Life-long have I envied others many a line
Life-long have I envied others many a line,
Will someone ever envy
One of mine?
My verse born now,
Fresh - dead until read.
Someone, anyone, yes, you -
If only you read it!
Will someone ever envy
One of mine?
My verse born now,
Fresh - dead until read.
Someone, anyone, yes, you -
If only you read it!
Would you call it just fine?
Would it not be dead.
Not dead if read?
Not when, but if?
Not good or bad just read?
Would it not be dead.
Not dead if read?
Not when, but if?
Not good or bad just read?
I thought of writing lines for you:
Of beauty, of strength, of truth.
A song, just one;
Of hope, of inspiration.
Lines on those themes come rarely now,
Of beauty, of strength, of truth.
A song, just one;
Of hope, of inspiration.
Lines on those themes come rarely now,
To write that way in these times is a sin.
These vacuous, vacant, little, listless times.
What use of such pursuits,
In a world like ours,
What’s false, what’s true?
Hate, anger, frustration:
Are themes right for you.
What use of such pursuits,
In a world like ours,
What’s false, what’s true?
Hate, anger, frustration:
Are themes right for you.
My poems although shallow
From my heart’s depths rise.
They lack in the mass of meaning
Have volume of words.
Not style but sense, nor craft but art.
From my heart’s depths rise.
They lack in the mass of meaning
Have volume of words.
Not style but sense, nor craft but art.
Who wants to say
Just what they want to say, and stop,
When it’s just begun,
Not half the distance run?
When how it's said,
For how long heard, is half the fun?
Just what they want to say, and stop,
When it’s just begun,
Not half the distance run?
When how it's said,
For how long heard, is half the fun?
Le baiser de la muse (The Kiss of the Muse) -- Félix-Nicolas Frillié /Paul Cézanne
Both Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso remarked that Paul Cézanne "is the father of us all." But it took him decades to paint the pictures that made him famous. One of his 1st paintings was "Le baiser de la muse." Neither the poet nor the muse is particularly animated or inspiring. Indeed, the poet is not even grasping a pen! In his letters to Émile Zola, who was 1 year below him at the Collège Bourbon in Aix-en-Provence, he made clear that he no longer believed in the divine blessing of the poet. As a clasicist he knew that the Greeks did not assign any Muse to painting, since it was a craft that was learnable and not dependent on inspiration.
ReplyDeleteAt school it was Cézanne who won prizes for his Latin and Greek translations, and Zola who won the school's prize for drawing. Zola told him, "My verse is perhaps purer than yours, but yours is certainly more poetic, more true; you write with the heart, I with the mind." But Cézanne was determined to be a painter, despite his friend's evaluation of his talent. Zola began his career as an art critic and remarked as early as 1861 that "Paul may have the genius to be a great painter, but he will never have the genius to become one. The least obstacle makes him despair.” Their friendship was strained by Zola's depiction of Cézanne as Claude Lantier in "L’Œuvre" (1886), whose paintings were "so coarse, so glaring, showing a violence of colour that jarred ... like a carter’s oath heard on the doorstep of an inn." Lantier eventually hanged himself "from the big ladder in front of his unfinished, unfinishable masterpiece." The early :Le baiser de la muse" was actually a near-perfect copy of one done in 1857 by the academic painter Félix-Nicolas Frillié. Both paintings hang together at the Musée Granet in Aix.