April 18.—Went out three or four miles to the house of Quincy Shaw, to see a collection of J. F. Millet’s pictures. Two rapt hours. Never before have I been so penetrated by this kind of expression. I stood long and long before “the Sower.” I believe what the picture-men designate “the first Sower,” as the artist executed a second copy, and a third, and, some think, improved in each. But I doubt it. There is something in this that could hardly be caught again—a sublime murkiness and original pent fury. Besides this masterpiece, there were many others, (I shall never forget the simple evening scene, “Watering the Cow,”) all inimitable, all perfect as pictures, works of mere art; and then it seem’d to me, with that last impalpable ethic purpose from the artist (most likely unconscious to himself) which I am always looking for. To me all of them told the full story of what went before and necessitated the great French revolution—the long precedent crushing of the masses of a heroic people into the earth, in abject poverty, hunger—every right denied, humanity attempted to be put back for generations—yet Nature’s force, titanic here, the stronger and hardier for that repression—waiting terribly to break forth, revengeful—the pressure on the dykes, and the bursting at last—the storming of the Bastile—the execution of the king and queen—the tempest of massacres and blood. Yet who can wonder?
Could we wish humanity different? Could we wish the people made of wood or stone? Or that there be no justice in destiny or time?
The true France, base of all the rest, is certainly in these pictures. I comprehend “Field-People Reposing,” “the Diggers,” and “the Angelus” in this opinion. Some folks always think of the French as a small race, five or five and a half feet high, and ever frivolous and smirking. Nothing of the sort. The bulk of the personnel of France, before the revolution, was large-sized, serious, industrious as now, and simple. The revolution and Napoleon’s wars dwarf’d the standard of human size, but it will come up again. If for nothing else, I should dwell on my brief Boston visit for opening to me the new world of Millet’s pictures. Will America ever have such an artist out of her own gestation, body, soul?
—From Walt Whitman’s journal of 1881
From J.G. Ballard’s short story “The Gioconda of the Twilight Noon”:
‘There’s a postcard from your mother. They’re near Malta, somewhere called Gozo.’
‘Give it to me.’ Maitland felt the card in his hands.
‘Gozo – that was Calypso’s island. She kept Ulysses there for seven years, promised him eternal youth if he’d stay with her forever.’
‘I’m not surprised.’ Judith inclined the card towards her. ‘If we could spare the time, you and I should go there for a holiday. Wine–dark seas, a sky like heaven, blue rocks. Bliss.’
‘Blue?’
‘Yes. I suppose it’s the bad printing. They can’t really be like that.’
‘They are, actually.’
Still holding the card, Maitland went out into the garden, feeling his way along the string guiderail. As he settled himself in the wheelchair he reflected that there were other correspondences in the graphic arts. The same blue rocks and spectral grottos could be seen in Leonardo’s Virgin of the Rocks, one of the most forbidding and most enigmatic of his paintings. The madonna sitting on a bare ledge by the water beneath the dark overhang of the cavern’s mouth was like the presiding spirit of some enchanted marine realm, waiting for those cast on to the rocky shores of this world’s end. As in so many of Leonardo’s paintings, all its unique longings and terrors were to be found in the landscape in the background. Here, through an archway among the rocks, could be seen the crystal blue cliffs that Maitland had glimpsed in his reverie.
Here is the riddle said the Great Father Serpent with a great flourishing of his two-tipped tongue, and it is a son-of-a-bitch I will tell you that, the most arcane item in the arcana, you will never guess it in a hundred thousand human years some of which I point out have already been used up by you in useless living and breathing but have a go, have a go, do: What do you really feel? Like murderinging, I answered, because that is what I had read on the underside of the tin, the wording murderinging inscribed in a fine thin cursive. Why bless my soul, said the Great Father Serpent, he’s got it, and the two ruffians blinked at me in stunned wonder and I myself wondered, and marveled, but what I was wondering and marveling at was the closeness with which what I had answered accorded with my feelings, my lost feelings that I had never found before. I suppose, the Father Serpent said, that the boon you wish granted is the ability to carry out this foulness? Of course, I said, what else? Granted then, he said, but may I remind you that having the power is often enough. You don’t have to actually do it. For the soul’s ease. I thanked the Great Father Serpent; he bowed most cordially; my companions returned me to the city. I was abroad in the city with murderinging in mind — the dream of a stutterer.
That is a tall tale, said the Dead Father. I don’t believe it ever happened.
No tale ever happened in the way we tell it, said Thomas, but the moral is always correct.
What is the moral?
Murderinging, Thomas said.
From Donald Barthelme’s novel The Dead Father.
Meandering through the bookstore on a Monday morn, I spied this beat up copy of Hans-Georg Rauch’s En Masse and had to have it.
I’d never heard of Rauch before, but his spidery ink drawings immediately intrigued me.
None of the images in En Masse is labeled—indeed, there are no words in the book.
Instead, Rauch plays with themes of creation and nihilism, sex and politics, architecture and nature.
This two page spread came out blurry via my iPhone pic—sorry—but in the book’s oversize 13″ x 9″ format the effect is overwhelming.
You can see some of the masses perhaps better in this close-up:
Rauch’s cartoony style is balanced with an Escher-like acumen; the guy can draft. But there’s a sense of humor here that I think puts him closer to Tomi Ungerer.
Lovely stuff.
“The Darling” by Anton Chekhov
Olenka, the daughter of the retired collegiate assessor Plemyanikov, was sitting on the back-door steps of her house doing nothing. It was hot, the flies were nagging and teasing, and it was pleasant to think that it would soon be evening. Dark rain clouds were gathering from the east, wafting a breath of moisture every now and then.
Kukin, who roomed in the wing of the same house, was standing in the yard looking up at the sky. He was the manager of the Tivoli, an open-air theatre.
“Again,” he said despairingly. “Rain again. Rain, rain, rain! Every day rain! As though to spite me. I might as well stick my head into a noose and be done with it. It’s ruining me. Heavy losses every day!” He wrung his hands, and continued, addressing Olenka: “What a life, Olga Semyonovna! It’s enough to make a man weep. He works, he does his best, his very best, he tortures himself, he passes sleepless nights, he thinks and thinks and thinks how to do everything just right. And what’s the result? He gives the public the best operetta, the very best pantomime, excellent artists. But do they want it? Have they the least appreciation of it? The public is rude. The public is a great boor. The public wants a circus, a lot of nonsense, a lot of stuff. And there’s the weather. Look! Rain almost every evening. It began to rain on the tenth of May, and it’s kept it up through the whole of June. It’s simply awful. I can’t get any audiences, and don’t I have to pay rent? Don’t I have to pay the actors?”
The next day towards evening the clouds gathered again, and Kukin said with an hysterical laugh:
“Oh, I don’t care. Let it do its worst. Let it drown the whole theatre, and me, too. All right, no luck for me in this world or the next. Let the actors bring suit against me and drag me to court. What’s the court? Why not Siberia at hard labour, or even the scaffold? Ha, ha, ha!”
It was the same on the third day.
Olenka listened to Kukin seriously, in silence. Sometimes tears would rise to her eyes. At last Kukin’s misfortune touched her. She fell in love with him. He was short, gaunt, with a yellow face, and curly hair combed back from his forehead, and a thin tenor voice. His features puckered all up when he spoke. Despair was ever inscribed on his face. And yet he awakened in Olenka a sincere, deep feeling. Continue reading ““The Darling” — Anton Chekhov”
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The hen sparrow believes that her cock sparrow is not chirping but singing beautifully.
* * * * *
When one is peacefully at home, life seems ordinary, but as soon as one walks into the street and begins to observe, to question women, for instance, then life becomes terrible. The neighborhood of Patriarshi Prudy (a park and street in Moscow) looks quiet and peaceful, but in reality life there is hell.
* * * * *
These red-faced young and old women are so healthy that steam seems to exhale from them.
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The estate will soon be brought under the hammer; there is poverty all round; and the footmen are still dressed like jesters.
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There has been an increase not in the number of nervous diseases and nervous patients, but in the number of doctors able to study those diseases.
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The more refined the more unhappy.
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Life does not agree with philosophy: there is no happiness which is not idleness and only the useless is pleasurable.
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The grandfather is given fish to eat, and if it does not poison him and he remains alive, then all the family eat it.
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—From Anton Chekhov’s Note-Books.
Biblioklept 