The Lovers’ Chronicle 14 December – the other side of you – art by Pierre-Cécile Puvis de Chavannes – verse by Paul Éluard

14 December 2023 By Rhett 0 In Love, Poems, Random, Songs

Dear Zazie, Hey thanks for stopping by! Loved your note. Here is today’s Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag dedicated to his muse. Who is the other side of you? Rhett

The Lovers’ Chronicle

Dear Muse,

so you can hear

visions of you

want, even need

to be, and to have

dreams intertwined

to get beyond

solitude

remember,

penance paid

can want

make another

other side of me

designed

by fixed devotions

destiny allowed

to come with you

to catch as can

as your other side

whisper, so you can hear

troubles passed
with patience
seekin’ consolation
for havin’ been lost

left behind
disconsolate,
forever desire

yet visions of you
want, even need
to be, and to have

to get beyond
solitude
remember,
penance
must be paid

self imposed
not to be another’s

can your want
make another
other side of me

the sorrow felt
will not allow
nor disappear
nor be forgiven
for the other side of you

destiny designed
by fixed devotions

allowed to come with you
to catch as cannot
as your other side

The muses took me on a wild ride with this one:

Other Side Of You

Whisper so, can you hear
You must hear me call you,
The other side of you

The troubles suffered,
Until now never-endin’,
Passed with patience,
Hopin’ to be consoled
Of havin’ been lost

But now, finally found
Must try to remove desperate
And disconsolate, forever desire

The visions of you
Want, even need
To be, and to have,
The other side of you

Have not begun to seek,
Nor go beyond solitude,
To become a legend of the fall
Remember, so many storms
And penance must be paid

You can say that I have died,
Kept in self imposed prison
Not to be another’s,
Your want made another
Other side of me

Yes harsh fortunes have always been
Constant moods, still emergin’
And foretold, not sold
Buried here

The sorrow felt
Will not allow
Nor disappear nor be forgiven
For the other side of you

Destinies designed by fixed devotions
Eternally earned by mixed emotions

Allowed to come with you
To be the other side of you
(if over time prayers permit)
To catch as cannot
As your other side

Which I do not lie
As your other side,
Or from pride
Penetrate feelin’s

That, for you so kind,
Shall grant and allow
Promise the price
That I have paid

If this will not do, only say
To want to finish misery,
If not to be your other side,
Refer to our learnin’ of the verse
Or for that matter to boil
Down the point brought to you

You are the other side of me
I am the other side of you

The Song of the Day is “The Other Side Of You” by American Bang. Disclaimer: No coyright infringement intended. I do not own the rights to the SOD.

Pierre Puvis de Chavannes
Pierre-Cécile Puvis de Chavannes, c. 1880, after a negative by Étienne Carjat

Today is the birthday of Pierre Puvis de Chavannes (Lyon, Rhône 14 December 1824 – 24 October 1898 Paris); painter. Perhaps best known for his mural painting, he came to be known as ‘the painter for France.’ He became the co-founder and president of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, and his work influenced many other artists, notably Robert Genin. Puvis de Chavannes was a prominent painter in the early Third Republic. Émile Zola described his work as “an art made of reason, passion, and will”.

In Montmartre, he had an affair with one of his models, Suzanne Valadon, who would become one of the leading artists of the day as well as the mother, teacher, and mentor of Maurice Utrillo.

Gallery

The Wine Press , 1865, The Phillips Collection

jeunes filles au bord de la mer

Fantasy, Ohara Museum of Art

Marseilles, Gateway to the Orient

Study for Patriotism

Hope, 1872, Walters Art Museum
Musée de Picardie. cliché H.Maertens (1863)
The Shepherd’s Song (1891)
The White Rocks (1869–1872)
The Dream (1883)
(Walters Art Museum)
Ludus Pro Patria (1883)
(Walters Art Museum)
The Poor Fisherman

Paul Éluard

And today is the birthday of Paul Éluard (born Eugène Émile Paul Grindel; Saint-Denis 14 December 1895 – 18 November 1952 Charenton-le-Pont); poet and one of the founders of the surrealist movement.

At the age of 16, he contracted tuberculosis and remained hospitalized until April 1914 in the Clavadel sanatorium near Davos. There he met a young Russian girl of his age, Helena Diakonova, whom he nicknamed Gala. He confided in her of his dream of becoming a poet, of his admiration for “poets dead of hunger, sizzling dreams” and of his parents’ disapproval. She wrote to him that “you will become a great poet”. They became inseparable. She believed in him and gave him the confidence and encouragement and provided him with the sense of security he needed to write. She listened and was involved in the creation of his verses. She became his muse.

In April 1914, Paul Éluard and Gala were both declared healthy again and sent home, to Paris and Moscow respectively. The separation was brutal. Europe was on the brink of war. Paul was mobilised. He passed his physical and was assigned to the auxiliary services because of his poor health. He spent most of 1915 under treatment in a military hospital not far from home. Paul’s mother came to visit him and he talked for hours about his beloved, opening his heart to her and slowly rallying her to his cause. Her initial hostility towards Gala slowly faded away, and she started calling her “the little Russian”. However, Paul’s father, who had also been mobilised, remained adamant that she could not come to Paris.

In Moscow, Gala listened to no one. Her love for Paul gave her an unshakable faith that they would be reunited again. She wrote to Paul’s mother to befriend her and finally convinced her stepfather to let her go to Paris to study French at the Sorbonne.

In June 1917, Paul was sent to Hargnicourt to work in one of the military evacuation hospital, 10 kilometres from the front line. The ‘poet’ was given a chair, a desk and a pen to painfully write to the families of the dead and the wounded. He wrote more than 150 letters a day. At night he dug graves to bury the dead. For the first time since Clavadel, shaken by the horrors of the war, Paul started writing verses again. Gala wrote to him “I promise you our life will be glorious and magnificent”.

On 14 December 1917, Paul Éluard turned 21 and wrote to his mother “I can assure you, that your approval will be infinitely precious to me. However, for all our sakes, nothing will change my mind”. He married Gala on 20 February 1918. Two days after getting married, Paul left for the front line. His health suffered. On 20 March 1917 he was sent to a military hospital with incipient pleurisy.

In 1919, Éluard wrote to Gala: “War is coming to an end. We will now fight for happiness after having fought for Life”. Waiting to be sent home, he published “Duty and Anxiety” and “Little Poems for Peace”.

In November 1921, Éluard and Gala visited Max Ernst at his home in Cologne. Paul and Gala moved to a house just outside Paris and were joined by Ernst, who entered France illegally, using Éluard’s passport. Paul, Max and Gala entered into a ménage à trois in 1922. Paul was torn between his love for Gala and his friendship for Max. He refused to challenge Gala, and spent his nights in clubs: the Zelli, the Cyrano, the Parrot, and Mitchell. Gala’s well-being was still what mattered to him above all and he tried to forget his anxiety by drinking.

Éluard, depressed, wrote “Dying of not Dying”. On 24 March 1924, Éluard disappeared. No one knew where he was. The night before he had had a worrisome meeting with Louis Aragon during which he confessed that he wanted to put an end to a present that tortured him. For his friends, Paul was gone forever. But Paul wrote to Gala and four months later she bought a ticket to go and find him and bring him back, locating him in Saigon.

In 1928 he had another bout of tuberculosis and went back to the Clavadel sanatorium with Gala. It was their last winter together. Gala met Salvador Dalí soon after and remained with him for the rest of her life.

In 1934, Éluard married Nusch (Maria Benz), a music-hall artist, whom he had met through his friends Man Ray and Pablo Picasso.

Verse

Une femme est plus belle que le monde où je vis, Et je ferme les yeux.
- A woman is more beautiful than the world in which I live, and I close my eyes.
Il y a assurément un autre monde, mais il est dans celui-ci…
- There is another world, but it is in this one.

L’Amour la poésie, 1929

Je te l’ai dit pour les nuages
Je te l’ai dit pour l’arbre de la mer

Capitale de la douleur (1926), Paul Éluard, éd. Gallimard, coll. « Poésie/Gallimard », 1997, p. 150

La terre est bleue comme une orange
Jamais une erreur les mots ne mentent pas

Capitale de la douleur (1926), Paul Éluard, éd. Gallimard, coll. « Poésie/Gallimard », 1997, p. 153

La brûlure de toutes les métamorphoses
La chaîne entière des aurores dans la tête
Tous les cris qui s’acharnent à briser les mots

Et qui creusent la bouche et qui creusent les yeux
Où les couleurs furieuses défont les brumes de l’attente
Dressent l’amour contre la vie les morts en rêvent.

Capitale de la douleur suivi de L’amour la poésie (1929), Paul Éluard, éd. Gallimard, coll. « Poésie », 1966 (ISBN 978-2-07-030095-2), partie Seconde nature, V. En l’honneur des muets, p. 181

La faim couverte d’immondices
Etreint le fantôme du blé.

Capitale de la douleur suivi de L’amour la poésie (1929), Paul Éluard, éd. Gallimard, coll. « Poésie », 1966 (ISBN 978-2-07-030095-2), partie Répétitions, IX. Les yeux brûlés du bois, p. 185

La peur en loques perce les murs.

Capitale de la douleur suivi de L’amour la poésie (1929), Paul Éluard, éd. Gallimard, coll. « Poésie », 1966 (ISBN 978-2-07-030095-2), partie Répétitions, IX. Les yeux brûlés du bois, p. 185

Bouquet des sèves le brasier que chevauche le vent
Fumées en tête les armées de la prise du monde
L’écume des tourments aériens la présence
Les attaches du front le plus haut de la terre.

Capitale de la douleur suivi de L’amour la poésie (1929), Paul Éluard, éd. Gallimard, coll. « Poésie », 1966 (ISBN 978-2-07-030095-2), partie Comme une image, III. Bouquet des sèves, p. 203

La fleur de chardon construit un château
Elle monte aux échelles du vent.

Capitale de la douleur suivi de L’amour la poésie (1929), Paul Éluard, éd. Gallimard, coll. « Poésie », 1966 (ISBN 978-2-07-030095-2), partie Comme une image, IV. Armure de proie, p. 204

Des étoiles d’ébène sur les vitres luisantes
Promettent tout à leurs amants
Les autres qui simulent
Maintiennent l’ordre de plomb.

Capitale de la douleur suivi de L’amour la poésie (1929), Paul Éluard, éd. Gallimard, coll. « Poésie », 1966 (ISBN 978-2-07-030095-2), partie Comme une image, IV. Armure de proie, p. 204

Pour en finir
Une tombe ornée de très jolis bibelots
Un voile de soie sur les lenteurs de la luxure
Pour en finir
Une hache dans le dos d’un seul coup.

Capitale de la douleur suivi de L’amour la poésie (1929), Paul Éluard, éd. Gallimard, coll. « Poésie », 1966 (ISBN 978-2-07-030095-2), partie Comme une image, IV. Armure de proie, p. 205

Dans les ravins du sommeil
Le silence dresse ses enfants
Voici le bruit fatal qui crève les tympans
La poussiéreuse mort des couleurs
L’idiotie.

Capitale de la douleur suivi de L’amour la poésie (1929), Paul Éluard, éd. Gallimard, coll. « Poésie », 1966 (ISBN 978-2-07-030095-2), partie Comme une image, IV. Armure de proie, p. 205

Aux alentours de l’espoir
En pure perte
Le calme fait le vide.

Capitale de la douleur suivi de L’amour la poésie (1929), Paul Éluard, éd. Gallimard, coll. « Poésie », 1966 (ISBN 978-2-07-030095-2), partie Comme une image, IV. Armure de proie, p. 206

Aux marches des torrents
Des filles de cristal aux tempes fraîches
Petites qui fleurissent et faibles qui sourient
Pour faire la part de l’eau séduisent la lumière

Des chutes de soleil des aurores liquides

Et quand leurs baisers deviennent invisibles
Elles vont dormir dans la gueule des lions.

Capitale de la douleur suivi de L’amour la poésie (1929), Paul Éluard, éd. Gallimard, coll. « Poésie », 1966 (ISBN 978-2-07-030095-2), partie Comme une image, IX. Révolte de la neige, p. 212

Passage où la vue détourne d’un coup la pensée
Une ombre s’agrandit cherche son univers
Et tombe horizontalement
Dans le sens de la marche.

Capitale de la douleur suivi de L’amour la poésie (1929), Paul Éluard, éd. Gallimard, coll. « Poésie », 1966 (ISBN 978-2-07-030095-2), partie Comme une image, XII. Passage où la vue détourne d’un coup la pensée, p. 215

La verdure caresse les épaules de la rue
Le soir verse du feu dans des verres de couleur
Comme à la fête
Un éventail d’alcool.

Capitale de la douleur suivi de L’amour la poésie (1929), Paul Éluard, éd. Gallimard, coll. « Poésie », 1966 (ISBN 978-2-07-030095-2), partie Comme une image, XII. Passage où la vue détourne d’un coup la pensée, p. 215

Les hommes errants plus forts que les nains habituels
Ne se rencontrent pas. L’on raconte
Qu’ils se dévoreraient.

Capitale de la douleur suivi de L’amour la poésie (1929), Paul Éluard, éd. Gallimard, coll. « Poésie », 1966 (ISBN 978-2-07-030095-2), partie Défense de savoir, V. Les hommes errants, p. 223

L’on vit de ce qu’on n’apprend pas
Comme une abeille dans un obus
Comme un cerveau tombant de haut
De plus haut.

Capitale de la douleur suivi de L’amour la poésie (1929), Paul Éluard, éd. Gallimard, coll. « Poésie », 1966 (ISBN 978-2-07-030095-2), partie Défense de savoir, VI. Ma mémoire, p. 223

Tu ne pleureras pas
Tu ne videras pas cette besace de poussière
Et de félicités
Tu vas d’un concret à un autre
Par le plus court chemin celui des monstres.

Capitale de la douleur suivi de L’amour la poésie (1929), Paul Éluard, éd. Gallimard, coll. « Poésie », 1966 (ISBN 978-2-07-030095-2), partie Défense de savoir, VII. Receleuse du réel, p. 235

Mac Tag

Fellow-wanderer,

Could we but mix ourselves into a dream,

Not in its image on the mirror!

– W. B. Yeats

cowboy coleridge, love letter, love poem, love song, muse, paul eluard, pierre puvis de chavannes, poem of the day, Rhett, song of the day, the lovers almanac, the lovers chronicle, the other side of you, twt, Zazie

The Lovers’ Chronicle 13 December – never as is – smitten Chopin – art by Emily Carr

13 December 2023 By Rhett 0 In Love, Poems, Random, Songs

Dear Zazie, Here is today’s Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag dedicated to his muse. Have you told someone never? Has someone told you never? Are you as is or as you were? Rhett

The Lovers’ Chronicle

Dear Muse,

all done with searchin’

all we need is here

the things you say to me
i cannot remember hearin’
before and these feelin’s
lengthen and there is after
each day an amazement
that converges in this

all it took
to go from
never to ever

well that is a word,

overused for certain

and here

is the trouble with as is

it can be a very long time

i come here as i do

each night, to try

to make a little sense

of the trail left behind

and what comes after

but mostly just tryin’

to figure this

i never expected you

Pale Love, Pale Rider edition

no point

in searchin’

all you need is here

verse is a force

that lengthens feelin’s

and there is after each one,

an amazement that emerges

it helps with gettin’ through

occurrences of nothin’ness

and understandin’ what it takes

to resign oneself to believe in it

how is it

that the things

you say to me

are things i cannot

remember anyone

ever sayin’ to me

yes, i take pleasure
in this indulgence
it is the only pleasure
goin’ on here these days

one needs only
to study the position
of the hands, to know
how to play as is

how strange
these words
on this page,
are but the debris
of those who came before

simplicity,
after one has been
through everything
and played all the notes,
is all that emerges

fast movin’ dream
tryin’ to keep up
whisperin’ voices
of many others
the Revelator says
believe
the lover says,
yes please

love is a many splintered thing
sorrow, a many splendored thing

tryin’ to love ’em all
hell, you could not even
love yourself

did you want for them
what they wanted, or
did you want for them
what you wanted

huge difference

“But don’t you miss…”
no, not really

and what of her
she was everything
you ever wanted
but you tossed around
never as if it were free
and now never is here

so own it

Sorry, Dark Muse took over today. Inspired in part by the Songs of the Day noted below:

Never As Is

This dream is movin’ pretty fast

Not sure I can keep up with it:

I hear whisperin’ voices
There are many others in here
The prophet said do not believe
The Dark Muse said these are the words
The lover said yes please like that
The Other One said come this way

All these voices comin’ at once
Somethin’ is written on the wall…

Love is a many splintered thing
Pain is a many splendored thing
You went about lovin’ ’em all
You should have tried to love yourself
You see I am you, you are me
She was everything you had hoped

There it is again, the writin’
SI SA REVEN: just makes no sense:

Did you want for her what she did
Or that which you wanted for her
Are you as is, or as you were,
Or as is, or as you will be
Never is ever as it is
Nothin’ is ever as it was

The voices come in unison
Now I understand the writin’:

Never say never say never
Here is the trouble with never
It can be a really long time
You used never with no regrets
She told you never and it is
And you will never be as is

Never as is, never as is

The Songs of the Day are “The Trouble with Never” and “As Is” both by Van Halen from their album, A Different Kind Of Truth. we do not own the rights to these songs. no copyright infringement intended.

Chopin is smitten

Frédéric Chopin and George Sand by Eugène Delacroix

On this day in 1836, the composer Frederic Chopin held a musical soiree in his apartment in Paris. The Paris Opéra tenor Adolphe Nourit, the Pavarotti of his day, sang some Schubert songs, accompanied at the piano by Chopin’s friend, Franz Liszt. Liszt and Chopin also played a new Sonata in E-flat for piano four-hands by Ignaz Moscheles. One of the people Chopin invited was a petite, olive-skinned Baroness turned writer, who, despite her sex, went by the name George Sand. Sand was famous for her novels, which included passages considered quite racy in that day, and for her unorthodox lifestyle. She liked cigars and often showed up at parties dressed as a man. Chopin had met her earlier, and at first was not attracted to her. The 26 year-old composer was engaged to a much younger girl back home in Poland, who could not be more unlike the 32-year-old Sand. But opposites attracted in this case. Sand showed up for Chopin’s soiree wearing white pantaloons and a scarlet sash (the colors of the Polish flag)—and left her cigars at home. Before long the Chopin-Sand romance was the talk of Paris. “My heart was conquered,” wrote Chopin in his journal, “She understood me.”

*********************************************************************************************************************************************************

Emily Carr
Emily Carr

Today is the birthday of Emily Carr (Victoria; December 13, 1871 – March 2, 1945 Victoria); artist and writer heavily inspired by the Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast. One of the first painters in Canada to adopt a Modernist and Post-Impressionist painting style. As she matured, the subject matter of her painting shifted from aboriginal themes to landscapes; forest scenes in particular. As a writer, Carr was one of the earliest chroniclers of life in British Columbia. The Canadian Encyclopedia describes her as a “Canadian icon”.

Carr suffered a heart attack in 1937, and another in 1939, forcing her to move in with her sister Alice to recover. In 1940 Carr suffered a serious stroke, and in 1942 she had another heart attack. Carr’s focus shifted from her painting to her writing. She suffered her last heart attack and died on March 2, 1945, at the James Bay Inn in her hometown of Victoria, British Columbia. Carr is buried at Ross Bay Cemetery.

Gallery

Shoreline * – 1936
* beach at the foot of Beacon Hill Cliffs

Autumn in France, 1911. National Gallery of Canada

Breton church, oil on canvas, 1906

Kitwancool, 1928

Odds and Ends, 1939

Blunden Harbour, 1930

Mac Tag

Great Powers of falling wave and wind and windy fire,

With your harmonious choir

Encircle her I love and sing her into peace.

– W. B. Yeats

a different kind of truth, as is, cowboy coleridge, emily carr, love letter, love poem, love song, muse, never as is, poem of the day, Rhett, song of the day, the lovers almanac, the trouble with never, twt, van halen, Zazie

The Lovers’ Chronicle 12 December – ever – birth of Gustave Flaubert – art by Edvard Munch

12 December 2023 By Rhett 0 In Love, Poems, Random, Songs

Dear Zazie, Here is today’s Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag dedicated to his muse. Are you askin’ Sandman to let someone come to you in your dreams, to come softly ever the same? Rhett

The Lovers’ Chronicle

Dear Muse,

we are readin’

poetry

to each other

while the wind blows

and the snow falls

i pause from readin’

to look at you

your great eyes

fix on me

we have so much

to say to each other

but in this moment

it does not occur,

to tell each other

how we feel

or wonder why

we just are…

enterin’ solitude,

obsessed

with these thoughts

that you will come

last night it worked

you came and hugged me,

felt myself flowin’ into you

told you it had been so, so long

sayin’ nothin’ you just held on

asked you to stay, but you left

always askin’

ever holdin’ on

all i ask

allow this

my only comfort

to be with you

ever the same

obsessed with these thoughts,
this solitude, ever the same

come, let yourself go
it has been so long

words flowin’, hold on
to what emerges,
to this occurrence
of everything

these feelin’s
at last carry
the meanin’
of all that will be

come to me
the totem spins…

oh hold on,
not sure which way
this one is goin’…

sittin’ by a fireplace
in a mountain cabin
we are readin’
poetry
to each other
while the wind blows
and the snow falls

i pause from readin’
to look at you
your great eyes
fix on me
have we nothin’ more
to say to each other
not hardly
but certainly we know
more meaningful
ways to talk
it does not occur,
to tell each other
how we feel
or wonder why
we just are…

ah, damnit,
losin’ it…

the flames die down
either exhausted or choked
little by little, quenched
by absence
and regret,
smothered
by routine
the fiery glow
vanishes

Come To Me Ever The Same

Enterin’ the dark solitude
Obsessed with this thought, this hope, this…
That you will come to me in dreams
Some nights it works, some it will not
Blessed by the Sandman last evenin’
You came to me and you hugged me
Felt myself flowin’ into you
Told you it had been so, so long
Sayin’ nothin’ you just held on
Asked you to stay but no you left
Always askin’, askin’ Sandman…
All I ask is this, all I ask
Allow this my only comfort:
To plunge into dreams into you
To be with you ever the same
To fall asleep in your shadow
To come to me ever the same
To come softly ever the same
To come to me, to come softly
Ever the same, ever the same

© Cowboy Coleridge

The Song of the Day is “Come to Me Softly” by Jimmy James and the Vagabonds.

Gustave Flaubert

Today is the birthday of Gustave Flaubert (Rouen 12 December 1821 – 8 May 1880 Croisset, Rouen); novelist who, in my opinion, was the leading exponent of literary realism in his country. Perhaps best known for his first published novel, Madame Bovary (1857), for his Correspondence, and for his devotion to his style and aesthetics. The celebrated short story writer Guy de Maupassant was a protégé of Flaubert. Flaubert believed in, and pursued, the principle of finding “le mot juste” (“the right word”), which he considered as the key means to achieve quality in literary art.

From 1846 to 1854, Flaubert had a relationship with the poet Louise Colet. According to his biographer Émile Faguet, his affair with Colet was his only serious romantic relationship. From Rouen, he made occasional visits to Paris and England, where he apparently had a mistress. Flaubert never married.

With his lifelong friend Maxime Du Camp, he traveled in Brittany in 1846. In 1849–50 he went on a long journey to the Middle East, visiting Greece and Egypt. In Beirut he contracted syphilis. He spent five weeks in Istanbul in 1850. He visited Carthage in 1858 to conduct research for his novel Salammbô. Flaubert was very open about his sexual activities with prostitutes in his writings on his travels.

He died from a cerebral hemorrhage at the age of 58. He was buried in the family vault in the cemetery of Rouen. A monument to him by Henri Chapu was unveiled at the museum of Rouen.

Prose

Madame Bovary, 1857

C’est la faute de la fatalité !

Phrase récurrente

Madame Bovary (1857), Gustave Flaubert, éd. Éditions Garnier Frères, coll. « Classiques Garnier », 1955, partie 3, chap. XI, p. 323

[…], la parole est un laminoir qui allonge toujours les sentiments.

Madame Bovary (1857), Gustave Flaubert, éd. Éditions Garnier Frères, coll. « Classiques Garnier », 1955, partie 3, chap. I, p. 218 (texte intégral sur Wikisource).

Le plus médiocre libertin a rêvé des sultanes, chaque notaire porte en soi les débris d’un poète.

Madame Bovary (1857), Gustave Flaubert, éd. Eugène Fasquelle, 1905, p. 264

Cette lâche docilité qui est pour bien des femmes comme le châtiment tout à la fois la rançon de l’adultère

Madame Bovary (1857), Gustave Flaubert, éd. Eugène Fasquelle, 1905, p. 314

Il y a toujours après la mort de quelqu’un comme une stupéfaction qui se dégage, tant il est difficile de comprendre cette survenue du néant et de se résigner à y croire.

Madame Bovary (1857), Gustave Flaubert, éd. Eugène Fasquelle, 1905, p. 379

Il ne faut pas toucher aux idoles, la dorure en reste aux mains.

Madame Bovary (1857), Gustave Flaubert, éd. Éditions Garnier Frères, coll. « Classiques Garnier », 1955, partie 3, chap. VI, p. 263

Edvard Munch
A photograph of Munch.

Today is the birthday of Edvard Munch (Ådalsbruk, Løten; 12 December 1863 – 23 January 1944 Oslo); painter and printmaker whose intensely evocative treatment of psychological themes built upon some of the main tenets of late 19th-century Symbolism and greatly influenced German Expressionism in the early 20th century. One of his most well-known works is The Scream of 1893.

Munch spent most of his last two decades in solitude at his nearly self-sufficient estate in Ekely, at Skøyen, Oslo. Many of his late paintings celebrate farm life, including several in which he used his work horse “Rousseau” as a model. Without any effort, Munch attracted a steady stream of female models, whom he painted as the subjects of numerous nude paintings. He likely had sexual relations with some of them.

To the end of his life, Munch continued to paint unsparing self-portraits, adding to his self-searching cycle of his life and his unflinching series of takes on his emotional and physical states. In the 1930s and 1940s, the Nazis labeled Munch’s work “degenerate art” (along with that of Picasso, Paul Klee, Matisse, Gauguin and many other modern artists) and removed his 82 works from German museums.

Munch died in his house at Ekely near Oslo on 23 January 1944, about a month after his 80th birthday. His Nazi-orchestrated funeral suggested to Norwegians that he was a Nazi sympathizer, a kind of appropriation of the independent artist.

From my rotting body,
flowers shall grow
and I am in them
and that is eternity.

Gallery

Self Portrait with Skeleton Arm, 1895

Munch in 1902

The Scream (1893)

The Sick Child (1907)

Harald Nørregaard (painted by Munch in 1899, National Gallery) was one of Munch’s closest friends since adolescence, adviser and lawyer

Munch in 1912

Munch in 1933

The Scream. 1893. Oil, tempera, and pastel on cardboard. Nasjonalgalleriet, Oslo
The Dance of Life. 1899–1900. Oil on canvas, 49½ × 75 in. Nasjonalgalleriet, Oslo
Ashes. 1894. Oil on canvas. 120.5 × 141 cm. Nasjonalgalleriet, Oslo
Madonna. 1894. Oil on canvas. 90 × 68 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo

The Seine at Saint-Cloud. 1890. 46 × 38 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo
At the Roulette Table in Monte Carlo. 1892. 74,5 × 116 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo
August Strindberg. 1892. Oil on canvas, 120 × 90 cm. Museum of Modern Art, Stockholm, Sweden
Death in the Sickroom. 1893. 134 × 160 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo
Starry Night. 1893. 135.6 × 140 cm. J. Paul Getty Museum.
Vampire. 1895. 91 × 109 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo
Anxiety. 1894. 94 × 74 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo
Death in the Sickroom. c. 1895. Oil on canvas. 59 × 66 in. Nasjonalgalleriet, Oslo
Lady From the Sea (detail). 1896. Oil on canvas. 39½ × 126 in.
Evening. Melancholy I. 1896. 41.1 × 55.7 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo
Separation. 1896. 96 × 127 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo
The Voice / Summer Night. 1896. 90 × 119 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo
The Kiss. 1897. 99 × 81 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo
Inheritance. 1897–99. 141 × 120 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo
Metabolism. 1898–99. 172 × 142 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo
Red and White. 1899–1900. 93 × 129 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo
Train Smoke. 1900. 84 × 109 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo
Consul Christen Sandberg. 1901. 215 × 147 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo
Kiss IV. 1902. 47 × 47 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo
Four Girls in Åsgårdstrand. 1903. 87 × 111 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo
The Brooch. Eva Mudocci. 1903. 76 × 53.2 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo
Shore with Red House. 1904. 69 × 109 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo
Portrait of Friedrich Nietzsche (1906). Thielska Galleriet, Stockholm
Death of Marat I (1907)
Jealousy. 1907. 75 × 98 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo
The Sun. 1910–11. 450 × 772 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo
Galloping Horse. 1910–12. 148 × 120 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo
The Yellow Log. 1912. 129.5 × 159.5 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo
On the Sofa. 1913. 80 × 150 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo
Weeping Nude. 1913–14. 110 × 135 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo
Golgotha.1900.
Workers on their Way Home. 1913–14. 227 × 201 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo

Puberty. 1894-95.
The Hands. 1893.
Seated Nude. 1902.
Weeping woman’. 1907-1909.
Morning Yawn. 1913.
Naked model by the wicker chair. 1919.

Self-Portrait. 1882. 26 × 19 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo
Self-Portrait. 1895. 458 × 314 mm. Munch Museum, Oslo
Self-Portrait in Hell. 1903. 82 × 66 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo
Self-Portrait with Brushes. 1904. 197 × 91 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo
Self-Portrait with a Bottle of Wine. 1906. 110 × 120 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo

Self-Portrait at 53 Am Strom in Warnemünde. 1907. 89 × 89 mm. Munch Museum, Oslo
Edvard Munch at the Beach in Warnemünde. 1907. 83 × 87 mm. Munch Museum, Oslo
Self-Portrait “à la Marat”. 1908–09. 81 × 85 mm. Munch Museum, Oslo
Self-Portrait Somewhere on the Continent I. 1906. 90 × 90 mm. Munch Museum, Oslo
Self-Portrait Somewhere on the Continent II. 1906. 82 × 87 mm. Munch Museum, Oslo
Portrait at 26 years
Portrait of Munch 1902
Portrait of Munch
Portrait of Munch 1929
Rosa Meissner at the Hotel Rohn in Warnemünde. 1907. Photograph. 87 × 73 mm. Munch Museum, Oslo

Mac Tag

come to me ever the same, come to me softly, cowboy coleridge, edvard munch, gustave flaubert, jimmy james and the vagabonds, love letter, love poem, love song, madame bovary, muse, poem of the day, Rhett, song of the day, the lovers almanac, the lovers chronicle, twt, Zazie, zinaida serebriakova

The Lovers’ Chronicle 11 December – embers – birth of Alfred de Musset & Jim Harrison – art by Mark Tobey

11 December 2023 By Rhett 0 In Love, Poems, Random, Songs

Dear Zazie, Here is today’s Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag to his muse. What currency are you on? Rhett

The Lovers’ Chronicle

Dear Muse,

writin’ in my journal

of things we talk about

the only possible way

what currency is this

what must i pay

to hold on to this…

i dream you are still here

we wake in our flat

we make love again

what currency

keeps this goin’

makes me want to stay

the most desperate

are the most beautiful songs

and when you are made

of those stories, answer

what i will tell you

sensual, curious,

sublime, the union

of two, so imperfect,

so as it should be

one is often deceived,

often wounded

but we try,

and on the edge

we turn and look back

just one long dénouement
the dyin’ embers, the untyin’
of the knot, of the mess
strewn in the rear view

all i can tell
is that this is
authentic

i hear, and follow
the inner voice

the vulnerability
is real y’all

did forever
turn out to be
too long

a home should have
proper balance,
n’est-ce pas
mine has
four bedrooms
one bed
three outdoor spaces
a library
and four writin’ rooms,
one outside
that is what i call
balance…

at least it can be said,
an attempt was made
to follow the path
of the Great American Dream
however ill that try
turned out to be

but better damn near
did not happen than
never did, i s’pose

and sadness has fled
for what could be called
acceptable sorrow

beside the dyin’ embers,
livin’ this dream
writin’ this for you
is far more than ever
i could have hoped for

This started out as a poem called A Reverie in Paris, inspired from watchin’ An American in Paris with Gene Kelly, again, but then the muses took over and this is what they wrote; the Poem of the Day:

Currency

I dream you are still here
The only possible way
To salve the wound
What currency is this
What must I pay
To hold on to this…

We wake in our flat
Coffee on the balcony
We make love again
What currency
Keeps this goin’

Makes me want to stay

We walk to a small cafe
It is sunny and warm
We sit outside and have our fill
Of food and café au lait
Writin’ in my journal
Of things we talk about and see
The way the sun shines in your hair
The way your hand feels in mine
The way I feel when you laugh
The way I see myself in your eyes

What currency keeps this goin’
How to make sure this never ends

The Song of the Day is “Strange Currencies” by R.E.M. we do not own the rights to this song. no copyright infringement intended.

Today is the birthday of Alfred de Musset (Alfred Louis Charles de Musset-Pathay, Paris 11 December 1810 – 2 May 1857 Paris); dramatist, poet, and novelist. Along with his poetry, he is known for writing the autobiographical novel La Confession d’un enfant du siècle (The Confession of a Child of the Century).

The tale of his celebrated love affair with George Sand in 1833–1835 is told from his point of view in his autobiographical novel La Confession d’un Enfant du Siècle (The Confession of a Child of the Century) (1836), which was made into a 1999 film, Children of the Century, and a 2012 film, Confession of a Child of the Century, and is told from her point of view in her Elle et lui (1859). Musset’s Nuits (Nights) (1835–1837) traces the emotional upheaval of his love for Sand from early despair to final resignation. He is also believed to be the anonymous author of Gamiani, or Two Nights of Excess (1833), a lesbian erotic novel also believed to be modeled on Sand.

Director Jean Renoir’s La règle du jeu (The Rules of the Game) was inspired by Musset’s play Les Caprices de Marianne.

Henri Gervex’s 1878 painting Rolla was based on a poem by De Musset. It was rejected by the jury of the Salon de Paris for immorality, since it features suggestive metaphors in a scene from the poem, with a naked prostitute after having sex with her client, but the controversy helped Gervex’s career.

Numerous (often French) composers wrote works using Musset’s poetry during the 19th and early 20th century:

Georges Bizet’s opera Djamileh (1871, with a libretto by Louis Gallet) is based on Musset’s story Namouna. Bizet also set Musset’s poem “A Une Fleur” for voice and piano.

Ruggero Leoncavallo’s symphonic poem “La Nuit de Mai” (1886) was based on Musset’s poetry.

The play La Coupe et les lèvres was the basis of Giacomo Puccini’s opera Edgar (1889).

Dame Ethel Smyth composed an opera based on Fantasio that premiered in Weimar in 1898.

The Welsh composer Morfydd Llwyn Owen wrote song settings for Musset’s La Tristesse and Chanson de Fortunio.

Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s Cielo di settembre, op. 1 for solo piano (1910) takes its name from a line of Musset’s poem “A quoi rêvent les jeunes filles”. The score, in the original publication, is preceded by that line, “Mais vois donc quel beau ciel de septembre…”

Lili Boulanger’s Pour les funérailles d’un soldat for baritone, mixed chorus and orchestra is a setting of several lines from Act IV of Musset’s play La Coupe et les lèvres.

Rebecca Clarke’s Viola Sonata (1919) is prefaced by two lines from Musset’s La Nuit de Mai.

The opera Andrea del Sarto (1968) by French composer Jean-Yves Daniel-Lesur (1908–2002) was based on Musset’s play André del Sarto.

Lorenzaccio, which takes place in Medici’s Florence, was set to music by the musician Sylvano Bussotti in 1972.

Shane Briant plays Alfred de Musset in a Masterpiece Theatre production of “Notorious Woman” in 1974.

In 2007, Céline Dion recorded a song called “Lettre de George Sand à Alfred de Musset” for her album D’elles.

Je ne puis;—malgré moi l’infini me tourmente.

I can’t help it, the idea of the infinite torments me.
L’Espoir en Dieu, Revue des deux Mondes (1838).

On ne badine pas avec l’amour, 1834

Perdican : Adieu, Camille, retourne à ton couvent, et lorsqu’on te fera de ces récits hideux qui t’ont empoisonnée, réponds ce que je vais te dire : Tous les hommes sont menteurs, inconstants, faux, bavards, hypocrites, orgueilleux et lâches, méprisables et sensuels ; toutes les femmes sont perfides, artificieuses, vaniteuses, curieuses et dépravées ; le monde n’est qu’un égout sans fond où les phoques les plus informes rampent et se tordent sur des montagnes de fange ; mais il y a au monde une chose sainte et sublime, c’est l’union de deux de ces êtres si imparfaits et si affreux. On est souvent trompé en amour, souvent blessé et souvent malheureux ; mais on aime, et quand on est sur le bord de sa tombe, on se retourne pour regarder en arrière ; et on se dit : ” J’ai souffert souvent, je me suis trompé quelquefois, mais j’ai aimé. C’est moi qui ai vécu, et non pas un être factice créé par mon orgueil et mon ennui.” (Il sort.)

On ne badine pas avec l’amour

La Nuit de Mai, 1835

La Muse : Les plus désespérés sont les chants les plus beaux,
Et j’en sais d’immortels qui sont de purs sanglots.

Poésies Nouvelles

Henri Gervex’s 1878 painting Rolla was based on a poem by De Musset

Statue d’Alfred de Musset et de sa muse au parc Monceau.

Today is the birthday of Mark George Tobey (Mark George Tobey; Centerville, Wisconsin; December 11, 1890 – April 24, 1976 Basel, Switzerland);painter. His densely structured compositions, inspired by Asian calligraphy, resemble Abstract expressionism, although the motives for his compositions differ philosophically from most Abstract Expressionist painters. His work was widely recognized throughout the United States and Europe. Along with Guy Anderson, Kenneth Callahan, Morris Graves, and William Cumming, Tobey was a founder of the Northwest School. Senior in age and experience, he had a strong influence on the others; friend and mentor, Tobey shared their interest in philosophy and Eastern religions. Similar to others of the Northwest School, Tobey was mostly self-taught after early studies at the Art Institute of Chicago. In 1921, Tobey founded the art department at The Cornish School in Seattle, Washington.

Gallery

20221211_143142

20221211_143704

20221211_143711

And today is the birthday of James “Jim” Harrison (Grayling, Michigan; December 11, 1937 – March 26, 2016); writer known for his poetry, fiction, reviews, essays about the outdoors, and writings about food. Perhaps best known for his 1979 novella Legends of the Fall. He has been called “a force of nature”, and his work has been compared to that of William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway. Harrison’s characters tend to be rural by birth and to have retained some qualities of their agrarian pioneer heritage.

Legends of the Fall (1994) was made into a film directed by Edward Zwick and starring Brad Pitt, Anthony Hopkins, Aidan Quinn, Julia Ormond and Henry Thomas. The story is about three brothers and their father living in the wilderness and plains of Montana in the early 20th century and how their lives are affected by nature, history, war and love. The film’s time frame spans from World War I through the Prohibition era, ending with a brief scene set in 1963. The film was nominated for three Academy Awards and won for Best Cinematography (John Toll). Both the film and book contain occasional Cornish language terms, the Ludlows being a Cornish emigrant family. Quotes from the movie…

One Stab

It’s hard to tell of happiness, time goes by and we feel safe too soon.
Some people hear their own inner voices with great clearness. And they live by what they hear. Such people become crazy… or they become legends.

Susanna

Forever turned out to be too long Tristan.

Tristan

We all love Samuel. Samuel is dead. WHAT!?
Because you love her I will forgive you for that, once. ONCE! But you say that again and we are not brothers.
You know when Samuel died I cursed God. Have I damned everyone around me as well as myself?

Alfred

Stab speak English?! Ha! He wouldn’t lower himself to speak English would you Stab?!
I followed all of the rules, man’s and God’s. And you, you followed none of them. And they all loved you more. Samuel, Father, and my… even my own wife.

mac tag

…Love fled

And paced upon the mountains overhead,

And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

– W. B. Yeats

alfred de musset, cowcoy coleridge, currency, jim harrison, love letter, love poem, love song, muse, poem of the day, rem, Rhett, song of the day, stranges currencies, the lovers almanac, twt, Zazie

The Lovers’ Chronicle 10 December – pictures – verse by George MacDonald & Emily Dickinson – art by Greta Kempton – birth of Clarice Lispector

10 December 2023 By Rhett 0 In Love, Poems, Random, Songs

Dear Zazie, I love the picture! Me and Mac Tag have been there done that. And the thoughtful words touch me in a place that has rarely been touched. May the Holidays bring you lastin’ cheer.

I shared your note with Mac Tag and it inspired him. Here is today’s Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag dedicated to his muse. Who are you picturin’ right now? Rhett

The Lovers’ Chronicle

Dear Muse,

left it all behind for beauty

“And that is why you failed”?

you think i had a choice

dreams are well

and wakin’

was once better

at first light

or at three o’clock,

pictures of you

thou art veiled

behold thee

smile and bliss,

an apparition

because i could not stop

picturin’ you in my mind as i write this:

pictures that stop me
because they remind me

without evidence
does it make sense

to comprehend
requires sorest need
only those who take
the trail less traveled
can tell the tale

distant strain,
comin’ clear
sings the tune,
the sweetest
i have heard

pictures of you
the ones i can hold
the ones i cannot
counted amongst
all that matters

livin’ my life
in these pictures
and these words
they are the only
comfort i know
and stayin’ lost
in this world
is becomin’
all i can do

I Picture You

Ever come across a picture
That stops you for a moment
Because it reminds you
Of a time, or a place,
Or a someone

Saw a picture that made me think of you
I see you in every picture of beauty
You are always with me

The pictures I have of you
Are among my treasures

I picture you wherever I go
I picture you when I see beauty
I picture you in the sun
I picture you still by my side

Remember, me and you…
Downtown, eatin’ at a sidewalk cafe
Before the opera dress rehearsal
The whole place was ours

You looked so beautiful
I kept hopin’ the world
Would stop spinnin’ for us
And that night would never end

The picture of you in my mind
Will forever be with me

Instead of holdin’ your pictures
I wish I was still holdin’ you

I picture you smilin’ and laughin’
I picture you layin’ in our bed
I picture you sleepin’ in my arms
I picture you always

The Song of the Day is “Picture” performed by Kid Rock and Sheryl Crow.

The SOD hits close to home for Jett. He has been there lived that!

Today is the birthday of author, poet and Christian minister, George MacDonald (10 December 1824 – 18 September 1905). He wrote the fantasy novel Phantastes: A Faerie Romance for Men and Women (1858). I found an untitled poem/song in Chapter 19. I thought it POD worthy and I gave it a title, voilà –

A Sigh Too Much

Sir Aglovaile through the churchyard rode;
Sing, All alone I lie:

Little recked he where’er he yode,
All alone, up in the sky.
Swerved his courser, and plunged with fear
All alone I lie:

His cry might have wakened the dead men near,

All alone, up in the sky.
The very dead that lay at his feet,

Lapt in the mouldy winding-sheet.
But he curbed him and spurred him, until he stood
Still in his place, like a horse of wood,
With nostrils uplift, and eyes wide and wan;
But the sweat in streams from his fetlocks ran.
A ghost grew out of the shadowy air,
And sat in the midst of her moony hair.
In her gleamy hair she sat and wept;
In the dreamful moon they lay and slept;
The shadows above, and the bodies below,
Lay and slept in the moonbeams slow.
And she sang, like the moan of an autumn wind

Over the stubble left behind:
Alas, how easily things go wrong!

A sigh too much, or a kiss too long,
And there follows a mist and a weeping rain,
And life is never the same again.
Alas, how hardly things go right!
‘Tis hard to watch on a summer night,
For the sigh will come and the kiss will stay,
And the summer night is a winter day.

“Oh, lovely ghosts my heart is woes
To see thee weeping and wailing so.

Oh, lovely ghost,” said the fearless knight,
“Can the sword of a warrior set it right?
Or prayer of bedesman, praying mild,
As a cup of water a feverish child,
Sooth thee at last, in dreamless mood
To sleep the sleep a dead lady should?
Thine eyes they fill me with longing sore,
As if I had known thee for evermore.
Oh, lovely ghost, I could leave the day
To sit with thee in the moon away
If thou wouldst trust me, and lay thy head

To rest on a bosom that is not dead.”
The lady sprang up with a strange ghost-cry,
And she flung her white ghost-arms on high:
And she laughed a laugh that was not gay,
And it lengthened out till it died away;

And the dead beneath turned and moaned,
And the yew-trees above they shuddered and groaned.
“Will he love me twice with a love that is vain?

Will he kill the poor ghost yet again?
I thought thou wert good; but I said, and wept:
`Can I have dreamed who have not slept?’
And I knew, alas! or ever I would,
Whether I dreamed, or thou wert good.
When my baby died, my brain grew wild.
I awoke, and found I was with my child.”

“If thou art the ghost of my Adelaide,
How is it? Thou wert but a village maid,
And thou seemest an angel lady white,
Though thin, and wan, and past delight.”
The lady smiled a flickering smile,
And she pressed her temples hard the while.
“Thou seest that Death for a woman can

Do more than knighthood for a man.”
“But show me the child thou callest mine,
Is she out to-night in the ghost’s sunshine?”
“In St. Peter’s Church she is playing on,
At hide-and-seek, with Apostle John.
When the moonbeams right through the window go,
Where the twelve are standing in glorious show,
She says the rest of them do not stir,
But one comes down to play with her.
Then I can go where I list, and weep,
For good St. John my child will keep.”
“Thy beauty filleth the very air,
Never saw I a woman so fair.”
“Come, if thou darest, and sit by my side;
But do not touch me, or woe will betide.
Alas, I am weak: I might well know
This gladness betokens some further woe.
Yet come. It will come. I will bear it. I can.
For thou lovest me yet — though but as a man.”
The knight dismounted in earnest speed;
Away through the tombstones thundered the steed,
And fell by the outer wall, and died.
But the knight he kneeled by the lady’s side;
Kneeled beside her in wondrous bliss,
Rapt in an everlasting kiss:
Though never his lips come the lady nigh,
And his eyes alone on her beauty lie.
All the night long, till the cock crew loud,
He kneeled by the lady, lapt in her shroud.
And what they said, I may not say:
Dead night was sweeter than living day.
How she made him so blissful glad
Who made her and found her so ghostly sad,
I may not tell; but it needs no touch
To make them blessed who love so much.
“Come every night, my ghost, to me;
And one night I will come to thee.
‘Tis good to have a ghostly wife:
She will not tremble at clang of strife;
She will only hearken, amid the din,
Behind the door, if he cometh in.”
And this is how Sir Aglovaile
Often walked in the moonlight pale.
And oft when the crescent but thinned the gloom,
Full orbed moonlight filled his room;

And through beneath his chamber door,
Fell a ghostly gleam on the outer floor;
And they that passed, in fear averred
That murmured words they often heard.
‘Twas then that the eastern crescent shone
Through the chancel window, and good St. John
Played with the ghost-child all the night,

And the mother was free till the morning light,
And sped through the dawning night, to stay
With Aglovaile till the break of day.

And their love was a rapture, lone and high,
And dumb as the moon in the topmost sky.
One night Sir Aglovaile, weary, slept
And dreamed a dream wherein he wept.
A warrior he was, not often wept he,
But this night he wept full bitterly.
He woke — beside him the ghost-girl shone
Out of the dark: ’twas the eve of St. John.
He had dreamed a dream of a still, dark wood,
Where the maiden of old beside him stood;
But a mist came down, and caught her away,
And he sought her in vain through the pathless day,

Till he wept with the grief that can do no more,
And thought he had dreamt the dream before.
From bursting heart the weeping flowed on;
And lo! beside him the ghost-girl shone;
Shone like the light on a harbour’s breast,
Over the sea of his dream’s unrest;
Shone like the wondrous, nameless boon,
That the heart seeks ever, night or noon:
Warnings forgotten, when needed most,
He clasped to his bosom the radiant ghost.

She wailed aloud, and faded, and sank.
With upturn’d white face, cold and blank,
In his arms lay the corpse of the maiden pale,
And she came no more to Sir Aglovaile.
Only a voice, when winds were wild,
Sobbed and wailed like a chidden child.
Alas, how easily things go wrong!
A sigh too much, or a kiss too long,
And there follows a mist and a weeping rain,
And life is never the same again.

Emily Dickinson
This daguerreotype taken at Mount Holyoke, December 1846 or early 1847 is the only authenticated portrait of Emily Dickinson later than childhood. The original is held by Amherst College Archives and Special Collections.

Today is the birthday of Emily Elizabeth Dickinson (Amherst, Massachusetts; December 10, 1830 – May 15, 1886 Amherst); poet. Dickinson lived much of her life in reclusive isolation. After studying at the Amherst Academy for seven years in her youth, she briefly attended the Mount Holyoke Female Seminary before returning to her family’s house in Amherst. Considered an eccentric by locals, she developed a noted penchant for white clothing and became known for her reluctance to greet guests or, later in life, to even leave her bedroom. Dickinson never married, and most friendships between her and others depended entirely upon correspondence.

Dickinson was a prolific, yet private poet; fewer than a dozen of her nearly 1,800 poems were published during her lifetime. The work that was published during her lifetime was usually altered significantly by the publishers to fit the conventional poetic rules of the time. Dickinson’s poems are unique for the era in which she wrote; they contain short lines, typically lack titles, and often use slant rhyme as well as unconventional capitalization and punctuation. Many of her poems deal with themes of death and immortality, two recurring topics in letters to her friends.

It was not until after her death in 1886, when Dickinson’s younger sister Lavinia discovered her cache of poems, that the breadth of her work became apparent to the public. Her first collection of poetry was published in 1890 by personal acquaintances Thomas Wentworth Higginson and Mabel Loomis Todd, though both heavily edited the content. A complete, and mostly unaltered, collection of her poetry became available for the first time when scholar Thomas H. Johnson published The Poems of Emily Dickinson in 1955. In my opinion, Dickinson is one of the most significant of all American poets.

Verse

Success is counted sweetest
By those who ne’er succeed.
To comprehend a nectar
Requires a sorest need.
Not one of all the purple Host
Who took the Flag today
Can tell the definition
So clear of Victory
As he defeated — dying —
On whose forbidden ear
The distant strains of triumph
Burst agonized and clear!
- 67: Success is counted sweetest
“Faith” is a fine invention
When Gentlemen can see —
But Microscopes are prudent
In an Emergency.
- 185: “Faith” is a fine invention

“Hope” is the thing with feathers —
That perches in the soul —
And sings the tune without the words —
And never stops — at all —
And sweetest — in the Gale — is heard —
And sore must be the storm —
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm —
- 254: “Hope” is the thing with feathers —

I’m Nobody! Who are you?
Are you — Nobody — Too?
- 288: I’m Nobody! Who are you?

How dreary — to be — Somebody!
How public — like a Frog —
To tell one’s name — the livelong June —
To an admiring Bog!
- 288: I’m Nobody! Who are you?; In some editions “June” has been altered to “day”.

The Soul selects her own Society —
Then — shuts the Door —
To her divine Majority —
Present no more —
- 303: The Soul selects her own Society —

Some keep the Sabbath going to Church —
I keep it, staying at Home—
With a Bobolink for a Chorister —
And an Orchard, for a Dome—
- 324: Some keep the Sabbath going to Church —

God preaches, a noted Clergyman —
And the sermon is never long,
So instead of getting to Heaven, at last—
I’m going, all along.
- 324: Some keep the Sabbath going to Church —

This is my letter to the World
That never wrote to Me —
The simple News that Nature told —
With tender Majesty
Her Message is committed
To Hands I cannot see —
For love of Her — Sweet — countrymen —
Judge tenderly — of Me
- 441: This is my letter to the World

I died for Beauty — but was scarce
Adjusted in the Tomb,
When One who died for Truth, was lain
In an adjoining Room —He questioned softly “Why I failed”?
“For Beauty,” I replied.
“And I — for Truth, — Themself are One —
We Brethren, are”, He said —
- 449: I died for Beauty —

Dreams — are well — but Waking’s better,
If One wake at Morn —
If One wake at Midnight — better —
Dreaming — of the Dawn —
- 450: Dreams — are well — but Waking’s better

Love — thou art Veiled —
A few — behold thee —
Smile — and alter — and prattle — and die —
Bliss — were an Oddity — without thee —
Nicknamed by God —
Eternity —
- 453: Love — thou art high —

I heard a Fly buzz — when I died —
The Stillness in the Room
Was like the Stillness in the Air —
Between the Heaves of Storm —
- 465: I heard a Fly buzz — when I died —

Because I could not stop for Death —
He kindly stopped for me —
The Carriage held but just Ourselves —
And Immortality.
We slowly drove — He knew no haste
And I had put away
My labor and my leisure too,
For His Civility —
- 712: Because I could not stop for Death —

Since then — ’tis Centuries — and yet
Feels shorter than the Day
I first surmised the Horses’ Heads
Were toward Eternity —
- 712: Because I could not stop for Death —

My Life had stood — a Loaded Gun —
In Corners — till a Day
The Owner passed — identified —
And carried Me away —And now We roam in Sovereign Woods —
And now We hunt the Doe —
And every time I speak for Him —
The Mountains straight reply —
- 754: My Life had stood — a Loaded Gun —

We outgrow love, like other things
And put it in the Drawer —
Till it an Antique fashion shows —
Like Costumes Grandsires wore.
- 887: We outgrow love, like other things

A Grave — is a restricted Breadth —
Yet ampler than the Sun —
And all the Seas He populates
And lands he looks uponTo Him who on its small Repose
Bestows a single Friend —
Circumference without Relief —
Or Estimate — or End
- 943: A Coffin — is a small Domain,

To Whom the Mornings stand for Nights,
What must the Midnights — be!
- 1095: To Whom the Mornings stand for Nights,

A Vastness, as a Neighbor, came,
A Wisdom, without Face, or Name,
A Peace, as Hemispheres at Home
And so the Night became.
- 1104: The Crickets sang

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant —
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth’s superb surpriseAs Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind —
- 1129: Tell all the Truth but tell it slant —

Could Hope inspect her Basis
Her Craft were done —
Has a fictitious Charter
Or it has none —Balked in the vastest instance
But to renew —
Felled but by one assassin —
Prosperity —
- 1283: Could Hope inspect her Basis

Not with a Club, the Heart is broken
Nor with a Stone —
A Whip so small you could not see it
I’ve knownTo lash the Magic Creature
Till it fell,
Yet that Whip’s Name
Too noble then to tell.
Magnanimous as Bird
By Boy descried —
Singing unto the Stone
Of which it died —
Shame need not crouch
In such an Earth as Ours —
Shame — stand erect —
The Universe is yours.
- 1304: Not with a Club, the Heart is broken

A little Madness in the Spring
Is wholesome even for the King.
- 1333: A little Madness in the Spring

More than the Grave is closed to me —
The Grave and that Eternity
To which the Grave adheres —
I cling to nowhere till I fall —
The Crash of nothing, yet of all —
How similar appears —
- 1503: More than the Grave is closed to me —

If Aims impel these Astral Ones
The ones allowed to know
Know that which makes them as forgot
As Dawn forgets them — now
- 1528: The Moon upon her fluent Route

Who has not found the Heaven — below —
Will fail of it above —
- 1544: Who has not found the Heaven — below —

I took one Draught of Life —
I’ll tell you what I paid —
Precisely an existence —
The market price, they said.
- 1725: I took one Draught of Life —

Today is the birthday of Martha Greta Kempton (March 22, 1901 – December 9, 1991); White House artist during the Truman administration.

Kempton was born in Vienna and came to the United States in the 1920s. She studied at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts before emigrating to the United States and in the 1930s was a student at the National Academy of Design and Art Students League, both in New York City.

By the 1930s Kempton was living in California and a well-established portrait painter. Her style was reminiscent of Rembrandt, Rubens, and other European masters. By the 1940s, she had compiled a list of subjects, including Dagmar Nordstrom, one of the Nordstrom Sisters, the families of some Hollywood residents of New Orleans, where she lived with her then-husband, the businessman Ambrose M. McNamara. Kempton became well known in Washington following the unveiling in 1947 of her portrait of Drucie Snyder, the daughter of Treasury Secretary John W. Snyder. Through Snyder, Kempton gained introductions to other high officials of the Truman administration. Later in 1947, she painted a portrait of Bess Truman, and that same year was commissioned to paint a portrait of the President himself – the first of five Kempton paintings for which Mr. Truman posed. The 1947 painting became the official White House portrait of President Truman.

She remained active as a painter well into her eighties and restored many paintings at Church of the Transfiguration, “The Little Church Around the Corner” in New York City. Her works are in the collections of the White House, the U.S. Department of the Treasury, the U.S. Supreme Court, the Harry S. Truman Library, the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, the National Portrait Gallery, and a number of museums. Her papers, which include a number of portraits, now form a collection at the Harry S. Truman Library in Independence, Missouri.

She died in New York City from heart failure in December 1991, and her cremated remains were placed in the columbarium in the Church of the Transfiguration, Manhattan.

Gallery

20221210_113107

20221210_113124

20221210_113131

And today is the birthday of Clarice Lispector (Chaya Lispector in Chechelnyk, Podolia, a shtetl in what is today Ukraine; December 10, 1920 – December 9, 1977 Rio de Janeiro); writer acclaimed internationally for her innovative novels and short stories. Her family moved to Brazil when she was an infant, amidst the disasters engulfing her native land following the First World War.

While in law school in Rio, she began publishing her first journalistic work and short stories, catapulting to fame at the age of 23 with the publication of her first novel, Near the Wild Heart (Perto do Coração Selvagem), written as an interior monologue in a style and language that was considered revolutionary in Brazil.

She left Brazil in 1944, following her marriage to a Brazilian diplomat, and spent the next decade and a half in Europe and the United States. After returning to Rio de Janeiro in 1959, she began producing her most famous works, including the stories of Family Ties (Laços de Família), the great mystic novel The Passion According to G.H. (A Paixão Segundo G.H.), and what is arguably her masterpiece, Água Viva. Injured in an accident in 1966, she spent the last decade of her life in frequent pain, steadily writing and publishing novels and stories until her premature death in 1977.

She has been the subject of numerous books, and references to her and her work are common in Brazilian literature and music. Several of her works have been turned into films. In 2009, the American writer Benjamin Moser published Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector. Since that publication, her works have been the object of an extensive project of retranslation, published by New Directions Publishing and Penguin Modern Classics, the first Brazilian to enter that prestigious series. Moser, who is also the editor of her anthology The Complete Stories (2015), describes Lispector as the most important Jewish writer in the world since Kafka.

Eu não te disse que viver é apertado? Pois fui dormir e sonhei que te escrevia um largo majestoso e era mais verdade ainda do que te escrevo: era sem medo. Esqueci-me do que no sonho escrevi, tudo voltou para o nada, voltou para a Força do que Existe e que se chama às vezes Deus. Tudo acaba mas o que te escrevo continua. O que é bom, muito bom. O melhor ainda não foi escrito. O melhor está nas entrelinhas.”

(Didn’t I tell you that living is tight? For I went to sleep and dreamed that I would write you a majestic broad and it was even more true than I write you: it was fearless. I forgot what in the dream I wrote, everything came back to nothing, went back to the force of what exists and what is sometimes called God. It’s all over but what I write to you continues. Which is good, very good. The best is not yet written. The best is between the lines.)

Mac Tag

clarice lispector, cowboy coleridge, emily dickinson, gerorge macdonald, i picture you, Jett, kid rock, love letter, love poem, love song, muse, picture, poem of the day, Rhett, sheryl crown, song of the day, the lovers almanac, the lovers chronicle, twt, Zazie

The Lovers’ Chronicle 9 December – for you – verse by John Milton – photography by Roy DeCarava

09 December 2023 By Rhett 0 In Random

Dear Zazie Lee, Here is the latest edition of The Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag. Rhett

The Lovers’ Chronicle

Dear Muse,

these words for you

all i know, all i have

no longer cleft asunder,

the past recedes

those days

without you

and i see,

retrievable

i am grown young

with you,

i need not much

for this journey

here i stand

arms around you,

together, we move

as we never have before

thou that dost prefer

above all, to be with

instruct me, for thou

from the first

wast present,

what in me is dark

illumine, what is low

raise and support

that to the highth

i may assert

and justifie

the mind

is its own place,

and can make its waye

through the lack thereof

these words for you
are as close as i can git…

what was cleft asunder,
pale and irretrievable,
the day we parted
‘neath that Carolina sky
flashin’ with lightenin’

without you
need not much
for this journey

the search pulled
close around me
keeps me

all done with that
pointless to go there
choices were made
and they came
with necessary
sacrifices

it is what it is
and as is
is a helluva lot better
than what was

besides,

you cannot put a lock
on the Ponte Vecchio
anymore

Cry for Love Reprise

These words I write to you
Are nearer to truth
Than anything I know…

Clouds pass and I see,
Pale and irretrievable,
And it agitates
What has been cleft asunder
Since the day you left me
On the Spanish Steps;
And I am grown old

Lost without you,
I need not much for this journey
Here I wander
Ever across the land, murmurin’ softly
Sorrow, arms around me,
Whisperin’ as I move along

As rain falls like tears,
Shaken from misery bearin’ clouds
Cry for love

pontevecchioPanorama_of_the_Ponte_Vecchio_in_Florence,_Italy

John Milton
Portrait of Milton

Today is the birthday of John Milton (Bread Streeet, Cheapside, London 9 December 1608 – 8 November 1674 Bunhill, London); poet, polemicist, man of letters, and civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell. He wrote at a time of religious flux and political upheaval, and is best known for his epic poem Paradise Lost (1667), written in blank verse.

Milton and his first wife Mary Powell (1625–1652) had four children. Mary on 5 May 1652 from complications following childbirth. On 12 November 1656, Milton was married to Katherine Woodcock at St Margaret’s, Westminster. She died on 3 February 1658, less than four months after giving birth. Milton married for a third time on 24 February 1663 to Elizabeth Mynshull or Minshull (1638–1728), the niece of Thomas Mynshull, a wealthy apothecary and philanthropist in Manchester. The marriage took place at St Mary Aldermary in the City of London. Despite a 31-year age gap, the marriage seemed happy, and lasted more than 12 years until Milton’s death.

Paradise Lost was first published in 1667, and consisted of ten books with over ten thousand lines of verse. A second edition followed in 1674, arranged into twelve books (in the manner of Virgil’s Aeneid) with minor revisions throughout and a note on the versification. It is considered by critics to be Milton’s major work, and it helped solidify his reputation as one of the greatest English poets of his time.

The poem concerns the Biblical story of the Fall of Man: the temptation of Adam and Eve by the fallen angel Satan and their expulsion from the Garden of Eden. Milton’s purpose, stated in Book I, is to “justify the ways of God to men”.

Verse

Paradise Lost (1667)

And chiefly Thou O Spirit, that dost prefer
Before all Temples th’ upright heart and pure,
Instruct me, for Thou know’st; Thou from the first
Wast present, and with mighty wings outspread
Dove-like satst brooding on the vast Abyss
And mad’st it pregnant: What in me is dark
Illumine, what is low raise and support;
That to the highth of this great Argument
I may assert th’ Eternal Providence,
And justifie the wayes of God to men.
- i.17-26
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a heav’n of hell, a hell of heav’n.
- i.254-255
To reign is worth ambition though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven.
- i.262-263
They looking back, all th’ Eastern side beheld
Of Paradise, so late thir happie seat,
Wav’d over by that flaming Brand, the Gate
With dreadful Faces throng’d and fierie Armes:
Som natural tears they drop’d, but wip’d them soon;
The World was all before them, where to choose
Thir place of rest, and Providence thir guide:
They hand in hand with wandring steps and slow,
Through EDEN took thir solitarie way.
- x.1532-40

Roy_DeCarava And today is the birthday of Roy DeCarava (Roy Rudolph DeCarava; Harlem; December 9, 1919 – October 27, 2009 New York City) artist and photographer. DeCarava received early critical acclaim for his photography, initially engaging and imaging the lives of African Americans and jazz musicians in the communities where he lived and worked. Over a career that spanned nearly six decades, DeCarava came to be known as a founder in the field of black and white fine art photography, advocating for an approach to the medium based on the core value of an individual, subjective creative sensibility, which was separate and distinct from the “social documentary” style of many predecessors.

Gallery

Billie Holiday & Hazel Scott

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20221209_211757

Mac Tag

john milton, paradise lost, the lovers almanac, the lovers chronicle

The Lovers’ Chronicle 8 December – pleasure – birth of Horace – art by Adolph von Menzel, Camille Claudel, & Diego Rivera – birth of Jim Morrison

08 December 2023 By Rhett 0 In Random

Dear Zazie Lee, Here is the latest edition of The Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag. Rhett

The Lovers’ Chronicle

Dear Muse,

i can believe

turnin’ towards

do you dare

kindness

forgiveness

in the strengthenin’

whispers, becomes

here we are

watchin’

we are aware

this is it

we know

we exist

we have not forgotten

soft driven, slow and mad

wanderin’ in hopeful night

i touch your thigh

and i know

rarely find one

who has been there,

and then retired

from it all

as if satisfied

yet here we are

came to find out

it is enough

to combine

well-chosen words

in a well-ordered life

now dream

care not

if you wish me to weep,

you must help me feel

strugglin’ to be brief

not obscure

best ever at fallin’
never could resist,
once struck
by the thunderbolt

an addiction
to the bearable terror

(can one ever
feel that way
about another)

but tell me

how the hell hard
can it be to find
the one just suited

and why is it
so damn easy
to find the ill suited

gin, straight, Hendrick’s
of course, cause wine
just will not git it done
on this cold night

havin’ trouble gittin’
this to come into focus
wood stove keeps
the flesh warm
but does nothin’
for a cold heart
or dormant
desire

Legends, Elegies, Pleasures and Norma Jean

The man who wrote Legends of the Fall
Wrote; ‘Don’t fall in love as if fallin’ off a dock at night’
But when you are struck by the thunderbolt
How do you not fall

The man who wrote the Duino Elegies
Wrote; ‘Beauty is only the start of bearable terror’
But to be without beauty
Is unbearable

The woman once known as Norma Jean
Wrote; ‘I know from life one cannot love another’
I know what she meant, but to love you
How can I not

The man who wrote The Pleasures of Hope
Wrote; ‘How hard it is to find the one just suited to our mind! ‘
But it is just a little too easy to find one
Who is ill suited

Legends, Elegies, Pleasures and Norma Jean
What they wrote is unforgettable
And that is what you are, though near or far
In every way

Today is the birthday of Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus; Venusia, December 8, 65 BC – November 27, 8 BC Rome); Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus (also known as Octavian). The rhetorician Quintilian regarded his Odes as just about the only Latin lyrics worth reading. Horace also crafted elegant hexameter verses (Satires and Epistles) and caustic iambic poetry (Epodes).

His career coincided with Rome’s momentous change from a republic to an empire. An officer in the republican army defeated at the Battle of Philippi in 42 BC, he was befriended by Octavian’s right-hand man in civil affairs, Maecenas, and became a spokesman for the new regime.

Inde fit ut raro, qui se vixisse beatum
dicat et exacto contentus tempore vita
cedat uti conviva satur, reperire queamus.

(we rarely find anyone
who can say he has lived
a happy life, and who,
content with his life,
can retire from it all
like a satisfied guest)

Non satis est puris versum perscribere verbis.

it is not enough to combine
well-chosen words in a well-ordered line

Nunc vino pellite curas.

Now drown care in wine.

Si vis me flere, dolendum est
primum ipsi tibi.

If you wish me to weep, you yourself
Must first feel grief.

Brevis esse laboro,
obscurus fio.

Struggling to be brief I become obscure.

Adolph von Menzel

Today is the birthday of Adolph Friedrich Erdmann von Menzel (Breslau, Silesia; December 8, 1815 – February 9, 1905); realist artist noted for drawings, etchings, and paintings. In my opinion, he is one of the most prominent German artists of the 19th century, and the most successful artist of his era in Germany. First known as Adolph Menzel, he was knighted in 1898 and changed his name to Adolph von Menzel.

Gallery

Emilie Menzel, seated woman

Eisenwalzwerk, Iron Rolling Mill, 1872-1875.

Balcony Room, 1845.

Studio Wall, 1872.

Building Site with Willows, 1846.

The Bedroom of the Artist in the Ritterstraße, 1847
Begegngung mit Kaiser Joseph II in Neiße, 1857.
Weekday in Paris, 1869
Supper at the Ball, 1878.
Fronleichnamsprozession in Hofgastein , 1880.

Camille Claudel
Camille Claudel in 1884 (aged 19)

Today is the birthday of Camille Claudel (Fère-en-Tardenois, Aisne; 8 December 1864 – 19 October 1943 Montdevergues, Vaucluse); sculptor and graphic artist. She died in relative obscurity, but subsequently gained recognition for the originality of her work. She was the elder sister of the poet and diplomat Paul Claudel.

As a young woman she studied at the Académie Colarossi, one of the few places open to female students, with sculptor Alfred Boucher. In 1882, Claudel rented a workshop with other young women, mostly English, including Jessie Lipscomb. Alfred Boucher became her mentor. Claudel was depicted in “Camille Claudel lisant” by Boucher and later she herself sculpted a bust of Boucher. Before moving to Florence and after having taught Claudel and others for over three years, Boucher asked Auguste Rodin to take over the instruction of his pupils. This is how Rodin and Claudel met and their tumultuous and passionate relationship started.

Around 1884, she started working in Rodin’s workshop. Claudel became a source of inspiration, his model, his confidante and lover. She never lived with Rodin, who was reluctant to end his 20-year relationship with Rose Beuret. In 1892, after an abortion, Claudel ended the intimate aspect of her relationship with Rodin, although they saw each other regularly until 1898.

After 1905 Claudel appeared to be mentally ill. She destroyed many of her statues, disappeared for long periods of time, and exhibited signs of paranoia and was diagnosed as having schizophrenia. She accused Rodin of stealing her ideas and of leading a conspiracy to kill her. After the wedding of her brother in 1906 and his return to China, she lived secluded in her workshop. On 10 March 1913 at the initiative of her brother, she was admitted to the psychiatric hospital of Ville-Évrard in Neuilly-sur-Marne. On 7 September 1914 Camille was transferred with a number of other women, to the Montdevergues Asylum, at Montfavet, six kilometres from Avignon. Camille Claudel died on 19 October 1943, after having lived 30 years in the asylum at Montfavet (known then as the Asile de Montdevergues, now the modern psychiatric hospital Centre hospitalier de Montfavet).

Gallery

Abandonner

The Waltz, conceived in 1889 and cast in 1905

Claudel (left) and sculptor Jessie Lipscomb in their Paris studio in the mid-1880s

The Mature Age (between 1898 and 1913)

La Vague (“The Wave”) (1897)

Auguste Rodin, (1892)

Perseus and the Gorgon, 1905

Diego Rivera
Diego Rivera with a xoloitzcuintle, photo taken at the Casa Azul

Today is the birthday of Diego María de la Concepción Juan Nepomuceno Estanislao de la Rivera y Barrientos Acosta y Rodríguez, known as Diego Rivera (Guanajuato; December 8, 1886 – November 24, 1957 Mexico City); painter. His large frescoes helped establish the Mexican Mural Movement in Mexican art. Between 1922 and 1953, Rivera painted murals among others in Mexico City, Chapingo, Cuernavaca, San Francisco, Detroit, and New York City. Rivera had a volatile marriage with fellow Mexican artist Frida Kahlo.

Rivera married Angelina Beloff in 1911. Rivera had a child with Maria Vorobieff-Stebelska. He married his second wife, Guadalupe Marín, in June 1922. He was still married when he met art student Frida Kahlo. They married on August 21, 1929 when he was 42 and she was 22. Their mutual infidelities and his violent temper led to divorce in 1939, but they remarried December 8, 1940 in San Francisco. Rivera later married Emma Hurtado, his agent since 1946, on July 29, 1955, one year after Kahlo’s death.

Gallery

La chascona

Maternidad, Angelina y el niño Diego (Motherhood, Angelina and the Child Diego), c. August 1916, oil on canvas, 134.5 x 88.5 cm, Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil. This work forms part of Rivera’s Crystal Cubist period.

Kahlo and Rivera in 1932, photo by: Carl Van Vechten

Amedeo Modigliani, Portrait of Diego Rivera, 1914

En el Arsenal detail, 1928

Recreation of Man at the Crossroads (renamed Man, Controller of the Universe), originally created in 1934 (detail)

Portrait of Rivera, 19 March 1932. Photo by Carl Van Vechten

Self-portrait with Broad-Brimmed Hat, 1907, 84.5 × 61.5 cm. Museo Dolores Olmedo
Avila Morning (The Ambles Valley), 1908, 97 × 123 cm. Museo Nacional de Arte
Street in Ávila (Ávila Landscape), 1908, 129 × 141 cm. Museo Nacional de Arte
El Picador, 1909, 177 × 113 cm. Museo Dolores Olmedo
The House on the Bridge, 1909, 147 × 121 cm. Museo Nacional de Arte
After the Storm (The Grounded Ship), 1910, 120.7 × 146.7 cm. Museo Nacional de Arte
Landscape, 1911. Frida Kahlo Museum.
Portrait of Adolfo Best Maugard, 1913, 227.5 × 161.5 cm. Museo Nacional de Arte
The Sun Breaking through the Mist, 1913, 83.5 × 59 cm. Museo Dolores Olmedo
The Woman at the Well, 1913, 145 × 125 cm. Museo Nacional de Arte
The Alarm Clock, 1914. Frida Kahlo Museum
Two Women (Dos Mujeres, Portrait of Angelina Beloff and Maria Dolores Bastian), 1914, 197.5 x 161.3 cm. Arkansas Arts Center
Portrait de Messieurs Kawashima et Foujita, 1914, oil and collage on canvas, 78.5 x 74 cm. Private collection
Young Man with a Fountain Pen, 1914, 79.5 × 63.5 cm. Museo Dolores Olmedo
El Rastro, 1915, 27.5 × 38.5 cm. Museo Dolores Olmedo
Zapata-style Landscape, 1915, 145 × 125 cm. Museo Nacional de Arte
Portrait of Marevna, c.1915, 145.7 x 112.7 cm. Art Institute of Chicago
Seated Woman (Women with the Body of a Guitar), 1915-16. Frida Kahlo Museum
Urban Landscape, 1916. Frida Kahlo Museum
Still Life with Tulips (Naturaleza Muerta con Tulipanes), 1916, oil on canvas, 67.8 x 53.7 cm
Knife and Fruit in Front of the Window, 1917, 91.8 × 92.4 cm. Museo Dolores Olmedo
Still Life with Utensils, 1917, 71 × 54 cm. Museo Dolores Olmedo
The Mathematician, 1919, 115.5 × 80.5 cm. Museo Dolores Olmedo

Jim Morrison
Promotional photo of Jim Morrison, 1969

And today is the birthday of The Lizard King, Mr. Mojo Risin’, Jim Morrison (born James Douglas Morrison; Melbourne, Florida; December 8, 1943 – July 3, 1971 Paris); singer, songwriter, and poet, best remembered as the lead singer of The Doors. As a result of his lyrics, wild personality, performances, and the dramatic circumstances surrounding his life and death, Morrison is regarded by critics and fans as one of the most iconic and influential frontmen in rock music history. He was also well known for improvising spoken word poetry passages while the band played live. Morrison developed an alcohol dependency during the 1960s, which at times affected his performances on stage. He died at the age of 27 in Paris, possibly from an accidental heroin overdose. As no autopsy was performed, the exact cause of Morrison’s death is still disputed. Morrison is interred at Père Lachaise Cemetery in eastern Paris.

Lyrics/Poetry

You know the day destroys the night,
Night divides the day,
Tried to run —
Tried to hide —
Break on through to the other side!

“Break on Through (To The Other Side)” from The Doors (1967)

We chased our pleasures here,
Dug our treasures there,
But can you still recall
The time we cried?
Break on through to the other side!
- “Break on Through (To The Other Side)” from The Doors

It hurts to set you free, but you’ll never follow me.
- “The End” from The Doors (1967)

People are strange when you’re a stranger
Faces look ugly when you’re alone
Women seem wicked when you’re unwanted
Streets are uneven when you’re down.
- “People Are Strange” on the album Strange Days (1967)

When you’re strange
Faces come out of the rain
When you’re strange
No one remembers your name
When you’re strange.
- “People Are Strange” on the album Strange Days (1967)

Five to one, baby
One in five
No one here gets out alive, now
You get yours, baby
I’ll get mine
Gonna make it, baby
If we try.
- “Five to One” on the album Waiting for the Sun (1968)

The old get older
And the young get stronger
May take a week
And it may take longer
They got the guns
But we got the numbers
Gonna win, yeah
We’re takin’ over
Come on!
- “Five to One” on the album Waiting for the Sun (1968)

Take an Indian home to lunch.
- When asked how the USA should celebrate the Bicentennial, as quoted in Avant Garde magazine (March 1968)

At first flash of Eden, We race down to the sea.
Standing there on Freedom’s shore.
Waiting for the sun…
- “Waiting for the Sun” on the album Morrison Hotel (1970)

This is the strangest life I’ve ever known.
- “Waiting for the Sun” on the album Morrison Hotel (1970)

Killer on the road
His brain is squirming like a toad.
- “Riders on the Storm” from the album L.A. Woman (1971).

Listen to this, and I’ll tell you ’bout the heartache
I’ll tell you ’bout the heartache and the loss of God.
- “The Wasp (Texas Radio And The Big Beat)” on the albums L. A. Woman (1971) and An American Prayer (1978)

I’ll tell you this —
No eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn.
- “The Wasp (Texas Radio And The Big Beat)” on the albums L. A. Woman (1971) and An American Prayer (1978)

Mute nostril agony.
- “Horse Latitudes”

Don’t let me die in an automobile
I wanna lie in an open field
Want the snakes to suck my skin
Want the worms to be my friends
Want the birds to eat my eyes
As here I lie
The clouds fly by
- “The End; Live in New York” (1970), “The End; Live at The Hollywood Bowl” (1968)

The Lords and the New Creatures: Poems (1969)

Yoga powers.
To make oneself invisible or small.
To become gigantic and reach to the farthest things.
To change the course of nature.
To place oneself anywhere in space or time.
To summon the dead.
To exalt senses and perceive inaccessible images, of events on other worlds,
in one’s deepest inner mind, or in the minds of others.

(Windows work two ways, mirrors one way.)
You never walk through mirrors or swim through windows.

The world becomes an apparently infinite,
yet possibly finite, card game.
Image combinations,
permutations,
comprise the world game.

The New Creatures

I can’t believe this is happening
I can’t believe all these people
are sniffing each other
& backing away
teeth grinning
hair raised, growling, here in
the slaughtered wind

Do you dare
deny my
potency
my kindness
or forgiveness?

Camel caravans bear
witness guns to Caesar.
Hordes crawl and seep inside
the walls. The streets
flow stone. Life goes
on absorbing war. Violence
kills the temple of no sex.

Cool pools
from a tired land
sink now
in the peace of evening
Clouds weaken
and die.
The sun, an orange skull,
whispers quietly, becomes an
island, & is gone.
There they are
watching
us everything
will be dark.
The light changed.
We were aware
knee-deep in the fluttering air
as the ships move on
trains in their wake.

This is it
no more fun
the death of all joy
has come.

An American Prayer (1978)

Indians scattered on dawn’s highway bleeding
Ghosts crowd the young child’s fragile eggshell mind.
Me and my mother and father, and a grandmother and a grandfather. were driving through the desert, at dawn, and a truck load of Indian workers had either hit another car, or just — I don’t know what happened — but there were Indians scattered all over the highway, bleeding to death.
So the car pulls up and stops. That was the first time I tasted fear. I musta’ been about four — like a child is like a flower, his head is just floating in the breeze, man. The reaction I get now thinking about it, looking back — is that the souls of the ghosts of those dead Indians… maybe one or two of ’em… were just running around freaking out, and just leaped into my soul. And they’re still there.

Do you know the warm progress under the stars?
Do you know we exist?
Have you forgotten the keys to the kingdom?
Have you been born yet
& are you alive?

Let’s reinvent the gods, all the myths of the ages
Celebrate symbols from deep elder forests

Now listen to this…
Ill tell you about texas radio and the big beat
Soft driven, slow and mad Like some new language
Reaching your head with the cold, sudden fury of a divine messenger
Let me tell you about heartache and the loss of god
Wandering, wandering in hopeless night
Out here in the perimeter there are no stars…
Out here we is stoned…
Immaculate.

O great creator of being
grant us one more hour to
perform our art
and perfect our lives
The moths & atheists are doubly divine
& dying
We live, we die
and death not ends it

I touched her thigh
and death smiled

We have assembled inside this ancient
& insane theatre
To propagate our lust for life
& flee the swarming wisdom
of the streets

Resident mockery
give us an hour for magic

I’m sick of dour faces
Staring at me from the T.V.
Tower.
I want roses in
my garden bower; dig?

Death makes angels of us all
and gives us wings
where we had shoulders
smooth as raven’s
claws

I will not go
Prefer a
feast of Friends
To the Giant family

The program for this evening
is not new. You have seen
This entertainment through and through.
You’ve seen your birth, your
life and death; you might recall
all of the rest — (did you
have a good world when you
died?) — enough to base
a movie on?

They’re making a joke of our universe

Do you know freedom exists in a school book
Did you know madmen are running our prisons
Within a jail
Within a gaol
Within a white free protestant maelstrom
We’re perched headlong on the edge of boredom
We’re reaching for death on the end of a candle
We’re trying for something that’s already found us.

Always a playground instructor, never a Killer

Her cunt gripped him like a warm friendly hand.

Indian, Indian what did you die for?
Indian says, nothing at all.

Lying on stained wretched sheets with the bleeding virgin,
we could plan a murder…or start a religion.

Mac Tag

adolph menzel, camille claudel, diego rivera, horace, jim morrison, the lovers almanac

The Lovers’ Chronicle 7 December – two – art by Gian Lorenzo Bernini – birth of Willa Cather

07 December 2023 By Rhett 0 In Random

Dear Zazie Lee, Here is the latest edition of The Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag. Do you know what it is to be one of two? Rhett

The Lovers’ Chronicle

Dear Muse,

two lyin’ naked,

livin’, talkin’, believin’

the same voice

the same story

everything we can do

to save each other

how did we become

our dreams aligned,

sleepin’ in tune

holdin’ each other

through whatever

there are no other

just us two

the still gazes

do not change

in the shadows

seemed to be nothin’ to see

no fences, no creeks, no trees,

but in those rollin’ hills

there was a trail,

i could make out

in the faint starlight

that i could follow

though i knew not

where it led

i just knew

that you were there

somewhere ahead

waitin’

that is all i need

seemed, nothin’ to see

to those who cannot

and nothin’ happened

even gave up expectin’

anything to come

after so much denial

but here it comes,

how it feels

to be a part

of somethin’

entirely

to be dissolved

into somethin’ complete

when it comes to two

two together
in the same room
or time zones apart
nothin’ better
two, each half
of a whole
do you know
what it means
to be half
of a whole
do you know
how it feels
to not care
where you are goin’
as long as you are
one of two together

but two asunder
sleepin’ outta tune
i god, nothin’ worse

and why did the one,
every damn time,
follow the other

never hesitated
to board that train
not carin’ where
it was goin’
but once on board
inevitably, the lookin’
for the backdoor
countdown began

so whatcha gonna do
with a soi-disant poet
full of beauty and sorrow

Two

Just us two
Two bodies lyin’
Naked, exhausted
Two people livin’
Two people talkin’
Two people believin’
Two silver rings
Two different voices
Two ways to tell the story
Was there nothin’ I could do
To save you
When did we become so unhappy
How did we become disappointed
Our dreams disjointed,
Sleepin’ outta tune
Through all of the mistakes
Holdin’ each other in the archway
Through the thunderstorms
But no one could fix us no one could
There are no other witnesses
Just us two
The still gazes
Do not change in the shadows

Today is the birthday of Gian Lorenzo Bernini (also Gianlorenzo or Giovanni Lorenzo; Naples; 7 December 1598 – 28 November 1680; Rome); painter, sculptor and architect. A major figure in the world of architecture and the leading sculptor of his age. He has been credited with creating the Baroque style of sculpture. In addition, he was a man of the theater: he wrote, directed and acted in plays. As architect and city planner, he designed both secular buildings and churches and chapels, as well as massive works combining both architecture and sculpture, including elaborate public fountains and funerary monuments and a whole series of temporary structures (in stucco and wood) for funerals and festivals.

In the 1630s he engaged in an affair with a married woman named Costanza (wife of his workshop assistant, Matteo Bonucelli, also called Bonarelli) and sculpted a bust of her (now in the Bargello, Florence) during the height of their romance. She later had an affair with his younger brother, Luigi, who was Bernini’s right-hand man in his studio. When Gian Lorenzo found out about Costanza and his brother, he chased Luigi through the streets of Rome and into the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, threatening his life. To punish his unfaithful mistress, Bernini had a servant go to the house of Costanza, where the servant slashed her face several times with a razor. The servant was later jailed, and Costanza was jailed for adultery; Bernini himself was exonerated by the pope, even though he had committed a crime. Soon after, in May 1639, at age forty-one, Bernini wed a twenty-two-year-old Roman woman, Caterina Tezio, in an arranged marriage, under orders from Pope Urban. She bore him eleven children, including youngest son Domenico Bernini, who would later be his first biographer.

Gallery

“Sleeping Hermaphrodite” – The Louvre, Paris.

Ratto di Proserpina

David

Apollo e Dafne

Fotografia del baldacchino di San Pietro

Costanza

Estasi di Santa Teresa (1647-1652); chiesa di Santa Maria della Vittoria, Roma.

La fontana dei Quattro Fiumi

Il ponte Sant’Angelo fotografato da Paolo Monti

Particolare dell’Apollo e Dafne

Particolare della Beata Ludovica Albertoni

Willa Cather
Cather in 1912.

Today is the birthday of Willa Cather (Willa Sibert Cather; Gore, Virginia; December 7, 1873 – April 24, 1947 Manhattan); author who achieved recognition for her novels of frontier life on the High Plains, including O Pioneers! (1913), The Song of the Lark (1915), and My Ántonia (1918). In 1923 she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for One of Ours (1922), a novel set during World War I. Cather grew up in Virginia and Nebraska, and graduated from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. She lived and worked in Pittsburgh for ten years, supporting herself as a magazine editor and high school English teacher. At the age of 33 she moved to New York City, her primary home for the rest of her life.

Throughout Cather’s adult life, her most significant friendships were with women. These included her college friend Louise Pound; the Pittsburgh socialite Isabelle McClung, with whom Cather traveled to Europe and at whose Toronto home she stayed for prolonged visits; the opera singer Olive Fremstad; the pianist Yaltah Menuhin; and most notably, the editor Edith Lewis.

Willa Cather Memorial Prairie in Webster County, Nebraska

Cather’s relationship with Lewis began in the early 1900s. The two women lived together in a series of apartments in New York City from 1908 until Cather’s death in 1947. Cather selected Lewis as the literary trustee for her estate.

My Antonia (1918)

There seemed to be nothing to see; no fences, no creeks or trees, no hills or fields. If there was a road, I could not make it out in the faint starlight. There was nothing but land: not a country at all, but the material out of which countries are made.
- Book I, Ch. 1

I kept as still as I could. Nothing happened. I did not expect anything to happen. I was something that lay under the sun and felt it, like the pumpkins, and I did not want to be anything more. I was entirely happy. Perhaps we feel like that when we die and become a part of something entire, whether it is sun and air, or goodness and knowledge. At any rate, that is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great. When it comes to one, it comes as naturally as sleep.
- Book I, Ch. 2

I ain’t got time to learn. I can work like mans now.
- Book 1, Ch. 17

Winter lies too long in country towns; hangs on until it is stale and shabby, old and sullen. On the farm the weather was the great fact, and men’s affairs went on underneath it, as the streams creep under the ice. But in Black Hawk the scene of human life was spread out shrunken and pinched, frozen down to the bare stalk.
- Book II, Ch. 7

On starlight nights I used to pace up and down those long, cold streets, scowling at the little, sleeping houses on either side, with their storm-windows and covered back porches. They were flimsy shelters, most of them poorly built of light wood, with spindle porch-posts horribly mutilated by the turning-lathe. Yet for all their frailness, how much jealousy and envy and unhappiness some of them managed to contain! The life that went on in them seemed to me made up of evasions and negations; shifts to save cooking, to save washing and cleaning, devices to propitiate the tongue of gossip. This guarded mode of existence was like living under a tyranny. People’s speech, their voices, their very glances, became furtive and repressed. Every individual taste, every natural appetite, was bridled by caution. The people asleep in those houses, I thought, tried to live like the mice in their own kitchens; to make no noise, to leave no trace, to slip over the surface of things in the dark.
- Book II, Ch. 12

There were no clouds, the sun was going down in a limpid, gold-washed sky. Just as the lower edge of the red disk rested on the high fields against the horizon, a great black figure suddenly appeared on the face of the sun. We sprang to our feet, straining our eyes toward it. In a moment we realized what it was. On some upland farm, a plough had been left standing in the field. The sun was sinking just behind it. Magnified across the distance by the horizontal light, it stood out against the sun, was exactly contained within the circle of the disk; the handles, the tongue, the share — black against the molten red. There it was, heroic in size, a picture writing on the sun.
- Book II, Ch. 14

“Jim,” she said earnestly, “if I was put down there in the middle of the night, I could find my way all over that little town; and along the river to the next town, where my grandmother lived. My feet remember all the little paths through the woods, and where the big roots stick out to trip you. I ain’t never forgot my own country.”
- Book II, Ch. 14

Cleric said he thought Virgil, when he was dying at Brindisi, must have remembered that passage. After he had faced the bitter fact that he was to leave the ‘Aeneid’ unfinished, and had decreed that the great canvas, crowded with figures of gods and men, should be burned rather than survive him unperfected, then his mind must have gone back to the perfect utterance of the ‘Georgics,’ where the pen was fitted to the matter as the plough is to the furrow; and he must have said to himself, with the thankfulness of a good man, ‘I was the first to bring the Muse into my country.’
- Book III, Ch. 2

Men are all right for friends, but as soon as you marry them they turn into cranky old fathers, even the wild ones. They begin to tell you what’s sensible and what’s foolish, and want you to stick at home all the time. I prefer to be foolish when I feel like it, and be accountable to nobody.
- Book III, Ch. 4

She remembered home as a place where there were always too many children, a cross man and work piling up around a sick woman.
- Book III, Ch. 4

The windy springs and the blazing summers, one after another, had enriched and mellowed that flat tableland; all the human effort that had gone into it was coming back in long, sweeping lines of fertility. The changes seemed beautiful and harmonious to me; it was like watching the growth of a great man or of a great idea. I recognized every tree and sandbank and rugged draw. I found that I remembered the conformation of the land as one remembers the modelling of human faces.
- Book IV, Ch. 3

I think of you more often than of anyone else in this part of the world. I’d have liked to have you for a sweetheart, or a wife, or my mother or my sister — anything that a woman can be to a man. The idea of you is a part of my mind; you influence my likes and dislikes, all my tastes, hundreds of times when I don’t realize it. You really are a part of me.
- Book IV, Ch. 4

Ain’t it wonderful, Jim, how much people can mean to each other?
- Bok IV, Ch. 4

As we walked homeward across the fields, the sun dropped and lay like a great golden globe in the low west. While it hung there, the moon rose in the east, as big as a cart-wheel, pale silver and streaked with rose colour, thin as a bubble or a ghost-moon. For five, perhaps ten minutes, the two luminaries confronted each other across the level land, resting on opposite edges of the world.
In that singular light every little tree and shock of wheat, every sunflower stalk and clump of snow-on-the-mountain, drew itself up high and pointed; the very clods and furrows in the fields seemed to stand up sharply. I felt the old pull of the earth, the solemn magic that comes out of those fields at nightfall. I wished I could be a little boy again, and that my way could end there.
- Book IV, Ch. 4

In the course of twenty crowded years one parts with many illusions. I did not wish to lose the early ones. Some memories are realities, and are better than anything that can ever happen to one again.
- Book V, Ch. 1

As I confronted her, the changes grew less apparent to me, her identity stronger. She was there, in the full vigour of her personality, battered but not diminished, looking at me, speaking to me in the husky, breathy voice I remembered so well.
- Book V, Ch. 1

It was no wonder that her sons stood tall and straight. She was a rich mine of life, like the founders of early races.
- Book V, Ch. 1

Whatever we had missed, we possessed together the precious, the incommunicable past.
- Book V, Ch. 3

Mac Tag

gian lorenzo bernini, the lovers almanac, the lovers chronicle, willa cather

The Lovers’ Chronicle 6 December – urges – art by Frédéric Bazille – lyrics by Ira Gershwin – photography by Alfred Eisenstaedt – James Joyce’s Ulysses obscenity ruling

06 December 2023 By Rhett 2 In Random

Dear Zazie Lee, Here is today’s edition of The Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag. Rhett

The Lovers’ Chronicle

Dear Muse,

how my skin feels under

your breath, as if all

of your urges were

comin’ at once

kissin’ my neck

strummin’

your fingers

down my side

soundin’ out

your passion

on top of me

then raisin’ up

up to shake your hair,

and the look in your eyes

as you release, yes this

we were meant for

how her breasts

would sway and swell,

then settle on my chest

after she let go,

and the way

my skin felt

under her breath

as if all of her urges

were talkin’ at once

she would sound out

her passion, then raise

up, to shake her hair,

in the breeze that blew

through our windows

then over our heads

she would pull the sheet,

printed with wavy lines,

crestin’ waves under puffs

of our spent urges,

scented with a mix

of sex and her perfume

touched in the night
the courage to believe
the courage to suffer

much ado about this
thinkin’ the full meanin’
could not be known

it would seem now,
that these words
can be shared

mutual devotion,
and declaration

it is remarkable

many fine memories
come around
to keep company
now that the fire
has cooled enough
to make ’em bearable
there was a time
when it hurt like hell
enough to almost
make a heart stop
now, there is such
an intense focus
to git these words
as near right as possible

as nights go by,
all this time
spent in solitude
with only voices
from the past
let in to mingle
with thoughts
of used to be
well, how could
human or beast
compete with that

too much, too far
too abstract, all in all,
altogether too intense
too dependent, yes
this is makin’ sense,
hooked on inspiration

when inspired
life was as it is written
but then it faded
and went out
why is that

livin’ from one
inspiration to the next
until there were no more

perhaps,
it is just as easy
as readin’ Ulysses
again and imaginin’
the locale is Celtic
and the season
is forever spring

Urges

i loved how her breasts
would sway and swell,
above me then settle
on my chest after she
let go, and the way
my skin felt under her
breath, so urgent, as if
her most fervent urges
were all talkin’ at once,
as if they had come in
cold from the darkness,
tryin’ to snuggle close
kissin’ my neck
she would strum
her fingers down
my side and sound out
her passion, then raise
up, to shake her hair,
in the breeze that blew
from the mountain mornin’
through our window
then over our heads
she would pull the bed sheet,
printed with wavy lines
like ocean waves
crestin’ under puffs
of our spent urges
scented with a mix
of sex and her perfume
the only crestin’ waves
near these mountains

Frédéric Bazille
Frédéric Bazille, Self-portrait, 1865–1866, oil on canvas, Art Institute of Chicago]]

Today is the birthday of Jean Frédéric Bazille (Montpellier, Hérault, Languedoc-Roussillon; December 6, 1841 – November 28, 1870 Beaune-la-Rolande); Impressionist painter. Many of Bazille’s major works are examples of figure painting in which Bazille placed the subject figure within a landscape painted en plein air.

Bazille joined a Zouave regiment in August 1870, a month after the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War. On November 28 of that year, he was with his unit at the Battle of Beaune-la-Rolande when, his officer having been injured, he took command and led an assault on the German position. He was hit twice in the failed attack and died on the battlefield at the age of twenty eight. His father traveled to the battlefield a few days later to take his body back for burial at Montpellier over a week later.

Gallery

Bazille’s Studio; 9 Rue de la Condamine, 1870, Musée d’Orsay, Paris. From left to right: Pierre Auguste Renoir sitting, Emile Zola (standing on the stairs), Eduard Manet and Claude Monet (with the hat) – next to Bazille, talking about one of his paintings.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Frédéric Bazille painting The Heron

Self Portrait, unknown date
The Pink Dress (View of Castelnau-le-Lez, Hérault), 1864, oil on canvas, Musée d’Orsay
Portrait of Renoir, 1867, oil on canvas, Musée d’Orsay
Le Petit Jardinier (The Little Gardener), c. 1866-67, oil on canvas Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
Nature morte avec du poisson, Still life with fish, c. 1866-67.
Aigues-Mortes, 1867
Family Reunion, c. 1867, Musée d’Orsay
Nature morte au héron, 1867
Fisherman with a Net, 1868
Flowers — 1868
Portrait of Paul Verlaine, 1868, Dallas Museum of Art
Scène d’été, 1869,
Portrait of Edmond Maître, 1869

Today is the birthday of Ira Gershwin (New York City; December 6, 1896 – August 17, 1983 Beverly Hills); lyricist who collaborated with his younger brother, composer George Gershwin, to create some of the most memorable songs of the 20th century. With George he wrote more than a dozen Broadway shows, featuring songs such as “I Got Rhythm”, “Embraceable You”, “The Man I Love”, and “Someone to Watch Over Me”. He was also responsible, along with DuBose Heyward, for the libretto to George’s opera Porgy and Bess. His mastery of songwriting continued after the early death of George. He wrote additional hit songs with composers Jerome Kern (“Long Ago (and Far Away)”), Kurt Weill and Harold Arlen. His critically acclaimed book Lyrics on Several Occasions of 1959, an amalgam of autobiography and annotated anthology, is an important source for studying the art of the lyricist in the golden age of American popular song.

Lyrics

You’ve made my life so glamorous,
You can’t blame me for feeling amorous.
‘S wonderful, ‘s marvellous
That you should care for me.
- “‘S Wonderful”, Funny Face, Act I (1927).

I got rhythm,
I got music,
I got my man
Who could ask for anything more?
- “I Got Rhythm”, Girl Crazy, Act I (1930).

Summertime and the livin’ is easy,
Fish are jumpin’, and the cotton is high.
Oh yo’ daddy’s rich, and yo’ ma is good lookin’,
So hush, little baby, don’ yo’ cry.
- “Summertime”, Porgy and Bess, Act I, sc. i (1935). Lyric written in collaboration with DuBose Heyward.

It ain’t necessarily so,
It ain’t necessarily so.
De t’ings dat yo’ li’ble
To read in de Bible,
It ain’t necessarily so.
- “It Ain’t Necessarily So”, Porgy and Bess, Act II, sc. ii.

Nice work if you can get it,
And you can get it if you try.
- “Nice Work If You Can Get It”, A Damsel in Distress (1937).

You like potato and I like po-tah-to,
You like tomato and I like to-mah-to;
Potato, po-tah-to, tomato, to-mah-to –
Let’s call the whole thing off!
- “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off”, Shall We Dance (1937).

They all laughed at Christopher Columbus
When he said the world was round;
They all laughed when Edison recorded sound.
- “They All Laughed”, Shall We Dance.

The way you wear your hat,
The way you sip your tea,
The mem’ry of all that –
No, no! They can’t take that away from me!
- “They Can’t Take That Away from Me”, Shall We Dance.

In time the Rockies may crumble,
Gibraltar may tumble,
They’re only made of clay,
But our love is here to stay.
- “Our Love Is Here to Stay”, The Goldwyn Follies (1938).

Poor Jenny, bright as a penny!
Her equal would be hard to find.
She lost one dad and mother,
A sister and a brother–
But she would make up her mind.
- “The Saga of Jenny”, Lady in the Dark

Today is the birthday of Alfred Eisenstaedt (Dirschau (Tczew) in West Prussia, Imperial Germany; December 6, 1898 – August 23, 1995 Oak Bluffs, Massachusetts); photographer and photojournalist. He began his career in Germany prior to World War II but achieved prominence as a staff photographer for Life magazine after moving to the U.S. Life featured more than 90 of his pictures on its covers, and more than 2,500 of his photo stories were published.

Among his most famous cover photographs was V-J Day in Times Square, taken during the V-J Day celebration in New York City, showing an American sailor kissing a nurse in a “dancelike dip” which “summed up the euphoria many Americans felt as the war came to a close”, in the words of his obituary. He was “renowned for his ability to capture memorable images of important people in the news” and for his candid photographs taken with a small 35mm Leica camera, typically with natural lighting.

After first settling in New York City in 1935, Eisenstaedt lived in Jackson Heights, Queens (NYC) for the rest of his life. He met Kathy Kaye, a South African woman, and married her in 1949. The couple had no children and remained together until her death in 1972. Until shortly before Eisenstaedt’s death, he would walk daily from his home to his Life office on the Avenue of the Americas and 51st Street.

He died in his bed at midnight at his beloved Menemsha Inn cottage known as the “Pilot House” at age 96 in the company of his sister-in-law, Lucille Kaye, and a friend, William E. Marks.

He was buried at Mount Hebron Cemetery in Flushing, Queens.

Gallery

VJ day..Times Square NYC

20221207_200823

20221207_201035

20221207_201057

On this day in 1933 – U.S. federal judge John M. Woolsey rules that James Joyce’s novel Ulysses is not obscene. Ulysses is a modernist novel by Irish writer James Joyce. It was first serialised in parts in the American journal The Little Review from March 1918 to December 1920, and then published in its entirety by Sylvia Beach in February 1922, in Paris. In my opinion, it is one of the most important works of modernist literature. Ulysses chronicles the meandering appointments and encounters of Leopold Bloom in Dublin in the course of an ordinary day, 16 June 1904. Ulysses is the Latinised name of Odysseus, the hero of Homer’s epic poem Odyssey, and the novel establishes a series of parallels between the poem and the novel, with structural correspondences between the characters and experiences of Leopold Bloom and Odysseus, Molly Bloom and Penelope, and Stephen Dedalus and Telemachus, in addition to events and themes of the early twentieth century context of modernism, Dublin, and Ireland’s relationship to Britain. Ulysses is approximately 265,000 words in length and is divided into eighteen episodes. Since publication, the book has attracted controversy and scrutiny, including the afore mentioned obscenity trial, due to its stream-of-consciousness technique, careful structuring, and experimental prose full of puns, parodies, and allusions, as well as its rich characterisation and broad humour. Joyce fans worldwide now celebrate 16 June as Bloomsday.

Judge Woolsey ruled that Ulysses was not pornographic. Acknowledging the “astonishing success” of Joyce’s use of the stream of consciousness technique, the judge stated that the novel was serious and that its author was sincere and honest in showing how the minds of his characters operate and what they were thinking. Some of their thoughts, the judge said, were expressed in “old Saxon words” familiar to readers, and:

[i]n respect of the recurrent emergence of the theme of sex in the minds of [Joyce’s] characters, it must always be remembered that his locale was Celtic and his season Spring.

May all of our locales be Celtic and our seasons forever Spring.

Mac Tag

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The Lovers’ Chronicle 5 December – lucidity – verse by Christina Rossetti – art by Konstantin Korovin

05 December 2023 By Rhett 0 In Random

Dear Zazie, Here is today’s edition of The Lovers’ Chronicle; Pale Lover, Pale Rider from Mac Tag. Do you trust in eternal lucidity? Rhett

The Lovers’ Chronicle

Dear Muse,

for Anna

now with you

certainty
in focus
findin’ myself
in my place

so on this waxin’
crescent night
i dwell not so much
on the found and lost
but on purpose
and meant to be

right time, right place
has ridden into
this solitude

then, i think of you

certainty

comin’ in focus

findin’ myself

in a different place

so on this chilly night

i dwell not so much

on the found and lost

but on purpose

and meant to be

all that remains to see

has right time, right place

ridden into this lucid solitude

is it up-hill all the damn way

“Yes, to the very end.”

will it take long

“From beauty

to sorrow,

my friend.”

remember

gone far away

into solitude

better by far you should

remember and be sad

than forget and smile

on this waxin’ moon night

the sad songs have come,

have come to us

where instinct and bein’
form into whatever will be
call out, around, everywhere
feelin’s no longer obscured
entangled in overdue choice

lucidity comes
crossin’ time
and distance

a voice heard, a whisper,
evermore, somewhere
in this awakenin’ desire

Pale Love, Pale Rider

Dear Dark Muse,

he said that to you
and you said that to him
well, hell if i know
there is no figurin’
what is inside
some people’s hearts
not even sure
what is inside my own

there were times
when i was certain
i had found lucidity
only to find myself
in the same damn place
pickin’ up what was left
of another sundered heart
and wonderin’ what went wrong

no doubt
failure was destined
tryin’ to love ’em all
without knowin’ how
to love myself

so on this windy,
cold, full moon night
i dwell not so much
on the found and lost
for i have lucidity
of a certain sort
my raison d’etre
is bein’ fulfilled
all that remains
to be seen
is whether or not
right time and right place
rides into this lucid solitude

The Song of the Day is one of my favorite songs and it played a part in the Poem of the Day. Since I became fascinated with the movie Inception I have been intrigued by the idea of lucid dreams. You did the rest, Dark Muse, and I thank you. Give yourself to the……

Eternal Lucidity

From everlastin’ silence,
Unconscious, ocean of night
Where instinct and bein’ soar,
Into whatever may be

Call out, nothin’, where is this
Around, everywhere, darkness
Everywhere a solemn vertigo
Entangled, obscured feelin’s

This featureless aurora
Float swirls of those in between
Oasis or misery, a choice
Crossin’ this unknown desert

Chosen for this mysterious trip
Remain here, stark, quiescent,
While around crowd the others
Cry, hope, death; astonishment

A voice heard, a whisper, who
The witness of evermore
Somewhere in this metamorphoses
Fear morphs into uncontrolled desire

Could this be, a conduit of space
To infinity, populated
By the unfortunate who find not
Themselves when they travel in this place

Ask again, anxiety and doubt
Or an enigma at least
Listen to the hours driftin’, dyin’
Dyin’, dyin’, time untouched

Die, be more nothin’
Enter the silence
Feel the disquiet desire
Then see the universe of the night

Nothin’, nothin’, rage assures
Tomorrow extinguished, not promised
Sewn in a cloth, prey to Nevermore
That is the trouble with never

Never said and done cannot be undone
What was let go cannot be held again
To be without, realizin’ now
There is just not another way to be

Then, surrender to the One
The one born of shadows
Trust in a different kind of truth
A degree of acceptance, as is

So, have not only this life
Go, alone, seek that certain future
Forget what the centuries have done
Trust the eternal lucidity

Christina Rossetti

Today is the birthday of Christina Georgina Rossetti (London 5 December 1830 – 29 December 1894 London); poet who wrote a variety of romantic, devotional, and children’s poems. She is famous for writing Goblin Market and Remember, and the words of the Christmas carol In the Bleak Midwinter. She was the sister of artist and poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

Portrait of Rossetti, by her brother Dante

In her late teens, Rossetti became engaged to the painter James Collinson, the first of three suitors. He was, like her brothers Dante and William, one of the founding members of the avant-garde artistic group, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (founded 1848). The engagement was broken in 1850 when he reverted to Catholicism. Later she became involved with the linguist Charles Cayley, but declined to marry him, also for religious reasons. The third offer came from the painter John Brett, whom she also refused.

Rossetti sat for several of Dante’s most famous paintings. In 1848, she was the model for the Virgin Mary in his first completed oil painting, The Girlhood of Mary Virgin, which was the first work to be inscribed with the initials ‘PRB’, later revealed to signify the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. The following year she modelled again for his depiction of the Annunciation, Ecce Ancilla Domini. A line from her poem “Who shall deliver me?” inspired the famous painting by Fernand Khnopff called “I lock my door upon myself“.

Illustration for the cover of Rossetti’s Goblin Market and Other Poems (1862), by her brother Dante

Quotes

Does the road wind up-hill all the way?
Yes, to the very end.
Will the day’s journey take the whole long day?
From morn to night, my friend.
- Up-Hill, st. 1 (1861).

My heart is like a singing bird
Whose nest is in a water’d shoot;
My heart is like an apple-tree
Whose boughs are bent with thick-set fruit.
- A Birthday, st. 1 (1861).

The birthday of my life
Is come, my love is come to me.
- A Birthday, st. 2.

When I am dead, my dearest,
Sing no sad songs for me;
Plant thou no roses at my head,
Nor shady cypress tree:
Be the green grass above me
With showers and dewdrops wet;
And if thou wilt, remember,
And if thou wilt, forget.
- Song, st. 1 (1862).

Remember me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land.
- Remember, l. 1-2 (1862).

Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.
- Remember, l. 13-14.

For there is no friend like a sister
In calm or stormy weather;
To cheer one on the tedious way,
To fetch one if one goes astray,
To lift one if one totters down,
To strengthen whilst one stands.
- Goblin Market, st. 28 (1862).

Oh roses for the flush of youth,
And laurel for the perfect prime;
But pluck an ivy branch for me
Grown old before my time.
- Song, st. 1 (1862).

In the bleak mid-winter
Frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow,
Snow on snow,
In the bleak mid-winter
Long ago.
- Mid-Winter, st. 1 (1872).

Who has seen the wind?
Neither you nor I:
But when the trees bow down their heads
The wind is passing by.
- Who Has Seen the Wind?, st. 2 (1872).

Sleeping at last, the trouble and tumult over,
Sleeping at last, the struggle and horror past,
Cold and white, out of sight of friend and of lover,
Sleeping at last.
- Sleeping at Last, st. 1 (1893) .

Hope is like a harebell, trembling from its birth,
Love is like a rose, the joy of all the earth,
Faith is like a lily, lifted high and white,
Love is like a lovely rose, the world’s delight.
Harebells and sweet lilies show a thornless growth,
But the rose with all its thorns excels them both.
- Hope is like a Harebell; reported in Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

All earth’s full rivers can not fill
The sea that drinking thirsteth still.
- By the Sea; reported in Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919); Old and New, Volume 5 (1872), p. 169.

One day in the country
Is worth a month in town.
- Summer; reported in Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Silence more musical than any song.
- Sonnet. Rest; reported in Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Song

When I am dead, my dearest,
Sing no sad songs for me;
Plant thou no roses at my head,
Nor shady cypress tree:
Be the green grass above me
With showers and dewdrops wet:
And if thou wilt, remember,
And if thou wilt, forget.

I shall not see the shadows,
I shall not feel the rain;
I shall not hear the nightingale
Sing on as if in pain:
And dreaming through the twilight
That doth not rise nor set,
Haply I may remember,
And haply may forget.

1862

Konstantin Korovin
Valentin Serov, Portrait of Konstantin Korovin, 1891

Today is the birthday of Konstantin Alekseyevich Korovin (Moscow; 5 December [O.S. 23 November] 1861 – 11 September 1939 Paris); Impressionist painter.

One of the artist’s favourite themes was Paris. He painted A Paris Cafe (1890s), Cafe de la Paix (1905), La Place de la Bastille (1906), Paris at Night, Le Boulevard Italien (1908), Night Carnival (1901), Paris in the Evening (1907), and others.

During World War I Korovin worked as a camouflage consultant at the headquarters of one of the Russian armies and was often seen on the front lines. After the October Revolution Korovin continued to work in the theater, designing stages for Richard Wagner’s Die Walküre and Siegfried, as well as Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker (1918–1920).

In 1923 Korovin moved to Paris on the advice of Commissar of Education Anatoly Lunacharsky to cure his heart condition and help his handicapped son. There was supposed to be a large exhibition of Korovin’s works, but the works were stolen and Korovin was left penniless. For years, he produced the numerous Russian Winters and Paris Boulevards just to make ends meet.

In the last years of his life he produced stage designs for many of the major theatres of Europe, America, Asia and Australia, the most famous of which is his scenery for the Turin Opera House’s production of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Golden Cockerel.

Korovin died in Paris on 11 September 1939. He was buried in Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois Russian Cemetery, in the southern suburbs of Paris.