The Lovers’ Chronicle 23 April – what light – birth of Shakespeare, Ruggero Leoncavallo & Roy Orbison – photography by Lee Miller

23 April 2024 By Rhett 1 In Love, Poems, Songs

Dear Zazie, Here is today’s Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag. How do you celebrate beauty and the Bard? Who do you see walkin’ down the street? I see a pretty woman! Rhett

The Lovers’ Chronicle

Dear Muse,

yes, there is this,

but soft, what light

put on the costume

for many years

played the part

gave what was wanted

laughed at the broken

trail left behind,

at the grief

that poisoned

i know what i say,

what i write

and what i do

for thou art more fair

than all that came before

act, while in this state,

at least still know what to write,

if not what to do

so necessary to make an effort

are you not

what you say you are

put it on

they expect it, they want you to be happy

and if Harlequin shall steal your Columbina,

shrug it off, so they can keep believin’

a sonnet that tells
how still as it was
on the day
when first seen

or a song that asks
how to compare
what knows
no comparison

perhaps some verse

that speaks,
but soft, of light
that breaks
all ’round
and none as fair

of dreams
and fond adieu
till we meet again

Today marks Shakespeare’s birth
Plus or minus a day
But the date matters not
The question before us;
To celebrate or not
To celebrate? We shall!

How about a sonnet
That tells of thy beauty
A beauty to be woo’d
How thy beauty is still
As it was on the day
When first your eye I eyed

Or a sonnet that asks
How shall I compare thee?
Whatever that may be,
Whether ’tis summer’s day,
It matters not a whit
For thou art more lovely

I could compose some verse

That speaks, but soft, of light
That breaks from your window
As though thou were the sun,
A light that can shame stars
And which none is as fair

Perhaps a toast will do
To the Bard and beauty
And to such stuff as dreams
And wishes are made of
For now bid fond adieu
Till the twain meet again

williamshakespeareTitle_page_William_Shakespeare's_First_Folio_1623 Today is the day that Shakespeare’s birthday is traditionally celebrated. We do not know for certain when he was born but we know he was baptised on 26 April 1564. Back then infants were usually baptised two or three days after birth. We have Shakespeare to thank for the now common phrase, “love is blind”. Indeed, it can be. I often quote him in my writing and speech. A few of the best;

All the world’s a stage,

and all the men and women merely players:

they have their exits and entrances;

and one man in his time plays many parts…

As You Like It, Act II, Scene 7

But soft, what light through yonder window breaks?
It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.
Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon,
Who is already sick and pale with grief
That thou, her maid, art far more fair than she.
Romeo And Juliet Act 2, scene 2

And Caesar’s spirit, raging for revenge,
With Ate by his side come hot from hell,
Shall in these confines with a monarch’s voice
Cry “Havoc!” and let slip the dogs of war,
That this foul deed shall smell above the earth
With carrion men, groaning for burial.
Julius Caesar Act 3, scene 1

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead.
In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility;
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger. . . .
Henry The Fifth Act 3, scene 1

Centre de Musique Mediane pour Vikipedia

Today is the birthday of Ruggero (or Ruggiero) Leoncavallo (Naples 23 April 1857 – 9 August 1919 Tuscany); opera composer and librettist. Although he would produce numerous operas and other songs throughout his career it is his two-act work Pagliacci (1892) that remains his lasting contribution. Pagliacci, is one of the most popular works in the opera repertory. His other well known works include the song “Mattinata”, popularized by Enrico Caruso, as well as the symphonic poem La nuit de mai.

Pagliacci (meaning “Clowns”) is an Italian opera in a prologue and two acts, with music and libretto by Leoncavallo. It is the only Leoncavallo opera that is still widely performed. It is often staged by opera companies as a double bill with Cavalleria rusticana by Pietro Mascagni, known as Cav and Pag. Pagliacci premiered at the Teatro Dal Verme in Milan on 21 May 1892, conducted by Arturo Toscanini, with Adelina Stehle as Nedda, Fiorello Giraud as Canio, Victor Maurel as Tonio, and Mario Ancona as Silvio. Nellie Melba played Nedda in London in 1892, soon after the Italian premiere, and it was given in New York on 15 June 1893, with Agostino Montegriffo as Canio.

Cover of the first edition of Pagliacci

“Vesti la giubba” (“Put on the costume”, sometimes translated as “On With the Motley”) is a tenor aria from Pagliacci. “Vesti la giubba” is sung at the conclusion of the first act, when Canio discovers his wife’s infidelity, but must prepare for his performance as Pagliaccio the clown because “the show must go on”. The aria is often regarded as one of the most moving in the operatic repertoire. The pain of Canio is portrayed in the aria and exemplifies the entire notion of the “tragic clown”: smiling on the outside but crying on the inside. This is still displayed today, as clown makeup sometimes features the painted-on tear running down the cheek of the performer. The 1902 recording of the aria, sung by Enrico Caruso, was the first million-selling record in history.

	“Vesti la giubba” Performed by Enrico Caruso, recorded on March 17, 1907

Recitar! Mentre preso dal delirio,
non so più quel che dico,
e quel che faccio!
Eppur è d’uopo, sforzati!
Bah! Sei tu forse un uom?
Tu se’ Pagliaccio!

Vesti la giubba e la faccia infarina.
La gente paga, e rider vuole qua.
E se Arlecchin t’invola Colombina,
ridi, Pagliaccio, e ognun applaudirà!
Tramuta in lazzi lo spasmo ed il pianto
in una smorfia il singhiozzo e ‘l dolor, Ah!

Ridi, Pagliaccio,
sul tuo amore infranto!
Ridi del duol, che t’avvelena il cor!

Act! While in delirium,
I no longer know what I say,
or what I do!
And yet it’s necessary… make an effort!
Bah! Are you not a man?
You are a clown!

Put on your costume, powder your face.
The people pay to be here, and they want to laugh.
And if Harlequin shall steal your Columbina,
laugh, clown, so the crowd will cheer!
Turn your distress and tears into jest,
your pain and sobbing into a funny face – Ah!

Laugh, clown,
at your broken love!
Laugh at the grief that poisons your heart!

Today is the birthday of singer and songwriter, the Big O, the Caruso of Rock, Roy Orbison (1936), born Roy Kelton Orbison in Vernon, Texas. By the time he was seven, he knew that music was his calling. He later said, “I was finished, you know, for anything else.” Clearly one of my songwriting heroes. My list of favorite Orbison songs includes; “Only the Lonely”, “Crying”, “Oh, Pretty Woman”, “Running Scared”, “Blue Bayou”, and “In Dreams”.

His career ignited in 1960 with a song that had been turned down by Elvis Presley and the Everly Brothers. “Only the Lonely” was the antithesis of the typical rock and roll song of the period, with no driving beat or teenage defiance; it was mournful and plaintive, with a string section backing up Orbison’s operatic voice. He had severe stage fright, and performed dressed all in black, hiding behind a pair of thick prescription Wayfarer sunglasses. He said: “I wasn’t trying to be weird, you know? … But the image developed of a man of mystery and a quiet man in black, somewhat of a recluse, although I never was, really.”

One day, during a songwriting session with his partner Bill Dees, Orbison asked his wife, Claudette Frady Orbison, if she needed any money for her upcoming trip to Nashville. Dees remarked, “Pretty woman never needs any money.” Forty minutes later, Orbison’s most famous hit, “Oh, Pretty Woman,” had been written.

Of Orbison, Bruce Springsteen said; “He was the true master of the romantic apocalypse you dreaded, and knew was coming after the first night you whispered ‘I Love You’ to your first girlfriend. You were going down. Roy was the coolest uncool loser you’d ever seen. With his Coke-bottle black glasses, his 3-octave range, he seemed to take joy sticking his knife deep into the hot belly of your teenage insecurities.”

Today is the birthday of Lee Miller (Elizabeth “Lee” Miller, Lady Penrose; Poughkeepsie, New York; Chiddingly, East Sussex, Great Britain; April 23, 1907 – July 21, 1977); model, muse, photographer, and photojournalist. She was a fashion model in New York City in the 1920s before going to Paris, where she became a fashion and fine art photographer. During the Second World War, she was a war correspondent for Vogue, covering events such as the London Blitz, the liberation of Paris, and the concentration camps at Buchenwald and Dachau.

In 1929, Miller traveled to Paris with the intention of apprenticing herself to the surrealist artist and photographer Man Ray. Although, at first, he insisted that he did not take students, Miller soon became his model and collaborator (announcing to him, “I’m your new student”), as well as his lover and muse.

In 1934, Miller abandoned her studio to marry the Egyptian businessman and engineer Aziz Eloui Bey, who had come to New York City to buy equipment for the Egyptian National Railways. Although she did not work as a professional photographer during this period, the photographs she took while living in Egypt with Eloui, including Portrait of Space, are regarded as some of her most striking surrealist images. In Cairo, Miller took a photograph of the desert near Siwa that Magritte saw and used as inspiration for his 1938 painting “Le Baiser.”

By 1937, Miller had grown bored with her life in Cairo and returned to Paris, where she met the British surrealist painter and curator Roland Penrose, whom she later would marry.

At the outbreak of World War II, Miller was living in Hampstead in London with Penrose when the bombing of the city began. Ignoring pleas from friends and family to return to the US, Miller embarked on a new career in photojournalism as the official war photographer for Vogue, documenting the Blitz. She traveled to France less than a month after D-Day and recorded the first use of napalm at the siege of St. Malo, as well as the liberation of Paris, the Battle of Alsace, and the horror of the Nazi concentration camps at Buchenwald and Dachau.

After returning to Britain from central Europe, Miller started to suffer from severe episodes of clinical depression and what later became known as Post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). She began to drink heavily, and became uncertain about her future. In 1946, she traveled with Penrose to the United States, where she visited Ray in California. After she discovered she was pregnant by Penrose with her only son, she divorced Bey and, on May 3, 1947, married Penrose. Their son, Antony Penrose, was born in September 1947.

In 1949, the couple bought Farley Farm House in Chiddingly, East Sussex. During the 1950s and 1960s, Farley Farm became a sort of artistic Mecca for visiting artists such as Picasso, Ray, Henry Moore, Eileen Agar, Jean Dubuffet, Dorothea Tanning, and Max Ernst. While Miller continued to do the occasional photo shoot for Vogue, she soon discarded the darkroom for the kitchen, becoming a gourmet cook. According to her housekeeper Patsy she specialized in “historical food” like roast suckling pig as well as fare such as marshmallows in a cola sauce (especially made to annoy English critic Cyril Connolly who told her Americans could not cook). She also provided photographs for biographies Penrose wrote on Picasso and Antoni Tàpies. However, images from the war, especially the concentration camps, continued to haunt her and she started on what her son later described as a “downward spiral”. Her depression may have been accelerated by her husband’s long affair with the trapeze artist Diane Deriaz.

Miller was investigated by the British security service MI5 during the 1940s and 1950s, on suspicion of being a Soviet spy.

In October 1969, Miller was asked in an interview with a New York Times reporter what it was that drew her to photography. Her response was that it was “a matter of getting out on a damn limb and sawing it off behind you.”

Gallery

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Man Ray & Ady Fidelin

Photo by George Hoyningen-Huene, 1932

Women with Fire Masks and Whistles, London 1941

Portrait by Picasso

HItler’s Bathtub

Mac Tag

cowboy coleridge, lee miller, muse, oh pretty woman, Rhett, roy orbison, shakespeare, tea with tater, the bard and beauty, the lovers almanac, the lovers chronicle, tla, twt, Zazie

The Lovers’ Chronicle 22 April – clingin’ – photography by Laura Gilpin & Max Dupain – birth of Vladimir Nabokov – birth of Bettie Page

22 April 2024 By Rhett 0 In Random

Dear Zazie,

Today’s Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag.

Rhett

The Lovers’ Chronicle

from a 2016 poem
a micro-story
about the one not found
“Oh, I thought you said,
just a swinging”
ha, that is a good song though
no, the same ol’ tune
and where i took it
from there to here
what i knew could be
but from so far away
from the verse to you
just a clingin’

one of the reasons i come here
is for the spontaneity

structured and rigid
in day-to-day activities
but here
go whichever way the Muse goes
let the words and rhythms
do the work, carry me
from one moment
to the next
no thinkin’
no decisions
just blue on white
me and you

half pleasure, half-pain, whenever in this ecstasy, to kiss, with a soft movement almost woeful, caught and slackened again, quiverin’ mouth, with a sibilant intake of breath come near, lips pressed, then again, ready to offer everything, mutual, at once, crept into waitin’ arms

another struggle

pushin’ through

there is nothin’ else

crept into waitin’ arms,

in the cloud, radiant,

relaxed, caressin’

tender, give and give

some more, never tire,

pure, no expectations,

this moment only,

’round midnight

while the wind

moans and sighs

through the trees

light, fire, sin, soul
tip of the tongue
takin’ a trip

in the mornin’,
in my arms,
usually
a precursor

there might have,
had it been at all

one thing remains
you can count on

what some never see
cling to this

the dance has hold
and time is turnin’
and the future
is possible

thanks Bret

Soy yo. Me sientes?

seriously y’all
trust me on this one
every sign leads
to not meant to be

mention trenchancy,
came across more than one
what stood in my way
with nothin’ to say
so give over to my
callin’ it done
i have come about
found my lines
slogged the reasons
borne the time
and we are even
and i am leavin’
meant to be behind

then… silence
lookin’ at each other,
thoughts, minglin’ together,
same anguish of mind…
cling close to one another

Today is the birthday of Laura Gilpin (Austin Bluffs, Colorado April 22, 1891 – November 30, 1979 Santa Fe); American photographer. She is known for her photographs of American Indians, (particularly the Navajo and Pueblo), and southwestern landscapes. Gilpin began taking photographs as a child in Colorado, and formally studied photography in New York in 1916-1917 before returning to her home in Colorado to begin her career as a professional photographer.

Gallery

Georgia O’Keeffe

The prelude

Francis Nakai & Family

Georgia O’Keeffe

Footprints in the Sand

Rancho de Taos Mission, New Mexico

Vladimir Nabokov
Nabokov in Montreux, 1973

Today is the birthday of Vladimir Nabokov (Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov; Saint Petersburg; 22 April [O.S. 10 April] 1899 – 2 July 1977 Montreux); novelist, translator and entomologist. His first nine novels were in Russian, but he achieved international prominence after he began writing English prose.

Perhaps best known for his novel Lolita (1955). Other notable works include, his novel Pale Fire (1962) and his memoir, Speak, Memory (1951). He was a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction seven times.

In 1922, Nabokov became engaged to Svetlana Siewert; she broke off the engagement in early 1923, her parents worrying that he could not provide for her. In May 1923, he met a Russian-Jewish woman, Véra Evseyevna Slonim, at a charity ball in Berlin and married her in April 1925.

Nabokov wrote Lolita while travelling on butterfly-collection trips in the western United States that he undertook every summer. Véra acted as “secretary, typist, editor, proofreader, translator and bibliographer; his agent, business manager, legal counsel and chauffeur; his research assistant, teaching assistant and professorial understudy”; when Nabokov attempted to burn unfinished drafts of Lolita, it was Véra who stopped him. He called her the best-humored woman he had ever known.

grave at Cimetière de Clarens near Montreux, Switzerland

After the financial success of Lolita, Nabokov was able to return to Europe and devote himself exclusively to writing. On 1 October 1961, he and Véra moved to the Montreux Palace Hotel in Montreux, Switzerland. From his sixth-floor quarters he conducted his business and took tours to the Alps, Corsica, and Sicily to hunt butterflies. In 1976 he was hospitalised with a fever doctors were unable to diagnose. He was rehospitalised in Lausanne in 1977 suffering from severe bronchial congestion. He died on 2 July in Montreux surrounded by his family. His remains were cremated and are buried at the Clarens cemetery in Montreux.

in the 1960s

in 1973

Monument in Montreux

Lolita

Part One

Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta. She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita. Did she have a precursor? She did, indeed she did. In point of fact, there might have been no Lolita at all had I not loved, one summer, an initial girl-child. In a princedom by the sea. Oh when? About as many years before Lolita was born as my age was that summer. You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, exhibit number one is what the seraphs, the misinformed, simple, noble-winged seraphs, envied. Look at this tangle of thorns.
- Opening lines, Ch. 1

You have to be an artist and a madman, a creature of infinite melancholy, with a bubble of hot poison in your loins and a super-voluptuous flame permanently aglow in your subtle spine (oh, how you have to cringe and hide!), in order to discern at once, by ineffable signs—the slightly feline outline of a cheekbone, the slenderness of a downy limb, and other indices which despair and shame and tears of tenderness forbid me to tabulate—the deadly little demon among the wholesome children; she stands unrecognized by them and unconscious herself of her fantastic power.
- Ch. 1

My very photogenic mother died in a freak accident (picnic, lightning) when I was three, and, save for a pocket of warmth in the darkest past, nothing of her subsists within the hollows and dells of memory, over which, if you can still stand my style (I am writing under observation), the sun of my infancy had set…
- Ch. 2

There are two kinds of visual memory: one when you skillfully recreate an image in the laboratory of your mind, with your eyes open (and then I see Annabel in such general terms as: “honey-colored skin,” “thin arms,” “brown bobbed hair,” “long lashes,” “big bright mouth”); and the other when you instantly evoke, with shut eyes, on the dark innerside of your eyelids, the objective, absolutely optical replica of a beloved face, a little ghost in natural colors (and this is how I see Lolita).
- Ch. 3

I also know that the shock of Annabel’s death consolidated the frustration of that nightmare summer, made of it a permanent obstacle to any further romance throughout the cold years of my youth. The spiritual and the physical had been blended in us with a perfection that must remain incomprehensible to the matter-of-fact, crude, standard-brained youngsters of today. Long after her death I felt her thoughts floating through mine. Long before we met we had had the same dreams. We compared notes. We found strange affinities. The same June of the same year (1919) a stray canary had fluttered into her house and mine, in two widely separated countries. Oh, Lolita, had you loved me thus!
- Ch. 4

I have reserved for the conclusion of my “Annabel” phase the account of our unsuccessful first tryst. One night, she managed to deceive the vicious vigilance of her family. In a nervous and slender-leaved mimosa grove at the back of their villa we found a perch on the ruins of a low stone wall. Through the darkness and the tender trees we could see the arabesques of lighted windows which, touched up by the colored inks of sensitive memory, appear to me now like playing cards-presumably because a bridge game was keeping the enemy busy. She trembled and twitched as I kissed the corner of her parted lips and the hot lobe of her ear. A cluster of stars palely glowed above us, between the silhouettes of long thin leaves; that vibrant sky seemed as naked as she was under her light frock. I saw her face in the sky, strangely distinct as if it emitted a faint radiance of its own. Her legs, her lovely live legs, were not too close together, and when my hand located what it sought, a dreamy and eerie expression, half pleasure, half-pain, came over those childish features. She sat a little higher than I, and whenever in her solitary ecstasy she was led to kiss me, her head would bend with a sleepy, soft, drooping movement that was almost woeful, and her bare knees caught and compressed my wrist, and slackened again and her quivering mouth, distorted by the acridity of some mysterious potion, with a sibilant intake of breath came near to my face. She would try to relieve the pain of love by first roughly rubbing her dry lips against mine; then my darling would draw away with a nervous toss of her hair, and then again come darkly near and let me feed on her open mouth, while with a generosity that was ready to offer her everything, my heart, my throat, my entrails, I gave her to hold in her awkward fist the scepter of my passion.
- Ch. 4

All at once we were madly, clumsily, shamelessly, agonizingly in love with each other; hopelessly, I should add, because that frenzy of mutual possession might have been assuaged only by our actually imbibing and assimilating every particle of each other’s soul and flesh; but there we were, unable even to mate as slum children would have so easily found an opportunity to do so.
- Ch.4

Now I wish to introduce the following idea. Between the age limits of nine and fourteen there occur maidens who, to certain bewitched travelers, twice or many times older than they, reveal their true nature which is not human, but nymphic (that is, demoniac); and these chosen creatures I propose to designate as “nymphets.”
- Ch. 5

Overtly, I had so-called normal relationships with a number of terrestrial women having pumpkins or pears for breasts; inly, I was consumed by a hell furnace of localized lust for every passing nymphet whom as a law-abiding poltroon I never dared approach. The human females I was allowed to wield were but palliative agents. I am ready to believe that the sensations I derived from natural fornication were much the same as those known to normal big males consorting with their normal big mates in that routine rhythm which shakes the world. The trouble was that those gentlemen had not, and I had, caught glimpses of an incomparably more poignant bliss. The dimmest of my pollutive dreams was a thousand times more dazzling than all the adultery the most virile writer of genius or the most talented impotent might imagine.
- Ch. 5

Oh, my Lolita, I have only words to play with!
- Ch. 8

All I want to stress is that my discovery of her was a fatal consequence of that ‘princedom by the sea’ in my tortured past. Everything between the two events was but a series of gropings and blunders, and false rudiments of joy.
- Ch. 10

Then she crept into my waiting arms, radiant, relaxed, caressing me with her tender, mysterious, impure, indifferent, twilight eyes–for all the world, like the cheapest of cheap cuties. For that is what nymphets imitate–while we moan and die.
- Ch. 27

While eager to impress me with the world of tough kids, she was not quite prepared for certain discrepancies between a kid’s life and mine. Pride alone prevented her from giving up; for, in my strange predicament, I feigned supreme stupidity and had her have her way — at least while I could still bear it. But really these are irrelevant matters; I am not concerned with so-called “sex” at all. Anybody can imagine those elements of animality. A greater endeavor lures me on: to fix once for all the perilous magic of nymphets.
- Ch. 29

Part Two

Lolita, when she chose, could be a most exasperating brat. I was not really quite prepared for her fits of disorganized boredom, intense and vehement griping, her sprawling, droopy, dopey-eyed style, and what is called goofing off — a kind of diffused clowning which she thought was tough in a boyish hoodlum way. Mentally, I found her to be a disgustingly conventional little girl. Sweet hot jazz, square dancing, gooey fudge sundaes, musicals, movie magazines and so forth — these were the obvious items in her list of beloved things. The Lord knows how many nickels I fed to the gorgeous music boxes that came with every meal we had.
- Ch. 1

And so we rolled East, I more devastated than braced with the satisfaction of my passion, and she glowing with health, her bi-iliac garland still as brief as a lad’s, although she had added two inches to her stature and eight pounds to her weight. We had been everywhere. We had really seen nothing. And I catch myself thinking today that our long journey had only defiled with a sinuous trail of slime the lovely, trustful, dreamy, enormous country that by then, in retrospect, was no more to us than a collection of dog-eared maps, ruined tour books, old tires, and her sobs in the night — every night, every night — the moment I feigned sleep.
- Ch. 3

I am sufficiently proud of my knowing something to be modest about my not knowing all.
- Ch. 25

Wanted, wanted: Dolores Haze.
Hair: brown. Lips: scarlet.
Age: five thousand three hundred days.
Profession: none, or “starlet”.
- Ch. 25

Dying, dying, Lolita Haze,
Of hate and remorse, I’m dying.
And again my hairy fist I raise,
And again I hear you crying.
- Ch. 25

In Kasbeam a very old barber gave me a very mediocre haircut: he babbled of a baseball-playing son of his, and, at every explodent, spat into my neck, and every now and then wiped his glasses on my sheet-wrap, or interrupted his tremulous scissor work to produce faded newspaper clippings, and so inattentive was I that it came as a shock to realize as he pointed to an easelled photograph among the ancient gray lotions, that the moustached young ball player had been dead for the last thirty years.
- p. 215

All of a sudden I noticed that he had noticed that I did not seem to have noticed Chum protruding from beneath the other corner of the chest. We fell to wrestling again. We rolled all over the floor, in each other’s arms, like two huge helpless children. He was naked and goatish under his robe, and I felt suffocated as he rolled over me. I rolled over him. We rolled over me. They rolled over him. We rolled over us.
- Ch. 35

The following decision I make with all the legal impact and support of a signed testament: I wish this memoir to be published only when Lolita is no longer alive.
Thus, neither of us is alive when the reader opens this book. But while the blood still throbs through my writing hand, you are still as much part of blessed matter as I am, and I can still talk to you from here to Alaska. Be true to your Dick. Do not let other fellows touch you. Do not talk to strangers. I hope you will love your baby. I hope it will be a boy. That husband of yours, I hope, will always treat you well, because otherwise my specter shall come at him, like black smoke, like a demented giant, and pull him apart nerve by nerve. And do not pity C. Q. One had to choose between him and H.H., and one wanted H.H. to exist at least a couple of months longer, so as to have him make you live in the minds of later generations. I am thinking of aurochs and angels, the secret of durable pigments, prophetic sonnets, the refuge of art. And this is the only immortality you and I may share, my Lolita.
- Ch. 36

And today is the birthday of Bettie Page (Betttie Mae Page; Nashville; April 22, 1923 – December 11, 2008 Los Angeles); model who gained notoriety in the 1950s for her pin-up photos. She was often referred to as the “Queen of Pinups”: her long jet-black hair, blue eyes, and trademark bangs have influenced artists for generations. After her death, Playboy founder Hugh Hefner called her “a remarkable lady, an iconic figure in pop culture who influenced sexuality, taste in fashion, someone who had a tremendous impact on our society”.

Page lived in California in her early adult years before moving to New York City to pursue work as an actress. There, she found work as a pin-up model, and she posed for several photographers throughout the 1950s. Page was “Miss January 1955”, one of the earliest Playmates of the Month for Playboy magazine. After years in obscurity, she experienced a resurgence of popularity in the 1980s.

In 1959, Page converted to evangelical Christianity and worked for Billy Graham, studying at Bible colleges in Los Angeles and Portland, Oregon, with the intent of becoming a missionary. The latter part of Page’s life was marked by depression, mood swings, and several years in a state psychiatric hospital with paranoid schizophrenia.

Gallery

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Mac Tag

laura gilpin, the lovers almanac, the lovers chronicle, vladimir nabokov

The Lovers’ Chronicle 21 April – distantly – art by Ludovico Carracci & Alfred Henry Maurer – birth of Charlotte Brontë

21 April 2024 By Rhett 0 In Random

Dear Zazie,

Here is today’s Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag.

Rhett

The Lovers’ Chronicle

Dear Muse,

this one from a Jimmy Buffett song
“I thought it might be in reference
to how far away your dreams were”
that is one reason the song stuck to me
how removed i had become from feelin’
anything, how i could hardly remember
what it felt like to be held by someone
who just wanted to hold you
“That is no longer distantly
for you my love”

may as well for if not who is to say what would become, these words will make you, repeated often enough, heard and held when nothin’ else came ’round, here bury where belong or disappear, the only possible sense that can be made, remember, focus, still unique not distantly removed

feelin’s… clamour, soothe, save, tell you and you will be, who cares for you, by what you do, still the reply: for thee, the more sustained, the more to hold this, worth believin, verse streamin’ and tempo beatin’ faster, comes in throes, unique and no longer distant

and you wondered why

and even asked

i responded

a number of ways…

humorously,

glibly,

or incredulously

as in it is so obvious

how could you ask

of course i said

you deserved it,

though deserves

got nothin’ to do with it

the answer is

i do not know,

except that

because you are you

“I can’t help but be
ruled by my own philosophy
not unique just distantly in love”

write through this April’s day,
poetry here and there,
streamin’ melodies, the feel
of wonder runnin’ about,
between purpose and clarity
verse provides all measures
and the means of gettin’
carried completely away

what will become of you and me

“Someone’s gonna git hurt
before your through”
too late
“Someone’s gonna pay
for the things you do”
yeah they did

“How many hearts must break
How many will it take
to satisfy you
Just to satisfy you”
i hope no more

need
ah hell nah
it done died thank god
never brought about
anything but trouble

want,
well now,
that is a whole
‘nother story
tryin’ my best
to deny that

“I can’t help but be
ruled by my own philosophy
not unique just distantly in love”

actually, quite unique
ruled by beauty and sorrow
and intrigued with every aspect
of have and have not

“Does she like you?”
i think so
“Do you like her?”
yes
“Have you told her?”
oh no
“Why not?”
someone has
not been payin’
attention i see

Today is the birthday of Ludovico (or Lodovico) Carracci (Bologna 21 April 1555 – 13 November 1619 Bologna); early-Baroque painter, etcher, and printmaker. His works are characterized by a strong mood invoked by broad gestures and flickering light that create spiritual emotion and are credited with reinvigorating Italian art, especially fresco art, which was subsumed with formalistic Mannerism.

Gallery

Bacco e Arianna

Medea, Palazzo Fava, Bologna

Christ in the Wilderness, Served by Angels

Lamentation of Christ (ca. 1582).
Madonna and Child with St Francis of Assisi (1591) – known as “La Carraccina” due to the admiration of the young Guercino
Madonna and Child with Saints
Annunciation
Transfiguration
Abraham and the Three Angels

Today is the birthday of Charlotte Brontë (Thornton, West Riding of Yorkshire, England; 21 April 1816 – 31 March 1855 Haworth, West Riding of Yorkshire, England); novelist and poet, the eldest of the three Brontë sisters who survived into adulthood and whose novels became classics of English literature.

She enlisted in school at Roe Head in January 1831, aged 14 years. She left the year after to teach her sisters, Emily and Anne, at home, returning in 1835 as a governess. In 1839 she undertook the role as governess for the Sidgwick family, but left after a few months to return to Haworth where the sisters opened a school, but failed to attract pupils. Instead they turned to writing and they each first published in 1846 under the pseudonyms of Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell. Her first novel The Professor was rejected by publishers, her second novel Jane Eyre was published in 1847. The sisters admitted to their Bell pseudonyms in 1848, and by the following year were celebrated in London literary circles.

Before the publication of her third novel, Villette, Brontë received an expected proposal of marriage from Arthur Bell Nicholls, her father’s curate, who had long been in love with her. She initially turned down his proposal and her father objected to the union at least partly because of Nicholls’s poor financial status. Elizabeth Gaskell, who believed that marriage provided “clear and defined duties” that were beneficial for a woman, encouraged Brontë to consider the positive aspects of such a union and tried to use her contacts to engineer an improvement in Nicholls’s finances. Brontë meanwhile was increasingly attracted to Nicholls and by January 1854 she had accepted his proposal. They gained the approval of her father by April and married in June. Her father Patrick had intended to give Charlotte away, but at the last minute decided he could not, and Charlotte had to make her way to the church without him. The married couple took their honeymoon in Banagher, County Offaly, Ireland. By all accounts, her marriage was a success and Brontë found herself very happy in a way that was new to her.

Brontë experienced the early deaths of all her siblings. She became pregnant shortly after her marriage in June 1854 but died on 31 March 1855, almost certainly from hyperemesis gravidarum, a complication of early pregnancy which causes excessive nausea and vomiting.

Jane Eyre (1847)

Most true is it that “beauty is in the eye of the gazer.” My master’s colourless, olive face, square, massive brow, broad and jetty eyebrows, deep eyes, strong features, firm, grim mouth, — all energy, decision, will, — were not beautiful, according to rule; but they were more than beautiful to me; they were full of an interest, an influence that quite mastered me, — that took my feelings from my own power and fettered them in his. I had not intended to love him; the reader knows I had wrought hard to extirpate from my soul the germs of love there detected; and now, at the first renewed view of him, they spontaneously arrived, green and strong! He made me love him without looking at me.

Jane (Ch. 17)

“Are you anything akin to me, do you think, Jane?”
I could risk no sort of answer by this time; my heart was full.
“Because,” he said, “I sometimes have a queer feeling with regard to you — especially when you are near to me, as now: it is as if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly and inextricably knotted to a similar string situated in the corresponding quarter of your little frame. And if that boisterous Channel, and two hundred miles or so of land, come broad between us, I am afraid that cord of communion will be snapped; and then I’ve a nervous notion I should take to bleeding inwardly.”

Mr. Rochester and Jane (Ch. 23)

Do you think I am an automaton? — a machine without feelings? and can bear to have my morsel of bread snatched from my lips, and my drop of living water dashed from my cup? Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong! — I have as much soul as you — and full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you. I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom, conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh: it is my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed through the grave, and we stood at God’s feet, equal — as we are!
- Jane to Mr. Rochester (Ch. 23)

I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will, which I now exert to leave you.
- Jane to Mr. Rochester (Ch. 23)

My bride is here… because my equal is here, and my likeness.
- Mr. Rochester to Jane (Ch. 23)

I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself.
- Jane (Ch. 27)

Feeling… clamoured wildly. “Oh, comply!” it said. “… soothe him; save him; love him; tell him you love him and will be his. Who in the world cares for you? or who will be injured by what you do?” Still indomitable was the reply: “I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself. I will keep the law given by God; sanctioned by man. I will hold to the principles received by me when I was sane, and not mad—as I am now. Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation… They have a worth — so I have always believed; and if I cannot believe it now, it is because I am insane — quite insane: with my veins running fire, and my heart beating faster than I can count its throbs.
- Jane (Ch. 27)

Gentle reader, may you never feel what I then felt? May your eyes never shed such stormy, scalding, heart-wrung tears as poured from mine. May you never appeal to Heaven in prayers so hopeless and so agonized as in that hour left my lips; for never may you, like me, dread to be the instrument of evil to what you wholly love.
- Jane (Ch. 27)

I can but die… and I believe in God. Let me try and wait His will in silence.
- Jane (Ch. 28)

“I scorn your idea of love,” I could not help saying, as I rose up and stood before him, leaning my back against the rock. “I scorn the counterfeit sentiment you offer; yes, St. John, and I scorn you when you offer it.”
- Jane to St. John Rivers (Ch. 34)

I have not much pride under such circumstances: I would always rather be happy than dignified.
- Ch. 34

God did not give me my life to throw away.
- (Ch. 35)

I recalled the voice I had heard; again I questioned whence it came, as vainly as before: it seemed in me — not in the external world. I asked, was it a mere nervous impression — a delusion? I could not conceive or believe: it was more like an inspiration.
- Jane (Ch. 36)

Reader, I married him.
- Jane (Ch. 38)

And today is the birthday of Alfred Henry Maurer (April 21, 1868 – August 4, 1932); American modernist painter. He exhibited his work in avant-garde circles internationally and in New York City during the early twentieth century. Highly respected today, his work met with little critical or commercial success in his lifetime, and he died, a suicide, at the age of sixty-four.


“Self portrait” (1897)

Gallery

Two sisters

Portrait of a Woman, 1908, Honolulu Museum of Art

Carousel, c. 1901-1902, Brooklyn Museum

“An Arrangement“. 1901; oil on cardboard

Landscape of Provence, c. 1912–1922, Reynolda House Museum of American Art

Four Sisters

Mac Tag

alfred henry maurer, Charlotte Brontë, ludovico carracci, the lovers almanac, the lovers chronicle

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

20 April 2024 By Rhett 0 In Random

Dear Zazie,

Here is today’s Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag.

Rhett

The Lovers’ Chronicle

Dear Muse,

“Like a tea bag”
ha, no, another origin unknown
first used in a 2016 poem
“From the melodramatic years”
yes well, drama did as drama does
“Oh I had that coming”
it is an apt verb for any of this verse
the gamut was run from the depths
of without to the culmination of with
“Steeped in this romance”
together we are

in ways formed by routine
comin’ now on five years
sanctuary here, free from
pretendin’, pursuin’
all that matters
tunin’ these voices
from the past
visions help focus
resonate across years
an affirmation of purpose
reasons why and who
memories resumed
reachin’ out, do you hear

i write, steeped in thoughts of you,

the woman who holds the reins

of so much discovery and beauty,

which the beloved well need

who has lived and learned

to cry and laugh, to enjoy

with depth and intensity

callin’ now, languid desire,

listen to her and this

you must have

the things i write

and say here,

about feelin’ again,

and the wonder of this

i know y’all have heard

it all before

but i do so

not because i think

i am supposed to,

not out of expectation

and damn sure not

because i want somethin’

i do so because

it is how i feel

this is my purpose

i know not else how to be

for the one
who prefers,
often somehow
to damn near always

imagine, no longer
torn between with
and without, no more
may as well, may as not

discoverin’

that the hardness was necessary
to allow, to know and want again

that this does not begin to tell the story

Pale Love, Pale Rider

writin’ what might sound
like boastin’ of lack thereof,
which the unforgiven
well sighed
who laid aside joy
with haughtiness,
and learned to weep
with that weepin’ sans tears
who leaned into his hardness
and called in a languid sound,
who does not listen to her
and takes her pain

been ridin’ since first light
my restin’ place for the night
a ruin… cabin and corral

after hours of pushin’
on through silence,
still to have silence,
still to eat, to sleep in it,
perfectly fits the mood

the great levels around me
lay chilly and the air
smells of wet weather

far in front the mesas rise
through the rain, indefinite

i want this isolation
not to be near anyone
steeped in reverie

Today is the birthday of Pietro Aretino (Arezzo 20 April 1492 – 21 October 1556 Venice); author, playwright, poet, satirist and blackmailer who wielded immense influence on contemporary art and politics and may have invented modern literate pornography.

He was a lover of men, having declared himself “a sodomite” since birth. In a letter to Giovanni de’ Medici written in 1524 Aretino enclosed a satirical poem saying that due to a sudden aberration he had “fallen in love with a female cook and temporarily switched from boys to girls…” (My Dear Boy). In his comedy Il marescalco, the lead man is overjoyed to discover that the woman he has been forced to marry is really a page boy in disguise. While at court in Mantua he developed a crush on a young man called Bianchino, and annoyed Duke Federico with a request to plead with the boy on the writer’s behalf.

Safe in Venice, Aretino became a blackmailer, extorting money from men who had sought his guidance in vice. He “kept all that was famous in Italy in a kind of state of siege”, in Jakob Burckhardt’s estimation. Francis I of France and Charles V pensioned him at the same time, each hoping for some damage to the reputation of the other. “The rest of his relations with the great is mere beggary and vulgar extortion”, according to Burckhardt. Addison states that “he laid half Europe under contribution”.

Aretino is said to have died of suffocation from “laughing too much”. The more mundane truth may be that he died from a stroke or heart attack.

Verse

Io vorrei dir la donna ch’ebbe il vanto
di leggiadra et angelica bellezza,
la qual l’amato ben sospirò tanto
che depose la gioia e l’alterezza,
et imparato a pianger con quel pianto
che ad altri insegnò già la sua durezza:
Medor pur chiama in suon languido e fioco,
che non l’ascolta e ‘l suo mal prende a gioco.

Today is the birthday of Odilon Redon (born Bertrand-Jean Redon;Bordeaux April 20, 1840 – July 6, 1916 Paris); symbolist painter, printmaker, draughtsman and pastellist.

Early in his career, both before and after fighting in the Franco-Prussian War, he worked almost exclusively in charcoal and lithography, works referred to as noirs. He started gaining recognition after his drawings were mentioned in the 1884 novel À rebours (Against Nature) by Joris-Karl Huysmans. During the 1890s he began working in pastel and oils, which quickly became his favourite medium, abandoning his previous style of noirs completely after 1900. He also developed a keen interest in Hindu and Buddhist religion and culture, which increasingly showed in his work.

He is perhaps best known today for the “dreamlike” paintings created in the first decade of the 20th century, which were heavily inspired by Japanese art and which, while continuing to take inspiration from nature, heavily flirted with abstraction. His work is considered a precursor to both Dadaism and Surrealism.

Gallery


Self-Portrait, 1880, Musée d’Orsay

Arbres sur un fond jaune, one of the panels painted in 1901 for the dining room of the Château de Domecy-sur-le-Vault

La Cellule d’or (1892), Londres, British Museum

La Naissance de Vénus (1912), New York, Museum of Modern Art

Butterflies, around 1910 (Museum of Modern Art)

Caliban, 1881 (Musée d’Orsay)
“Guardian Spirit of the Waters”, 1878
The Trees, c. 1890s (Museum of Fine Arts, Houston)
Lady of the Flowers, c. 1890–95 (Honolulu Museum of Art)
The Port of Morgat, 1882, Dallas Museum of Art
The Cyclops, 1898 (Kröller-Müller Museum)
Ophelia, 1900–1905 (Dian Woodner Collection)
Baroness Robert de Domecy, 1900 (Musée d’Orsay)
Vase of Flowers, ca. 1900-10, (Princeton University Art Museum)
Flower Clouds, 1903 (The Art Institute of Chicago)
The Buddha, 1904 (Musée d’Orsay)
Initiation to Study: Two Young Ladies (vers 1905) Dallas Museum of Art, oil on canvas 93 x 65 cm
Apparition, 1905-10, (Princeton University Art Museum)
Flowers, 1909
Chariot of Apollo, c. 1910 (Musée d’Orsay)
Portrait of Violette Heymann, 1910 (Cleveland Museum of Art)
Saint Sebastian, 1910–1912, (National Gallery of Art)
Coquille, 1912 (Musée d’Orsay)
Pandora, c. 1914 (Metropolitan Museum of Art)
Evocation, undated, private collection

Today is the birthday of Joan Miró i Ferrà (Barcelona; 20 April 1893 – 25 December 1983 Palma (Majorca)); painter, sculptor, and ceramicist. A museum dedicated to his work, the Fundació Joan Miró, was established in his native city in 1975, and another, the Fundació Pilar i Joan Miró, was established in his adoptive city of Palma de Mallorca in 1981.

Earning international acclaim, his work has been interpreted as Surrealism, a sandbox for the subconscious mind, a re-creation of the childlike, and a manifestation of Catalan pride. In numerous interviews dating from the 1930s onwards, Miró expressed contempt for conventional painting methods as a way of supporting bourgeois society, and declared an “assassination of painting” in favour of upsetting the visual elements of established painting.

Miró married Pilar Juncosa in Palma on 12 October 1929.

Gallery

desnudo de pie

Retrato de Juanita Obrador 1918

Retrato de una bailarina española (1921)

April 1917, Portrait of Vincent Nubiola (Portrait de Vincenç Nubiola), oil on canvas, 104 x 113 cm, Folkwang Museum

1918, La casa de la palmera (House with Palm Tree), oil on canvas, 65 x 73 cm, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía

1918, Portrait of Heriberto Casany (Le chauffeur), oil on canvas, 70.2 x 62 cm, Kimbell Art Museum

1919, Nu au miroir (Nude with a Mirror, Naakt met mirror), oil on canvas, 113 x 102 cm, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen

1920, Les cartes espagnoles (The Spanish Playing Cards), oil on canvas, 63.5 x 69.5 cm, Minneapolis Institute of Arts

1920, Horse, Pipe and Red Flower, oil on canvas, 82.6 × 74.9 cm, Philadelphia Museum of Art

Carrer de Pedralbes, drawing, published in Troços, Segona sèrie, N. 4, March 1918

Dona i Ocell, 1982, Barcelona, Spain

Pájaro lunar (Moon Bird), 1966, Reina Sofia Museum, Madrid
- The mosaic Pla de l’Os by the artist on the Ramblas of Barcelona
- Interior views of Museo Reina Sofía
- Hakone open-air museum
- Grande Maternite
- Sculpture at Fundació Joan Miró
Mac Tag

joan Miró, odilon redon, pietro aretino, the lovers almanac, the lovers chronicle

The Lovers’ Chronicle 19 April – cast thy shadow – art by Willem Drost & Hermine David – verse by José Echegaray – birth of Jayne Mansfield

19 April 2024 By Rhett 0 In Random

Dear Zazie,

Here is today’s Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag.

Rhett

The Lovers’ Chronicle

Dear Muse,

this one had to be from somethin’
i was readin’, though that is lost
“I can see the drama pulling you in”
and today is a perfecto,
no not the cigar kind
“Ah, that was my first guess”
ha! hold on, i consider june 2017
to be the beginnin’ of my verse
so on this day, i have written
a poem every year from
2018 through 2023
“Nice job bébé”
and since 2021,
three years in a row
castin’ verse for you

choose this, a passion, an idea… and instill it, dense, deep inside a vision that our minds create, the plot, surrounds us, wallowin’ in the warmth, the bursts, the reward we have paid for in this siege that we put to art, that flatters so, we are caught, castin’ our shadows

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

the arched curve of your back

a falterin’ voice

breathin’

while hands touch

tender, to awaken

thoughts afford

a remembered

vision together

there is no hidin’

ask not, whate’er state,

voice regained, steady

feelin’s now expressin’

what is discovered

come, cast thy shadow o’er

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

endure as best can

though these troubles

overwhelm and control

in every laugh a cry

in each pleasure, grief

as happens with life, but

pain wanes, we go on

such are the constancies

of havin’ long-felt desire

when the loss feels intense,

when joy feels all but lost

hope reminds

endure as best as can
at once precious yet
unendurable
this self-imposed trial
overwhelms and controls

laugh, cry,
pleasure, grief
wane, endure
such are the inconstancies
of holdin’ what cannot be held

when felt most intense
all but certain
and the hour arrives
begin again

long-felt vain dreams
accustomed to run
endless beyond…

can it ever root again
if it arched the curve of its back
if it thrust as deep as before

allow falterin’ voice
to breathe
while hands touch

tender, to wake
no thought affords
but one remembered
vision together

there is no hidin’
were there yet tears
ask not, whate’er state,
voice lost, hand unsteady
when feelin’s nor can express
that which was known

come, cast thy shadow o’er

choose an idea,
often somehow
related to you,
and i create with it
what i can
it is the only
fulfillment
i know

surround myself,
with the feelin’,
wallow in the fire
that lights up inside
and bursts hopelessly

and i will pay
what has to be paid
for what i must have

endure as best as can
at once so precious yet
so plainly unendurable
these self-imposed troubles
overwhelm and control

in every laugh a cry
in each pleasure, grief
happiness wanes, pain endures
such are the inconstancies
of holdin’ what cannot be held

when the loss feels most intense
when joy feels all but certain
and the hour of delight arrives
anguish begins again

long-felt desires, vain hopes
sad sighs, dreams accustomed to run
sad into as many rivers,
pourin’ like fountains, endless rain
a pain, beyond…

so hard, no compassion, gone mad
with pity: the last passions had
can passion ever root again
if it arched the curve of its back
if it licked with ardent fire
if it thrust as deep as before

the wounds cut everywhere
so there would be no place free
were yet there tears to flow
for hours, forever, past away

while yet, swellin’ sighs allow
falterin’ voice to breathe
while yet hands touch
tender, to wake
while yet, no thought affords
but one remembered dream alone

ask not, whate’er state
but when eyes weep no more
voice lost, hand untrue
when spirit’s fire is o’er
nor can express that which was known

come, cast thy shadow o’er

Today is the baptismal day of Willem Drost (Amsterdam 19 April 1633 – buried 25 February 1659); Dutch Golden Age painter and printmaker.

He is a mysterious figure with not much known of his life. Around 1650, according to the early art historian Houbraken, he became a student of Rembrandt, eventually developing a close working relationship, painting history scenes, biblical compositions, symbolic studies of a solitary figure, as well as portraits. He was in Amsterdam until 1655 and then travelled to Rome and Venice, where he died.

Gallery

Cimon et Pero

Young woman with a carnation

The Vision of Daniel, 1650, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin

Bathsheba, 1654, oil on canvas, Louvre.

Portrait of a Young Man

Young Woman in a Brocade Gown,Wallace Collection

Timothy and Lois, 1650s, Hermitage Museum

Today is the birthday of José Echegaray y Eizaguirre (Madrid 19 April 1832 – 14 September 1916 Madrid); civil engineer, mathematician, statesman, and one of the leading Spanish dramatists of the last quarter of the 19th century. He was awarded the 1904 Nobel Prize for Literature “in recognition of the numerous and brilliant compositions which, in an individual and original manner, have revived the great traditions of the Spanish drama.”

Escojo una pasión, tomo una idea,
un problema, un carácter… y lo infundo,
cual densa dinamita, en lo profundo
de un personaje que mi mente crea.
La trama, al personaje le rodea
de unos cuantos muñecos que en el mundo
o se revuelcan en el cieno inmundo
o se calientan a la luz febea.
La mecha enciendo. El fuego se prepara,
el cartucho revienta sin remedio,
y el astro principal es quien lo paga.
Aunque a veces también en este asedio
que al arte pongo y que al instinto halaga,
¡me coge la explosión de medio a medio!

—Célebre soneto en el que expuso su poética teatral

And today is the birthday of Jayne Mansfield (born Vera Jayne Palmer; Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania; April 19, 1933 – June 29, 1967 East New Orléans, Louisiana); actress, singer, nightclub entertainer, and Playboy Playmate. A sex symbol of the 1950s and early 1960s while under contract at 20th Century Fox, Mansfield was known for her well-publicized personal life and publicity stunts. Her film career was short-lived, but she had several box-office successes and won a Theatre World Award and a Golden Globe Award.

Mansfield enjoyed success in the role of fictional actress Rita Marlowe in the Broadway play Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (1955–1956), which she reprised in the film adaptation of the same name (1957). Her other film roles include the musical comedy The Girl Can’t Help It (1956), the drama The Wayward Bus (1957), the neo-noir Too Hot to Handle (1960), and the sex comedy Promises! Promises! (1963); the latter established Mansfield as the first major American actress to perform in a nude scene in a post-silent era film.Mansfield took her professional name from her first husband, public relations professional Paul Mansfield. She married three times, all of which ended in divorce, and had five children, including Mariska Hargitay, with husband Mickey. She was allegedly intimately involved with numerous men, including Robert and John F. Kennedy, her attorney Samuel S. Brody, and Las Vegas entertainer Nelson Sardelli. On June 29, 1967, she died in an automobile accident at the age of 34.

Gallery

Mac Tag

jose echegaray y eizaguirre, the lovers almanac, the lovers chronicle, willem drost

The Lovers’ Chronicle 18 April – inspire – birth of Lucrezia Borgia – verse by Thomas Middleton – verse by Antero de Quental – art by George Clausen & Max Weber

18 April 2024 By Rhett 0 In Random

Dear Zazie,

Here is today’s Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag.

Rhett

The Lovers’ Chronicle

here i draw forth my journal, turn to this page and with pen, after thinkin’ a moment, write these words

it is my privilege to have you lookin’ over my shoulder, to have you here to listen

i was late comin’ to realize my purpose, what i want

with gratitude held high

i thank you

only know how to expend myself

in gratitude and thoughtfulness,

givin’ birth to visions and verse

passin’ through a long devotion,

through sharpest expressions

of self-insight, and isolation,

through great doubts,

to its rightful place

here

with no other interest

than this

the worst

havin’ taken over

and the rest

utterly broken down

how little survives,

how little mended

or built that was lost

………

made to understand

every want, every urge

the long believed gone crept out

we looked at one another anew

and wept to be reminded of could be

inspiration
to not hold
feelin’s too close

then everything
else fades
and all
that went before
is as if
it had never been

only ever been
worth a damn
when in thrall

as with you

The Poem of the Day is a translated amalgam of verses from de Quental’s sonnets (see below). A sonnet sampler on dreams! A favorite topic here at TLC.

I Dreamed I Dream

I dreamed (dreams are not always vain, it seems)
I had been carried off by winds that moan
Across the starry space; the stellar zone
Where dawn eternally has smiles, and beams.

I dream I’m a knight who ventures forth
Through deserts, hot days, and pitch-black nights.
A defender of love, with all my might
I seek the enchanted palace of Fortune!

Fly on misfortune’s wing as black as night,
You thought of love, your shadow of an hour
That I embraced delirious in my tower.
Fly as a windswept cloud, and pass from sight.

Let hope be but a dream, or even less;
Although it always comes with pain and dole,
Deceiving all except misfortune’s scope

Vision of my dreams! If you are the truth,
Reveal yourself to me in heaven at least!

The Song of the Day is “I Dreamed I Dream” by Sonic Youth.

Lucrezia Borgia
The only confirmed Lucrezia portrait painted from life (attributed to Dosso Dossi, c. 1519, National Gallery of Victoria)

Today is the birthday of Lucrezia Borgia (Subiaco 18 April 1480 – 24 June 1519 Ferrara); daughter of Pope Alexander VI and Vannozza dei Cattanei. Her brothers included Cesare Borgia, Giovanni Borgia, and Gioffre Borgia.

Her family arranged several marriages for her that advanced their own political position including Giovanni Sforza (Lord of Pesaro), Alfonso of Aragon (Duke of Bisceglie), and Alfonso I d’Este (Duke of Ferrara). Tradition has it that Alfonso of Aragon was an illegitimate son of the King of Naples and that her brother Cesare may have had him murdered after his political value waned.

Rumors about her and her family cast Lucrezia as a femme fatale, a role in which she has been portrayed in many artworks, novels and films.

First marriage: Giovanni Sforza

Possible portrait of Lucrezia as St. Catherine of Alexandria in a fresco by Pinturicchio, in the Sala dei Santi the Borgia apartments in the Vatican c. 1494.

On 26 February 1491, a matrimonial arrangement was drawn up between Lucrezia and the Lord of Val D’Ayora in the kingdom of Valencia, Don Cherubino Joan de Centelles, which was annulled less than two months later in favour of a new contract engaging Lucrezia to Don Gaspare Aversa, count of Procida. When Rodrigo became Pope Alexander VI, he sought to be allied with powerful princely families and founding dynasties of Italy. As such, he called off Lucrezia’s previous engagements and arranged for her to marry Giovanni Sforza, a member of the House of Sforza who was Lord of Pesaro and titled Count of Catignola. Giovanni was an illegitimate son of Costanzo I Sforza and a Sforza of the second rank. He married Lucrezia on 12 June 1493 in Rome.

Before long, the Borgia family no longer needed the Sforzas, and the presence of Giovanni Sforza in the papal court was superfluous. The Pope needed new, more advantageous political alliances, so he may have covertly ordered the execution of Giovanni: the generally accepted version is that Lucrezia was informed of this by her brother Cesare, and she warned her husband, who fled Rome.

Alexander asked Giovanni’s uncle, Cardinal Ascanio Sforza, to persuade Giovanni to agree to an annulment of the marriage. Giovanni refused and accused Lucrezia of paternal incest. The pope asserted that his daughter’s marriage had not been consummated and was thus invalid. Giovanni was offered her dowry in return for his cooperation. The Sforza family threatened to withdraw their protection should he refuse. Giovanni finally signed confessions of impotence and documents of annulment before witnesses.

There has been speculation that during the prolonged process of the annulment, Lucrezia consummated a relationship with someone, perhaps Alexander’s chamberlain Pedro Calderon, also named Perotto. Families hostile to the Borgias would later accuse her of being pregnant at the time her marriage was annulled for non-consummation. She is known to have retired to the convent of San Sisto in June 1497 to await the outcome of the annulment proceedings, which were finalized in December of the same year. The bodies of Pedro Calderon, and a maid, Pantasilea, were found in the Tiber in February 1498. In March 1498, the Ferrarese ambassador claimed that Lucrezia had given birth, but this was denied by other sources. A child was born, however, in the Borgia household the year before Lucrezia’s marriage to Alfonso of Aragon. He was named Giovanni but is known to historians as the “Infans Romanus“.

In 1501, two papal bulls were issued concerning the child, Giovanni Borgia. In the first, he was recognized as Cesare’s child from an affair before his marriage. The second, contradictory, bull recognized him as the son of Pope Alexander VI. Lucrezia’s name is not mentioned in either, and rumors that she was his mother have never been proven. The second bull was kept secret for many years, and Giovanni was assumed to be Cesare’s son. This is supported by the fact that in 1502 he became Duke of Camerino, one of Cesare’s recent conquests, hence the natural inheritance of the Duke of Romagna’s oldest son. Giovanni went to stay with Lucrezia in Ferrara after Alexander’s death, where he was accepted as her half-brother.

Second marriage: Alfonso d’Aragon (Duke of Bisceglie)

Duke Alfonso of Aragon

Following her annulment from Sforza, Lucrezia was married to the Neapolitan Alfonso of Aragon, the half-brother of Sancha of Aragon who was the wife of Lucrezia’s brother Gioffre Borgia. The marriage was a short one.

They were married in 1498; Lucrezia—not her husband—was appointed governor of Spoleto in 1499; Alfonso fled Rome shortly afterwards but returned at Lucrezia’s request, only to be murdered in 1500.

It was rumored that Lucrezia’s brother Cesare was responsible for Alfonso’s death, as he had recently allied himself (through marriage) with France against Naples. Lucrezia and Alfonso had one child, Rodrigo of Aragon, who was born in 1499 and predeceased his mother in August 1512 at the age of 12.

Third marriage: Alfonso d’Este (Duke of Ferrara)

Alfonso d’Este

After the death of Lucrezia’s second husband, her father, Pope Alexander VI, arranged a third marriage. She married Alfonso I d’Este, Duke of Ferrara, in early 1502 in Ferrara. She had eight children during this marriage and was considered a respectable and accomplished Renaissance duchess, effectively rising above her previous reputation and surviving the fall of the Borgias following her father’s death.

Neither partner was faithful: beginning in 1503, Lucrezia enjoyed a long relationship with her brother-in-law, Francesco II Gonzaga, Marquess of Mantua. Francesco’s wife was the cultured intellectual Isabella d’Este, the sister of Alfonso, to whom Lucrezia had made overtures of friendship to no avail. The affair between Francesco and Lucrezia was passionate, more sexual than sentimental as can be attested in the fevered love letters the pair wrote one another.

Lucrezia also had a love affair with the poet Pietro Bembo during her third marriage. Their love letters were deemed “The prettiest love letters in the world” by the Romantic poet Lord Byron when he saw them in the Ambrosian Library of Milan on 15 October 1816. On the same occasion Byron claimed to have stolen a lock of Lucrezia’s hair – “the prettiest and fairest imaginable”.

Lucrezia met the famed French soldier, the Chevalier Bayard while the latter was co-commanding the French allied garrison of Ferrara in 1510. According to his biographer, the Chevalier became a great admirer of Lucrezia’s, considering her a “pearl on this Earth”.

After a long history of complicated pregnancies and miscarriages, on 14 June 1519 Lucrezia gave birth to her tenth child, named Isabella Maria in honour of Alfonso’s sister Isabella d’Este. The child was sickly and – fearing she would die unbaptised – Alfonso ordered her to be baptised straightaway with Eleonora della Mirandola and Count Alexandro Serafino as godparents.

Lucrezia had become very weak during the pregnancy and fell seriously ill after the birth. After seeming to recover for two days, she worsened again and died on 24 June the same year. She was buried in the convent of Corpus Domini.

Portrait of a Woman by Bartolomeo Veneto, traditionally assumed to be Lucrezia

Tomb of Alfonso I d’Este and Lucrezia, Ferrara

She is described as having heavy blonde hair that fell past her knees, a beautiful complexion, hazel eyes that changed color, a full, high bosom, and a natural grace that made her appear to “walk on air”. These physical attributes were highly appreciated in Italy during that period. Another description said, “her mouth is rather large, the teeth brilliantly white, her neck is slender and fair, and the bust is admirably proportioned.”

One painting, Portrait of a Youth by Dosso Dossi at the National Gallery of Victoria, was identified as a portrait of Lucrezia in November 2008. This painting may be the only surviving formal portrait of Lucrezia Borgia; however, doubts have been cast on that attribution. Several other paintings, such as Veneto’s fanciful portrait, have also been said to depict her, but none have been accepted by scholars at present.

Several rumours have persisted throughout the years, primarily speculating as to the nature of the extravagant parties thrown by the Borgia family. Many of these concern allegations of incest, poisoning, and murder on her part; however, no historical basis for these rumours has ever been brought forward beyond allegations made by rival parties. It is rumoured that Lucrezia was in possession of a hollow ring that she used frequently to poison drinks.

Thomas Middleton, depicted in the frontispiece of Two New Plays, a 1657 edition of Women Beware Women and More Dissemblers Besides Women

Today is the baptismal day of Thomas Middleton (London 1580 – July 1627 Southwark); English Jacobean playwright and poet. Middleton stands with John Fletcher and Ben Jonson among the most successful and prolific playwrights who wrote their best plays during the Jacobean period. He was one of the few Renaissance dramatists to achieve equal success in comedy and tragedy.

Let the air strike our tune,
Whilst we show reverence to yond peeping moon.

Today is the birthday of poet, philosopher and writer Antero de Quental (Ponta Delgada on the island of São Miguel, in the Azores18 April 1842 – 11 September 1891 Ponta Delgada). His works became a milestone in the Portuguese language alongside those of Camões, Bocage, and Fernando Pessoa.

Throughout his life, de Quental oscillated between pessimism and depression; afflicted with what might have been bipolar disorder, at the time of his last trip to Lisbon, he was in a state of steady depression, compounded by spinal disease. After a month in Lisbon, he returned once again to Ponta Delgada around June 1891. On September 11 that year, at about 8:00 PM, he shot himself in the stomach twice, while seated on a bench in a local garden park. He died approximately an hour later. De todas as coisas, o pior é ter nascido (“Of all things, the worst is having been born,”) he wrote in a poem.

Raios de extinta luz

“Mas quem de amor nos lábios traz doçura

Esse é que leva a flor de uma alma pura!”

– O sol do Bello, 3º verso, 4ª estrofe

Today is the birthday of George Clausen (London 18 April 1852 – 22 November 1944 Cold Ash, West Berkshire, England); artist working in oil and watercolour, etching, mezzotint, drypoint and occasionally lithographs.

Clausen became one of the foremost modern painters of landscape and of peasant life, influenced to a certain extent by the Impressionists, with whom he shared the view that light is the real subject of landscape art. His pictures excel in rendering the appearance of things under flecking outdoor sunlight, or in the shady shelter of a barn or stable. His Girl at the Gate was acquired by the Chantrey Trustees and is now at the Tate Gallery. The Yale Center for British Art holds Clausen’s Schoolgirls (1880), an urban scene, which it featured in its exhibit called “Britain in the World: 1860-Now.”

Clausen was an official war artist during World War I. During the war his daughter’s fiancé was killed; this event may have inspired his painting, Youth Mourning which shows a distressed young woman mourning in a desolate landscape.

Gallery

Youth mourning

The watcher

20230418_195840

And today is the birthday of Max Weber (Białystok, Poland; April 18, 1881 – October 4, 1961); painter and one of the first American Cubist painters who, in later life, turned to more figurative Jewish themes in his art. He is best known today for Chinese Restaurant (1915), in the collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art, “the finest canvas of his Cubist phase,” in the words of art historian Avis Berman.

Weber emigrated to the United States and settled in Brooklyn with his Orthodox Jewish parents at the age of ten. He studied art at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn under Arthur Wesley Dow. Dow was a fortunate early influence on Weber as he was an “enlightened and vital teacher” in a time of conservative art instruction, a man who was interested in new approaches to creating art. Dow had met Paul Gauguin in Pont-Aven, was a devoted student of Japanese art, and defended the advanced modernist painting and sculpture he saw at the Armory Show in New York in 1913.

In 1905, after teaching in Virginia and Minnesota, Weber had saved enough money to travel to Europe, where he studied at the Académie Julian in Paris and acquainted himself with the work of such modernists as Henri Rousseau (who became a good friend), Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, and other members of the School of Paris. His friends among fellow Americans included some equally adventurous young painters, such as Abraham Walkowitz, H. Lyman Sayen, and Patrick Henry Bruce. Avant-garde France in the years immediately before World War I was fertile and welcoming territory for Weber, then in his early twenties. He arrived in Paris in time to see a major Cézanne exhibition, meet the poet Guillaume Apollinaire, frequent Gertrude Stein’s salon, and enroll in classes in Matisse’s private “Academie.” Rousseau gave him some of his works; others, Weber purchased. He was responsible for Rousseau’s first exhibition in the United States.

Gallery

The three graces

Nude

Summer

Mac Tag

antero de quental, lucrezia borgia, the lovers almanac, the lovers chronicle, thomas middleton

The Lovers’ Chronicle 17 April – seven cross – verse by John Ford & Henry Vaughan – art by George Vicat Cole – birth of Karen Blixen & Thornton Wilder

17 April 2024 By Rhett 0 In Random

Dear Zazie,

Here is today’s Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag.

Rhett

The Lovers’ Chronicle

Dear Muse,

a thousand miles away
and yet close enough,
i can feel the wind

there are things
that words fail

the 40 mile vistas
a night sky
horizon to horizon
full of stars

the look in your eyes
when you say, yes

whispers in the dark

a connection
that feels as though
it has always been

oh yes,

it would be good

to be there with you

a place unlike any

you have ever seen

a place that is a part of me

until you have been there

you cannot understand

how far i have come,

and what this means to me

i know this is unlike

anything you have known

but you can believe

tonight we dream of that place where worry of the world holds not, a placid ecstasy, and ease of bein’, where we know what is real and free of will, and the pleasure lies in this, here with the long splendid views, and the wind, and feelin’s which we have never seen or heard of

let me take you
to the Seven Cross
on the Texas High Plains

a world of isolation
far from the nearest town
where i will show you,
in abundance;
wind and wildlife,
old friendships,
wide open vistas,
night skies with more stars
than you can imagine

and the end of our search

might be hard to find
but once you do
you might just
find yourself

go west, on the two lane black top
turn south on an old county road,
then east on the caliche road
and you will find, The Seven Cross

Today is the birthday of John Ford (Ilsington, Devon, England 1586 – ca. 1639); English playwright and poet of the Jacobean and Caroline eras. Perhaps best known for the tragedy ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore (1633), a family drama with a plot line of incest. The play’s title has often been changed in new productions, sometimes being referred to as simply Giovanni and Annabella — the play’s leading, incestuous brother-and-sister characters. In a nineteenth-century work it is coyly called The Brother and Sister. Shocking as the play is, it is regarded as a classic piece of English drama. It has been adapted to film at least twice: My Sister, My Love (Sweden, 1966) and ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore (Belgium, 1978).

The Lover’s Melancholy (1628)

Flattery
Is monstrous in a true friend.
- Act I, sc. i.

Tell us, pray, what devil
This melancholy is, which can transform
Men into monsters.
- Act III, sc. i.

Melancholy
Is not, as you conceive, indisposition
Of body, but the mind’s disease.
- Act III, sc. i.

Philosophers dwell in the moon.
- Act III, sc. iii.

Love is the tyrant of the heart; it darkens
Reason, confounds discretion; deaf to Counsel
It runs a headlong course to desperate madness.
- Act III, sc. iii.

Fly hence, shadows, that do keep,
Watchful sorrows, charmed in sleep.
- Act V, sc. i.

Love is dead; let lovers’ eyes
Locked in endless dreams
Th’ extreme of all extremes
Ope no more, for now Love dies.

Today is the birthday of Henry Vaughan (Newton St. Bridget, Wales 17 April 1621 – 23 April 1695 Scethrog House, Wales); author, physician and metaphysical poet. Perhaps best known for his religious poetry contained in Silex Scintillans, which was published in 1650, with a second part published in 1655.

Dear Night! this world’s defeat;
The stop to busy fools; care’s check and curb;
The day of spirits; my soul’s calm retreat
Which none disturb!

They are all gone into the world of light!
And I alone sit lingering here;
Their very memory is fair and bright,
And my sad thoughts doth clear.

Vicat Cole RA by Sir Arthur Stockdale Cope KCVO RA Aberdeen Art Gallery & Museums Collections

Portrait by Sir Arthur Stockdale Cope KCVO RA
Aberdeen Art Gallery & Museums Collections

Today is the birthday of George Vicat Cole RA (Portsmouth, Hampshire, England; April 1833 – 6 April 1893); painter.

Cole was the son of the landscape painter, George Cole (1810–1883), and in his practice followed his father’s lead with marked success. He exhibited at the British Institution at the age of nineteen, and was first represented at the Royal Academy in 1853. His election as an associate of this institution took place in 1870, and he became an Academician ten years later. He died in London on 6 April 1893. The wide popularity of his work was due partly to the simple directness of his technical method, and partly to his habitual choice of attractive material.

Most of his subjects were found in the counties of Surrey and Sussex, and along the banks of the Thames. One of his largest pictures, The Pool of London, was bought by the Chantrey Fund Trustees in 1888, and was shown in the Tate Gallery.

He was the father of the painter Rex Vicat Cole.

His daughter Mary Blanche Cole (1858–1945), also an artist, married the artist Louis Paul (Alexander Louis Paul 1855–1927).

Gallery

20230417_203821

Winter scene with cattle and figures 1865

Richmond Hill, London by 1876
Oil on Canvas

Today is the birthday of Baroness Karen von Blixen-Finecke (Rungsted, Denmark 17 April 1885 – 7 September 1962 Rungsted), née Karen Christenze Dinesen; author, also known by the pen name Isak Dinesen, who wrote works in Danish, French and English. She also at times used the pen names Tania Blixen, Osceola, and Pierre Andrézel. Perhaps best known for Out of Africa, an account of her life while living in Kenya, and for one of her stories, Babette’s Feast, both of which have been adapted into Academy Award-winning motion pictures.

Karen Blixen
Blixen in 1957

Blixen photographed in 1913

with her brother Thomas on the family farm in Kenya in the 1920s

Dinesen first fell in love with the equestrian Hans von Blixen-Finecke but he did not reciprocate. She therefore decided to accept the favours of his twin brother, Baron Bror Blixen-Finecke, announcing their engagement on 23 December 1912. Given the difficulties both were experiencing in settling in Denmark, the family suggested they should move abroad. Their common uncle, Aage Westenholz (1859–1935) who had made a fortune in Siam, suggested they should go to Kenya to start a coffee farm. Early in 1913, Bror Blixen-Finecke left for Kenya, followed by Dinesen in December.

Blixen’s African home, now the Karen Blixen Museum

Soon after Dinesen arrived in Kenya, which at the time was part of British East Africa, she and Blixen married in Mombassa on January 14, 1914. After her marriage, she was known as Baroness Blixen, and used the title until 1929, when her ex-spouse remarried. Initially, they planned to raise cattle on their farm, but were convinced that coffee would be more profitable. The couple soon established their first farm, M’Bagathi, in the Great Lakes area, but quickly ran into difficulties caused by the outbreak of the First World War. Fighting between the Germans and British in East Africa led to a shortage of workers and supplies. Nevertheless, in 1916, the Karen Coffee Company purchased a larger farm, M’Bogani, near the Ngong Hills to the north of Nairobi. It covered 6,000 acres of land, of which 600 were used for a coffee plantation. The remainder were used by the natives for grazing while 2,000 acres of virgin forest were left untouched.

However, the land was not suited for coffee cultivation, being too high in elevation. The couple hired local workers, predominantly the Kikuyu people who lived on the farmlands at the time of their arrival but there were also Wakamba, Kavirondo, Swahili and Masai. Initially Bror Blixen-Finecke worked the farm, but it soon became evident that he had little interest in it and preferred to leave running the farm to Blixen while he went on safari. For the first time, English became the language she used daily. About the couple’s early life in the African Great Lakes region, Karen Blixen later wrote,

Here at long last one was in a position not to give a damn for all conventions, here was a new kind of freedom which until then one had only found in dreams!

Blixen and her husband were quite different in education and temperament, and Bror Blixen was unfaithful to his wife. She was diagnosed with syphilis toward the end of their first year of marriage in 1915. She returned to Denmark in June 1915 for treatment which proved successful. Although Blixen’s illness was eventually cured (some uncertainty exists), it created medical anguish for years to come. By 1919, the marriage had run into serious difficulties, causing her husband to request a divorce in 1920. Against her wishes, the couple separated in 1921, and were officially divorced in 1925. Bror Blixen was dismissed as the farm manager by Aage Westenholz, chair of the Karen Coffee Company, and Karen Blixen took over its management officially in 1921.

Denys Finch Hatton, around 1910–1920

In 1918, Blixen met the English big game hunter Denys Finch Hatton (1887–1931), an English army officer and aristocrat. He often travelled back and forth between Africa and England and would visit her occasionally. After her separation from her husband she and Finch Hatton developed a close friendship which eventually became a long-term love affair. In a letter to her brother Thomas in 1924, she wrote: “I believe that for all time and eternity I am bound to Denys, to love the ground he walks upon, to be happy beyond words when he is here, and to suffer worse than death many times when he leaves…” But other letters in her collections show that the relationship was unstable, and that Blixen’s increasingly dependent behavior upon Finch Hatton, who was intensely independent, was an issue.

Finch Hatton used Blixen’s farmhouse as a home base between 1926 and 1931, when on safari with his clients. He died in the crash of his de Havilland Gipsy Moth biplane in March 1931. At the same time, the failure of the coffee plantation, as a result of mismanagement, a drought and the falling price of coffee caused by the worldwide economic depression, forced Blixen to abandon her beloved estate. The family corporation sold the land to a residential developer, and Blixen returned Denmark in August 1931 to live with her mother. She remained in Rungstedlund for the rest of her life.

Jurij Moskvitin (middle) accompanying Blixen and meeting composer Igor Stravinsky (left) at the Copenhagen City Hall, 1959

Blixen boarding an SAS flight from at Kastrup Airport, Copenhagen, in 1957

Blixen’s grave in Rungstedlund, Denmark

The Karen Blixen Museum in Rungstedlund, Denmark

Out of Africa (1937)

I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills. The Equator runs across these highlands, a hundred miles to the North, and the farm lay at an altitude of over six thousand feet. In the day-time you felt that you had got high up, near to the sun, but the early mornings and evenings were limpid and restful, and the nights were cold.

People who dream when they sleep at night know of a special kind of happiness which the world of the day holds not, a placid ecstasy, and ease of heart, that are like honey on the tongue. They also know that the real glory of dreams lies in their atmosphere of unlimited freedom. It is not the freedom of the dictator, who enforces his own will on the world, but the freedom of the artist, who has no will, who is free of will. The pleasure of the true dreamer does not lie in the substance of the dream, but in this: that there things happen without any interference from his side, and altogether outside his control. Great landscapes create themselves, long splendid views, rich and delicate colours, roads, houses, which he has never seen or heard of…

Seven Gothic Tales (1934)

“Do you know a cure for me?”
“Why yes,” he said, “I know a cure for everything. Salt water.”
“Salt water?” I asked him.
“Yes,” he said, “in one way or the other. Sweat, or tears, or the salt sea.”
- “The Deluge at Norderney”

And today is the birthday of Thornton Wilder (born Thornton Niven Wilder; Madison, Wisconsin; April 17, 1897 – December 7, 1975 Hamden, Connecticut); playwright and novelist. He won three Pulitzer Prizes—for the novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey, and for the plays Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth — and a U.S. National Book Award for the novel The Eighth Day.

Wilder never married and kept his personal life private.

Quotes

All those impulses of love return to the love that made them. Even memory is not necessaryfor love. There is a land of the living and a land of the deadand the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.

Love is an energy which exists of itself. It is its own value.
- TIME magazine (3 February 1958)

Many who have spent a lifetime in it can tell us less of love than the child that lost a dog yesterday.
- As quoted in “The Notation of the Heart” by Edmund Fuller, in The American Scholar Reader (1960) edited by Hiram Hayden and Betsy Saunders

Love, though it expends itself in generosity and thoughtfulness, though it gives birth to visions and to great poetry, remains among the sharpest expressions of self-interest. Not until it has passed through a long servitude, through its own self-hatred, through mockery, through great doubts, can it take its place among the loyalties.
- As quoted in “The Notation of the Heart” by Edmund Fuller, in The American Scholar Reader (1960) edited by Hiram Hayden and Betsy Saunders

The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1927)

Like all the rich he could not bring himself to believe that the poor (look at their houses, look at their clothes!) could really suffer. Like all the cultivated he believed that only the widely read could be said to know that they were unhappy.

Soon we shall die and all memory of those five will have left earth, and we ourselves shall be loved for a while and forgotten. But the love will have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the love that made them. Even memory is not necessary for love. There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.

Style is but the faintly contemptible vessel in which the bitter liquid is recommended to the world.

Now he discovered that secret from which one never quite recovers, that even in the most perfect love one person loves less profoundly than the other.

Our Town (1938)

People are meant to go through life two by two. ‘Tain’t natural to be lonesome.
- “Mrs. Gibbs”

A man looks pretty small at a wedding, George. All those good women standing shoulder to shoulder, making sure that the knot’s tied in a mighty public way.
- “Mr. Webb”

Wherever you come near the human race there’s layers and layers of nonsense.
- “Stage Manager”

That’s what it was to be alive. To move about in a cloud of ignorance; to go up and down trampling on the feelings of those… of those about you. To spend and waste time as though you had a million years. To be always at the mercy of one self-centered passion, or another. Now you know — that’s the happy existence you wanted to go back to. Ignorance and blindness.
- “Simon Stimson”

I can’t. I can’t go on. It goes so fast. We don’t have time to look at one another. I didn’t realize. So all that was going on and we never noticed. Take me back — up the hill — to my grave. But first: Wait! One more look. Good-by, Good-by, world. Good-by Grover’s Corners…Mama and Papa. Good-by to clocks ticking…and Mama’s sunflowers. And food and coffee. And new ironed dresses and hot baths…and sleeping and waking up. Oh, earth, you’re too wonderful for anybody to realize you. …Do human beings ever realize life while they live it? — Every, every minute? …I’m ready to go back…I should have listened to you. That’s all human beings are! Just blind people.
- “Emily Webb”

The Skin of Our Teeth (1942)[edit]

I’ve never forgotten for long at a time that living is struggle. I know that every good and excellent thing in the world stands moment by moment on the razor-edge of danger and must be fought for — whether it’s a field, or a home, or a country.
- Antrobus, in Act 3

My advice to you is not to inquire why or whither, but just enjoy your ice cream while it’s on your plate — that’s my philosophy.
- Sabina, Act One

I hate this play and every word in it.
- Sabina

The Matchmaker (1954)

Later adapted into the musical Hello, Dolly

Marriage is a bribe to make a housekeeper think she’s a householder.
- Vandergelder, in Act 1

Never support two weaknesses at the same time. It’s your combination sinners — your lecherous liars and your miserly drunkards — who dishonor the vices and bring them into bad repute.
- Malachi, in Act 3

Nurse one vice in your bosom. Give it the attention it deserves and let your virtues spring up modestly around it. Then you’ll have the miser who’s no liar; and the drunkard who’s the benefactor of the whole city.
- Malachi, in Act 3

The test of an adventure is that when you’re in the middle of it, you say to yourself, “Oh, now I’ve got myself into an awful mess; I wish I were sitting quietly at home.” And the sign that something’s wrong with you is when you sit quietly at home wishing you were out having lots of adventure.
- Barnaby, in Act 4

Money is like manure; it’s not worth a thing unless it’s spread around encouraging young things to grow.
- Dolly Levi, in Act 4

The difference between a little money and no money at all is enormous…and the difference between a little money and an enormous amount of money is very slight.

Ninety-nine per cent of the people in the world are fools and the rest of us are in great danger of contagion.

Writers at Work interview (1958)

The future author is one who discovers that language, the exploration and manipulation of the resources of language, will serve him in winning through to his way.

I think myself as a fabulist, not a critic. I realize that every writer is necessarily a critic — that is, each sentence is a skeleton accompanied by enormous activity of rejection; and each selection is governed by general principles concerning truth, force, beauty, and so on. But, as I have just suggested, I believe that the practice of writing consists in more and more relegating all that schematic operation to the subconscious. The critic that is in every fabulist is like the iceberg — nine-tenths of him is underwater.

The comic spirit is given to us in order that we may analyze, weigh, and clarify things in us which nettle us, or which we are outgrowing, or trying to reshape.

On the stage it is always now; the personages are standing on that razor edge, between the past and the future, which is the essential character of conscious being; the words are rising to their lips in immediate spontaneity … The theater is supremely fitted to say: “Behold! These things are.”

Many great writers have been extraordinarily awkward in daily exchange, but the greatest give the impression that their style was nursed by the closest attention to colloquial speech.

A dramatist is one who believes that the pure event, an action involving human beings, is more arresting than any comment that can be made upon it.

The theatre is supremely fitted to say: “Behold! These things are.” Yet most dramatists employ it to say: “This moral truth can be learned from beholding this action.”

I am convinced that, except in a few extraordinary cases, one form or another of an unhappy childhood is essential to the formation of exceptional gifts.

One of the dangers of the American artist is that he finds himself almost exclusively thrown in with persons more or less in the arts. He lives among them, eats among them, quarrels with them, marries them.

The Eighth Day (1967)

It is only in appearance that time is a river. It is rather a vast landscape and it is the eye of the beholder that moves.

Those who are silent, self-effacing and attentive become the recipients of confidences.

Hope, like faith, is nothing if it is not courageous; it is nothing if it is not ridiculous.

A sense of humor judges one’s actions and the actions of others from a wider reference and a longer view and finds them incongruous. It dampens enthusiasm; it mocks hope; it pardons shortcomings; it consoles failure. It recommends moderation.

We do not choose the day of our birth nor may we choose the day of our death, yet choice is the sovereign faculty of the mind.

Man is not an end but a beginning. We are at the beginning of the second week. We are children of the eighth day.

The planting of trees is the least self-centered of all that we do. It is a purer act of faith than the procreation of children.

When God loves a creature he wants the creature to know the highest happiness and the deepest misery … He wants him to know all that being alive can bring. That is his best gift…. There is no happiness save in understanding the whole.

Theophilus North (1973)

Imagination draws on memory. Memory and imagination combined can stage a Servants’ Ball or even write a book, if that’s what they want to do.

Mac Tag

henry vaughan, isak dinesen, john ford, karen blixen, the lovers almanac, the lovers chronicle

The Lovers’ Chronicle 16 April – not with words – art by Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun & Ford Madox Brown – verse by Anatole France

16 April 2024 By Rhett 0 In Random

Dear Zazie,

Here is today’s Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag.

Rhett

The Lovers’ Chronicle

Dear Muse,

certainly mostly with
“Of course”
there are moments
when more happens
“The way we end our days”
yes, our favorite time
“After you read poetry to me”
words precede, flow through
punctuatin’ our time together
“From the conjuring”
to the ones i write for you
but now, is the time
for more than words

they have never
let me down
turn on the spigot
and they flow
sometimes effortlessly
other times, the valve
must be opened full tilt

fixin’ to be six years
that they have been
comin’, findin’ their way
every day to enlighten,
to make carryin’ the burden
just a little easier

the tale has been good

it just lacks completeness

words are only vain sounds

if you cannot feel them

instinct is enough

sinkin’ into the wide chair,

speechless, leanin’ forward,

wrappin’ a blanket snugly

around, presently a whisper

i plight thee my troth

in this first new hour

they are all i have
i will write myself
outta this one

the birth of the end
a few months ago
exact date, not sure

stripped of feelin’s
my own damn fault
then this pandemic

Schopenhauer was right
all will be well because
whatever happens

day and time fade away

nothin’ compares
dull would be without this

the night now doth wear
the fallin’ last light; silent, bare,

hills and river lie
open unto the big sky

ne’er did two need more
in this splendour
ne’er felt we, so deep

abideth here at our will
the very source of want

for you
all of this
of you
about you
(so now y’all know
who to blame)

of course,
there are never
enough words,
nor melodies,
nor sketches

not to mention
that there will never
be enough time

for you

not the sort to keep
anyone happy
“But you should try!”

sinkin’ by his chair,
hidin’ her face on his knees

speechless, he leaned forward
and wrapped his arms round her
the Navajo blanket fell over them
presently a whisper…

you have beat me
how can i fight this

she answered nothin’

not with words, not even
with meetin’ eyes,
did they plight their troth
in this first new hour

Today is the birthday of Louise Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun (Marie Élisabeth Louise; Paris 16 April 1755 – 30 March 1842 Paris) also known as Madame Lebrun; painter. Her artistic style is generally considered part of the aftermath of Rococo, while she often adopted a neoclassical style. While serving as the portrait painter to Marie Antoinette, Vigée Le Brun works purely in Rococo in both her color and style choices. Vigée Le Brun left a legacy of 660 portraits and 200 landscapes.

Gallery


Self-portrait in a Straw Hat, 1782.

Countess Siemontkowsky Bystry 1793

Self-portrait with her daughter Jeanne-Lucie, 1786

Portrait of Marie Antoinette, 1783

Marie Antoinette and her Children, 1787

Portrait de la comtesse Maria Theresia Bucquoi, 1793
Lady Folding a Letter
Varvara Golovina
Emma, Lady Hamilton
Portrait of Miss Pitt as Hebe
Charles-Alexandre de Calonne (1734–1802), 1784
Portrait of Marie Gabrielle de Gramont, Duchesse de Caderousse , 1784
The Bather, 1792
Portrait of princess Alexandra Golitsyna and her son Piotr, 1794
Anna Ivanovna Baryatinskaya Tolstoy
Comtesse de La Châtre
Princess Ana Gruzinsky Galitzine
Self portrait with Her Daughter, 1789

Today is the birthday of Ford Madox Brown (Calais, France 16 April 1821 – 6 October 1893 London); painter of moral and historical subjects, notable for his distinctively graphic and often Hogarthian version of the Pre-Raphaelite style. Perhaps his most notable painting was Work (1852–1865). Brown spent the latter years of his life painting the Manchester Murals, depicting Mancunian history, for Manchester Town Hall.

Gallery


Self-portrait 1850

Thinking, his wife emma

The Convalescent (A Portrait of the Artist’s Wife)

Brown’s Jacob and Joseph’s Coat at Museo de Arte de Ponce, Ponce, Puerto Rico

The Bromley Family. Brown’s first wife Elizabeth, lower right, 1844

Pretty Baa-Lambs. Browns mistress Emma and second daughter Cathy in 1851

Catherine Madox Brown
Emma in 1852 (study for The Last of England)
in 1867, drawn by Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

James Leathart
Traveller
The Irish Girl, 1860
Cromwell, Protector of the Vaudois, 1877
Finding of Don Juan by Haidee
Cordelia’s Portion
Byron’s Dream
The French saint King Louis IX in the stained glass of the East window of All Saints Church, Cambridge.
Chaucer at the Court of Edward III, oil on canvas painting, 1847–1851, Art Gallery of New South Wales
Romeo and Juliet parting on the balcony in Act III. Delaware Art Museum, 1870
King Rene’s Honeymoon, 1864, an imaginary scene in the life of the art-loving medieval king René of Anjou.
Jesus washing Peter’s feet

Today is the birthday of Anatole France (born François-Anatole Thibault, Paris 16 April 1844 – 12 October 1924 Tours); poet, journalist, and novelist. Ironic and skeptical, he was considered in his day the ideal French man of letters. He was a member of the Académie française, and won the 1921 Nobel Prize in Literature “in recognition of his brilliant literary achievements, characterized as they are by a nobility of style, a profound human sympathy, grace, and a true Gallic temperament”. France is also widely believed to be the model for narrator Marcel’s literary idol Bergotte in Marcel Proust‘s In Search of Lost Time.

Les plus beaux mots du monde ne sont que de vains sons, si on ne les comprend pas.

The finest words in the world are only vain sounds, if you cannot comprehend them.
- Series I : Propos de rentrée: la terre et la langue

En art comme en amour, l’instinct suffit.

In art as in love, instinct is enough.
- Le Jardin d’Épicure [The Garden of Epicurus] (1894)

Un conte sans amour est comme du boudin sans moutarde; c’est chose insipide.

A tale without love is like beef without mustard: insipid.
- La Révolte des Anges [The Revolt of the Angels], (1914), ch. VIII

On devient bon écrivain comme on devient bon menuisier: en rabotant ses phrases.

You become a good writer just as you become a good joiner: by planing down your sentences.
- As quoted in Anatole France en pantoufles by Jean-Jacques Brousson (1924); published in English as Anatole France Himself: A Boswellian Record by His Secretary, Jean-Jacques Brousson (1925), trans. John Pollock, p. 85

Mac Tag

anatole france, ford madox brown, louise elisabeth vigee le brun, the lovers almanac, the lovers chronicle

The Lovers’ Chronicle 15 April – consider – birth of Leonardo da Vinci & Henry James – premiere of Handel’s Serse – art by Thomas Hart Benton

15 April 2024 By Rhett 0 In Random

Dear Zazie,

Here is today’s Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag.

Rhett

The Lovers’ Chronicle

Dear Muse,

these random thoughts

-a knock on the door-
i did place an order
but i did not think
anyone was listenin’

need some help
no, though i will
accept it from you

i like to do things
when inspired so

darlin’,
-pausin’-
if i were to…
with pleasure

i like this game
shall we play another

yes do…

what i think of you, you know, what i am capable of sayin’

to you, you have felt; it is here stretchin’ out over ten years

for you to read, and for all that, my highest purpose, still

is to keep writin’, i am not capable of anything else with

regard to you, but just of bein’ here for you to read

if one is strong, one becomes only the more strongly

your own way of doin’ all you do, and any description fails in givin’ the full impression
you remind me of no one, so natural and quick to understand, to be, that i fell at once
will you consider a question, wonderin’ if you would join me in gettin’ up now and goin’ back

*Think on your sins*

-a knock on the door-
“Room service.”
i did not
order anything
-openin’ the door-
not even you

“Need some help
with that?”
your help,
always

i like to do things
the old fashioned way
“Sometimes,
the old ways
are the best.”

“I’m impressed!
Old dog, new tricks?”
when inspired so
there is nothin’
i cannot do

darlin’, -pausin’-, if i were to…
-and she smiles- “With pleasure!”

was that your best shot
“Hardly.”
well, a movin’ target
is harder to hit
“Then you better
keep moving.”

“I like this game.”
shall we play another

“You have a lot
of faith in me.”
yes, a faith
that will only cease
with breath

-later-

you look amazin’
in that dress
“It’s a wonder
what one can do
with an extra
pair of hands!”
you are tellin’ me

i do not want
to over complicate things
“Who doesn’t enjoy
the occasional twist?”

may i ask why

“Be careful what you wish for.
You know nothing about it.”
i know all there is

Today is the birthday of Leonardo da Vinci (Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci, Vinci 15 April 1452 – 2 May 1519 Amboise, Kingdom of France); polymath whose areas of interest included invention, painting, sculpting, architecture, science, music, mathematics, engineering, literature, anatomy, geology, astronomy, botany, writing, history, and cartography. He has been called the father of paleontology, ichnology, and architecture, and is widely considered one of the greatest painters of all time. His genius epitomized the Renaissance humanist ideal.

Beyond friendship, Leonardo kept his private life secret. His sexuality has been the subject of satire, analysis, and speculation. This trend began in the mid-16th century and was revived in the 19th and 20th centuries, most notably by Sigmund Freud. Leonardo’s most intimate relationships were perhaps with his pupils Salai and Melzi. Melzi, writing to inform Leonardo’s brothers of his death, described Leonardo’s feelings for his pupils as both loving and passionate. It has been claimed since the 16th century that these relationships were of a sexual or erotic nature. Court records of 1476, when he was aged twenty-four, show that Leonardo and three other young men were charged with sodomy in an incident involving a well-known male prostitute. The charges were dismissed for lack of evidence, and there is speculation that since one of the accused, Lionardo de Tornabuoni, was related to Lorenzo de’ Medici, the family exerted its influence to secure the dismissal. Since that date much has been written about his presumed homosexuality and its role in his art, particularly in the androgyny and eroticism manifested in John the Baptist and Bacchus and more explicitly in a number of erotic drawings.

Gallery

Leonardo’s earliest known drawing, the Arno Valley (1473), Uffizi

Study of horse from Leonardo’s journals, Royal Library, Windsor Castle

Study for a portrait of Isabella d’Este (1500) Louvre

John the Baptist (c. 1513–16), Louvre. Leonardo is thought to have used Salai as the model.

Annunciation (1475–1480), Uffizi, is thought to be Leonardo’s earliest complete work

Unfinished painting of Saint Jerome in the Wilderness (1480), Vatican

The Last Supper (1498), Convent of Sta. Maria delle Grazie, Milan, Italy

Lady with an Ermine, around 1489–1490, National Museum, Kraków, Poland

Mona Lisa or La Gioconda (1503–05/07), Louvre, Paris, France

The Virgin and Child with St. Anne (c. 1510), Louvre Museum

The Virgin and Child with St. Anne and St. John the Baptist (c. 1499–1500), National Gallery, London

The Vitruvian Man (c. 1485) Accademia, Venice

Francis I of France receiving the last breath of Leonardo da Vinci, by Ingres, 1818

Leonardo da Vinci, c.1500, Salvator Mundi, oil on walnut

On this day in 1738 – Serse, an Italian opera by George Frideric Handel receives its premiere performance in London, England. It is an opera seria in three acts. The Italian libretto was adapted by an unknown hand from that by Silvio Stampiglia for an earlier opera of the same name by Giovanni Bononcini in 1694. Stampiglia’s libretto was itself based on one by Nicolò Minato that was set by Francesco Cavalli in 1654. The opera is set in Persia (modern-day Iran) in 480 BC and is very loosely based upon Xerxes I of Persia, though there is little in either the libretto or music that is relevant to that setting. Serse, originally sung by a castrato, is now usually performed by a mezzo-soprano, contralto or countertenor. The opening aria, “Ombra mai fu”, sung by Xerxes to a plane tree (Platanus orientalis). Ombra is the Italian word for shade, as in shade tree. In the writings of the Greek historian Herodotus, Xerxes is depicted as an all-powerful despot, whose every whim became law. As evidence of the irrational effect of absolute power, Herodotus tells of Xerxes’ fondness for a certain plane tree that he ordered decorated with gold ornaments and put under perpetual military guard as a sign of royal favor. In Handel’s opera, the famous “Largo” is actually Xerxes’s dreamy song to this famous tree-and the “shade” referred to is the sort to be found under its gold-bedecked branches. It is set to one of Handel’s best-known melodies, and is often known as Handel’s “Largo” (despite being marked “larghetto” in the score).

Henry James
James in 1910

Today is the birthday of Henry James, OM (New York City, 15 April 1843 – 28 February 1916 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, London); author regarded as a key transitional figure between literary realism and literary modernism, and in my opinion, is one of the greatest novelists in the English language. He was the son of Henry James Sr. and the brother of renowned philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James.

Perhaps best known for a number of novels dealing with the social and marital interplay between emigre Americans, English people, and continental Europeans – examples of such novels include The Portrait of a Lady, The Ambassadors, and The Wings of the Dove. His later works were increasingly experimental. For their unique ambiguity, as well as for other aspects of their composition, his late works have been compared to impressionist painting.

In addition to voluminous works of fiction, James published articles and books of criticism, travel, biography, autobiography, and plays. Born in the United States, James largely relocated to Europe as a young man and eventually settled in England, becoming a British subject in 1915, one year before his death. James was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1911, 1912, and 1916.

James in 1890

Grave marker in Cambridge Cemetery, Cambridge, Massachusetts

As he requested, his ashes were buried in Cambridge Cemetery in Massachusetts.

James regularly rejected suggestions that he should marry, and after settling in London proclaimed himself “a bachelor”. Biographers have speculated that James had been in love with his cousin Mary (“Minnie”) Temple, but that a neurotic fear of sex kept him from admitting such affections. As more material became available to scholars, including the diaries of contemporaries and hundreds of affectionate and sometimes erotic letters written by James to younger men, the picture of neurotic celibacy gave way to a portrait of a closeted homosexual. Another portrayal of James includes the suggestion that he was celibate.

Portrait of Henry James, charcoal drawing by John Singer Sargent (1912)

“Portrait of Henry James”, oil painting by John Singer Sargent (1913)

Photograph (1897)

The Portrait of a Lady (1881)

Mrs Touchett was certainly a person of many oddities, of which her behaviour on returning to her husband’s house after many months was a noticeable specimen. She had her own way of doing all that she did, and this is the simplest description of a character which, although by no means without liberal motions, rarely succeeded in giving an impression of suavity.
- Ch. III.

Mr Touchett used to think that she reminded him of his wife when his wife was in her teens. It was because she was fresh and natural and quick to understand, to speak – so many characteristics of her niece – that he had fallen in love with Mrs Touchett.
- Ch. VI.

She had promised him she would consider his question [of marrying him] […]. But this was not the case; she was wondering if she were not a cold, hard, priggish person, and, on her at last getting up and going rather quickly back to the house, felt, as she had said to her friend, really frightened at herself.
- Ch. XII.

There’s no more usual basis of union than a mutual misunderstanding.
- Ch. XV.

“If I should cease to think of you at all for a prescribed time, I should find I could keep it up indefinitely. […] You know that what you ask is impossible […] I’m capable of nothing with regard to you,” he went on, “but just of being infernally in love with you. If one’s strong one loves only the more strongly.”
- Ch. XVI.

Besides, I try to judge things for myself; to judge wrong, I think, is more honourable than not to judge at all.
- Ch. XVI.

She often wondered indeed if she ever had been, or ever could be, intimate with anyone. She had an ideal of friendship as well as of several other sentiments, which it failed to seem to her in this case – it had not seemed to her in other cases – that the actual completely expressed.
- Ch. XIX.

“I don’t pretend to know what people are meant for,” said Madame Merle. “I only know what I can do with them.”
- Ch. XXII.

To live in such a place was, for Isabel, to hold to her ear all day a shell of the sea of the past. This vague eternal rumour kept her imagination awake.
- Ch. XXIII.

Don’t mind anything anyone tells you about anyone else. Judge everyone and everything for yourself.
- Ch. XXIII.

The working of this young lady’s spirit was strange, and I can only give it to you as I see it, not hoping to make it seem altogether natural.
- Ch. XXIX

She gave an envious thought to the happier lot of men, who are always free to plunge into the healing waters of action.
- Ch. XXXVIII

She could never rid herself of the sense that unhappiness was a state of disease – of suffering as opposed to doing. To “do” – it hardly mattered what – would therefore be an escape, perhaps in some degree a remedy.
- Ch. XLI

The real offence, as she ultimately perceived, was her having a mind of her own at all. Her mind was to be his — attached to his own like a small garden-plot to a deer-park.
- Ch. XLII.

You wanted to look at life for yourself — but you were not allowed; you were punished for your wish. You were ground in the very mill of the conventional!
- Ch. LIV.

Here she drew forth a small pocket-book, took from it a card and a pencil and, after meditating a moment, wrote a few words. It is our privilege to look over her shoulder, and if we exercise it we may read the brief query: […].
- XLIV

What he thought of her she knew, what he was capable of saying to her she had felt; yet they were married, for all that, and marriage meant that a woman should cleave to the man with whom, uttering tremendous vows, she had stood at the altar.
- Ch. LI

Today is the birthday of Thomas Hart Benton (Neosho, Missouri April 15, 1889 – January 19, 1975 Kansas City, Missouri); painter and muralist. Along with Grant Wood and John Steuart Curry, he was at the forefront of the Regionalist art movement. His fluid, sculpted figures in his paintings showed everyday people in scenes of life in the United States. Though his work is strongly associated with the Midwestern United States, he studied in Paris, lived in New York City for more than 20 years and painted scores of works there, summered for 50 years on Martha’s Vineyard off the New England coast, and also painted scenes of the American South and West.


Benton in 1935

Gallery

A Streetcar Named Desire

Hollywood

Jessie with guitar

People of Chilmark (Figure Composition), 1920, in the Hirshhorn Museum collection in Washington, D.C.

In 1924, Benton depicted three landmarks in New York City’s Madison Square within his painting New York, Early Twenties.

Achelous and Hercules, a 1947 mural made for a Kansas City department store, now in the Smithsonian American Art Museum

Mac Tag

george frideric handel, henry james, leonardo da vinci, serse, the lovers almanac, the lovers chronicle, thomas hart benton

The Lovers’ Chronicle 14 April – revelator, reprise- art by Victor Borisov-Musatov – premiere of Delibes’ Lakmé

14 April 2024 By Rhett 0 In Random

Dear Zazie,

Here is today’s Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag.

Rhett

The Lovers’ Chronicle

Dear Muse,

*tell me who’s that writin’*

though not religious
“One of the reasons for us”
yes, i have always felt
a pull to this call
“It is powerful”
when i write it seems
as if someone has come
to tell me somethin’
“That’s what the song is about”
exactly, and the answer is me
with more revelations for this

*tell me who’s that writin’*

come down to tell me
what i know, or should
but have i not
been listenin’
or payin’ attention
not sure it matters

answer back from where
would you have me go
to what purpose or place

best keep on
turn to see one
who continues
arms opened wide

*Tell me who’s that writin’*

you know a voice called down

in the dark of night, said my name

but i refused to answer because

i was ashamed, deaf and dumb

the voice came back years later

when despair was closin’ in

i answered, and have yet to stop

*Tell me who’s that writin’*

still comes ’round

once a year, well

maybe more

at one time, a constant

companion, now

feels like a visit

from an old friend

came by today

but i pushed it away

thoughts of here

keep me holdin’ on

just only ever care

about whatever need

creation has

*Tell me who’s that writin’*

since it must be told,
there has been this dichotomy…
the inability to be without,
the inability to be with

and now solitude

this to make the best of

*Tell me who’s that writin’*

knows wherein
salvation lies
in the arms
of another
and i succumb
on occasion
but i am not
convinced

too many mistakes
and wrong choices
the faults run too deep

She knows…

*Tell me
who’s that writin’*

the Revelator
comes round to explain
what will have to be done

i want to tell Her, it is alright
i have heard worse

live long enough
you come to understand

sorry for the wait, She says

it is alright
i will be home soon

Today is the birthday of Victor Borisov-Musatov (Victor Elpidiforovich Borisov-Musatov, Saratov April 14 [O.S. April 2] 1870 – November 8 [O.S. October 26] 1905); painter, prominent for his unique Post-Impressionistic style that mixed Symbolism, pure decorative style and realism. Together with Mikhail Vrubel he is often referred as the creator of Russian Symbolism style.

Gallery

20230414_184339

Self-portrait

Loneliness (on the balcony) 1903

Self-Portrait with sister, 1898

The Pool. 1902

The Emerald Necklace

The Pool. Sketch

May Flowers, 1894
Agave, 1897
Dame in a Rocking Chair, 1897
Two Dames, 1899
Spring, 1898-1901
Daphnis and Chloe. 1901
Phantoms, 1903
Portrait of Nadezhda Stanyukovich, 1903
Autumn Song. 1905
Requiem. 1905

On this day in 1883 the premiere of Lakmé, an opera in three acts by Léo Delibes to a French libretto by Edmond Gondinet and Philippe Gille.

The score, written from 1881–1882, was first performed by the Opéra-Comique at the (second) Salle Favart in Paris, with stage decorations designed by Auguste Alfred Rubé and Philippe Chaperon (Act I), Eugène Louis Carpezat and (Joseph-)Antoine Lavastre (Act II), and Jean-Baptiste Lavastre(Act III). Set in British India in the mid-19th century, Lakmé is based on Théodore Pavie’s story “Les babouches du Brahamane” and novel Le Mariage de Loti by Pierre Loti.

The opera includes the popular Flower Duet (Sous le dôme épais) for sopranos performed in Act 1 by Lakmé, the daughter of a Brahmin priest, and her servant Mallika. The name Lakmé is the French rendition of Sanskrit Lakshmi, the name of the Hindu Goddess of Wealth. Perhaps the most famous aria is the Bell Song (L’Air des clochettes) in Act 2.

Like other French operas of the period, Lakmé captures the ambience of the Orient seen through Western eyes, which was periodically in vogue during the latter part of the 19th century and in line with other operatic works such as Bizet’s The Pearl Fishers and Massenet’s Le roi de Lahore. The subject of the opera was suggested by Gondinet as a vehicle for the American soprano Marie van Zandt.

The Indian fashion brand Lakmé, established in 1952 by the Tata Group and now owned by Hindustan Unilever, is named after the opera.

Synopsis

Place: India

Time: Late nineteenth century during the British Raj. Many Hindus have been forced by the British to practise their religion in secret.

Act 1

The Hindus go to perform their rites in a sacred Brahmin temple under the high priest, Nilakantha. Nilakantha’s daughter Lakmé (which derives from the Sanskrit Lakshmi) and her servant Mallika are left behind and go down to the river to gather flowers where they sing the “Flower Duet”. As they approach the water at the river bank, Lakmé removes her jewelry and places it on a bench. A party of British officers, Frederic and Gérald, arrive nearby while on a picnic with two British girls and their governess. The British girls see the jewelry and request sketches; Gérald volunteers to stay and make sketches of the jewelry. He sees Lakmé and Mallika returning and hides. Mallika leaves Lakmé for a while; while alone Lakmé sees Gérald and, frightened by the foreigner’s incursion, cries out for help. However, simultaneously, she is intrigued and so she sends away those who had responded to her call for help when they come to her rescue. Lakmé and Gérald begin to fall in love with each other. Nilakantha returns and learns of the British officer’s trespassing and vows revenge on him for his affront to Lakmé’s honor.

Act 2

At a bazaar, Nilakantha forces Lakmé to sing (the Bell Song) in order to lure the trespasser into identifying himself. When Gérald steps forward, Lakmé faints, thus giving him away. Nilakantha stabs Gérald, wounding him. Lakmé takes Gérald to a secret hideout in the forest, where she nurses him back to health.

Act 3

While Lakmé fetches sacred water that will confirm the vows of the lovers, Fréderic, a fellow British officer, appears before Gérald and reminds him of his duty to his regiment. After Lakmé returns, she senses the change in Gérald and realises that she has lost him. She dies with honour, rather than live with dishonor, killing herself by eating the poisonous datura leaf.

Mac Tag

Lakmé, leo delibes, the lovers almanac, the lovers chronicle, victor borisov-musatov

Lolita

Part One

Part Two

Gallery

Jane Eyre (1847)

Gallery

Gallery

First marriage: Giovanni Sforza

Second marriage: Alfonso d’Aragon (Duke of Bisceglie)

Third marriage: Alfonso d’Este (Duke of Ferrara)

The Lover’s Melancholy (1628)

Out of Africa (1937)

Seven Gothic Tales (1934)

Quotes

The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1927)

Our Town (1938)

The Skin of Our Teeth (1942)[edit]

The Matchmaker (1954)

Writers at Work interview (1958)

The Eighth Day (1967)

Theophilus North (1973)

The Portrait of a Lady (1881)

Gallery

Mac Tag

Synopsis

Act 1

Act 2

Act 3

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