge

The Song of the Day is “Per Amore” by Andrea Bocelli.  Disclaimer: we do not own the rights to this song.  No copyright infringement intended.

 

Molière
Portrait of Molière by Pierre Mignard (ca. 1658)

Portrait of Molière by Nicolas Mignard

Today is the birthday of Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, known by his stage name Molière (Paris; 15 January 1622 – 17 February 1673 Paris); playwright and actor who is considered to be one of the greatest masters of comedy in Western literature.  Among Molière’s best known works are The Misanthrope, The School for Wives, Tartuffe, The Miser, The Imaginary Invalid, and The Bourgeois Gentleman.

Molière’s hard work in so many theatrical capacities took its toll on his health and, by 1667, he was forced to take a break from the stage.  In 1673, during a production of his final play, The Imaginary Invalid, Molière, who suffered from pulmonary tuberculosis, was seized by a coughing fit and a haemorrhage while playing the hypochondriac Argan.  He finished the performance but collapsed again and died a few hours later.

Verse

Tartuffe (1664)

• Couvrez ce sein que je ne saurais voir.
  Par de pareils objets les âmes sont blessées.
  • Cover that bosom that I must not see:
    Souls are wounded by such things.
  • Act III, sc. ii.
• Le scandale du monde est ce qui fait l’offense,
  Et ce n’est pas pécher que pécher en silence.
  • To create a public scandal is what’s wicked;
    To sin in private is not a sin.
  • Act IV, sc. v.

Le Misanthrope (1666)

• Sur quelque préférence une estime se fonde,
  Et c’est n’estimer rien qu’estimer tout le monde.
  • On some preference esteem is based;
    To esteem everything is to esteem nothing.
  • Act I, sc. i.

• Et c’est une folie, à nulle autre, seconde,
  De vouloir se mêler de corriger le monde.
  • The world will not reform for all your meddling.
    • As published in Le Misanthrope, Molière, tr. Curtis Hidden Page, G.P. Putnam’s Sons (1913), p. 12
  • Variant translation: Of all follies there is none greater than wanting to make the world a better place.
    • As contained in The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations, ed. Robert Andrews, Columbia University Press (1993), p.772 : ISBN 0231071949
  • Act I, sc. 1, lines 155-156 (Philinte)

• C’est un parleur étrange, et qui trouve toujours
  L’art de ne vous rien dire avec de grands discours.
  • He’s a wonderful talker, who has the art
    Of telling you nothing in a great harangue.
  • Act II, sc. iv.

• Que de son cuisinier il s’est fait un mérite,
  Et que c’est à sa table à qui l’on rend visite.
  • He makes his cook his merit,
    And the world visits his dinners and not him.
  • Act II, sc. iv.

• On voit qu’il se travaille à dire de bons mots.
  • You see him laboring to produce bons mots.
  • Act II, sc. iv.

• Plus on aime quelqu’un, moins il faut qu’on le flatte:
  À rien pardonner le pur amour éclate.
  • The more we love our friends, the less we flatter them;
    It is by excusing nothing that pure love shows itself.
  • Act II, sc. iv.

• Les doutes sont fâcheux plus que toute autre chose.
  • Doubts are more cruel than the worst of truths.
  • Act III, sc. v.

• On peut être honnête homme et faire mal des vers.
  • Anyone may be an honorable man, and yet write verse badly.
  • Act IV, sc. i.

• Si de probité tout était revêtu,
  Si tous les cœurs était francs, justes et dociles,
  La plupart des vertus nous seraient inutiles,
  Puisqu’on en met l’usage à pouvoir sans ennui
  Supporter dans nos droits l’injustice d’autrui.
  • If everyone were clothed with integrity,
    If every heart were just, frank, kindly,
    The other virtues would be well-nigh useless,
    Since their chief purpose is to make us bear with patience
    The injustice of our fellows.
  • Act V, sc. i.

• C’est un merveilleux assaisonnement aux plaisirs qu’on goûte que la présence des gens qu’on aime.
  • It is a wonderful seasoning of all enjoyments to think of those we love.
  • Act V, sc. iv.

Amphitryon (1666)

• J’aime mieux un vice commode,
  Qu’une fatigante vertu.
  • I prefer an accommodating vice
    To an obstinate virtue.
  • Act I, sc. iv.

watercolor by Camille Roqueplan

Today is the birthday of Marie Duplessis (born Alphonsine Plessis; Normandy, 1824 – 3 February 1847); courtesan. She was beautiful: petite, dark-haired, and slim. She was working as a laundress at the age of 13 when her father decided that prostitution paid better. He sent her to live with a rich and elderly bachelor in exchange for cash. After a year she went to live with cousins in Paris. For a time she was kept by a restaurant owner who gave her a place to live in exchange for her favors. It was not long before she set her sights higher. She learned to read and write and she studied a wide variety of subjects so that she could hold her own in any social situation. She started appearing at places where the rich and powerful were likely to be and she attracted lots of attention.

She suspected she had tuberculosis when she developed a cough that only got worse. She was treated with everything from spa cures to strychnine to hypnotism. And through it all, she kept dressing up and holding salons and going to the opera. Having grown up in poverty, she could not get enough of luxury. Noblemen from all over Europe would call on her whenever they were in Paris and they brought her expensive trinkets which she sometimes pawned to support herself between lovers.

She began an affair with Alexandre Dumas the younger when they were both 20 years old. He was a struggling writer and he was not able to give her lavish gifts like her other lovers. He kept her with him out in the country for a while, for the sake of her health, but she missed the lively Paris scene and went back to the city after a year. Finally, he could not take it anymore, and broke it off with her, writing in a letter, “I am neither rich enough to love you as I could wish nor poor enough to be loved as you wish.”

Duplessis never answered Dumas’s letter. She was too ill, and she had begun an affair with the composer and pianist Franz Liszt. She wanted Liszt to bring her along on his concert tour, but he was afraid he would catch tuberculosis from her, so he left her behind. He promised to take her to Turkey one day, but he never saw her again. After she died at the age of 23, Liszt regretted not coming to her bedside, and said: “She had a great deal of heart, a great liveliness of spirit and I consider her unique of her kind. […] She was the most complete incarnation of womankind that has ever existed.”

Four months after Duplessis’s death Dumas published his novel The Lady of the Camellias (1848). It is the story of a courtesan named Marguerite Gautier, based on Duplessis. She breaks the heart of her lover — Armand Duval — to spare him from ruin. Dumas wrote it in four weeks. It was later made into a play, which in turn inspired Verdi’s opera La Traviata (1853).

Giovanni Segantini
Self-portrait, 1895

Today is the birthday of Giovanni Segantini (Arco, Trentino, Austrian Empire 15 January 1858 – 28 September 1899 Pontresina, Graubünden, Switzerland); painter known for his large pastoral landscapes of the Alps.  He was one of the most famous artists in Europe in the late 19th century, and his paintings were collected by major museums.  In later life he combined a Divisionist painting style with Symbolist images of nature.

In 1879 he met Luigia Pierina Bugatti (1862–1938), known as “Bice”, and they began a life-long romance.  Although Segantini tried to marry Bice the next year, due to his stateless status he could not be granted the proper legal papers.  In opposition to this bureaucratic technicality, they decided to live together as an unmarried couple.  This arrangement led to frequent conflicts with the Catholic church that dominated the region at this time, and they were forced to relocate every few years to avoid local condemnation.

In spite of these difficulties, Segantini was devoted to Bice throughout his life.  He wrote many love letters when he was away from her, sometime including wild flowers that he had picked.  Once he wrote “Take these unsightly flowers, these violets, as a symbol of my great love, When a spring comes in which I fail to send you such violets, you will no longer find me among the living.”

In 1880 he and Bice moved to Pusiano and soon thereafter to the village of Carella.  It was in this mountain scenery that Segantini began to paint en plein air, preferring to work in the outdoors than in a studio.

Eager to finish the third part of his large tryptich, Nature (Segantini Museum, St. Moritz) Segantini returned to the high altitude of the mountains near Schafberg. The pace of his work, coupled with the high altitude, affected his health, and in mid-September he became ill with acute peritonitis. Two weeks later he died. His son Mario and his partner Bice were with him at his death bed.

Gallery

L’ange de la vie

Segantini in 1890

The Punishment of Lust

Midday in the Alps, 1891. Segantini Museum (de), St. Moritz

Le cattive madri (de) (The Bad Mothers), 1894. Kunsthaus Zürich

• 

  Bagpipers of Brianza, 1883-1885.

• 

  Ave Maria on the Lake, 1886

• 

  Il lavoratore della terra, 1886 (charcoal

• 

  Return from the Woods, 1890

• 

  Alpine landscape, 1893-94

• 

  Love at the Fountain of Life, 1896.

• 

  Vanitas, 1897

• 

  Alpine Triptych: Life, 1898-99

• 

  Alpine Triptych: Nature, 1898-99

• 

  Alpine Triptych: Death, 1898-99

• 

  Segantinihütte (de) (Death place of Giovanni Segantini) on top of the grassy summit

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andrea bocelli, cowboy coleridge, giovanni segantini, love letter, love poem, love song, moliere, muse, per amore, poem of the day, Rhett, song of the day, the lovers almanac, twt, Zazie

Dear Zazie,  Here is today’s Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag dedicated to his muse.  Rhett

The Lovers’ Chronicle 

Dear Muse,

that question has ruled
many days and nights
and if you have paid
attention, the or not
answer prevailed
until now

bein’ there was part
choice and part
circumstance

the latter changed
and the former took
awhile, as you know,
but i came around
and chose to be
here with you

© copyright 2022 mac tag all rights reserved

pre-you
that question
was too easy
to answer

decidedly or not

sure there were
some fleetin’ moments
where i thought maybe
but they were just that
a pause to tighten the cinch
and jump another fence

but now
to be here with you
startin’ to believe,
and feel a need
to change that answer

© copyright 2021 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

silence understood
and how all the same
in what we do

you know

similarities
with color
complete
the canvas

between the things
seen and said
cannot imagine

to be without

will not lose
another moment

think
of nothin’ else

become
more and more
us

© copyright 2019 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

to be or not to be
these are the thoughts
that seize my nights
and govern my days

my friends
i hear the chorus
and i ‘preciate
your concern
but i believe
solitude chooses
some of us
and it becomes
a first, best destiny
……

whoa, hold on playa
it is not that i do not
want your body
it is your mind
that i really want
that is where you keep
your beauty and sorrow
show me that
the rest will follow
or not
……

come, be my Lady Brett
we will sip absinthe
by the fire and talk
of our hopes
and dreams
……

come, enter this vision…
me, white dinner jacket tux
you in a killer black dress
we waltz the night away

© copyright 2018 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

© copyright 2017 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

it is not what she did
this mornin’
at first light

accounts for the smile

it is,
that she plans
to do it again

this evenin’

oh those eyes
ever

lettin’ on

but it is not
exactly

her eyes,
or her mouth

or even
her smile

it is all of her

and i want more

© copyright 2016 mac tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved

Henri Fantin-Latour, Self-portrait (1859), Museum of Grenoble

Today is the birthday of Henri Fantin-Latour (Grenoble, Isère 14 January 1836 – 25 August 1904 Buré, Orne in Lower Normandy); painter and lithographer best known for his flower paintings and group portraits of Parisian artists and writers.

In 1875, Fantin-Latour married a fellow painter, Victoria Dubourg, after which he spent his summers on the country estate of his wife’s family at Buré, Orne in Lower Normandy, where he died.  He was interred in the Cimetière du Montparnasse, Paris, France.

Gallery

Le Soir, musée d’art et d’industrie de Roubaix.

La Muse (Richard Wagner), 1862, lithographie

Naïade, musée de l’Ermitage, Saint-Pétersbourg

A Studio at Les Batignolles, Un atelier aux Batignolles, parody, “Worshipping Manet”, 1870

By the Table

Peonies

The temptation of St. Anthony

Still Life with a Carafe, Flowers and Fruit

Flowers and Fruit

Vase of Flowers

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  Portrait of Charlotte Dubourg, 1882, Paris, musée d’Orsay

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  Édouard Manet, 1867, Art Institute of Chicago

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  Madame Lerolle 1882

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  Dawn

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  Roses

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  Danae

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  Venus and Cupido, (1867).

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  La Lecture, 1877, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon

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  Still Life, primroses, pears and promenates, 1873

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  Vase of Roses 1875

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  Still Life with Flowers and Fruit, 1865

   

Berthe Morisot Madame Eugène Manet
Berthe Morisot, 1875

Today is the birthday of Berthe Marie Pauline Morisot (Bourges, Cher; January 14, 1841 – March 2, 1895 Paris); painter and a member of the circle of painters in Paris who became known as the Impressionists.  In 1864, she exhibited for the first time in the esteemed Salon de Paris.  Sponsored by the government, and judged by Academicians, the Salon was the official, annual exhibition of the Académie des beaux-arts in Paris.  Her work was selected for exhibition in six subsequent Salons until, in 1874, she joined the “rejected” Impressionists in the first of their own exhibitions, which included Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Alfred Sisley.

She was married to Eugène Manet, the brother of her friend and colleague Édouard Manet.

In 1868 Morisot became friends with Édouard Manet who painted several portraits of her, including a striking study in a black veil while in mourning for her father.  Correspondence between them shows affection, and Manet gave her an easel as a Christmas present.

Morisot drew Manet into the circle of painters who became known as the Impressionists.  In 1874, she married Manet’s brother, Eugène.

Morisot died of pneumonia contracted while attending to her daughter Julie’s similar illness, and thus orphaning her at the age of 16.  She was interred in the Cimetière de Passy.

Gallery

Jeune Femme se levant. 1886

Avant le théâtre, 1875-76

Deux jeunes filles 1894

Portrait de Mme Morisot et de sa fille Mme Pontillon ou La lecture (The Mother and Sister of the Artist – Marie-Joséphine & Edma) 1869/70

Grain field, c.1875, Musée d’Orsay

Édouard Manet, Berthe Morisot with a Bouquet of Violets (in mourning for her father), 1872, Musée d’Orsay

 

Jeune Fille au Manteau Vert. Oil on canvas, circa 1894

Bergère nue couchée (Shepherdess – reclining nude)

 

La Coiffure

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  The Harbor at Lorient, 1869, National Gallery of Art

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  Reading, 1873, Cleveland Museum of Art

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  Hanging the Laundry out to Dry, 1875, National Gallery of Art

• 

  Lady at her Toilette, 1875 The Art Institute of Chicago

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  Eugène Manet on the Isle of Wight, 1875, Musée Marmottan Monet

• 

  The Dining Room, c. 1875 National Gallery of Art

• 

  Summer’s Day, 1879, National Gallery, London

• 

  Winter aka Woman with a Muff, 1880, Dallas Museum of Arts

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  The Bath (Girl Arranging Her Hair), 1885–86, Clark Art Institute

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  Julie Manet et son Lévrier Laerte, 1893, Musée Marmottan Monet

Portraits of Berthe Morisot

• 

  Detail from The balcony by Édouard Manet, with the portrait of Berthe in the foreground. 1868.

• 

  Berthe Morisot posing for The Rest. 1870. By Édouard Manet.

• 

  Berthe Morisot on a divan couch, 1872, by Édouard Manet.

• 

  Portrait of Berthe Morisot with a Fan, 1874 by Édouard Manet.

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  Portrait of Berthe Morisot, 1876, by Marcellin Desboutin.

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  Portrait of Berthe Morisot. 1882. By Édouard Manet.

• 

  Berthe Morisot au soulier rose. 1872. By Édouard Manet. Hiroshima Museum of Art.

• 

  Berthe Morisot and her daughter Julie Manet, 1894, by Pierre-Auguste Renoir.

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  Berthe Morisot, 1892, by Renoir.

And on this day in 1900, the premiere of Tosca, an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini to an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa. It premiered at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome. The work, based on Victorien Sardou’s 1887 French-language dramatic play, La Tosca, is a melodramatic piece set in Rome in June 1800, with the Kingdom of Naples’s control of Rome threatened by Napoleon’s invasion of Italy. It contains depictions of torture, murder, and suicide, as well as some of Puccini’s best-known lyrical arias.

Puccini saw Sardou’s play when it was touring Italy in 1889 and, after some vacillation, obtained the rights to turn the work into an opera in 1895. Turning the wordy French play into a succinct Italian opera took four years, during which the composer repeatedly argued with his librettists and publisher. Tosca premiered at a time of unrest in Rome, and its first performance was delayed for a day for fear of disturbances. Despite indifferent reviews from the critics, the opera was an immediate success with the public.

Musically, Tosca is structured as a through-composed work, with arias, recitative, choruses and other elements musically woven into a seamless whole. Puccini used Wagnerian leitmotifs to identify characters, objects and ideas. While critics have often dismissed the opera as a facile melodrama with confusions of plot—musicologist Joseph Kerman famously called it a “shabby little shocker”—the power of its score and the inventiveness of its orchestration have been widely acknowledged. The dramatic force of Tosca and its characters continues to fascinate both performers and audiences, and the work remains one of the most frequently performed operas. Many recordings of the work have been issued, both of studio and live performances.

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