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 …

Edgar Degas – Rest – Waiting for the Kiss of Spring

“O eyes long laid in happy sleep!”
“O happy sleep that lightly fled!”
“O happy kiss, that woke thy sleep!”

Edgar Degas, Rest, 1893, pastel

Edgar Degas has many lovely pastels which I enjoy gazing at from time to time, mostly of ballerinas – a motif which he was famous for – but for months now this beautiful pastel with a simple title, “Rest”, from 1893, has been on my mind. The pastel shows Degas’ favourite subject; a woman. This time a half-nude woman sleeping on a pile of fabrics, she is covered only partly with a bright blue blanket. While her auburn hair is cascading down her back, her face is, thank you Degas, turned towards us. Perhaps she was folding her laundry and started daydreaming of sparrows and blossoming orchards and baby blue skies in the middle of her task and eventually fell asleep; been there, done that. The thing that immediately drew me to the painting was the bright blue blanket. That colour! Ah! Is it really a man-made fabric or a meadow of cornflowers? Even though it is long and covers a lot, Degas left plenty of skin-coloured areas to tempt us; a leg coyly peeking out of that sea of blue, the face, the arm and the bosom. How delightful is the contrast between her delicate porcelain skin and that blue colour? Another pop of colour here comes from the bright blue wall behind her, and that same blue is repeated in dashes on the floor. Truly that blueness is irresistible.

The forgotten castle (Château de la Mothe-Chandeniers).

The colours and the mood of the painting make me think of this forgotten castle in a picture above. Degas’ slumbering maiden was probably just a Parisian working class girl, but in my imagination she is the Sleeping Beauty and she is sleeping in one of the chambers of this castle, waiting in vain for a kiss of spring… The maiden is in a sweet slumber; the long, frosty and icy slumber of winter that is about to be awoken by a sweet, fragrant and warm kiss of spring. I imagine the Spring to be a personified as a wickedly handsome man, fragrant and long-haired, with a slightly mischievous yet disarming smile, dressed in green robes or perhaps nothing at all, the Zephyr from Botticelli’s painting “The Birth of Venus” comes to my mind. And then the woman will open her eyes and whisper:

“I’d sleep another hundred years,
O love, for such another kiss;”
“O wake forever, love,” she hears,
“O love, ’t was such as this and this.”

….“O eyes long laid in happy sleep!”
“O happy sleep that lightly fled!”
“O happy kiss, that woke thy sleep!”
“O love, thy kiss would wake the dead!“

(Lord Tennyson, The Day-Dream)

When she stands up, the blue blanket of winter will fall down and in a second be replaced by a dress of dandelions and a corsette of dandelions that the man-Spring had been weaving and making for her in all those long wintery afternoons. And then the two will dance and play till their hearts’ delights in flowery meadows.

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.

Tennessee Williams: We have not long to love, A night. A day….

A poem that’s been on my mind these days…

Lovers, c 1850

We Have Not Long To Love

We have not long to love.

Light does not stay.

The tender things are those

we fold away.

Coarse fabrics are the ones

for common wear.

In silence I have watched you

comb your hair.

Intimate the silence,

dim and warm.

I could but did not, reach

to touch your arm.

I could, but do not, break

that which is still.

(Almost the faintest whisper

would be shrill.)

So moments pass as though

they wished to stay.

We have not long to love.

A night. A day….

Illustration for Alexander Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin by Lidia Timoshenko, 1878

Edna St. Vincent Millay: Summer Sang In Me a Little While, That In Me Sings No More

One of my favourite poems these days is “What Lips My Lips Have Kissed, and Where, and Why” by the American poetess Edna St. Vincent Millay, originally published in November 1920. In this poem Millay looks back at all the “lips her lips have kissed” and she tries to remember where and why those kisses have occured. She compares the beating of the rain against the window to the ghosts of her memories, or ghosts of her dead (failed) love relationships, haunting her. In her heart “there stirs a quiet pain” when she realises that she cannot remember the names or the faces of the “lads” who will not shout out for her at night. The loves, just like summer, were vibrant but transitory and fragile, and unlike summer will not return next year. I feel like this is a moment of sobering up. After being drunk on life and drunk on love, she is alone and in a wistful, reflective mood, the rain outside her only companion. Now, summer has passed, love has passed, and she compares herself to a lonely tree in winter which used to be full of birds chirping and is now solitary, with no leaves or birdnests, utterly forgotten… Where does love go when it goes away? Were the kisses, now nought but pale memories, worth it in the end?

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Portrait of Elizabeth Siddal, 1854, watercolour

What Lips My Lips Have Kissed, and Where, and Why

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply,
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
For unremembered lads that not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.

Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone,
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.

Tagore: Only lips know the language of lips, know how to sip each other’s hearts

Constantin Brancusi, The Kiss, 1907

The Kiss

Only lips know the language of lips,
Know how to sip each other’s hearts
The two lovers leave home for goals unknown,
Setting out eagerly on Holy Communion.
Like two waves that crest at love’s pull
Lips at last melt and meld in lovers’ lips,
Viewing each other with deep desire,
Both meet at the body’s frontier.
Love weaves music from such refrains
Love’s tale is told in quivering lips!
From fowers plucked from lips that roam
Garlands surely will be woven at home!
The sweet union of two desiring lips
Climaxes in a red bridal bed of smiles!

(“Chumban,” from Kori O Komal)
Translated by Fakrul Alam)

Tagore: When I called you in your garden mango blooms were rich in fragrance

A poem I recently discovered, called “Unyielding” by the Bengali poet Tagore. The mood of the poem reminded me of many lovely illustrations by the French artist Edmund Dulac such as the one bellow from his series “The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam” from 1909.

Edmund Dulac, The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, “Hour of Grace”, 1909

Unyielding

When I called you in your garden

Mango blooms were rich in fragrance –

Why did you remain so distant,

Keep your door so tightly fastened?

Blossoms grew to ripe fruit-clusters –

You rejected my cupped handfuls,

Closed your eyes to perfectness.

In the fierce harsh storms of Baiśākh

Golden ripened fruit fell tumbling –

‘Dust,’ I said, ‘defiles such offerings:

Let your hands be heaven to them.’

Still you showed no friendliness.

Lampless were your doors at evening,

Pitch-black as I played my vīnā.

How the starlight twanged my heartstrings!

How I set my vīnā dancing!

You showed no responsiveness.

Sad birds twittered sleeplessly,

Calling, calling lost companions.

Gone the right time for our union –

Low the moon while still you brooded,

Sunk in lonely pensiveness.

Who can understand another!

Heart cannot restrain its passion.

I had hoped that some remaining

Tear-soaked memories would sway you,

Stir your feet to lightsomeness.

Moon fell at the feet of morning,

Loosened from night’s fading necklace.

While you slept, O did my vīnā

Lull you with its heartache?

Did you Dream at least of happiness?

Tin Ujević – Love unrequited gave no rest, so now you yearn for earth’s breast

Today I wanted to share a beautiful and sad poem by the Croatian poet Tin Ujević (1891-1955) called “Frailty” from his poetry collection “The Cry of a Slave” (1920), translated by Richard Berengarten. Ujević is considered by some to have been one of the last masters of European Symbolism and even the translator calls him “one of the finest South-Slavic poets”. In addition to being a poet, he was also an accomplished translator and translated the works of Edgar Allan Poe, Walt Whitman, Marcel Proust, Rimbaud, Arthur Gidé and many others. He spent his childhood living in different towns on the Croatian seaside and this love of the sea left a life-long trace on him, and it can be seen in this poem as well. In 1912 Ujević was a part of the Nationalist youth movement and was often imprisoned. From 1913 to 1919 he was in Montparnasse in Paris, where he was a notorius “anarchic bohemian” and he was a known frequenter of bars and cafes where he was often hanging out with fellow poets and artists from the Balkans, but he also moved in the art circles with artists such as Modigliani, Picasso, Cocteau and d’Annuzio. The poetry collection “The Cry of a Slave” represents the first phase in Ujević’s poetry and these poems are of intimate preocupations, woven with pessimism, a tragic sense of loneliness is intermingled with motives of metaphysical, spiritual love towards an imaginary woman.

Wilhelm Kotarbiński, Suicide’s grave, c 1900

Frailty

In this mist, in this rain –
oh drunken heart, don’t drown in pain.

Love unrequited gave no rest,
so now you yearn for earth’s breast,

And all your longing, cry of a slave,
is to find some quiet grave:

here my soul will soon expire
and here will wither my desire

on the waves of our blue, blue sea
and white, white pebbles cover me,

and my needs will all come home
under Blessed Heaven’s dome,

with sun, calm blue, and clarity,
beneath the ground that once bore me.

Rubén Darío: The Princess is sad… (Sonatina)

Today I wanted to share this wonderful poem by the Nicaraguan poet Rubén Darío called “Sonatina” published in 1896 in his poetry collection “Prosas Profanas”. I love all the vibrant visual imagery, all the details that the poet so vividly describes instantly transport me to a summer garden where the pale and sad princess resides, surrounded by fragrant dahlias and lilies, and peacocks and swans. How can anyone be sad in such a heavenly place!? I love the way her features are described; she has “mouth of roses”, and “strawberry lips”. And I especially love the stanza where the princess imagines how beautiful it would be to fly like a butterfly or a swallow.

James Abbott Mcneill Whistler, Le Princesse du Pays de la Porcelaine, 1863-65

Sonatina

The princess is sad . . . from the princess slips
such sighs in her words from the strawberry lips.
Gone from them laughter and the warm light of day.
Pallid she is sat in her golden chair;
unsounded the keys of the harpsichord there,
and a flower, from a vase, has swooned away.

The peacocks in the garden parade their tails.
The duenna’s chatter is incessant and stales.
The pirouetting jester is tricked out in red,
yet nothing she cares for and she does not smile
but follows a dragonfly that flits the while
as vague in the east as is her dream-lost head.

Does a prince from China or Golconda approach,
does she think of one stepping from his silver coach,
bedazzled by her beauty in the sky’s soft blues,
to court her with islands of fragrant roses,
shower bright diamonds as a sovereign disposes,
or proud owners of pearls do, out of Ormuz?

Ah, the poor princess, with that mouth of roses,
thinks of butterfly and swallow, but supposes
how easily with wings she would soar up under
the bright ladders brought down from the sunlit day.
With lillies she would meet the fresh songs of May,
and be one with the wind in the ocean’s thunder.

Listless in the palace spins the spinning wheel;
in the magical falcon and jester no appeal.
The swans are as one in the lake’s azure swoon.
From west come the dahlias for the first in court,
from east the sad jasmines, south roses of thought,
from north the waterlillies, weeping from noon.

Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale, They toil not, neither do they spin, 1903

Her blue eyes see nothing but sad misrule:
into gold she is set and beset by tulle.
Days are poured out as from a heavy flagon,
haughtily they watch now over palace floors;
silent with the halberds are a hundred Moors,
sleepless the greyhound, and a colossal dragon.

Oh, to find freshness of the butterfly’s veil:
(The princess is sad. The princess is pale.)
Be silent as ivory, rose-coloured and gold!
Where will he fly to, the prince she had!
The princess is pale. The princess is sad,
more brilliant than the dawn is, a hundred fold.

Be patient, my princess: the horse has wings,
for you he is coming, the fairy godmother sings.
With a sword in the belt he has a hawk above,
and a kiss to ignite you, to vanquish death:
never has he seen you, but joyous the breath
from the prince who awakes you: you will be his love.

Sándor Petőfi: Wilt thou, who now dost on my breast repose, not kneel, perhaps, to morrow o’er my tomb?

Today I wanted to share my new poetic discovery: Sándor Petőfi, a Romantic Hungarian poet and a revolutionary whose national fervour and patriotism eventually led him to his doom, but also to his glory. Romanticism arrived a bit late to the Austro-Hungarian Empire and was closely tied to patriotism and national revival; each country in the vast empire sought to define its individuality; its national history and traditions. Petofi fits the theme of central European Romanticism and the two of his main poetic themes are romantic love and love for his country. He was of Slovak or Serbian ancestry, but he wrote in Hungarian and fought for the Hungarian language to be the language of the theatre and literature instead of German. As a true Romantic hero, he led a short and turbulent life and went missing at the age of twenty-six after the Battle of Segesvár in 1849; he was presumed dead but who knows when he actually died… His poems are the mirrors of the politically turbulent times he lived in and he died in the very manner he wished, as expressed in his poem “The Thought Torments Me”:

“When every nation wearing chains
Shall rise and seek the battle-plains,
With flushing face shall wave in fight
Their banners, blazoned in the light:
“For liberty!” Their cry shall be;
Their cry from east to west,
Till tyrants be depressed.
There shall I gladly yield
My life upon the field;
There shall my heart’s last blood flow out,
And I my latest cry shall shout.“

In 1846, in Transylvania he met an eighteen year old maiden Júlia Szendrey and, charmed by the beauty of her countenance which matched the beauty of her mind and soul, Petofi instantly fell in love and they married the same year. His parents didn’t approve and their marriage was short anyway. Like her husband, Júlia was also a poet, and a writer and translator. She spoke a few foreign languages, loved the poetry of Heinrich Heine and the writings of George Sand, loved dancing and playing the piano but she was also a private and modest person who didn’t like sharing her talents with the world. They seem like a perfect Romantic couple, with the perfectly short, intense and tragic marriage ended by a mysterious disappearance in battle and probable death. It sounds like a story one would read in a work of Schiller or Lermontov.

Giuseppe Molteni, Desolate at the Loss of her Lover, 1850

Poem “At the End of September” is written in a truly Romantic manner because it ties the themes of love and death that all Romantics loved so much. In the first stanza Petofi slowly introduces the theme of transience through a visual imagery of the changing of seasons, and even compares the arrival of winter to his hair slowly turning grave. The transience of spring and summer goes hand in hand with the passing of his youth, and the arrival of winter is tied with the impedimence of his death. I love how melancholy and melodramatic he is, wanting to know whether his beloved will weep over his grave, but then the poetic imagery turns a darker mood and we see the poet returning from the death’s vale at midnight… These poems satisfy all my poetic needs. Just seeing the words and expressions in the poem such as “broken heart”, “bleeding heart”, “tomb”, “weep”, “tears”, “death”, “mournful”, makes me swoon!

At the End of September

The garden flowers still blossom in the vale,

Before our house the poplars still are green;

But soon the mighty winter will prevail;

Snow is already in the mountains seen.

The summer sun’s benign and warming ray

Still moves my youthful heart, now in its spring;

But lo! my hair shows signs of turning gray,

The wintry days thereto their color bring.

This life is short; too early fades the rose;

To sit here on my knee, my darling, come!

Wilt thou, who now dost on my breast repose,

Not kneel, perhaps, to morrow o’er my tomb?

O, tell me, if before thee I should die,

Wilt thou with broken heart weep o’er my bier?

Or will some youth efface my memory

And with his love dry up thy mournful tear?

 

If thou dost lay aside the widow’s vail,

Pray hang it o’er my tomb. At midnight I

Shall rise, and, coming forth from death’s dark vale,

Take it with me to where forgot I lie.

And wipe with it my ceaseless flowing tears,

Flowing for thee, who hast forgotten me;

And bind my bleeding heart which ever bears

Even then and there, the truest love for thee.

Matthew James Lawless, Dead Love, 1862

“Wilt thou, who now dost on my breast repose,

Not kneel, perhaps, to morrow o’er my tomb?”

Petofi’s poems often bring to mind romantic imagery, typically romantic themes of love and death mingle freely in his verses and I decided to illustrate the poem with the drawing “Dead Love” from 1862. Victorian era artist Matthew James Lawless is little known today because he died young, at the age of twenty-seven, and his career never had a chance to take off. The drawings that he left definitely show a talent and a romantic imagination which ties him to the Pre-Raphaelites, and therefore I think the mood of his drawing fits the mood of Petofi’s poem. And now a poem which continues with the theme of love but here love is tied with another motif Petofi loves: fighting for liberty.

My Wife and My Sword

Upon the roof a dove,
A star within the sky,
Upon my knees my love,
For whom I live and die;
In raptures I embrace
And swing her on my knees,
Just as the dewdrop sways
Upon the leaf of trees.

But why, you’ll surely ask,
Kiss not her pretty face?
It is an easy task
To kiss while we embrace!
Many a burning kiss
I press upon her lip,
For such a heavenly bliss
I cannot now let slip.

And thus we pass our day,
I and my pretty wife,
Beyond all rare gem’s ray
Is our gay wedded life.
A friend, my sword, it seems,
Does not like this at all,
He looks with angry gleams
Upon me from the wall.

Don’t look on me, good sword,
With eyes so cross and cold,
There should be no discord
Between us, friends of old.
To women leave such things,
As green-eyed jealousy:
To men but shame it brings,
And you a man must be!

But then, if you would pause
To think who is my love,
You’d see you have no cause
At all me to reprove.
She is the sweetest maid,
She is so good and true;
Like her God only made,
I know, but very few.

If thee, good sword, again
Shall need our native land,
To seek the battle-plain
Will be my wife’s command.
She will insist that I
Go forth, my sword, with thee,
To fight, if need to die,
For precious liberty!

Sandor’s wife Julia Szendrey (1828-1868).