Delmira Agustini: I lived in the leaning tower of Melancholy…

Delmira Agustini (1886-1914) was an Uruguayan poetess who published three poetry collections during her short life; The White Book (Fragile, 1907), Morning Songs (1910) and The Empty Chalices (1913), and the fourth one called “The Stars of the Abyss” was published post-humously in 1924. She was a passsionate woman with a love for all that is deep, raw and profound. The unashamedness, the vivid and powerful eroticism of her poetry and her turbulent personal love life were not well received in the Uruguayan society of the time. Hers is the poetry that I can easily get “drunk” on, in the Baudelaire-sense of drunkedness. No other poet describes the burning passions and sensations of love and desire as beautifully as Agustini does. Her verses and even the words she uses, like “fire, “rubies”, “hot”, all convey an image of something that is lush, ripe, sensual, hot, overflowing… Reading her poems is like eating honey, ripe figs and dates on a summer dusk, the sky is turning pink in the distance and the bats are dancing in the sky, and the ground is still hot from the sun, and the heavy scent of roses and lavender is making one drowsy and drunk, while the red and pink oleander is blooming near by, inhaling the deep scent of the dark night. There are no stars in Agustini’s night because they have all explored from too much intensity, as she herself did too, in a way. Her life was cut short when her jealous and possessive husband murdered her and then himself, under mysterious circumstances. Agustini lived and wrote with burning passion and intensity.

Today I decided to share a poem called “Oh You!” from her poetry collection “The Empty Chalices” because it really chimes with me these days. The imagery of a woman trapped in a “tower of melancholy”, the tower as a solitary and claustrophobic place and not only a physical place but also a mood of the spirit… A lonely woman, surrounded by dust, dried flowers and spiders, alive but not living, brings to mind many female literary female figures, from fairy tales and novels alive, from the Rapunzel and the Lady of Shalott who were both “awakened” by the man they saw from the tower, or from the mirror, to Miss Havisham. In connection, I really love this study by John William Waterhouse for this painting “The Lady of Shalott” which portrays the moment when Elaine, the Lady of Shalott, stands up from her embroidery to look out the window. It is Sir Lancelot; the man who caught her eye, the man who stirred something inside her heart. Seeing Elaine in this painting, with her white gown painted in such a sketchy, unfinished way that makes her seem as though she is ghostly, disappearing, makes me think of these lines from Mazzy Star’s song “Into Dust”: “I could possibly be fading/ Or have something more to gain/ I could feel myself growing colder/ I could feel myself under your fate…” As we know, this only brings doom to Elaine as the curse is upon her, but in case of Rapunzel as well as in case of Delmira Agustini, the man is the wind of change which blew in through the window of the tower and stirred something inside that, once awoken, will not fall to slumber again. For Agustini, the man “lifted the veil” and, perhaps most beautifully, “made a whole lake with swans” of her tears.

John William Waterhouse, The Lady of Shalott (from the poem by Tennyson), 1894

Oh You!

I lived in the leaning tower
Of melancholy …
The spiders of tedium, the grayest spiders,
Wove and wove in grayness and silence.

Oh! the dank tower,
Filled with the sinister
Presence of a great owl
Like a soul in torment;

So mute, that the silence in the tower is twofold;
So sad, that without seeing it, we are chilled by the immense
Shadow of its sorrow.

Eternally it incubates a great barren egg,
Its strange pupils fixed on the hereafter;
Or hunts the spiders of tedium, or devours bitter
Mushrooms of solitude.

The owl of illustrious ruins and souls
Tall and desolate!
Cast out from the light I drowned in shadows …
In the dank tower, leaning over myself,
Sometimes I trembled
From the horror of my abyss.

O you who tore me down from that mightiest tower!
Who gently lifted the shadow like a veil,
Who bore me roses in the snow of my soul,
Who bore me flames in the marble of my body,
Who made a whole lake with swans, of my tears …
You who in me are all powerful,
In me you must be God!
From your hands I even seek the good that harms …
I am the shining chalice that you will fill, Lord;
Fallen and stiff like a lily, I am at your feet,
I am more than your own, my God!
Forgive me, forgive me, if I should once sin, dreaming
Of your winged embrace, all mine, in the sun …

How could you regain a poetical frame of mind at times like this? (Natsume Soseki’s The Three-Cornered World)

My go-to book for the late winter and early spring days is Natsume Soseki’s novel “The Three-Cornered World”; it is soothing, meditative, lyrical and inspiring. The story is told in the first person by the main character, a nameless thirty-year old artist, a poet and a painter, who one day sets out on a journey to the mountains, in search of Beauty and the true meaning of art. He stays at a hot spring resort where he is the only guest. One moonlit night he hears a woman singing in the garden. This mysterious beauty, called Nami, captures his imagination, not in a romantic but in an artistic way. The novel is filled with the narrator’s observations on nature, art and life. Every time I read the novel, something new catches my attention and this time it was this passage about distancing oneself from one’s emotions and how that may help in maintaining the poetic vision of the world.

Painting by a Korean artist Oh Myung-Hee

“Even something frightening may appear poetic if you stand back and regard it simply as a shape, and the eerie may make an excellent picture if you think of it as something which is completely independent of yourself. Exactly the same is true with disappointed love. Providing that you can divorce yourself from the pain of a broken heart and, conjuring up before you the tenderness, the sympathy, the despair and yes, even the very excess of pain itself, can view them objectively, then you have aesthetic, artistic material. There are those who purposely imagine their hearts to be broken, and crave for the pleasure they get from this form of emotional self-flagellation. The average person dismisses them as foolish, or even a little mad, but there is absolutely no difference, inasmuch as they both have an artistic standpoint, between the man who draws an outline of misery for himself and then leads his life within it, and him whose delight it is, to paint a landscape which never existed, and then to live in a potted universe of his own creation. (…) Putting it as a formula, I suppose you could say that an artist is a person who lives in the triangle whichremains after the angle which we may call common sense has beenremoved from this four-cornered world.

(…) The shadow I had just seen, considered simply as a shadow and nothing more, was charged with poetry. So much so, that nobody who saw or heard it could possibly fail to appreciate the fact.—A hot-spring in a secluded village—the shadow of blossoms on a spring night—a voice singing softly in the moonlight—a figure flitting through the shadows—every one of them a subject to delight any artist. Yet for all that I had engaged in an investigation which was quite out of keeping with the situation, and probe dabout pointlessly trying to find reasons for everything. I had been privileged to see the world of pure poetry, and had tried to apply to it the yardstick of logic.

(…) How, I wondered, could you regain a poetical frame of mind at times like this? I came to the conclusion that it could be done, if only you could take your feelings and place them in front of you, and then taking a pace back to give yourself the room to move that a bystander would have, examine them calmly and with complete honesty. The poet has an obligation to conduct a post-mortem on his own corpse and to make public his findings as to any disease he may encounter. There are many ways in which he may do this, but the best, and certainly the most convenient, is to try and compress every single incident which he comes across into the seventeen syllables of a Hokku. Since this is poetry in its handiest and most simple form, it may be readily composed while you are washing your face, or in the lavatory, or on a tram. When I say that it may be readily composed, I do not mean it in any derogatory sense. On the contrary, I think it is a very praiseworthy quality, for it makes it easy for one to become a poet; and to become a poet is one way to achieve supreme enlightenment. No, the simpler it is, the greater its virtue. Let us assume that you are angry: you write about what it is that has made you lose your temper, and immediately it seems that it is someone else’s anger that you are considering. Nobody can be angry and write a Hokku at the same time. Likewise, if you are crying, express your tears in seventeen syllables and you feel happy. No sooner are your thoughts down on paper, than all connection between you and the pain which caused you to cry is severed, and your only feeling is one of happiness that you are a man capable of shedding tears.“

Gensen: Selected Stories in Modern Japanese Literature (Translated by J.D.Wisgo)

“Hisako nodded teary-eyed and started playing that part over from the beginning. A melody flowed from the strings like the soft weeping of a homesick gypsy.”

(“The Uncharted Road” by Sakunosuke Oda)

Berthe Morisot, Julie Playing a Violin, 1893

Once again I have had the pleasure of reading the freshly translated short stories by various authors in the book “Gensen: Selected Stories in Modern Japanese Literature” published last summer and translated by J.D.Wisgo. I have already written about his translations of works of Fumiko Hayashi, “Downfall and Other Stories” and “Days and Nights“, which I have enjoyed tremendously and also Masao Yamakawa’s “The Summer of Strangers“, which have both left a profound impact on me. If you enjoy short stories, if you are curious to discover new, perhaps not so popular writers, and especially if you have a passion for Japanese literature, then I am sure you will enjoy this little selection of short stories as much as I have.

This collection of short stories includes five stories all by different authors; “The Uncharted Road” by Sakunosuke Oda, “The Dream Egg” by Oshio Toyoshima, “Musical Clock” by Murou Saisei, “Space Prisoner Number One” by Juza Unno, and “The Mysterious Telescope” by Kyusaku Yumeno. This is a sampling of sorts, a delicious box of different flavoured chocolates, where each story comes with a different flavour, something for everyone. As the translator noted in the introduction, the word “gensen” means “specially selected”. All of these authors were completely new to me, and I am guessing will be to most of you as well, and that is why I think it was particularly lovely and useful that before each story there was a brief introduction to the author, his life and the themes of his literary work. Also, the first half of the book contains these short stories in English while the second part of the book has these same stories in parallel English/Japanese which would be very useful, I believe, for anyone learning or trying to learn Japanese.

The stories were all different in style and in themes, and I was most surprised with the story “The Dream Egg” because of its Indian theme and setting. Whilst reading it I had images of Warwick Goble and Edmund Dulac floating in my mind. My favourite story, if I had to chose one, would have to be “The Uncharted Road” by Sakunosuke Oda (1913-1947), an author born in Osaka who primarily wrote novels, essays, and radio dramas. Interestingly, Oda was a close friend with Osamu Dazai whose famous novel “No Longer Human” I have enjoyed rereading these past few weeks. This sort of felt like a continuation of the sorts and I was especially intrigued to read a short story written by an author whose work was banned at times, as the brief introduction states. The short story is about a nine year old girl called Hisako and her father who is a strict violin teacher and who is forcing her to play day and night until she gets it right. Violin is one of my favourite instruments and it instantly made me think of this painting by Berthe Morisot, a portrait of her daughter playing violin. The mood of the story was so well conjured through words; Hisako’s suffering, her persistance and final success in a way, her father who “acted like a lunac whenever it came to the violin”, truly he seems like the most horrible music teacher in the world and reading the story I really felt sympathies for poor Hisako. Here is a short passage from the story about her playing:

“Hisako wanted to burst out crying. Yet perhaps due to her inborn, strong-minded spirit, she held back the tears. However, for some reason a terrible coldness dwelled in Hisako’s
eyes, and even her father Shonosuke could feel a chill from that light in her eyes. Those almond-shaped eyes were like the eyes of a mask, filled with an imposing, pale light that spoke of emptiness. Even if you tried to describe those mysterious eyes with everyday words such as “clever”, “unyielding”, or “an arrogance beyond her years,” there was something hard to put your finger on. But as she played the Bach fugue over and over, as if possessed, her eyes began to grow red to the point of being painfully bloodshot. To make matters worse, as night deepened, countless mosquitoes mercilessly bit into Hisako’s arms, hands, and neck.
“Poor thing…”

Kaburagi Kiyokata, Morning Dew — あさ露, 1903

All in all, if you love short stories and Japanese literature, I am sure you will enjoy these shorts stories. You can check out the translator’s word on his blog: Self Taught Japanese and Goodreads page.

This book is available here on Amazon.

Galileo Chini – L’Amore: To sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lip

“Love has no other desire but to fulfil itself.
(…)
To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night.
To know the pain of too much tenderness.
To be wounded by your own understanding of love;
And to bleed willingly and joyfully.
To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving;
To rest at the noon hour and meditate love’s ecstasy;
To return home at eventide with gratitude;
And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lip.”
(Khalil Gibran, from The Prophet)

Galileo Chini (Italian, 1873– 1956), L’Amore, 1919

Galileo Chini was an eclectic and vibrant figure in the Italian art scene at the turn of the century. Painter, designer, decorator, ceramic artist, and an important figure in the “Liberty style” (Stile Liberty), which was the Italian version of Art Nouveau, just as Secession was the Austrian (or rather Austro-Hungarian) version of Art Nouveau. These days I derive a great joy in simply gazing at the vibrant paintings with ornamental background, where the figures and the decorative background fight and compete for the dominance on canvas, especially in works of Klimt, but also of Vittorio Zecchin and Galileo Chini. In particular, I have enjoyed Chini’s painting “L’Amore” painted in 1919.

The painting shows two lovers, kneeling down, in an embrace. The setting is natural but whimsical, not realistically depicted but dream-like. In addition to the undefined, somewhat mysterious setting, there is another element which brings a sense of mystery to the painting; we cannot see the faces of the lovers. Chini painted it from such a wonderful perspective that the man’s face is hidden by the woman’s head and we see only the most beautiful, most important and symbolic elements; his strong arms wrapped around her and her long golden hair flowing down her back, like a golden river made out of flickering stars. The woman’s rosy pink dress is falling straight down at first and then, the moment it touches the grass, it starts spreading out like a pink puddle in which the pale pink blossoms and the stars are reflected. The surface of the painting seems to be dissolving and every little thing in the painting, especially in the background, whether a flower or a star, seems to be flickering, shimmering, twinkling, it is just such a joy to gaze at it.

The shapes are clear enough to be recognised, but abstract enough to be dreamy and to provoke the viewer to sink into a daydream. Is that a weeping willow falling from the upper left corner? An ocean of golden stars in the upper right corner? A vertical straight cloud of cherry blossoms or a sea of pink May roses right behind the couple? A round shape of a full moon falling behind the horizon? And the meadow upon the couple is kneeling, a lake made entirely of daisies or some other white flowers which are so gentle that they are almost transparent, ghostly. Is this heaven? Oh, a hug is a heaven while it lasts. Which brings to mind the lines from Andre Breton’s poem “The Road to San Romano”:

“The embrace of poetry,
Like love’s impossible, perfect fit,
Defends while it lasts
Against all the misery of the world.”

While their embrace lasts, it is a shield against the miseries of the world. Everything is so delightfully vague and so inspiring for daydreaminess. I also love the almost spiritual, otheworldy aura of their love, despite their embrace being physical and the man being naked, it seems, (or is it only in my imagination?), it seems to me this is a visual representation of the ‘confluence of souls’ as is a title of a painting I love by Max Švabinský from 1896.

Galileo Chini, La Primavera, 1914, one of the panels in the Venice Hotel Terminus

In the artwork above, “La Primavera”, from 1914, you can see more of Chini’s decorative style. I love the different decorative panels; are those vibrant circles or heads of carnations and dahlias, then the elegant women in long dresses, as beautiful as the flowers, fruit and triangles, but both so beautiful that it is incredible. I wish the world were as vibrant!

Sei Shonagon: Things That Arouse a Fond Memory of the Past

Sei Shonagon (c. 966-1017/1025) was a Japanese court lady who wrote poems and lyrical observations on court life. Her most famous literary work is a collection of short texts and poems called “Pillowbook” which she wrote purely for her own amusement before going to sleep, hence the name “Pillowbook”. Perhaps she even kept it under her pillow, who knows. Some chapters, such as those discussing politics, were a bit tedious in my opinion, but others were brilliantly poetic and lyrical, often witty and a tad sarcastic as well. The book was written in 990s and there something so poignant to me in the fact that there was a lady, both witty and intelligent, often cynical, who thought it interesting to write about things happening at court, about the change of seasons, and document her views on many topics, from having a lover to travelling in carriages made of bamboo plants. And now, more than a thousand years later, I have a privilege to read a collection of texts you could rightfully call a diary. Some people even went so far as to say that Shonagon was the first blogger!

Her observations seemed so relatable, even though cultures and time periods divide her life from mine. The book really brings the spirit of the times and I like their way of life; visiting shrines, belief in reincarnation, writing haiku poems and sending elegant letters with tree twigs attached to it, contemplating in beautiful rock (later Zen) gardens, and admiring the moonlight and the stillness of the lakes and the gentle plum trees in spring. If I had ten lives, I wouldn’t mind spending one of them living like that. In today’s hectic and instant society such serenity seems unimaginable to me. Today I wanted to share a fragment of the book titled “Things That Arouse a Fond Memory of the Past”.

Sakai Hoitsu, Lilies and Hydrangeas; Hollyhocks, 1801

Things That Arouse a Fond Memory of the Past

Dried hollyhock. The objects used during the Display of Dolls. To find a piece of deep violet or grape-coloured material that has been pressed between the pages of a notebook.

It is a rainy day and one is feeling bored. To pass the time, one starts looking through some old papers. And then one comes across the letters of a man one used to love.

Last year’s paper fan. A night with a clear moon.

Anne Carson: To feel anything deranges you, To be seen feeling anything strips you naked

A poem by a Canadian poet and a classicist Anne Carson from her work “Red Doc” (2013); a collection of poetry, prose and drama which resumes the story of her novel “Autobiography of Red” from 1998.

Gustav Klimt, Two Studies of a Seated Nude with Long Hair, 1901-02, detail

To feel anything
deranges you. To be seen
feeling anything strips you
naked. In the grip of it
pleasure or pain doesn’t
matter. You think what
will they do what new
power will they acquire if
they see me naked like
this. If they see you
feeling. You have no idea
what. It’s not about them.
To be seen is the penalty.

Sei Shonagon: Things that make one’s heart beat faster…

Sei Shonagon (c. 966-1017/1025) was a Japanese court lady who wrote poems and lyrical observations on court life. Her most famous literary work is a collection of short texts and poems called “Pillowbook” which she wrote purely for her own amusement before going to sleep, hence the name “Pillowbook”. Perhaps she even kept it under her pillow, who knows. Some chapters, such as those discussing politics, were a bit tedious in my opinion, but others were brilliantly poetic and lyrical, often witty and a tad sarcastic as well. The book was written in 990s and there is something so poignant to me in the fact that there was a lady, both witty and intelligent, often cynical, who thought it interesting to write about things happening at court, about the change of seasons, and document her views on many topics, from having a lover to travelling in carriages made of bamboo. And now, more than a thousand years later, I have a privilege to read a collection of texts you could rightfully call a diary. Some people even went so far as to say that Shonagon was the first blogger!

Her observations seemed so relatable, even though cultures and time periods divide her life from mine. The book really brings the spirit of the times and I like their way of life; visiting shrines, belief in reincarnation, writing haiku poems and sending elegant letters with tree twigs attached to it, contemplating in beautiful rock (later Zen) gardens, and admiring the moonlight and the stillness of the lakes and the gentle plum trees in spring. If I had ten lives, I wouldn’t mind spending one of them living like that. In today’s hectic and instant society such serenity seems unimaginable to me. Today I wanted to share a fragment of the book titled “Things That Make One’s Heart Beat Faster”.

Shōson Ohara (Japan, 1877-1945), Sparrows and Plum Blossoms, 1925

Things That Make One’s Heart Beat Faster:

Sparrows feeding their young.
To pass a place where babies are playing.
To sleep in a room where some fine incense has been burnt. To notice that one’s elegant Chinese mirror has become a little cloudy. To see a gentleman stop his carriage before one’s gate and instruct his attendants to announce his arrival. To wash one’s hair, make one’s toilet, and put on scented robes; even if not a soul sees one, these preparations still produce an inner pleasure. It is night and one is expecting a visitor.
Suddenly one is startled by the sound of raindrops, which the wind blows against the shutters.

(Sei Shōnagon, The Pillow Book (枕草子, Makura no Sōshi), Translated by Ivan Morris)

Sabina as an Artist (Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being)

“And that’s how I began my first cycle of paintings. I called it Behind the Scenes. Of course, I couldn’t show them to anybody. I’d have been kicked out of the Academy. On the surface, there was always an impeccably realistic world, but underneath, behind the backdrop’s cracked canvas, lurked something different, something mysterious or abstract. After pausing for a moment, she added, On the surface, an intelligible lie; underneath, the unintelligible truth.“

Milan Kundera’s novel “The Unbearable Lightness of Being”, written in 1982 and published in 1984, is one of my favourite novels, as many of you probably know by now because I have written about it before. I love the simplicity with which this novel, and other Kundera’s novels, are written. Kundera never writes to fill the paper with words, he never wastes time on unnecessary descriptions and digressions, every sentence is carefully weighed, simple but philosophical and thought-pondering. He never bores the reader like some writers *cough* Balzac *cough* do. He gets to the point and I appreciate it.

The novel is set against the political events of 1968 and it revolves around the lives of four main characters; Tomáš, a surgeon, an intellectual and a womaniser; Tereza, a shy and gentle provincial girl who falls in love with Tomáš and comes to live with him in Prague and marries him, then Sabina; Tomáš’s lover and his best friend who is a painter and is in a self-declared war on kitsch, and Franz, an idealistic, kind yet weak professor from Geneva and Sabina’s lover. Kundera always uses his characters to explore ideas and philosophies so his characters are not just characters. I’ve always had a soft spot for Sabina because she is very free-spirited and because she is a painter, and she also represents the ‘unbearable’ lightness of being from the title, as opposed to Tereza’s view of life as ‘heavy’ burden. Tomáš and Sabina both represent the lightness of life because they take everything as it comes, they are like balloons in the air, flying freely wherever wind takes them, and Tereza is someone who pulls Tomáš down to reality with her heaviness. Tereza is initially jealous of Sabina, for obvious reasons, but eventually they befriend and on one ocassion Tomáš brings Tereza to Sabina’s studio and Sabina tells us something about her art.

As I mentioned above, the novel is set in the sixties and at the time when Sabina was a student the artistic and cultural climate was strict. We know this from real life examples, the life of the Czech writer Bohumil Hrabal, or from literary examples; Kundera’s first novel “The Joke”, published in 1967 but set in the 1950s, where we see how a simple joke against the regime can mean a life in prison or at least ostracism from society for the individual. If Sabina had painted as freely as she wanted perhaps she would have been expelled from university, but these restrictions only served to inspire her creatively and in her works, which of course we don’t see because it is a novel although I wonder what they might look like in Kundera’s mind, she finds ways to beat the system from within. The space in her paintings always shows two worlds, realism and magic meet and live alongside one another on Sabina’s cavases.

Jeanne Hebuterne, Self-Portrait, 1918

This dualism always reminds me of circus or theatre stage, at once vibrant and melancholy, and that is why I chose the picture of red curtains on the stage because they show this divison well; the red velvet curtains separate the real world of the audience from the magical, fanciful world of the stage. Here is what the novel says:

“Sabina invited Tereza to her studio, and at last she saw the spacious room andits centerpiece: the large, square, platform-like bed.

I feel awful that you’ve never been here before, said Sabina, as she showed herthe pictures leaning against the wall. She even pulled out an old canvas, of asteelworks under construction, which she had done during her school days, aperiod when the strictest realism had been required of all students (art thatwas not realistic was said to sap the foundations of socialism). In the spiritof the wager of the times, she had tried to be stricter than her teachers andhad painted in a style concealing the brush strokes and closely resembling colorphotography.

Here is a painting I happened to drip red paint on. At first I was terribly upset, but then I started enjoying it. The trickle looked like a crack; it turned the building site into a battered old backdrop, a backdrop with abuilding site painted on it. I began playing with the crack, filling it out, wondering what might be visible behind it. And that’s how I began my first cycle of paintings. I called it Behind the Scenes. Of course, I couldn’t show them to anybody. I’d have been kicked out of the Academy. On the surface, there was always an impeccably realistic world, but underneath, behind the backdrop’s cracked canvas, lurked something different, something mysterious or abstract. After pausing for a moment, she added, On the surface, an intelligible lie; underneath, the unintelligible truth.

(Sabina and Tereza, two women in Tomáš’s life, stills from the film from 1988 which Kundera disliked intensely.)

Tereza listened to her with the remarkable concentration that few professors ever see on the face of a student and began to perceive that all Sabina’s paintings, past and present, did indeed treat the same idea, that they all featured the confluence of two themes, two worlds, that they were all double exposures, so to speak. A landscape showing an old-fashioned table lamp shiningthrough it. An idyllic still life of apples, nuts, and a tiny, candle-lit Christmas tree showing a hand ripping through the canvas.

She felt a rush of admiration for Sabina, and because Sabina treated her as afriend it was an admiration free of fear and suspicion and quickly turned into friendship. She nearly forgot she had come to take photographs. Sabina had to remind her. Tereza finally looked away from the paintings only to see the bed set in the middle of the room like a platform.“

You’ve been reading some old letters, You smile and you think how much you’ve changed

The end of the year approaching, my thoughts naturally tend towards reflection. Bouts of a bittersweet wistfulness overwhelm me often these nights. So many different feelings mix and mingle in my soul, to quote Morrissey, “I’m not happy and I’m not sad”. Night after night, when everyone is asleep, I found myself alone in the quiet stillness of the night, flipping through the pages of my many diaries written throughout the years. I don’t even know why I have the habit of doing it, for it only leaves me shattered and in tears, but at times there shines a smile on my face and this song, not originally written but covered by the Welsh band the Manic Street Preachers comes to mind. I love how the video for the song captures the highlights of the band’s early years, especially moments with Richey who looks just stunning with his eyeliner and cool hairdo. I really love how the song combines both sentiments; the looking back at the past and all the wonderful moments that no money in the world could bring back, but also stating ‘this is the day your life will surely change’ so it’s looking cheerfully into the future and what goods things it might bring. It’s almost like the Roman God Janus who represents things such as duality, gateways, passageways, transitions, endings, beginnings, and whose face looks both ways; into the past and into the future. To be able to simply appreciate the beautiful moments of the past days without the ache of yearning in your heart, now that would be a true gift.

William Turner, Moonlight, 1841

You didn’t wake up this morning
’cause you didn’t go to bed
You were watching the whites of your eyes turn red

The calendar on your wall is ticking the days off
You’ve been reading some old letters
You smile and you think how much you’ve changed
And all the money in the world
Couldn’t bring back those days

You pull back the curtains
And the sun burns into your eyes
You watch a plane flying
Across a clear blue sky

This is the day, your life will surely change
This is the day when things fall into place

You could’ve done anything if you’d wanted
And all your friends and family think that you’re lucky
But the side of you they’ll never see
Is when you’re left alone with the memories
That hold your life together, together like glue

You pull back the curtains
And the sun burns into your eyes
You watch a plane flying
Across a clear blue sky
This is the day, your life will surely change
This is the day when things fall into place
This is the day, your life will surely change
This is the day when things fall into place
This is the day
This is the day

Edvard Munch’s Kiss By the Window, Asa Heshel and Hadassah (The Family Moskat)

“I longed for you very much.”
The girl quivered. There was a movement in her throat, as though she were swallowing something.
“I too,” she answered. “From the beginning.”

Edvard Munch, Kiss by the window, 1892

“If only (…) the twilight last forever, and the two of them, he and Hadassah, to stand there at the window, close to each other, for eternity!“

And now for the final post of my The Family Moskat triptych; the scene in the novel where Hadassah visits Asa in his room and it is a very special moment in which they both admit their longing for one another, and the snow is falling and the darkness of an early winter night is descending. “The Family Moskat” is a novel written by Isaac Bashevis Singer published in 1950 and it falls the lives of the members of the Warsaw Moskat family starting from just before the First World War up until the horrors of the Second World War. The first post of this little series is about Edward Hopper’s painting “The Evening Wind” and Hadassah’s sleepless night and the second one is about Asa Heshel’s thoughts when he is alone in his room. This third and last post, at least for now, is the crown of the other two posts because it combines both Asa and Hadassah in a single scene. Asa had not visited Hadassah as he had promised and so Hadassah decides to visit him, which was quite a bold move for a girl of her age at the time. The passage from the novel goes:

“You’re too pessimistic. I know, because I’m very melancholy too. Everyone is against me-my grandfather, Papa, even mamma.”
“What do they want of you?”
“You know. But I can’t.”
She started to say something else, but suddenly stopped. She walked to the window. Asa Heshel went after her and stood beside her. There was a twilight blueness outside. The snow fell slowly, broodingly. Lights gleamed from the opposite windows. There was a faint rumble of noise, which sounded at one moment like the sighing of the wind and again like the rustling of the forest. Asa Heshel held his breath and let his eyelids close. If only the sun were to stand still in the skies, as it had stood still for Joshua, and the twilight last forever, and the two of them, he and Hadassah, to stand there at the window, close to each other, for eternity!
He glanced toward her and met her own eyes turned toward him. Her features were hidden in the dimness. Her eyes. deep in pools of shadow, were opened wide. It seemed to Asa Heshel that he had experienced all this before. He heard himself say:
“I longed for you very much.”
The girl quivered. There was a movement in her throat, as though she were swallowing something.
“I too,” she answered. “From the beginning.”

Edvard Munch, The Lonely Ones (Two People), 1895

The reason that Edvard Munch’s painting “The Kiss by the Window” came to my mind is because of its atmosphere. There is a sense of a foreboding doom, not just for Jews in Warsaw in the novel, but for Hadassah and Asa in the novel because Asa is an essentially heartless nihilist who only cares for his own needs and is ultimately a selfish person uncapable of true love. But he awoke tender feelings in Hadassah, the kind that she had never felt before, and the first step of the path of heartbrokenness is paved.There is always something foreboding about Munch’s art, especially in his paintings of lovers. They never express the pure loveliness that love can bring, but rather tackle the darker sides of love. The painting is painted in nocturnal blue shades which instantly makes it atmospheric. Two lovers are standing by the window and are merged in a kiss, merged indeed because their grimace-like faces are melting one into another, but not in that typical romantic notion of being “as one”, but in a much gloomier way which hints at more disturbing things. Lovers merging and becoming one may carry connotations of loosing oneself, disappearing, loosing one’s identity. In Asa’s case, he is a good representation of this fear and throughout the novel he always kept himself to himself in a way that would prevent him from truly connecting with another, and it is quite sad. From Munch’s painting “The Kiss by the Window” to his painting “The Lonely Ones (Two People)”; this is the love path of Asa and Hadassah and upon reading the novel again I find myself mourning over Hadassah’s choices, her devotion and adoration, all for Asa who was most unworthy of it all.