The Kiss
A poet worth his mettle
Boiling water in his cute kettle
Told me that kisses will eternally
Remain unsurpassed in beauty.
He kissed me and I was seventeen.
It was my first taste of love’s elixir,
A perfect osmosis without cosmetics,
With charms invariable
And desires unforgettable.
Ethereal and surreal,
It was the zenith of a wish
That left me spellbound
While the thunderstorm obliterated the town.
The kiss had the taste of nectar unblemished,
Making my interior self with light
replenished.
Again he kissed me and this time
It had the peachy taste of sweet peach Melba.
Voluntarily or involuntarily absolutely
sobered,
It invoked the vision of love making
While lightning flashed across the window
panes
Taking us both in its strides.
In reverie and camaraderie
I asked the poet, ‘Is it the beginning
of a lifetime love?’
In a hushed whisper, he replied,
‘The lifetime love is in the now.’
I smiled while the rain drizzled
And the scent of geranium and oregano
Rose joyously in the air.
The sun shone through rain
Making a radiant rainbow
And love shone in between our lips
With exuberant ecstasy
While the unbridled passions
Slowly empowered our frail bodies.
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The Kiss (Le Baiser) -- Auguste Rodin
In 1892, when Australian soprano Nellie Melba performed in Richard Wagner's "Lohengrin" at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden in central London, Louis Philippe Robert, the exiled duc d'Orléans, hosted a dinner party at the Savoy, the 1st luxury hotel in the UK, to celebrate the occasion, for which the roi des cuisiniers et cuisinier des rois ("king of chefs and chef of kings") August Escoffier created a new dessert. In homage to the opera he used an ice sculpture of a swan which carried peaches resting on a bed of vanilla ice cream and topped with spun sugar. In 1900, for the opening of the Carlton Hotel, which he managed, Escoffier created a new version which replaced the spun sugar with with raspberry purée.
ReplyDeleteA decade earlier, in 1882, Auguste Rodin sculpted "Le Baiser." It was originally called "Francesca da Rimini," who was murdered by her jealous husband Giovanni Malatesta when he discovered her making love to his younger brother Paolo. It was renamed by critics in 1887 when it was 1st exhibited, and in 1888 the French government commissioned a large-scale marble version for the 1889 Exposition universelle. A bronze version was displayed at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago but was relegated to an inner chamber with admission only by personal application due to its unsuitability for general display. He made a 2nd copy for Edward Perry Warren, an eccentric American collector in Lewes, Sussex, England, who insisted that "the genitals of the man must be complete." For a decade (1904-1914) it was kept in the stables at the back of Lewes House, then temporarily transferred to the town hall, but outraged citizens forced it to be draped and screened from public view. Carl Christian Hillman Jacobsen, whose father had founded the Dansk brewing company Carlsberg (named after Carl) commissioned a 3rd replica in 1900 and installed it in his Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in København (Copenhagen) when he opened it in 1906.
(2 March 1842 – 11 January 1914) was a Danish brewer, art collector and philanthropist, the son of J. C. Jacobsen, who founded the brewery Carlsberg and named it after him. His wife (see picture) Ottilia Marie Jacobsen, née Stegmann (3 October 1854 - 20 July 1903), whom he met during a business trip to Edinburgh in Scotland later marrying in Copenhagen on 24 September 1874),[1] was almost as famous as himself within the contemporary arts community in Denmark. She was the daughter of the Danish grain merchant Conrad Stegmann and wife Louise Marie, née Brummer.