Dear Zazie, Here is today’s Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag dedicated to his muse. Follow us on twitter @cowboycoleridge. Have you lost the fragrance of love’s ways? Have you felt the sting of anguish? Rhett
The Lovers’ Chronicle
Dear Muse,
© copyright 2020 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved
survived long discordant days,
despair, and Time’s laggin’ pace
to say farewell to those ways
let the days pass
and drowse those thoughts
a dream long sought
now at hand
no longer gone
grasp the chance
and welcome calm
© copyright 2018 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved
on this night, clear
in the moonlight,
a long walk in order,
we arrive at the bridge
deserted at this time
we start across arm in arm
midway we stop to look
over the rail at the river below,
uniformly gray under the nocturnal sky
the water appears to vanish
into an empty space beyond
we turn to each other,
strip our clothes, and disappear
in the depths beneath
a fall with the dizzy
rapidity of a dream
we surface
from the cool water
and cling to each other
in the wan moonlight
we take a deep breath
and descend to the bottom
lost now in the darkness,
in the immensity of life,
in each other
© copyright 2017 mac tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved
Come to me,
come before
it is too late
you alone can draw
the sting of anguish
© copyright 2012 mac tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved
Portrait of Caspar David Friedrich, Gerhard von Kügelgen c. 1810–20
On 21 January 1818, Friedrich married Caroline Bommer, the twenty-five-year-old daughter of a dyer from Dresden. Physiologist and painter Carl Gustav Carus notes in his biographical essays that marriage did not impact significantly on either Friedrich’s life or personality, yet his canvasses from this period, including Chalk Cliffs on Rügen—painted after his honeymoon—display a new sense of levity, while his palette is brighter and less austere.
Gallery
Woman before the rising or setting sun
The chalk drawing Self-portrait, 1800, which portrays the artist at 26, was completed while he was studying at the Royal Academy in Copenhagen. Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Copenhagen
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Old Heroes’ Graves, (1812), 49.5 x 70.5 cm. Kunsthalle, Hamburg.
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The Cross Beside The Baltic (1815), 45 × 33.5 cm. Schloss Charlottenburg, Berlin.
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Moonrise Over the Sea (1822). 55 × 71 cm. Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin.
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Graveyard under Snow (1826). 31 × 25 cm. Museum der bildenden Künste, Leipzig.
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The Oak Tree in the Snow (1829). 71 × 48 cm. Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin.
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The Stages of Life (Die Lebensstufen (1835). Museum der Bildenden Künste, Leipzig.
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The Giant Mountains (1830–35). 72 × 102 cm. Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin.
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Seashore by Moonlight (1835–36). 134 × 169 cm. Kunsthalle, Hamburg.
It was on this day in 1914 that French poet Charles Péguy died in Villeroy, France. In 1897, at age 24, Péguy married Charlotte-Françoise Baudoin. They had one daughter and three sons, one of whom was born after Péguy’s death. Around 1910 he fell deeply in love with Blanche Raphael, a young Jewish friend, however he was faithful to his wife. My friend Jett is in that situation. He is married with kids but he loves another. The only reason he stays with his wife is because of the kids.
nothin’ ain’t worth nothin’
On this day in 1707 Irish writer Richard Steele sat in St. James Coffee House in London and wrote a love letter to Mary Scurlock, whom he wanted to marry.
It was on this day in 1867, French poet Charles Baudelaire died in Paris. Baudelaire’s muse was Jeanne Duval (c.1820 – 1862) a Haitian-born actress and dancer of mixed French and black African ancestry. They met in 1842, when Duval left Haiti for France. They remained together, albeit stormily, for the next two decades. Duval is said to have been the woman whom Baudelaire loved most in his life. Poems of Baudelaire’s which are dedicated to Duval or pay her homage are: Le balcon, Parfum exotique, La chevelure, Sed non satiata, Le serpent qui danse, and Une charogne. Baudelaire called her “mistress of mistresses” and his “Vénus Noire” (“Black Venus”), and it is believed that, to him, Duval symbolized the dangerous beauty, sexuality, and mystery of a Creole woman in mid-nineteenth century France. Here is the Poem of the Day by Baudelaire (translation by Edna St. Vincent Millay):
Today is the birthday of Helen Levitt (Brooklyn; August 31, 1913 – March 29, 2009)
Today is the birthday of the father of German literature, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, born in Frankfurt (1749), the author of the epic drama Faust. He moved to Italy in 1786, and when he returned to Germany in 1788, he fell in love with a woman from Weimar, Christiane Vulpius, a 23-year-old who was 16 years his junior. That year, he wrote her an epithalamium, a specific type of poem written for a bride on the way to the marital chamber. But he did not actually marry her; instead, the couple lived together for 18 years unwed.0
They were still living together in 1806, unmarried and with children, when some of Napoleon’s French soldiers — who were drunk — broke into their home in Weimer one evening. Goethe was terrified, but Christiane started shouting at the soldiers, fending them off in hand-to-hand combat, and protecting the bewildered man of the house. After a prolonged skirmish, she pushed them out of the house and barricaded the kitchen and the cellar so the soldiers could not try to steal any more of their food. Grateful to the brave and steadfast woman who had saved his life and home, Goethe went down to a church the very next day and married her, his live-in girlfriend of 18 years.
Today is the birthday of Vittorio Sella (Biella, Kingdom of Sardinia; 28 August 1859 – 12 August 1943 Biella, Kingdom of Italy); photographer and mountaineer, who took photographs of mountains which are regarded as some of the finest ever made.
And it was on this day in 1859 that English poet Leigh Hunt died in London.
On this day in 1930, one of America’s most eligible bachelors got married. Journalist H.L. Mencken, almost 50, had never before been married. He was a man who made fun of romance and who called marriage “the end of hope.” My friend Jett loves that quote, though he keeps gettin’ married, and Rhett believes it is so. So Mencken shocked America when he tied the knot on this day. The bride, his girlfriend of seven years: Sara Haardt, of Montgomery, Alabama, an English professor, suffragist, and fellow writer. She died of meningitis just five years after marryin’ Mencken. Mencken was grief-stricken and never remarried.
On this day in 1950, Italian poet, writer, Cesare Pavese died from an overdose perhaps due to the failure of a brief love affair with the actress Constance Dowling, to whom his last novel (La luna e i falò, The Moon and the Bonfires (1950)), was dedicated (“For C. The ripeness is all”.) And one of his last poems (“Death will come and she’ll have your eyes”) was dedicated to Dowling.
And on this day in 1953, William Wyler‘s film, 
