I thought I would put a small excerpt from Cennini’s excellent Il Libro dell’ Arte on the blog today:
“You would have occasion in the service of young ladies, especially those of Tuscany to display certain colours to which they take a fancy. And they are in the habit of beautifying themselves with certain waters. But since the Paduan women do not do so; and so as not to give them occasion to reproach me; and likewise because it is contrary to the Will of God and Our Lady; because of all this I shall keep silence. But I will tell you that if you wish to keep your complexion for a long time; you must take a practice of washing in water-spring or well or river: warning you that if you adopt any artificial preparation your countenance soon becomes withered, and your teeth black; and in the end ladies grow old before the course of time; they come out the most hideous old women imaginable. And this will have to be enough discussion of the matter.”
(!)
Quite reminds me of my grandmother’s woe at freckles. Il LibroDell’ Arte is still studied for its excellence in technique in painting,from grinding colours through creating fresco. If one can ignore the jaundiced approach to women… its always best to keep in mind the artistic instruction books were written solely for the benefit of young men hoping to be apprenticed to masters, but he does some pretty good facial and cosmetics advice therein.
The Craftsman’s Handbook , ” Il Libro dell’ Arte “. Cennino d’Andrea
Cennini, Trans, Daniel V. Thompson Jr. Dover. 1960
I am reading a poem while it rains. The day blinks through windows guarded by a griffin; its talons flex, its tail switches. Do you remember those summer showers high in the mountains? The dull pop of a toadstool beneath your bare foot in the dew-covered grass? Under a crystal bell jar, the still life-fleshy ripe bananas, cherries, lemons and the silver knife you bargained for in the bazaar as the Bhosphorus sparkled at the feet of the one you loved. On the wobbly kitchen table, with that very knife, you slit open a pike. And the hunting rifle, propped against stuffed peacocks- has it turned into a lapdog licking the other woman’s hands as she weighs my pearls…?
In the Forest
I wrote the essential poem on an oar just before setting out. Perhaps long ago it’s been erased or maybe the sea knows it now by feel.
Like the woman in Rousseau’s painting I shudder at the sound of footsteps -when the fear comes on too strong.
The path I follow is a knife blade. maybe this is why the sky behind the forest is now so red.
I wrote the essential poem on an oar just before setting out.
These two poems are taken from the Bloodaxe published book, The Sky Behind the Forest by Poet Liliana Ursu. It is translated by Tess Gallagher and Adam Sorkin.
I really like the book, but I always make one suggestion when recommending it, and that is to read and absorb the beautiful writing before reading the introductory and translators essays. The essays are highly important in establishing the appalling context of censorship under which the poet suffered, but one can feel it also in the powerful writing.
The Sky Behind the Forest, Liliana Ursu. Trans, Liliana Ursu, Tess Gallagher,
Adam J Sorkin. Bloodaxe Books. 1997.
Your tender revolt Contained by the illicit apple Pounds in red And your eye’s shattered diamond A woman in seclusion Revolves into a star With you On the surface of water I am thirsty Place the skies in your eyes Blaze out the star So that I can see you The sea is peaceful Silent…
from : The Seven Valleys of Love, trans Sheema Kalbasi Poet , A Bilingual Anthology Of Women Poets from Middle Ages Persia to Present
Today I was reading more of Farideh Mostavi who features on the blog in two sections, her poetry can be accessed by using the search engine to the right of this post. The issue of Translation has been a part of this site since I started it up, Including the works of Mostavi, Tess Gallagher, the translators of Nagy and of Ursu. The sympathetic work of the translator being grossly undervalued in terms of what is actually available for people to purchase in bookshops. The IPWWC and translators committees have done tremendous work in funding and bringing to the reader some of our most incredible women writers.
In Ireland there is a wonderful tradition of writers and poets translating works; and bringing them to an interested readership.
There is a small post somewhere on the blog of a Marianne Agren Mc Elroy translation of Comes Somebody , by Nelly Sachs, it had fallen out of a Paul Celan book which I had been casually mooching at a friend’s house. It was one of three small and old pieces from a now defunct Irish newspaper. It really is an excellent poem, thus I am going to stick it beneath this post on the blog if I can. (the tech occasionally mystifies).
I have printed one other piece by Moore on this blog. I tend to ignore critique except to contextualisethe social and historical life of the poet, those movements that brought the writer tosettle into her voice. There is a resonance in Moore’s poetry that is hooking,despite the best efforts of Ted Hughes to underrate her contribution, orwhatever it was that provoked the nasty little Moore Poem inBirthday Letters
I am adding in this little excerpt along with the title of the book in the hope thatmore readers will come to look at women writers:
There never was a war that was not inward; I must fight till I have conquered in myself what causes war, but I would not believe it. I inwardly did nothing.
When I read Birthday Letters, long before I hadread anything by Moore, I must confess that the imagery that Hughes used to talkof the woman put me right off wanting to read her. The issue emanated from a particularepisode in which he accused her of putting shards of glass into an acerbic note shesent Plath, or the image of her in her hat looking for the grave on which tolay her little wreath. It irritates me beyond belief that Hughes exploited his power in such a wholly provocative manner, and that be celebrated by other poetsincluding Seamus Heaney. For what Hughes did in Birthday Letters was to make himself unanswerable, neither Moore nor Plath can respond to his work. It must have been great that the mostly male critical and academic establishment refused to note this in their reviews. It did not occur to Heaney, for instance to note that Hughes took an opportunity to settle old scores/scars.
For me, a writer of prose and a poet, the issue has always been about engagementwith themes and symbols that evolve over time, but that somehow retain theirshape and essence no matter what. I am still trying to understand how a voiceas strong as Hughes is capable of honing those particular traumas so artfullydecades indeed after the episode. Thats Poetic Engagement andcan give reviewers the equivalent of the bends; and yet effect another writer’shistorical place in our consciousness by sleight of hand (or with deliberate intention).
The image is by Sophie Tauber-Arp and is to be found in the NMWA. The day began with Dada and I suppose it shall end thusly. I hope to include the link to the Women’s Art Museum on the blogroll when I have a little more time to do so.
In the meantime Dada and it’s place in the linear art-historical (or academic approach to Art History) is encapsulated quite beautifully in a book by Hans Richter : Dada, Art and Anti-Art , by Hans Richter, Trans, David Britt. Thames and Hudson 1997.
The Dada relation to Surrealism is abysmally discussed in the small piece : Babylon, Art and Image , which is further down this blog. That particular piece was about the excellent collaboration between René Crevel and Max Ernst in shaping the Book Babylon, Quartet Publications, Trans, Kay Boyle.
I am sorely tempted to include some Hans Arp or Kurt Schwitters Poetry (maybe later..,)
This image is one of 19 Max Ernst images that grace René Crevel‘s Bayblon, the book is published by Quartet Encounters (1988) and originally published in French as Babylone (1927). The Quartet Encounters translation is provided by Kay Boyle. I am taking the book away with me on a train today because it is a while since I read it and I remember it as lit.
The most persistent symbol therein being that of the Grandmother applying a clyster to a rose and the child’s wonder at such an exercise.
Each chapter is illustrated by the Ernst prints which are food for the eyes. Other collaborations mentioned on Poethead include : Alice Maher and Eilis Ní Dhuibhne , Leonard Baskin and T. Hughes.
In terms of illustration and writing, the work of RB Kitaj throughout The First Diasporist Manifesto perfectly illustrates how the artist combines a strong visual ability and a need to communicate in words their experience of creating symbol that we fully recognise. Many of these above named collaborations are based in dialogue that attempts to make sense of the appalling political situation in Europe in the period between two World Wars.
Dadaism and Surrealism were attempts by persons of great personal integrity to resist the mass-movement of totalitarianism.
Crevel died by his own hand as he witnessed the spiralling violence that people must react to and resist even today. His words are printed at the back of the book and are pertinent to anyone who refuses to accept that there is no thread of fascism apparent in modern politics,
“The Mind turned outward for a change and reason folded under. A long time ago I wrote something about Reason creating so many mindless divisions, such as Mind, body, spirit/flesh, real/unreal, sane/insane, dream/action that Mind was obliged to declare war on reason. Then I asked myself, Well, if consciousness is the thesis and unconsciousness the antithesis, when does the synthesis come about?” :
“I think it comes about in a fusion that is absolute love. That love is different from the everyday article because it implies total honesty, while conventional morality and customs declarations are alike in that both make people cheat.”
The excellent translation by Kay Boyle and illustrations by Ernst make this a beautiful volume to read.
For info on Dadaism and Surrealism , use google. How and ever many natural surrealists declined the honour of joining the varied groups of clever types including Frida Kahlo but don’t let that put ye off reading about Art and image. Another Surrealist book that I’d recommend is The Story of the Eyeby Georges Bataille, though I have not time to go into the imagery at the moment.
Degas: Fan with Dancers 1879 .From the Tacoma Art Museum. Priv Collection.
Sylvia Plath‘s return to the United States as a teacher at Smith College was dominated by fear, its evident from her diaries and from her utter helplessness. I had thought to publish this morning ,without comment two of her poems: Mary’s Song from Winter Trees and The Magi from The Collected Plath.
It is Autumn here (despite the sunshine ),there is both a significant temperature drop and a filigree of copper on pavements and grasses , thus I got to thinking about winter palettes and warm clothing.
I read the Diaries in the last years and remember wondering at Plath’s connectedness to her intimate objects, how bemused she was at the amelioration of her condition of cold by the wearing of a pair of red silk stockings and how it alleviated her mood of intense depression. She disliked abstract art and had told a painter friend that she adored the “Thinginess of Things“.
In the last few days I had published a small piece on the Island women and the Trousseau, in relation to both Mary Lavin and plays by Federico Garcia Lorca.
I also thought about the issues of women’s homelessness (homelessness) as a result of War; and those little knickknacks and mementoes that are to many people Valueless .
The amount of young women on the streets of Dublin in this condition of abodelessness has increased significantly. Thus the value of small and intimate things has decreased in the face of oncoming winter and the struggle for survival. I watched people literally walk over a young girl and infant the other day in their own struggle and fear of ending up like her and it worried me. And what would ameliorate her condition and that of the infant? In many statements against war and ecological destruction I have published wordson the value of objects and trinkets. How , on my bookshelf there is a small clay snail painted in gold; and made by the hand of a small child who in learning about colour had underpainted the snail in red and left the imprint of his small fingers upon it. How, when he got older and copped onto the issue of preservation, he had lacquered the little snail with PVA in order to preserve the red-gold and give the shell a glossy sheen. To anyone else the process of creation from a simple pallets and the indented fingerprints would suggest a simple child’s play and not a process of working out and creation that progressed, it seemed, over many weeks.
I am happy that I have a shelf to put the troublesome snail onto.
Mary’s Song
The Sunday lamb cracks in its fat. The fat Sacrifices its opacity….
A window, holy gold The fire makes it precious, The same fire
Melting the tallow heretics, Ousting the Jews. Their thick palls float
Over the cicatrix of Poland, burn-out Germany. They do not die.
Grey Birds obsess my heart, Mouth-ash, ash of eye. They settle. On the high
Precipice. That emptied one man into space The ovens glowed like heavens, incandescent.
It is a heart, This holocaust I walk in, O golden child the world will kill and eat .
Where do you think I am writing this letter? In the garden! I have brought out a small table at which I am now seated, hidden among the shrubs. To the right is the currant bush smelling of cloves; to the left, a privet in flower, overhead, a sycamore and a young slender Spanish Chestnut stretch their broad green hands , in front is the tall, serious, and gentle white Poplar, its silvery leaves rustling in the breeze.
On the paper as I write , the faint shadows of the leaves are at play with the interspersed patches of sunlight; the foliage is still damp from a recent shower, and now and again drops fall on my face and hands.
Service is going on in the prison chapel; the sound of the organ reaches me indistinctly , for it is masked by the noise of the leaves, and by the clear chorus of the birds, which are all in a merry mood today; from afar I hear the call of the cuckoo. How lovely it is; I am so happy. One seems already to have the mid-summer mood- the full luxuriance of summer and the intoxication of life. Do you remember the scenes in Wagner’s Meistersinger, the one in which the prentices sing “Midsummer day! Midsummer day!” and the folk scene where, after singing “St Crispin! St Crispin!” the motley crowd joins in a frolicsome dance.”
(To Sophie Liebknecht May 1917- from Luxemburg’s Prison Letters:ed Paul Le Blanc)
Somehow the Red Rosa propaganda against this woman never sat with me, her political and organisational genius really got up the noses of the Nazi pre-cursors and they brutally murdered her and her friends. It took weeks before her broken body was found. Rosa was Jewish and like her contemporaries was hounded or murdered in the era preceding the rise of National Socialism. Her genius in writing is historically underestimated and often we do not speak of the Shoah in terms of it’s vastness; and the areas where it had touched geographically. I had only recently read some accounts of the Galician and Italian contribution to an eradication programme that beggars belief. Interestingly I believe that great writers like Sylvia Plath were just beginning to look at the post-Holocaust period in terms that were not (as some critics would claim) personalising the issues but trying to contain the enormity of the issue within their tropes and symbols.
My first encounter with Rosa Luxemburg was in a Painting. I went to see the RB Kitaj Retrospective in London and sat for hours staring at ‘The Murder of Rosa Luxemburg’ and trying to absorb the minutest of detail from the canvas.
I Left London with The First Diasporist Manifesto and a copy of Pamphlets by Luxemburg.
I have published excerpts from her letters on a few sites because of they display her intimacy with nature, her knowledge of the names of things and her closeness to her many friends.
Chris Murray 