John Keats: This morning I am in a sort of temper, indolent and supremely careless…

“Shameful to say, I was in bed at ten. (…) This morning I am in a sort of temper, indolent and supremely careless—I long after a Stanza or two of Thomson’s Castle of Indolence—my passions are all asleep, from my having slumbered till nearly eleven…”

James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Symphony in White, No. 3, 1865-67

Last night I was reading some of John Keats’ beautiful letters and the one from the 19th March 1819 struck me with its description of sweet indolence – something near and very dear to my heart. Since today is also the 19th of March, I thought it a splendid serendipity that deserves a post. The letter was written during Keats’ stay at Wentworth Place in Hampstead Heath. His stay there, from December 1818 to May 1820, has proven to be quite fruithful, not only in poetry, but also – in love. He wrote five out of his six great odes while there, one of which, surprise surprise, is the “Ode to Indolence”, and fell in love with Fanny Brawne. On that morning of the 19th March, as Keats was enjoying the idleness of early spring in the coziness of his bed, little did he know what was awaiting him around the corner; on the 3rd April that year Fanny Brawne and her mother had moved into the other half of the Wentworth Place and the two were able to spend time together every day, and the months to follow were a fruithful period for him artistically.

Keats writes about staying in bed late, about being indolent, and even though our minds, so poisoned today with the culture of hustle and an emphasis on productivity, may perceive this as a waste of time, it was in fact the opposite. The word “indolence” comes from the Latin word “indolentia”, and even though nowadays the word is almost synonymous with laziness, originally it was meant to describe a state in which one feels free from pain. For many poets of the Keats’ generation and even prior generations, indolence was seen as the first step of artistic creation; indolence as a passive state which precedes the active state of creating an artwork. At the time of writing the letter, Keats had spent two months having written almost nothing, and that might be seen as a waste of time, but the indolence which he allowed himself to experience will prove to be useful later on. Even when you plant the seeds, the flowers don’t start growing instantly, and just because the plant hasn’t sprung it doesn’t mean the soil is dead. Keats’ indolence was merely a period In April and May that year he had written some of his most beautiful and most celebrated poetry. For many poets, indolence was seen as a mood that is auspicious for artistic creation, for a mind that is idle is a fertile ground for flowers to bloom.

“Shameful to say, I was in bed at ten—I mean this morning. (…)  This morning I am in a sort of temper, indolent and supremely careless—I long after a Stanza or two of Thomson’s Castle of Indolence—my passions are all asleep, from my having slumbered till nearly eleven, and weakened the animal fibre all over me, to a delightful sensation, about three degrees on this side of faintness. If I had teeth of pearl and the breath of lilies I should call it languor, but as I am I must call it laziness. In this state of effeminacy the fibres of the brain are relaxed in common with the rest of the body, and to such a happy degree that pleasure has no show of enticement and pain no unbearable power. Neither Poetry, nor Ambition, nor Love have any alertness of countenance as they pass by me; they seem rather like figures on a Greek vase—a Man and two women whom no one but myself could distinguish in their disguisement. This is the only happiness, and is a rare instance of the advantage of the body overpowering the Mind.”

Still, in the same letter, upon having heard news about his friend’s dying father, he laments on the transient nature of the pleasures of life. All the more reason to cherish them then:

“This is the world—thus we cannot expect to give way many hours to pleasure. Circumstances are like Clouds continually gathering and bursting—While we are laughing, the seed of some trouble is put into the wide arable land of events—while we are laughing it sprouts it grows and suddenly bears a poison fruit which we must pluck.”

In a letter to John Hamilton Reynolds, from the 19th February 1818, Keats writes again about the “beauty of the morning” and a “sense of Idleness”. It seems that Keats had quite a few indolent mornings which he definitely benefited from artistically:

“It has been an old comparison for our urging on – the Beehive; however, it seems to me that we should rather be the flower than the Bee – for it is a false notion that more is gained by receiving than giving – no, the receiver and the giver are equal in their benefits. The flower, I doubt not, receives a fair guerdon from the Bee – its leaves blush deeper in the next spring – and who shall say between man and woman which is the most delighted? Now it is more noble to sit like Jove than to fly like Mercury – let us not therefore go hurrying about and collecting honey, bee-like buzzing here and there impatiently from a knowledge of what is to be aimed at; but let us open our leaves like a flower and be passive and receptive – budding patiently under the eye of Apollo and taking hints from every noble insect that favours us with a visit – sap will be given us for meat and dew for drink. I was led into these thoughts, my dear Reynolds, by the beauty of the morning operating on a sense of Idleness…“

Indian Miniature Painting – Lovers On Bed: The days are short and nights are dark and long, and this is the month for love

“The days are short and nights are dark and long,
and this is the month for love.
Do not quarrel and turn away from me,
and leave me not this month of Pausha.”

Lovers on Bed, opaque watercolour on paper, Kangra, c. 1780-1790

In Indian miniature paintings the lovers are always waiting, yearning, pining, dreaming, suffering. The beautiful heroines such as Utka Nayika are anxiously waiting for their lovers, or, like Abhisarika Nayika, all dressed up and walking through a dark forest to meet her lover. When I discovered the Kangra paintings last year I was completely enthralled by the beautiful representations of love. In these Indian miniature paintings I found what I was seeking all along; all the subtle beauties and nuances of love – fifty, and more, shades of love. No other art movement or school portrays love in such an intricate manner.

There are many Kangra paintings that I love and I discover my new favourites all the time, but at the moment the painting “Lovers on Bed” from the late eighteenth century is my favourite. When we think of a perfect setting or season for love, we might think of warmth, spring or summer, flowers, gardens, and parks, the kind that we see in paintings of Fragonard or Boucher. A land of love might equal the land of eternal summer. And yet Keshav Das speaks of the winter month of Pausha as “the month for love”. There is a delightful sense of coziness about winter that summer, despite all its beauty and magic, simply doesn’t have. And indeed, in these cold winter days there is nothing better to do than to cuddle up to your beloved under a blanket, gaze at the moon perhaps or, better yet, gaze into each other’s eyes. And this is exactly what the lovers in this miniature painting are doing. In this Kangra watercolour, “Lovers on Bed”, the lovers are united at last! No more yearning, uncertainty, anxious waiting or walking through a dark snake-filled forest to meet your beloved, why, he is right here, under the blanket with you. The painting shows a sweet, intimate moment between two lovers on a winter night. The woman is offering the man – her man – paan, while he is covering them both in a warm yellow blanket. Despite the simplicity of the scene, the simple background and also the simple gesture between lovers, still so much warmth and love and a sense of a quiet, secure joy is conveyed. Truly, no words, no adornments, no other visual elements in the painting are needed to express the beauty of the love they are feeling. Yesterday was the night of the full moon and even though a new month had therefore begun in the Hindi calender, these verses by the poet Keshav Das describing the month of Pausha, the winter month that had just passed, are very fitting for the scene in the painting:

“Anything cold in the month of Pausha,
food, water, house, or dress,
Is liked by none anywhere.
Cold are the earth and the sky,
and the rich and poor all alike
Want sunshine, massage, betel, fire,
company of women, and warm clothes.
The days are short and nights are dark and long,
and this is the month for love.
Do not quarrel and turn away from me,
and leave me not this month of Pausha.”

The full painting.

Miklós Radnóti: In your two arms even death’s silence cannot frighten me

These days I was exploring once again the poetry of the Hungarian Jewish poet Miklós Radnóti (1909-1944) which I had discovered a few summers ago. Radnoti worked as a teacher and a translator during his life and he translated some works of the poets Guillaume Apollinaire and Jean de La Fontaine into Hungarian, but he died very young in sad circumstances as a victim of Holocaust. Poem “In Your Two Arms” was written in April 1941 and, like many of his other poems, was inspired by his wife and muse Fanni Radnoti. In his book of translations, Gabor Barabas writes of Fanni: “She was the muse that inspired many of his poems and since his death faithfully continued to carry the torch she once carried in her husband’s imagination, one that illuminated the profundities of love and nature, as well as the darkest recesses of men’s minds.” There is something bittersweet about these love poems written in the war years, but also something very beautiful. It is fascinating to me how the horrors of the war didn’t fill him with bitterness but rather inspired a sense of beauty and awoke the humanity inside him. Most of his poems written in 1941 … 1943 etc show how unburdened he was with the events of the times. One can sense death and the ending in his verses, but above it all like a cloud is – hope.

Photograph by Laura Makabresku

IN YOUR TWO ARMS
In your two arms
I rock silently.
In my two arms
you rock in silence.
In your two arms
I am a child, sleeping.
In my two arms
you are a child, listening.
In your two arms
you enfold me
when I’m afraid.
In my two arms I enfold you
and I no longer fear.
In your two arms
even death’s silence
cannot frighten me.
In your two arms
I overcome death
as in a dream.

(translated by Gabor Barabas)

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)

Rimbaud – No One’s Serious at Seventeen

Today I thought I’d share a poem called “Novel” by a French poet Arthur Rimbaud. I’ve loved the poem for years now and then I also noticed it was recited in the film “Young and Beautiful” (Jeune & Jolie, 2013) which I also love. The poem instantly transports me to a summer evening in June when the scent of linden trees fills the night air and the pavements are littered with its tiny golden flowers, in those summer evenings the scent of the linden trees, the fireflies and the stars above give the illusion that everything is possible. It’s a heavenly feeling and this poem gives me that feeling, even though it’s misty and drab November.

Still from the film Jeune & Jolie (2013)

I

We aren’t serious when we’re seventeen.

—One fine evening, to hell with beer and lemonade,

Noisy cafés with their shining lamps!

We walk under the green linden trees of the park

 

The lindens smell good in the good June evenings!

At times the air is so scented that we close our eyes.

The wind laden with sounds—the town isn’t far—

Has the smell of grapevines and beer . . .

 

II

—There you can see a very small patch

Of dark blue, framed by a little branch,

Pinned up by a naughty star, that melts

In gentle quivers, small and very white . . .

 

Night in June! Seventeen years old! —We are overcome by it all

The sap is champagne and goes to our head . . .

We talked a lot and feel a kiss on our lips

Trembling there like a small insect . . .

 

III

Our wild heart moves through novels like Robinson Crusoe,

—When, in the light of a pale street lamp,

A girl goes by attractive and charming

Under the shadow of her father’s terrible collar . . .

 

And as she finds you incredibly naïve,

While clicking her little boots,

She turns abruptly and in a lively way . . .

—Then cavatinas die on your lips . . .

 

IV

You are in love. Occupied until the month of August.

You are in love. —Your sonnets make Her laugh.

All your friends go off, you are ridiculous.

—Then one evening the girl you worship deigned to write to you . . . !

 

—That evening, . . . —you return to the bright cafés,

You ask for beer or lemonade . . .

—We’re not serious when we are seventeen

And when we have green linden trees in the park.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette, 1876

*Translation found here.

Rainer Maria Rilke: Only the Maidens Question Not the Bridges That Lead to Dream

As autumn approaches, the heart begins to dream and Rilke’s poems are on my mind….

Max Švabinský, The Confluence of Souls, 1896

MAIDENS. I

Others must by a long dark way
Stray to the mystic bards,
Or ask some one who has heard them sing
Or touch the magic chords.
Only the maidens question not
The bridges that lead to Dream;
Their luminous smiles are like strands of pearls
On a silver vase agleam.

The maidens’ doors of Life lead out
Where the song of the poet soars,
And out beyond to the great world—
To the world beyond the doors.

Gaston La Touche, A Maiden in Contemplation, 1893

MAIDENS. II

Maidens the poets learn from you to tell
How solitary and remote you are,
As night is lighted by one high bright star
They draw light from the distance where you dwell.

For poet you must always maiden be
Even though his eyes the woman in you wake
Wedding brocade your fragile wrists would break,
Mysterious, elusive, from him flee.

Within his garden let him wait alone
Where benches stand expectant in the shade
Within the chamber where the lyre was played
Where he received you as the eternal One.

Henri Martin, Mystic Scene, 1895

Go! It grows dark—your voice and form no more
His senses seek; he now no longer sees
A white robe fluttering under dark beech trees
Along the pathway where it gleamed before.

He loves the long paths where no footfalls ring,
And he loves much the silent chamber where
Like a soft whisper through the quiet air
He hears your voice, far distant, vanishing.

The softly stealing echo comes again
From crowds of men whom, wearily, he shuns;
And many see you there—so his thought runs—
And tenderest memories are pierced with pain.

Reinaldo Arenas – Viejo Niño

Wonderful Cuban author Reinaldo Arenas was born on 16th July 1943 and I celebrated his birthday by thinking about him and his amazing autobiography called “Before Night Falls” which has been my source of inspiration and strength ever since I read it three summers ago. His poem called “Viejo Niño” was written in 1989, just a year before Arenas died on 7th December 1990, and it portrays his childhood so well, in a direct, sincere and amusing way; a childhood of poverty and magic, spent in the Cuban countryside, with a single mother, her family and the all pervading awareness of the mother’s sadness and yearning for the man who had left her soon after they married and Reinaldo, a little boy sitting on her lap, was a reminder of that. A childhood of fascination with all things of nature, mud and rains, chasing roosters and playing with other children under the vast treetops, hiding from the burning sun of the Caribbean. Arenas was all too aware of how unlovable and unwanted he was, but it never stopped him from enjoying the little wonders his childish eyes saw around him.

Egon Schiele, Young Boy, 1918, 45.5×27 cm, gouache, pencil, watercolor on paper

Viejo Niño

I am that child with the round, dirty face

who on every corner bothers you with his

“Can you spare a quarter?”

 

I am that child with the dirty face

no doubt unwanted

that from far away contemplates coaches

where other children

emit laughter and jump up and down considerably

 

I am that unlikeable child

definitely unwanted

with the round dirty face

who before the giant street lights or

under the grandames also illuminated

or in front of the little girls that seem to levitate

projects the insult of his dirty face

 

I am that angry and lonely child of always,

that throws you the insult of that angry child of always

and warns you:

if hypocritically you pat me on the head

I would take that opportunity to steal your wallet.

 

I am that child of always

before the panorama of imminent terror,

imminent leprosy, imminent fleas,

of offenses and the imminent crime.

I am that repulsive child that improvises a bed

out of an old cardboard box and waits,

certain that you will accompany me.

Henry Kirke White – The Dance Of The Consumptives

Today I wanted to share some a beautiful and eerie fragment of an unfinished drama called “The Dance of the Consumptives” written by a rather obscure English poet Henry Kirke White (1785-1806) said to have been written n his earlier phase though I am not sure how old he would have been exactly because he died so young as it is. You can read the whole text of this eccentric unfinished drama here.

Henri Le Sidaner, Ronde des jeunes filles, crayon graphite, 1897

These lines specifically have been haunting me for some time now, but now, at last, the perfect imagery came to my mind. The drama is about death arriving dressed as consumption to flush a young girl’s cheek and take her away to the other world. Dancing young girls in drawings of the French painter Henri Le Sidaner perfectly fit the mood of the drama. With their pale attire and fluid, ghostly forms they almost looks like ghostly maidens who fell prey to the consumption and have now arrived to welcome a new soul into their eerie, ghostly circle dance:

In the dismal night air dress’d,
I will creep into her breast:
Flush her cheek, and bleach her skin,
And feed on the vital fire within.
Lover, do not trust her eyes,—
When they sparkle most, she dies!
Mother, do not trust her breath,—
Comfort she will breathe in death!
Father, do not strive to save her,—
She is mine, and I must have her!
The coffin must be her bridal bed!
The winding-sheet must wrap her head;
The whispering winds must o’er her sigh,
For soon in the grave the maid must lie:
The worm it will riot
On heavenly diet,
When death has deflower’d her eye.

Henri Le Sidaner, La Ronde, c 1900

Six Years on the Blog – Rilke’s Words of Wisdom

“For broken dreams, the cure is, dream again and deeper.”

(C.S.Lewis)

Byron’s Muse is six years old today. It is also Arthur Rimbaud’s birthday, which is a fascinating coincidence that I like to point out every year when I celebrate the blog’s birthday. It is crazy to imagine that six years had gone by already; how much has changed, and how I have changed, it seemed it was a century ago, not in this lifetime at all. I feel so old! Usually, everything for me serves as a springboard to nostalgia but in this case I am really happier being here and now, then to go six years back. But still, the realisation of the passing of time touches a special part in my heart and I suddenly feel introspective and melancholy, or perhaps is it just the autumn creeping into my bones. I feel like I am standing on the bridge, gazing at the beautiful scenery, and I feel life passing underneath like a vast, wild river, and for once I don’t wish to control its flow, I just wanna let it flow the way it wants, I have no desires or strength to change it. I just wanna rest and let the leaves cover me, ivy overgrow me and keep me warm from the cold northern winds. In this mood, I find myself turning to Rainer Maria Rilke’s poetry and letters the most, and for this occasion I chose my favourite quotes from Rilke’s book “Letters to a Young Poet”:

“You ask whether your verses are any good. You ask me. You have asked others before this. You send them to magazines. You compare them with other poems,and you are upset when certain editors reject your work. Now (since you have said you want my advice) I beg you to stop doing that sort of thing. You are looking outside, and that is what you should most avoid right now. No one can advise or help you — no one. There is only one thing you should do. Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write. This most of all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write? Dig into yourself fora deep answer. And if this answer rings out in assent, if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple “I must,” then build your life in accordance with this necessity…”

“Don’t write love poems; avoid those forms that are too facile and ordinary: they are the hardest to work with, and it takes great, fully ripened power to create something individual where good, even glorious, traditions exist in abundance. So rescue yourself from these general themes and write about what your everyday life offers you; describe your sorrows and desires, the thoughts that pass through your mind and your belief in some kind of beauty —describe all these with heartfelt, silent, humble sincerity and, when you express yourself, use the Things around you, the images from your dreams, and the objects that you remember. If your everyday life seems poor, don’t blame it; blame yourself; admit to yourself that you are not enough of a poet to call forth its riches; because for the creator there is not poverty and no poor, indifferent place. And even if you found yourself in some prison, whose walls let in none of the world’s sounds—wouldn’t you still have your childhood, that jewel beyond all price, that treasure house of memories?”

“Works of art are of an infinite solitude, and no means of approach is so useless as criticism. Only love can touch and hold them and be fair to them. — Always trust yourself and your own feeling, as opposed to argumentations, discussions, or introductions of that sort;if it turns out that you are wrong, then the natural growth of your inner life will eventually guide you to other insights. Allow your judgments their own silent,undisturbed development, which, like all progress, must come from deep within and cannot be forced or hastened.”

“Being an artist means: not numbering and counting, but ripening like a tree, which doesn’t force its sap, and stands confidently in the storms of spring, not afraid that afterward summer may not come. It does come. But it comes only to those who are patient, who are there as if eternity lay before them,so unconcernedly silent and vast. I learn it every day of my life, learn it with pain I am grateful for: patience is everything!”

“You are so young,so much before all beginning, and I would like to beg you, dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.”

“And that is why it is so important to be solitary and attentive when one is sad: because the seemingly uneventful and motionless moment when our future steps into us is so much closer to life than that other loud and accidental point of time when it happens to us as if from outside. The quieter we are, the more patient and open we are in our sadnesses, the more deeply and serenely the new presence can enter us, and the more we can make it our own, the more it becomes our fate….”

“We have no reason to harbor any mistrust against our world, for it is not against us. If it has terrors, they are our terrors; if it has abysses, these abysses belong to us; if there are dangers, we must try to love them.”

“For it is not only indolence that causes human relationships to be repeated from case to case with such unspeakable monotony and boredom; it is timidity before any new, inconceivable experience, which we don’t think we can deal with. But only someone who is ready for everything, who doesn’t exclude any experience, even the most incomprehensible, will live the relationship with another person as something alive and will himself sound the depths of his own being.“

Theophile Gautier: To your parted lips I would go and there would I die

Here’s a beautiful and devastatingly romantic poem “Butterflies” by Theophile Gautier!

Odilon Redon, Five Butterflies, c. 1912

Butterflies

Butterflies, the colour of snow,
In clouds to the sea now fare;
White butterfly beauties, when can I follow
Your path through the blue of the air?

Do you know, oh beauty of beauties,
My sacred dancer with jet black eyes,
If they could lend me their wings,
Do you know where my journey would lie?

Without taking one kiss to the roses,
Across valleys and forests I’d fly,
To your parted lips I would go,
And there, flower of my soul, would I die.