THESAURUS THURSDAY - SENTIMENTAL

“The cure for anything is salt water - sweat, tears, or the sea." - Isak Dinesen (KarenBlixen)

I was born in Greece and my family and I moved here to Australia when I was 10 years old. The political situation in Greece at that time was dominated by the rule of the “colonels”, a military junta that had overthrown the government and had plunged the country into an extreme right-wing totalitarian regime that was exceedingly oppressive and wasted no opportunity in eradicating all forms of ideological opposition. This extended to political parties, organisations, artistic and literary groups and of course to individuals. My parents were situated slightly to the left side of the centre (pink rather than red) in their political ideology. Our house in Athens was thus often full of artists, poets, musicians and actors who visited and regaled us with their latest work. At the time of the junta, many of these liberals and socialists were actively sought out and were exiled, imprisoned (or worse!) depending on their perceived threat to the military junta establishment. We managed to flee and to settle in Australia.

The first time I went back to Greece after living in Australia for 10 years or so, the country had returned to democratic rule and the climate was one of optimism with everyone still drunk with the heady wine of political and intellectual freedom. I was taken for a long drive by relatives and we ended up on top of a mountain, looking down onto a valley and far away to the sea. We had coffee at a café and as I gazed out into the distant azure depths of the sea, a few tears rolled down my eyes. It was all so beautiful: The return to the land of my birth, seeing relatives that I had not laid eyes on for a long time, the beauty of the landscape, the sounds of my mother tongue around me, and the sweeping vista in front of me where land, sea and sky seemed to conspire so as to make a picture of incomparable loveliness.

My companions looked at me and asked if everything was OK. I had to smile and eventually laughed. I said nothing was wrong, all was right, in fact! It was just that something had got into my eye and caused it to tear – I think that was indeed true, a little piece of the landscape in front me had entered into my heart through my eyes and caused me to become sentimental over the experience that I was living through. The beauty of nature that I beheld had become enmeshed with my feelings of nostalgia of the time of my childhood, the joy of seeing my relatives once again, the remembrances of happy times in the past, and the sense of “returning home”…

Yes, I was being sentimental, and was afraid of admitting it… This poor word “sentimental” has been much maligned in recent times and what once could be described as sentimental and raise fellow feelings of sympathy in others, is now more likely to be ridiculed in the person confessing such a weakness in their character. We are losing our innocence of experience as a culture in the West, I think, and what could be interpreted tenderly and with true feeling is often described as romantic nonsense and as living in the past. We have become so modern in our sensibilities…

sentimental |ˌsen(t)əˈmen(t)l|adjective

of or prompted by feelings of tenderness, sadness, or nostalgia: She felt a sentimental attachment to the place creep over her.

• (of a work of literature, music, or art) dealing with feelings of tenderness, sadness, or nostalgia in an exaggerated and self-indulgent way: A sentimental ballad.

• (of a person) excessively prone to feelings of tenderness, sadness, or nostalgia: I’m a sentimental old fool.

PHRASES

sentimental value the value of something to someone because of personal or emotional associations rather than material worth.

DERIVATIVES

sentimentally |ˈsɛn(t)əˌmɛn(t)li| adverb

ORIGIN late Middle English (in the senses [personal experience] and [physical feeling, sensation] ): from Old French sentement, from medieval Latin sentimentum, from Latin sentire ‘feel.’

If you are moved to tears by a situation that does not necessarily warrant such a response, you’re likely to be called sentimental, an adjective used to describe a willingness to get emotional at the slightest prompting (A sentimental man who kept his dog’s ashes in an urn on the mantel).

Effusive applies to excessive or insincere displays of emotion, although it may be used in an approving sense (Effusive in her gratitude for the help she had received).

Maudlin derives from the name Mary Magdalene, who was often shown with her eyes swollen from weeping. It implies a lack of self-restraint, particularly in the form of excessive tearfulness, often in the context of self-pity.

Mawkish carries sentimentality a step further, implying emotion so excessive that it provokes loathing or disgust (Mawkish attempts to win the audience over).

Although romantic at one time referred to an expression of deep feeling, nowadays it is often used disapprovingly to describe emotion that has little to do with the way things actually are and that is linked to an idealised vision of the way they should be (She had a romantic notion of what it meant to be a “starving artist”).

Mushy suggests both excessive emotion or sentimentality and a contempt for romantic love (A mushy love story).

Similarly, schmaltzy implies excessive sentimentality, a mushiness of feeling especially in music or movies.

I am sentimental. I have always been and always will be, I guess. Only now I am not afraid of confessing it! That would make me a sentimental old fool, according to some people, whereas I prefer to think of myself as a neo-romanticist… What about you? Are you sentimental?

POETRY JAM - IMPOSSIBILITY

“If we’re destroying our trees and destroying our environment and hurting animals and hurting one another and all that stuff, there’s got to be a very powerful energy to fight that. I think we need more love in the world. We need more kindness, more compassion, more joy, more laughter. I definitely want to contribute to that.” - Ellen DeGeneres

Poetry Jam this week has enjoined participants to think about thing impossible and write a poem about it. Here is my contribution in response to this:

The Impossible

The world is ageing fast

And in its death vision sees

With rheumy, presbyopic eyes,

Its own end in oceans of hellish fire, 

Rain of lambent ash, and rivers of molten metal.

People have hardened hearts

And robbed spirits, hollow souls;

Humanity overcome by brute savagery,

As our basest cannibalistic tendencies

Cause us to tear apart with nails and devour each other’s flesh.

Nature was stunned, killed long ago:

No green leaf budding, flowers but a distant memory;

No animal left to roam the burning deserts;

No bird to fly in poisoned air, no insect to burrow in roasted earth;

No shelter, no safe haven, no refuge left.

And yet, as long as there is one amongst us

With a vision, with a deep well of hope,

With strong belief and endless love,

We shall achieve what seems well nigh impossible:

This bluish-white sphere spinning endlessly in space,

This our only home, to save, and our dying world to revivify…

LITERARY TUESDAY - FANIA FÉNELON

“We must accept finite disappointment, but we must never lose infinite hope.” - Martin Luther King Jr

One of the most distressing chapters in the history of WWII is the Holocaust with the mass extermination of millions of people by the Nazis. Not just the Jews, but also gypsies, blacks, communists, homosexuals, and other “undesirables”. As Niemöller said after his epiphany:

“In Germany, the Nazis first came for the communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, but I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak for me…”

Martin Niemöller was a German theologian and Lutheran pastor, founder of the anti-Nazi Bekennende Kirche (Confessing Church) in 1934, and a president of the World Council of Churches from 1961 to 1968. Niemöller was a commander of a German U-boat in World War I. Something that changed his moral outlook, which he related in many public speeches later in his life, occurred when he commanded his submarine crew not to rescue the sailors of a boat he torpedoed, but let them drown instead. His conscience and his humanity woke up in him and he became a chief critic of the Nazi regime so that in 1937 he was arrested because of his outspoken sermons, and sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp. In 1941 he was moved to Dachau, where he stayed until the end of the war.

The literature that surrounds the Holocaust is considerable and a wide sample of genres can be found within this broad group of writings. Factual accounts, biographical notes (“The Diary of a Young Girl” by Anne Frank is a prime example), memoirs (e.g. “On Both Sides of the Wall 
by Vladka Meed”), historical treatises, novels (“The Man from the Other Side” by Uri Orlev; “Schindler’s Ark” by Thomas Keneally), letters, poems, and many more. Literature spawned many films, and some very successful and moving films are:

“The Diary of Anne Frank” (1959)

“Schindler’s List” (1993)

“Life is Beautiful” (1997)

“The Pianist” (2002) and so on...

One of the books in this genre that I found particularly engaging is the 1986 novel “The Musicians of Auschwitz” 
by Fania Fénelon (= Fanny Goldstein 1918?-1983). This is a famous book that describes the amazingly potent effects that music had as an anodyne, a healer and as a means of intellectual escape in Fania Fénelon’s troubled life. Fania Fénelon was one of the Jewish musicians who played in the orchestra at Birkenau-Auschwitz concentration camp. She would play, arrange music and occasionally she would compose music for the orchestra that amused the SS officers who lived in the camp.

The Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz, described by Fénelon was created in June 1943 by a Polish music teacher, Mrs. Zofia Czajkowska, by order of the SS. The members were protected from being gassed in the gas chamber, or from being worked to death. Czajkowska was eventually replaced as conductor by Alma Rosé, niece of Gustav Mahler. Rosé had been the conductor of a women’s orchestra in her hometown of Vienna. As well as entertaining the SS, the orchestra played at the gate when the work gangs went out, and when they returned. During the final stages of the Holocaust, when the mass deportations of Jews from Eastern Europe occurred and large numbers of Jews were sent directly to the gas chambers, the orchestra played in order to put the minds of the victims at ease. The music preserved the illusion that the Jews were being transported “to the East”, and allowed the SS to kill more efficiently.

Fénelon’s book describes the horrors of the camp, but at the same time it is a joyous document of survival, of hope and resilience. She maintains that her all-consuming passion in the creation of music emptied her mind, lifted her soul and gave her undying hope. Although Fania and the other musicians played for their SS captors under the most soul-destroying circumstances, their songs were secretly subversive, joyful and hopeful without the German soldiers’ realisation. The orchestra would transform traditional Jewish music and delighted in performing classical pieces that were banned by the Nazis.

Alma Rosé died in 1944 of unknown causes; poisoning was suspected by Fénelon and others, but according to Newman and Kirtley the cause was likely to be either botulism or typhus. After Rosé the orchestra was conducted haphazardly by Sonia Vinogradovna, a Russian prisoner, but in January 1945 Auschwitz was dismantled by the Nazis and the orchestra was sent to Bergen-Belsen. Two members, Lola Kroner and Julie Stroumsa, died there. The rest survived, though Ewa Stojowska was badly beaten and Fania Fénelon nearly died of typhus. Fénelon wrote that remaining members of the orchestra was scheduled to be shot to death on the same day as the liberation by British troops. She was interviewed by the BBC on the day of liberation and performed “La Marseillaise” and “God Save the King.”

Fania Fénelon’s book has also been made into a television show, “Playing for Time” (1980), screenplay written by Arthur Miller, and starring Vanessa Redgrave. I haven’t seen this, but according to the International Movie Database reviews it is an excellent show.

MOVIE MONDAY - NOSFERATU

“Man is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness from which he emerges and the infinity in which he is engulfed.” - Blaise Pascal

For Movie Monday today I am considering a movie that we saw at the weekend, “Nosferatu: The Vampyre” by Werner Herzog (1979).

This is a famous film and is a remake of an equally famous silent expressionistic classic also from Germany, FW Murnau’s “Nosferatu, a Symphony of Horrors” of 1922. Both of these movies are based on the famous 1897 Gothic novel “Dracula” by Bram Stoker (which is available in its entirety online).  Stoker’s “Dracula” remains one of the most popular novels ever published and Dracula has been adapted for the stage and screen hundreds of times. It is a typical Victorian Gothic novel of a bloodthirsty vampire whose nocturnal activities are a metaphor for the hidden salaciousness and immorality of a supremely moralistic age. Bram Stoker wrote seventeen novels, but “Dracula” remains his most famous and enduring work.

The German film-maker, FW Murnau wanted to make a film version of “Dracula” but was denied the rights to the book by Stoker’s estate. Murnau proceeded to change the title to “Nosferatu”, the name of Dracula to “Count Orlok”, and then he proceeded to make a classic of the silent film era. It is a prime example of German film expressionism but at the same time a faithful adaptation of Stoker’s story. The film has images that are haunting and horrible, lingering and lugubrious, unsettling and uncanny. Considering when the film was made, even today it is quite disturbing and amazingly effective in the horror genre. I watched this film some time ago in my University years and one can now watch it in its entirety on YouTube.

Werner Herzog in the late 70s reimagined Murnau’s “Nosferatu”, remaining quite faithful to the original version and trying to capture as much as possible the atmosphere of Murnau’s masterpiece, utilising modern technology, equipment, colour film stock and sound. He uses Murnau’s vision and extends it in a logical fashion, attempting to fill in the lacunae of the original. It is not a remake, shot for shot, nor does mimic artistically the original. Herzog was too great a director to slavishly ape his predecessor. He is inspired by Murnau and he creates a beautifully haunting film where even the character of the vampire changes and he becomes strangely sympathetic to us. The vampire is trapped by circumstances in an undead state he loathes (and which he continues to live, by compulsion of fate) and he often meditates on his inability to die and also his yearning for love, the blood-lust being a poor substitute for it.

In case you are not familiar with the plot (which planet are you from?) here it is in a nutshell: Jonathan Harker, an estate agent’s representative is sent to Count Dracula’s castle to negotiate the sale of a house in Wismar, where he lives. Count Dracula is a vampire, one of the undead ghouls who needs human blood to remain alive. Seeing a photograph of Lucy Harker, Jonathan’s wife, Dracula decides to move to Wismar, bringing with him rats, plague and death.

The film has a certain theatricality about it and in certain scenes resembles a patchwork of tableaux-vivants – a stroll through the chamber of horrors of Madame Tussaud. In other scenes, there is a glowing misty light that mimics Vermeer’s paintings. Isabelle Adjani is a beautifully cool Lucy and her acting is rather formalised and detached. Klaus Kinski as the Count is magnificent and his caricature-like face and hands do not detract from the look of the film. Jonathan’s part played by Bruno Ganz is adequate and his rather prissy, narcissistic, ineffectual anti-hero comes across well. The locations are beautiful and brought back memories of my time in Delft, Holland. There is a chilling foreboding throughout the film and suits very well several subtext messages that Herzog is conveying to us.

Watch if you can the German-speaking version with subtitles, rather than the English-speaking version (the film was shot twice) as the acting is better in the German version. Both original version and Herzog’s recent one are definitely worth seeing.

ART SUNDAY - LEONORA CARRINGTON

“Surrealism is destructive, but it destroys only what it considers to be shackles limiting our vision.” - Salvador Dali

The Google Doodle today highlights an artist I was not aware of before now, so I thought it a good idea to find out a little more about her and feature her on Art Sunday here, as well. Leonora Carrington (British, born April 6, 1917–died May 25, 2011) was an artist and author, best known as one of the leading female figures of the Surrealist movement. Carrington was born in Clayton Green, Lancashire, England, to a wealthy textile merchant family, and received much of her early education from tutors and nuns.

After being expelled from several schools due to her rebellious nature, Carrington was sent to Florence, Italy, to attend her first art school, Mrs. Penrose’s Academy of Art. Her education continued at Chelsea School of Art in London for a year, after which she transferred to Ozenfant Academy, London, for the following three years. In 1937, Carrington met Max Ernst, who is recognised as one of the pioneers of the Surrealist movement. Carrington and Ernst formed a strong bond, and lived in Paris and southern France where they supported each other’s artistic talent and vision. This would result in their collaboration on several pieces of art that they used to decorate their home.

After Ernst’s arrest by the Nazis shortly after their occupation of France, Carrington moved to Spain, where she suffered a complete breakdown that resulted in her being institutionalised. This experience would directly influence both her artistic and written works in the coming years. Examples of this influence can be seen in her novel “Down Below” (1972), and her paintings “Portrait of Dr. Morales” (1940) and “Map of Down Below” (1943).

In 1947, Carrington became extremely well known almost overnight after she showcased her work at a Surrealist exhibition held at the Pierre Matisse Gallery. As the only professional female painter represented at the exhibition, she quickly made a name for herself as one of the most prominent female painters of the Surrealist movement. In 2010, Carrington’s work was presented during a show entitled “Surreal Friends” at the Pallant House Gallery in West Sussex. Before her death in 2011, Carrington was recognised as one of the last female painters of the Surrealist movement. She also gained recognition when her painting Juggler (1954) set a new record as the most expensive piece ever sold by a living Surrealist painter. Carrington died on May 25, 2011.

The painting above is a “Self Portrait” from 1937/8. The painter has depicted herself in a vacuous room with three animals: A curious hyena, looking like a pygmy-like striped mare, which she seems to hold at bay with an apotropaic gesture; a rocking horse floating above her head and a white, almost unicorn-like horse galloping away in the landscape seen from the open window. Horses symbolise freedom and power. In some cultures, white horses stand for the balance of wisdom and power. In others, like Christianity, the white horse is a symbol of death. The horse is a universal symbol of freedom without restraint, because riding a horse made people feel they could free themselves from their own bindings. Also linked with riding horses, they are symbols of travel, movement, and desire.

Carrington spent her childhood on a country estate surrounded by animals and reading fairy tales and legends. She revisited these memories in her adulthood, creating paintings populated with real and imagined creatures. Here, the white horse, which Carrington used as her symbolic surrogate, gallops freely into the verdant landscape beyond the curtained window. The hyena in front of her is a powerful symbol of femininity and maternity, the breasts full of milk. The tail-less rocking horse is perhaps an allusion to childhood, left behind as the artist gallops into maturity, beyond the shackles of convention.

MUSIC SATURDAY - RACHMANINOV

“Prayer is when you talk to God. Meditation is when you’re listening. Playing the piano allows you to do both at the same time.” - Kelsey Grammer

Sergei Vasilievich Rachmaninov - Born: April 1, 1873 - Oneg, Novgorod, (or Semyonovo) , Russia. Died: March 28, 1943 - Beverly Hills, California, USA.

Sergei Vasilievich Rachmaninov (Сергей Васильевич Рахманинов) was a Russian composer, pianist, and conductor, one of the last great champions of the Romantic style of European classical music. He came from a music-loving, land-owning family; young Sergei’s mother fostered the boy’s innate talent by giving him his first piano lessons. After a decline in the family fortunes, the Rachmaninovs moved to St. Petersburg, where Sergei studied with Vladimir Delyansky at the Conservatory.

As his star continued to rise, Sergei went to the Moscow Conservatory, where he received a sound musical training: Piano lessons from the strict disciplinarian Nikolay Zverev and Alexander Siloti (Rachmaninov’s cousin), counterpoint with Taneyev, and harmony with Arensky. During his time at the Conservatory, Rachmaninov boarded with Zverev, whose weekly musical Sundays provided the young musician the valuable opportunity to make important contacts and to hear a wide variety of music.

As Rachmaninov’s conservatory studies continued, his burgeoning talent came into full flower; he received the personal encouragement of Tchaikovsky, and, a year after earning a degree in piano, took the Conservatory’s gold medal in composition for his opera “Aleko” (1892). Early setbacks in his compositional career - particularly, the dismal reception of his "Symphony No. 1" (1895) - led to an extended period of depression and self-doubt, which he overcame with the aid of hypnosis.

With the resounding success of his Piano Concerto No. 2 (1900-1901), however, his lasting fame as a composer was assured. The first decade of the twentieth century proved a productive and happy one for Rachmaninov, who during that time produced such masterpieces as the Symphony No. 2 (1907), the tone poem “Isle of the Dead” (1907), and the “Piano Concerto No. 3” (1909).

On May 12, 1902, the composer married his cousin, Natalya Satina. By the end of the decade, Sergei Rachmaninov had embarked on his first American tour, which cemented his fame and popularity in the USA. He continued to make his home in Russia but left permanently following the Revolution in 1917; he thereafter lived in Switzerland and the USA between extensive European and American tours. While his tours included conducting engagements (he was twice offered, and twice refused, leadership of the Boston Symphony Orchestra), it was his astounding pianistic abilities that won him his greatest glory.

Rachmaninov was possessed of a keyboard technique marked by precision, clarity, and a singular legato sense. Indeed, the pianist’s hands became the stuff of legend. He had an enormous span (he could, with his left hand, play the chord C-E flat-G-C-G) and his playing had a characteristic power, which pianists have described as “cosmic” and “overwhelming”. He is, for example, credited with the uncanny ability to discern, and articulate profound, mysterious movements in a musical composition, which usually remain undetected by the superficial perception of rhythmic structures.

Fortunately for posterity, Sergei Rachmaninov recorded much of his own music, including the four piano concerti and what is perhaps his most beloved work, the “Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini” (1934). He became an American citizen a few weeks before his death in Beverly Hills, California, on March 28, 1943.

Here is his glorious Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor, Op. 18. The work is scored for 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets in B♭ (I mov.) and A (II & III mov.), 2 bassoons, 4 horns in F, 2 trumpets in B♭, 3 trombones (2 tenor, 1 bass), tuba, timpani, bass drum, cymbals, solo piano, and strings. It is written in three-movement concerto form. It is performed here by Evgeny Kissin with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France conducted by Myung-Whun Chung. A dazzling performance!

FOOD FRIDAY - BAKED FISH

“The sea hath fish for every man.” - William Camden

In Australia it is a tradition for many to eat fish on Good Friday. Here is a recipe for baked whole red snapper, which we have every now and then.

BAKED WHOLE RED SNAPPER

Ingredients

One 2 kg red snapper, gutted, gills removed, not scaled, washed

3 tablespoons olive oil

Fresh thyme, rosemary

Extra virgin olive oil

Juice of two large lemons

Sea salt and pepper

Method

Preheat the oven to 200ºC. Place a few sprigs of thyme and rosemary in the abdominal cavity of the fish. Rub the fish with 2 tablespoons olive oil and season well with salt and pepper.

Place fish in an oiled oval pan or baking tray.

Bake for about 15 minutes per 2 cm of thickness at the thickest part of the fish. Baste with the pan juices every now and then.

Check to see if the fish is cooked by carefully sliding a paring knife in its back at the thickest part, gently lifting the top filet, and peeking inside to make sure the fish pulls away from the bone and the flesh is opaque (but still moist) rather than translucent and raw.

Prepare the dressing by beating together equal quantities of lemon juice and extra virgin olive oil seasoned with sea salt.

Take fish from oven and carefully remove the skin (and scales) from both sides using two forks. The two large fillets of the fish should be easily removed from the bones. Serve the fillets with the dressing poured on top.

Accompany with a fresh green seasonal salad and crusty bread.

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GALLEYS vs KITCHENS!

“Cooking is at once child’s play and adult joy. And cooking done with care is an act of love.” - Craig Claiborne

A couple of weeks ago, a friend told me that she went to look at some new apartments that were being advertised for sale in the City. To her surprise, there was no kitchen to be seen anywhere in the flat. When she asked the estate agent showing her the apartment to show her where the kitchen was, he smiled and opened a cupboard, and pointed to a tiny galley with a microwave oven, a metre-long bench, a tiny bar fridge and an equally tiny sink. He explained to her that most people who chose to live a “downtown lifestyle” rarely ate in. As a vast selection of eating places of all kinds were within a few hundred metres of your apartment, why would you want to cook? My friend was not impressed…

Nor would I be! One of the most cosy and homely places in the house is the kitchen. There is always something happening there, always someone around, and many-a-time the delicious smells of food being cooked and the clatter of pots and pans are enticing calls to attention and draw everyone in the house to this happy place. Our kitchen is not overly large, but is well designed and merges with the family room and meals area, so that quite a spacious area is perceived when one enters these “three rooms in one”.

Whoever is cooking or working in the kitchen can converse with the others sitting in the family room and meals are easily passed from the cooking area to the meals area. Close friends gravitate to this part of the house, whereas acquaintances or work colleagues can be entertained away from this private area, in the “public” lounge room. Making a pot of coffee in the kitchen while one is conversing with close friends sitting in the family room is one of the pleasures of this arrangement.

My favourite times in the kitchen are weekend wintry mornings, when I wake first, turn the heater on and start the coffee going. Making hot toast with lashings of butter, while some baroque music is playing in the background sets the stage for the making of more serious breakfast fare, later on when everyone is awake. Scones, pancakes, porridge, eggs or on rare occasion a full, cooked breakfast are special treats, especially in winter. There is a wonderful smell that comes to mind when I think of such winter mornings. Freshly brewed coffee blending with hot buttered toast, ground pepper on hot, steaming scrambled eggs and green tender chives chopped on top.

A galley, indeed! Hrrrrrrrrrrrrrmph!

A recipe for Eggs Benedict

Split some English muffins in halves crosswise, toast them without allowing to brown. Place a slice of cooked ham on each muffin half. Heat in a moderate oven and put a poached egg on each muffin half. Cover the whole with Hollandaise sauce and garnish with finely chopped chives. Keep warm until served, but don’t dawdle in serving them!

POETRY JAM - THE FLAME

“Love cannot endure indifference. It needs to be wanted. Like a lamp, it needs to be fed out of the oil of another's heart, or its flame burns low.” - Henry Ward Beecher

This week, Poetry Jam wants participants to write about “the flame”. A broad topic to be sure, and whether one chooses to be literal or figurative, there are countless possibilities. Here is my contribution:


Our Love’s Flames

In the depths of my abyss
And my endless, lonely night,
I remember a sweet kiss
And the flames of love’s delight.

In the desert of my strife
In the coldness of my soul,
I recall our happy life
And the warmth that made us whole.

In the roiling seas ice-cold
And the Winter’s howling storm,
Long past Spring of old
I yearn, and the fire of Summer warm.

In a dark, dejected place
Hungry, thirsty and forlorn,
I seek you, of endless grace,
Come, remove my heart’s deep thorn.

In the Autumn greyness drear
And my freezing blood’s despair,
I await you to come by near
All my damage to repair.

Come again, and heal my pain,
Blow the ash off my cold grate;
Light my fires, fan my flames,
Tell me all was not in vain;
I was right to hope and wait,
Let us play our old love games.

ARTHUR RIMBAUD

“Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it” – Confucius

Venus Anadyomene

As from a green zinc coffin, a woman’s

Head with brown hair heavily pomaded

Emerges slowly and stupidly from an old bathtub,
With bald patches rather badly hidden;

Then the fat gray neck, broad shoulder-blades

Sticking out; a short back which curves in and bulges;

Then the roundness of the buttocks seems to take off;

The fat under the skin appears in slabs:

The spine is a bit red; and the whole thing has a smell

Strangely horrible; you notice especially

Odd details you’d have to see with a magnifying glass…

The buttocks bear two engraved words: CLARA VENUS;
—
And that whole body moves and extends its broad rump
Hideously beautiful with an ulcer on the anus.

Venus Anadyomène

Comme d’un cercueil vert en fer blanc, une tête
De femme à cheveux bruns fortement pomades
D’une vieille baignoire émerge, lente et bête,
Avec des déficits assez mal ravaudés;

Puis le col gras et gris, les larges omoplates
Qui saillent; le dos court qui rentre et qui ressort;
Puis les rondeurs des reins semblent prendre l’essor;
La graisse sous la peau paraît en feuilles plates:

L’échine est un peu rouge, et le tout sent un gout
Horrible étrangement; on remarque surtout
Des singularités qu’il faut voir à la loupe…

Les reins portent deux mots gravés: CLARA VENUS;
—
Et tout ce corps remue et tend sa large croupe
Belle hideusement d’un ulcère à l’anus.

Arthur Rimbaud – (Translated by Wallace Fowlie and revised by Seth Whidden)

The 19th century poet, Arthur Rimbaud (born October 20th, 1854, Charleville and died November 10th, 1891, Marseilles) was a leading proponent of the Symbolist movement and his poems are wonderful vehicles for his magnificent, opulent, iconoclastic visions. Rimbaud saw himself as a prophet, a visionary, or, as he put it, a voyant (“seer”). He had come to believe in a universal life force that informs or underlies all matter, which spiritual force Rimbaud referred to simply as “l'inconnu” (“the unknown”). He maintained that this force can be sensed only by a chosen few, he himself of course being one of them.

Rimbaud set himself the task of striving to “see” this spiritual unknown and allowing his individual consciousness to be taken over and used by it as a mere instrument. He should then be able to transmit (by means of poetry) this music of the universe to his fellow men, awakening them spiritually and leading them forward to social progress (being a socialist). He coined a famous phrase to describe his method of achieving his ideals: “le dérèglement de tous les sens” (“the derangement of all the senses”). In a voluntary martyrdom he would subject himself to fasting and pain, imbibe alcohol and drugs, and even cultivate hallucination and madness in order to expand his consciousness.

His poems manifest these visions sometimes in terrible and weird, bizarre and repulsive images, other times in delicate, water-coloured dreamlike trances. His works are often fiercely satirical, often sarcastic, attacking the hollow, petty values and customs of the bourgeoisie. He has been described as an anti-Christian poet because of his attacks on the church, but it is the clergy and their corruption he objects to rather than a genuine spirituality, which he often exhibits. However he is deeply critical of Christianity’s rejection of the sensual and particularly of female sensuality, which he elevates by his frequent references to Venus.

His use of slang and the “mots bas” (“low words”) rather than the “mots propres” (“proper words”) brings his poems to a level accessible to everyone. The poem given here, Venus Anadyomene (Venus rising out of the waves) mocks the traditional description of the goddess Venus, which formed very much part of the aesthetic tasteful verses of the Parnassians (Rimbaud’s contemporary neoclassical poets including Banville, Gautier, and Leconte de Lisle). Rimbaud's Venus, an ugly fat woman getting out of a dirty zinc bath, is a direct parody of the poetic conventions of these Parnassian poets. The poem's final rhyme of "Vénus" with "l' anus" completes the act of poetic subversion.

The poem to me suggests also the love-hate relationship Rimbaud had with the idea of the “female”. He was bisexual and his self destructive life is told in the indie film “Total Eclipse”, directed by Agnieszka Holland. Leonardo Di Caprio in a master-stroke of casting plays the poet Rimbaud. David Thewlis plays fellow poet Verlaine and Rimbaud’s mentor (10 years older and eventually shooting Rimbaud in a crime of passion). Rimbaud survived to renounce his gift, run guns in Africa and die in agony…

For more of his poems visit:
http://www.mag4.net/Rimbaud/poesies/Poems.html

MOVIE MONDAY - THREE COLOURS: BLUE

“The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.” - Albert Camus

The Polish director Krzysztof Kieslowski has quite a few films in his portfolio, but the worldwide success he deserves came in the mid-nineties with his trilogy “Three Colours”. It is not surprising that he chose the three colours on France’s flag, blue, white and red and the country’s national motto of “Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity” with which to construct his trilogy, as Poles have had a special bond with France for quite some time.

Last weekend I watched again Kieslowski’s 1993 film “Three Colours: Blue”,which I consider to be the best of the trilogy. As I expected, I enjoyed it as much as I did the first time I had watched it when it was first released. “Blue” concerns itself with the life of Julie, the wife of a famous and successful composer, who survives him and her young daughter, both of whom are killed in the car accident that begins the film.  The film is very much a study of Julie’s character and how she copes with her manifold losses.

If you have not watched it, I will not spoil for you, but suffice to say that it concerns itself with the theme of “liberty” on a personal level. Julie has been so scarred by her loss that she becomes an emotional cripple, chained to the past simply because she will not acknowledge it. Her grief is so immense that she chooses to black it out, ignore it and live a life free of emotional involvements, free of love, friendship, commitment. The theme of freedom is turned in on itself when Julie discovers that her strategy is failing and she has to redefine her life and her concept of “liberty” according to new parameters, as life intrudes into her self-imposed emotional isolation.

Juliet Binoche delivers a tour de force of acting brilliance in this film, and her dazzling depiction of grief in all of its manifestations is quite an amazing achievement. Her suffering through most of the film is linked of course to the loss of her family, but also she evinces from the role the nagging survivor’s guilt.

Cinematographer Sławomir Idziak’s camera captures images of peerless beauty in this movie and frame by frame, a complex painting is constructed, like the artist’s canvas is completed by brushstroke upon brushstroke. The musical score of the film composed by Zbigniew Preisner is magnificent and complements the images admirably. As a composer of music myself, I found the process of musical composition portrayed in the film accurate and illuminating for myself also!

If you have not seen this film, I strongly recommend it. It is slow-paced, confronting, disturbing, challenging, but also very rewarding.

ART SUNDAY - FRA BARTOLOMMEO

“For though we love both the truth and our friends, piety requires us to honour the truth first.” - Aristotle

Fra Bartolommeo, (also spelled Bartolomeo; also called Bartolomeo della Porta or Baccio della Porta) is an Italian artist born March 28, 1472, Florence and died Oct. 31, 1517, Florence. He was a prominent exponent in early 16th-century Florence of the High Renaissance style. Bartolommeo served as an apprentice in the workshop of Cosimo Rosselli and then formed a workshop with the painter Mariotto Albertinelli.

His early works, such as the “Annunciation” (1497), were influenced by the balanced compositions of the Umbrian painter Perugino and by the sfumato (smoky effect of light and shade) of Leonardo da Vinci. In 1499 Bartolommeo was commissioned to paint a large-scale fresco, “The Last Judgment”, for one of the cemetery chapels in Santa Maria Nuova. Influenced by the preaching of the Florentine Dominican religious reformer Girolamo Savonarola, Bartolommeo joined a convent in 1500, and in 1501 he gave up painting and joined the Dominican order.

He began painting again in 1504, producing devotional paintings mostly at the service of his order. His “Vision of St. Bernard” (completed 1507) shows him achieving the transition from the subtle grace of late Quattrocento painting to the monumentality of the High Renaissance style. In 1508 Fra Bartolommeo visited Venice, where he assimilated the Venetian painters’ use of richer colour harmonies. Back in Florence soon afterward, he painted a number of calm and simple religious pictures in which monumental figures are grouped in balanced compositions and portrayed with a dense and somewhat shadowy atmospheric treatment. Among such works are his “God the Father with SS. Catherine of Siena and Mary Magdalene” (1509) and the “Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine” (1512).

Bartolommeo visited Rome in 1514, where he saw Raphael’s mature work and Michelangelo’s frescoes on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. In response Bartolommeo’s art took on a greater power of dramatic expression, as in the “Madonna della Misericordia” (1515) and the “Pietà” (c. 1515; see above). Also in this vein were his large frescoes of St. Mark and St. Sebastian on the wall at San Marco in Florence. The St. Sebastian, an ornamental pendant, was later purchased by King Henry I of France.

Despite Bartolommeo’s assimilation of the progressive currents of his time, his art is restrained, conservative, and somewhat severe, and he painted religious subjects almost exclusively. His production of drawings and preparatory sketches shows a delicate sensitivity and technical superiority. His landscapes are among the most notable of his time.