UMBRELLAS…
Umbrellas are opening their wings,
Their senses are looking at somewhere.
They are wings but flying… hopeless,
“Birds” looking for salvation and crying.
Their senses are looking at somewhere.
They are wings but flying… hopeless,
“Birds” looking for salvation and crying.
The ocean breaks the universe,
It precipitates drop-drop from the sky.
The soul which loves the rains
Floats as a ship and looks for salvation.
It precipitates drop-drop from the sky.
The soul which loves the rains
Floats as a ship and looks for salvation.
The air is fresh but more painful,
The universe is full with cries.
The umbrellas are waiting for deliverance,
Every head has a salvation.
The universe is full with cries.
The umbrellas are waiting for deliverance,
Every head has a salvation.
--tr. Asror Allayarov from "The Gate Opened by Angels"
Golconde --René Magritte
Louis Scutenaire discovered surrealism in 1926 and was a primary contributor to the "Revue surréaliste" but the poet grew disillusioned with the genre's increasing commercialization after World War II, but he continued to remain close to René Magritte and would visit his home on Sundays, where Magritte would invite him to give titles to his recent paintings. His names are still connected to 170 of them, including 1953's "Golconde," named after Golkonda ("Round shaped hill," a ruined city near Hyderabad) which was the capital of the Qutb Shahi dynasty (ca.1518–1687). [The region's diamond industry produced a famous gem which Jean-Baptiste Tavernier acquired in 1666 and sold to Louis XIV in 1668; the court jeweller, Sieur Pitau, took two years cutting it down to create Le bleu de France; stolen in 1791 while Louis XVI and his family were imprisoned during the early stages of the Reign of Terror, smuggled to London and halved; the largest (45.52-carat [9.104 g]) section was perhaps acquired by George IV, and it acquired its famous name as the "Hope" diamond in 1839, when it appeared in the catalog of a gem collection owned by a London banking family with that name; purchased in 1949 by Harry Winston, he donated it to the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC, in 1958. In 1817 the 43.38-carat (8.676 g) Nassak Diamond (the Eye of the Idol) was taken from the Trimbakeshwar Shiva Temple, near Nashik, in the state of Maharashtra, by the British East India Company during the Third Anglo-Maratha War; it was recut by the British jewellers Rundell and Bridge in 1816 and was imported into the US in 1927, purchased by Edward J. Hand.The area also produced the Koh-i-Noor (Persian for "Mountain of Light," it went to the British after the conquest of the Punjab in 1849; three years later Victoria's husband Albert, the prince consort, had it cut down from its 186 carats (37.2 g) to 105.6 carats (21.12 g) in order to improve its appearance' now part of the Crown Jewels of the United Kingdom, it is set in the front of the Queen Mother's Crown). The 182-carat (36 g) Daria-i-Noor (“Sea of Light”) was given (along with the Koh-i-noor) to Nader Shah in 1739 in exhange for returning the crown of India to the Mughal emperor after his occupation of Delhi; it is now part of the Iranian Crown Jewels.] Scutenaire's face was used for the large man by the chimney of the house to the right. (He was also the model for the figure in the 1943 painting "Universal Gravitation.") Magritte died of pancreatic cancer on 15 August 1967; Scutenaire died 20 years to the hour later while watching a television program commemorating the painter's death.
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