#39__ Leonardo & Water

Art historians have long wondered why Leonardo da Vinci, gifted with an endlessly curious eye, devoted so much of his attention to the study of turbulence, especially turbulent water.  For many a scholar this seeming obsession was a bootless use of the artist’s time: genius of such magnitude should have been directed into more challenging endeavors!  What prompted the man to fill page after page of his notebooks with drawings of eddies, waves and plunge pools?

Leonardo sought to reveal the hidden workings of whatever his eye landed on and, at the most elementary level, I imagine that the problem solver in him delighted in the challenge of untieing the interwoven skeins of river vortices. While keeping his hand and eye nimble, like practicing scales, rendering the protean skeleton of a plunge pool must have been as satisfying for him as the completion of a London Times acrostic for today’s puzzle fanatic.  But, at a deeper level, I think that Leonardo had apprenticed himself to the vortex. The restless desire that drove him to unravel the infinite watery braidings of the human body through his study of cadavers also brought him to the river bank to dissect the organs of a rushing stream. His eye craved sharpening against the quick as well as the dead, for, as his notebooks testify, the entire world was his whetstone.  He returned repeatedly to the vortex as one returns to knock on a closed door or an unanswered question.  It insisted itself on his consciousness, drew itself again and again to his attention where it might be seen and understood, entered and anatomized.  I believe that Leonardo had glimpsed the silver world of Flow and, enraptured by water’s manifold beauties, its shifting moods and transparencies, its music, its therapeutic properties, perhaps even its ancient association with the soul, had enrolled himself in water’s mystery school.

Excerpt from Ganesha’s Mouse, Book 1

#38 ____ Ottoman star

 

#37 _____ Oneiric doorway

 

I am walking on a woodland path to a place where someone or something has been hurt or is suffering.  I approach a large door and see many dogs lying about outside. They have been attracted by the suffering of the person inside and are keeping vigil.  I poke my head in over the threshold and am aware of many people inside to the left – the feeling of a large airy cave.   I am greeted by the old woman who works there at the door.  She has the words Abide with me, true dark written in chalk on a wall nearby.

 

 

Frederick Carter – Night

 

#36 ____ two heroes of mine

Andrei Tarkovsky

 

 

Edmond Jabès

 

Excerpts from E. J.’s “The Book of Questions”

***

The wound has the rose as childhood friend.

———

You are silent: I was.  You speak: I am.

———

A cradlesong is a mirror of words to put a child to sleep in its glance.

———

All our songs originate in the sacrifice of our wings and our longing to fly.

———

We speak to what is blossoming.   What listens is shedding its leaves.

———

A writer questions himself forever in the infinite solitude of God whose gesture he has inherited, but with its fire gone out.   Rekindling the divine gesture again and again, this is our contribution to the light.

———

God disdains memory.   He travels.

———

Dawn is more than a hope, it is an elect full of fresh fervor.   Straining towards what it to come, his ties cut, man when he is finally free gorges himself on eternity.   His gravity lies in being available and great, in the vacancy of a moment which will fuse with his life.   Not to expect anything and yet to die daily of infinite expectation.

———

We are closer to one another than to ourselves.

———

Childhood is a colony of astonished words.

———

You are opened by your eyes.

 ———

You enter the night, as a thread enters a needle,

through an opening propitious or bloody,

through the most luminous breach.

Being both thread and needle,

you enter the night

as you enter yourself.

 

Translated by Rosemary Waldrop

#35 ____ goddess

You are to me the transparent waters of awakening 

and premonition of the dream,

you are the invisible itself in the spring,

at the place of its emission, like the invisible itself in the flame,

its essence, at the place very pure and safe,

where the frail heart of the flame is a ring of sweetness…

 

 St.-Jean Perse

 

#34 ___ guardian of the threshold

A familiar image,  close cousin to the lions reclining before the entrance of the NY Public Library and to the pair that draw the chariot of the Goddess.  As a clue to his greater purpose and to the true nature of the doorway, he holds in his mouth one of the universal symbols of wholeness.

 

Photo :  E. Atget

#33 ____ Saturn Return: Composers – II

 

A continuation of the list on posting #29 – with a few performers and pop musicians thrown in.

*

[30] DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH, 1906-75.  Drew Stalin’s wrath at a performance of Lady Macbeth of Mzensk. “Stalin is said to have stormed out of the theatre in a fury after the first act, livid with rage about the ‘degenerate’ music…. S. rehabilitated himself in 1937 [31] with his Fifth Symphony. But to all intents and purposes, he was ruined as a composer. Never again would he write with the dash, sparkle and modernity he had shown in the First Symphony, The Nose, Lady Macbeth, and the Piano Concerto.”     – Harold Schonberg, Lives

[30] GEORGE GERSHWIN, 1898-1937.  American in Paris (1928).

[29] HANK WILLIAMS, 1923-53. Death.

[29] BILL HALEY, 1925-81. “Rock Around the Clock” (1954) – “was selected to play over the opening credits [of “The Blackboard Jungle” – 1955], and the song went to number one, bestowing upon Haley instant star status (though he would never have a hit that came close to matching it, he continued to work off it profitably until the day he died).”    P. Guralnick

[28-30] MARIA CALLAS, 1923-77.  La Scala debut with I Vespri Siciliani (12/51); signed exclusive recording contract with EMI; dramatic weight loss in 29^th yr :  “She became another woman and another world of expression opened to her. Potentials held in the shadows emerged. In every sense, she had been transformed.” Carlo M. Giulini;      Career zenith; the beginning of the famous Visconti productions.

[28] CARLISLE FLOYD, b. 1926.  Susannah, the most-often performed American opera and the one for which CF is known.

[29] CHUCK BERRY, b. 1926.  Recorded Maybelline in 1955 – his first historic recording; a national hit.

[29] BARRY GORDY, b. 1929. Starts Motown Records.

[29-30] RAY CHARLES, 1930-2004.  Signs up with ABC-Paramount; releases What’d I Say?;  founds his own music publishing co., his own record label and sets up a permanent home base in LA.

[29] STEPHEN SONDHEIM, b. 1930.  Words for Gypsy; formed his own publishing company.

[30] Death of Oscar Hammerstein: SS’s mentor and father figure.

[30] PATSY CLINE, 1933-1963.  Death.

[30] FRANK ZAPPA, 1940-93.   An ‘annus mirabilis’ – recorded 3 albums of music which are rated amongst his best: Burnt Weeny Sandwich, Weasles Ripped My Flesh & Chunga’s Revenge.

[29] CAROLE KING, b. 1942.  Released Tapestry (1971), her most popular, best selling album.

[30] JIM CROCE, 1943-73.  Death in a plane crash.

[28] JAQUELINE Du PRE, 1945 -87.  Diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and forced to retire (1973).

[28] PATTI SMITH, b. 1947.  Released her first music album, Horses (1975) – “on most lists of the greatest rock albums of all time”.    New Yorker, 3/02.

[29] Met her future husband Fred Smith in 1976.

[30] Suffered a very bad fall off a stage while performing (Jan 1977). Fractured several vertebrae and was immobilized.  She said ‘it was an accident on a practical level, but on a spiritual level it was time for me to assess what I was doing and where I was going. Which I did. I was laid up for 4-5 months.’

 

 

 

 

#32 _____ in ictu trepidantis aspectus

 

The light of the eye is derived from the light of the heart.

Rumi

*

The pilgrimage: Day 26.         As one descends into Villafranca on foot, the Romanesque Church of Santiago sits on the outskirts to the left of the path on a hillside and the refugio clings to the edge of the small plaza in front of the church.   Together, the two, set apart from other buildings, make one of the more mismatched architectural pairings of the Camino: one—centuries old, built of beautiful aging stone with a famous carved portal; the other—a jerry-built, sprawling canvas structure that appears to have been erected by nomads.   I step inside the refugio, sign in, and then quietly find an empty cot amongst the snoozing pilgrims slowly melting in the semi-darkness of the dormitory.   And the hours pass in a muggy, somnolescent silence broken only by the tinklings of a goat bell from the steep garden behind the kitchen. 

General movement returns to the refugio by the late afternoon.   I chat briefly with some Dutch pilgrims in the cafe and then take a chair out to the rough stone gateway and sit down to watch the raked light on the walls of the town below and to catch cool samplings of evening breeze that have finally started to blow from some mysterious location that had been much prayed-to and exhorted by all of us during the hours of walking.  

An old man approaches, walking slowly up the hill from the direction of town—a tourist most assuredly, judging from his clothes, camera and the attentive way he sights the church from afar.   As he is walking past, he turns and notices the incongruous structure behind me and a look of puzzlement crosses his face.   I volunteer the information that he is looking at a refugio.   Unsure of what language to use, he haltingly asks if I am a pilgrim.   He uses the word “Pilger” and so I answer affirmatively in German and invite him to join me.   He is a retired architect from East Germany, a member of a bus tour visiting the art and architecture of the pilgrimage trail.   I introduce myself and after five minutes of chatting about the Camino he spontaneously presents me with one of the most intimate gifts I have ever received, a true hermaion.

With no prologue or word of explanation, he breaks into the flow of pleasantries when he raises his head, fires a look into my eyes and says Ich komme aus Dresden.   A declaration pushed spontan-eously off his tongue:  I come from Dresden.   There is no doubt about what he’s referring to.

 

Sometimes the world disrobes, slips its dress off a shoulder, stops time for a beat.  If we look up at that moment, it’s not due to any ability of ours to pierce the darkness,  it’s the world’s brief bestowal.   The catastrophe of grace.

Anne Michaels

 

I cannot begin to describe the quality or the magnitude of pain in his eyes as he uttered that short sentence.   Words, no matter how judiciously and sensitively chosen, are bound to fall short in conveying the concentrated energy that flowed between us in that instant.   There was obviously nothing unusual about his having suffered or needing to share his experience with another.    No, but what “scalped my soul” was the lasered quality of emotion in his eyes, the immensity that had opened up without warning and lay smoldering between us, for seconds only.

Obeying the automatic impulse to say something, anything, to indicate that I have understood, I murmur  “Ah….. Dresden.”    And immediately sense the inanity of my words, any words, as I utter them.   For there is no adequate response to such a confession, such a moment, except silence and a stance of utter attending.   That is, for as long as one can bear such a catastrophic grace.   The angel of such a moment is ‘terrifying,’ as Rilke said, and requires only the instant of its lifespan to be comprehended.

The architect’s non-sequitur has evidently caught him by surprise as well.   Embarrassed, he turns away and hurriedly gropes for the frayed threads of our conversation as if nothing unusual has occurred.   It is immediately clear to me that the treasure of our conversation lies in the unfolding and witnessing of the moment that has just passed and so, before he can finish his sentence, I break in:  “Wait!…something important just happened….the weight in your voice as you pronounced that last word….and I….an American….”  

In retrospect, I see that my pauses and stutterings in a language I had learned many years before only served to highlight my sense of urgency, as if those very breaks, like the hole in a camera obscura, allowed the immensity of that extraordinary moment, or at least its bright afterglow, to slip back and reinhabit (relume?) the space between us.  

He turns to look at me again, relaxes, and with an expression of relief mixed with sadness, slowly, silently nods.    Tears fill my eyes.    He says simply:  Ich habe durchgelebt.    I lived through it.      

And I, an American. . .

I had only one truly unpleasant conversation on the Camino.   It had taken place the night before at the refugio in Ponferrada with someone who refused to see me as a fellow pilgrim and chose instead to focus on my nationality in order to deliver his tiresome philippic on the pervasiveness of American bombs and hamburgers, etcetera etcetera.    As if to balance out that disheartening episode, here, on the following day, was an anonymous man who had first-hand experience of American bombs in all their hellishness; who, with the years, had managed to forge some kind of truce with grief and had, I believe, fashioned a measure of forgiveness for those who had leveled his beautiful city in a storm of fire.    But at no point during our brief time together did I sense in him the slightest whiff of malice or desire to inflict guilt. 

Simply and without fanfare, as if whisking the sheet off the sculpture of a perfect grief, he quietly unveiled a portion of his earthly burden and, lighting it with an unforgettable look, placed it solemnly between us that we might witness it,  together,  in a perfect moment.

 

“We are, both of us, walking through the fire.   One single flame enfolds us both.   So let us together proceed with our burning.   There is no other way.”  Arms wide, we bent toward each other.   And a passing angel paused for a moment, standing imponderably on the air, to witness our embrace.     “Whenever there are two, there are three!”   He smiled at us benignly.  “May that Third, the One that reconciles, unnameable, not to be seen or known, in mercy forgive you both.”

P.L. Travers

 

 

 

in ictu trepidantis aspectus =  in the striking of a fleeting look -   

from St. Augustine’s description of his glimpse of God.  

     

 

 

#31 ___ Saturn Return: Writers – I

A continuation of Posting #29.  Events in the lives of 20 famous writers between their 28th and 30th years: the liminal period known as the Saturn Return.  

*

[29] PLATO, 428-347 BCE.  Death of his teacher, Socrates.

[31] VIRGIL, 70-19 BC.  Published The Eclogues, his first collection of poetry, written during his Saturn Return.

[30] MOSES MAIMONIDES, 1138-1204.  Completes his towering Commentary on the Mishnah (1168). 

[29] TORQUATO TASSO, 2/1544-95.  Writes Aminta (1573), a masterpiece, “perhaps the most famous pastoral play ever”.  Made TT’s reputation.

[30] TT at work on Gerusalemme liberata, the famed epic poem of the First Crusade – completed the following year (1575).

[29] CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE, 1564-93.   Murdered.

[30] WM. SHAKESPEARE, 1564-1616.   The first record of Shakespeare’s company as a functioning unit is dated Oct 8, 1594, but the company is likely to have been in existence for some time by that date. ..WS had already written a significant number of plays: the Henry VI trilogy, TG of V, Taming of S, C of E, Titus A, and Richard III.  …In the period 1594-5, he wrote LLL, and in the years that immediately followed he produced, in probable sequence, Rich II, R&J, MN’s D, (perhaps) King John, M of Venice, and 1 Henry IV. The difference between these two groups of plays is arguably qualitative; I want to suggest that it is structural as well. 1594 marks a watershed in S’s composition.

Why, if at all, should the event of S’s incorporation within an acting company have been so significant?….We do not know precisely what S was doing in the early  1590s, but he could not have found such security in the changing world of professional drama at that time. The distribution of his early plays suggests that S, like other writers, wrote for multiple companies…. The work by S that can be securely dated before 1594 bears significant hallmarks of the drama of its time…First, a tendency to borrow explicitly and widely from existing drama: that of contemporaries and that of Roman and vernacular models as well. Second, frequent recourse to co-authorship. Third, thinness of characterization beyond the central protagonist, combined with little consistency in the division of lesser roles. Such features, it could be argued, follow naturally from a relative disconnection between playwright and playing company.

Early S is sometimes seen as subject to the “anxiety of influence” – where that influence is Marlowe’s…[who died the year before].

The change that occurs in 1594 (while by no means absolute) is already evident in Richard II, probably the first work written by an established member of a stable and successful acting company.  By joining the Lord Chamberlain’s Men as one of its founding sharer’s, S set himself decisively apart from other writers, none of whom would follow him in this fixed position as a sharer, performer and writer in an acting company. A sharer was something very different from a hired man. ..The eight sharers in the L C’s Men each committed £50 to the venture. They took the major roles, had an equal portion of the profits, and had a secure place in what was intended to be a lasting settlement. These men were to remain permanent figures in S’s life – on his death he would leave them rings of mourning, just as those who died before left him legacies in their wills….Paradoxically, S stood alone precisely as a company man.  ….

From Richard II onwards the distinctive feature of S’s dramaturgy is the relationship within and between clusters of characters.       – B. van Es, Times Literary Supplement, Feb 2, 2007

[30] JOHN DONNE, 1572-1631.  Converted from Roman Catholicism to Anglicanism (1602).

[29] PIERRE CORNEILLE, 1606-84.  Medée (1635); his first tragedy; was followed by

[30] Le Cid (1636) a masterpiece of French drama.  In its day Le Cid was considered brazenly subversive. It challenged the unity of place, time and action required by early 17^th C. French theatre. PC also called it a tragicomedy at a time when tragedy and comedy were never mixed. Such was the ensuing furor, including charges of plagiarism, that Cardinal Richelieu summoned the Académie Francaise to sit in judgment (it issued a 192-page critical verdict).  PC was so shaken that he was never as daring again.   -  NY TIMES    

[28] JEAN RACINE, 1639-99.  His first 2 dramatic efforts were imitations of Corneille then, with Andromaque (1667), he took over Corneille’s position as leading tragic dramatist.  A string of masterpieces followed.

[28] PIERRE-AUGUSTIN CARON de BEAUMARCHAIS, 1732-99.    His ambitions as regards money received extraordinary encouragement in 1760 when he got to know [financier] Joseph Pâris-Duverney [in his 70s]…who was immediately dazzled by the intelligence of the young man, seduced by his wit, and bowled over by his aplomb.  Pâris-Duverney seems to have adopted him as a proxy son and took over his financial education, as well as opening his purse to him on the most lavish scale..

 [30]  If Beaumarchais were to make any mark in the world he needed—so at least he told himself—to enter the nobility, and in 1762 Pâris-Duverney provided the funds for him to buy an office as secrétaire du roi.    -  NY Review of Books, 4/26/07

[28] WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, 1770-1850. Lyrical Ballads – With Coleridge, starts the Romantic school; wrote “Tintern Abbey”.

[29] NOVALIS (Friedrich Hardenburg), 1772-1801. Death.

[29] JANE AUSTEN, 12/1775-1817.   Another death that struck JA more nearly came on her twenty-ninth birthday (1804), when her old friend Mrs. Lefroy [died]. Jane had hardly time to come to terms with this news when her father was taken ill [and died soon after].”  … “ ‘Seven years I suppose are enough to change every pore of one’s skin, & feeling of one’s mind,’ wrote Jane to [sister] Cassandra this year [1805], thinking back over the drama and upheavals they had gone through. She did not need to say that in seven years she had lost home and father. Nor did she care to spell out that she now had little prospect of marriage; and that she had almost lost hope of getting anything published. It was unnecessary to state that she was penniless, dependent on her brothers, and obliged to accept whatever living arrangements were chosen for her.       – C. Tomalin bio

[29] LEIGH HUNT, 1784-1868. After “a series of editorials attacking the prince regent and, by extension, the crown itself, resulting in Hunt’s own 2-yr prison term for libel.  The trial attracted 10,000 Hunt supporters on its opening day and earned him a Cruikshank cartoon when it was over. Through a combination of bribery and charm, the 29-year old aesthete bargained his way into a suite of rooms in the jail’s infirmary and hired a painter and carpenter to decorate them.”     – NY Times Book Review, 1/06

[29] PERCY SHELLEY, 1792-1822.  Death.

[30] JOHN CLARE, 1793-1864.   “Turning thirty, Clare had his first bouts of severe depression, on top of poverty, seven children to feed, publishing troubles, anguish at enclosure, and an unwanted move from his birthplace.”      -  American Poetry Review, 1/ 2007

[30] HONORE de BALZAC, 1799-1850. Published Le Dernier Chouan, his first signed novel (he dismissed the previous works) & the earliest work to be incorporated into La Comédie Humaine; “it marked the beginning of HB’s reputation….In a short time, B’s success was established. La Physiologie du Mariage appeared in Dec 1829. The brilliant, uninhibited book revealed an astonishing knowledge of women…But beneath its flippant surface…it had serious things to say.  B. used it to propound his whole philosophy of creative energy and the unity of the world.”    -  Maurois, Prometheus: the life of Balzac

[27-30] ALEXANDRE DUMAS père, 1802-70. His first successes were historical dramas: Henri III (1829); Christine (1830); Antony (1831); Le Tour de Nesle (1832).

[30] KARL MARX, 1818-83.  The Communist Manifesto (1848); co-author FRIEDRICH ENGELS (1820-95) was 28.

 [30] EMILY BRONTE, 1818-48.  Wuthering Heights; Death.

 

There is a destiny that shapes our ends,

                      Rough-hew them how we will.                         

Hamlet

 

*

# 30 ___ in the cathedral of Siena

A doctored photo of Bernini’s St. Jerome  – one of the most moving depictions of spiritual ecstasy in western art: his expression, the way he holds the crucifix like a violin . . . a dissolution in stone

 

#29 ___ Saturn Return : Composers – I

 

Saturn is the god of mutilated people, criminals, and cripples, but also of artistic and creative people.   M.L. von Franz

Years ago, while reading Harold Schonberg’s Lives of the Composers [HS], I was struck by how many signature works and masterpieces were produced, how many deaths, life-changing transitions and encounters occurred in the lives of these men between the ages of 28 and 30.  I began a list. Here is a sampling of 30 names from a file that has grown to many pages and which now includes sections on all branches of the arts.  I welcome any additions/corrections. 

*

[30] HENRY PURCELL, 1659-95.  Dido & Aeneas.  The “first English opera”.  HS

[28] FRANZ JOSEF HAYDN, 1732-1809. “So, though Maria Anna Aloysia Apollonia was three years his senior, not good looking, not pleasant, and not interested in music, he married her on Nov 26, 1760. In so doing he made a disastrous mistake—possibly the greatest mistake of his life. He expected marriage to provide him with a comfortable, peaceful home and with children, for whom he felt a great fondness. Neither of these hopes was fulfilled.”    Geiringer, Haydn: A Creative Life in Music.

[29] “FJH made the most significant move of his life, entering the service of the Esterházy family”.  HS            (Haydn ended his association with the family 30 years later on his second Saturn Return when the Esterházy patriarch died and he was lured to England by the impresario Salomon.)  

[30] WOLFGANG A. MOZART, 1756-91.   Meets Lorenzo da Ponte.  Le Nozze di Figaro.   

[28] ANDRE GRETRY, 1741-1813.  Le Huron. The day after its premiere, “five libretti were submitted to him.  Suddenly AG became the composer of the day.  He was to remain so for over 30 years.”    CD liner notes

 [30] Zémire et Azor.  The best known of AG’s operas.

[30] FRANZ SCHUBERT, 1797-1828.  “Many believe [Die Winterreise] to be the greatest single series of songs in the literature: sad plaintive, haunting, mounting in melancholy and even desperation to the shattering last song, Der Leiermann.  ‘Wunderlicher Alter,’ ends the song, ‘ soll ich mit dir geh’n? Willst zu meinen Lieder deiner Leier dreh’n?’ — meaning “Mysterious old man, shall I go with you? Will you crank your hurdy-gurdy to my songs?”…It is hard to escape the notion that the words…had an autobiographical significance for Schubert.”  He died a year later.  HS 

[30] VINCENZO BELLINI, 1801-35.  Norma & La Sonnambula.

[30] MIKHAIL GLINKA, 1804-57. Inspired to write A Life for a Czar – Glinka himself  wrote: “As if by magic, both the plan of the whole opera and the idea of the antithesis of Russian and Polish music, as well as many of the themes and even details of the working out—all this flashed into my head at one stroke.”;  the first work of Russian opera’s maturity.  HS

[28] FREDERIC CHOPIN, 1810-49. With George Sand in Majorca where he “all but died” (terrible weather affecting his delicate constitution).  HS

[30] ROBERT SCHUMANN, 1810-56. Marriage; composes the 2 Liederkreis cycles & Dichterliebe.

[29] GIUSEPPE VERDI, 1813-1901.  Nabucco (1842).  The young composer, who had hitherto enjoyed little more than a modest local reputation, was swept to national celebrity.

[29] RICHARD WAGNER, 1813-83.  Rienzi. “An enormous success, and RW was suddenly a famous man”. HS

[30] CESAR FRANCK, 1822-90. “Not until he was 30 years old did Franck switch from piano to organ. He specialized in church work and improvisation, and was considered to be by far the greatest improviser of his time.”   HS[29] Ludwig Schnorr von Carolsfeld, 1836-65. Tenor; the first Tristan. Died of a heart attack within weeks of the Tristan premiere.

[29] MODEST MUSSORGSKY, 1839-81. Starts work on Boris Godunov – finishes the next year.

[29] ARTHUR SULLIVAN, 1842-1900.  First collaboration with WS Gilbert.

[30] GUSTAVE CHARPENTIER, 1860-1956. Louise. “GC lives by this one work” which “became one of the most popular of French operas”.  HS

[28-30] HUGO WOLF, 1888-90. “..In a feverish burst of activity..W. produced over 170 songs, including most of those by which he is best known.”   CD program notes

[29] IRVING BERLIN, 1888-1989. Became US citizen; at 30 was drafted and during his stint at Camp Upton on Long Island, wrote Yip! Yip! Yaphank – big success which revitalized his career & “crystallized a moment of history”; ended the ‘ragtime’ period of his 20’s.     Berggreen, As Thousands Cheer

[28] GUSTAV MAHLER, 1860-1911.  Composition of First Symphony – which flowed out of him “like lava out of a volcano” (K. Blaukopf bio.)  Hired as artistic director of the Royal Hungarian Opera – 10 yr contract – encountered opposition & only stayed till 1891. 

[29] Both of GM’s parents & 1 sibling die; becomes paterfamilias of his remaining siblings (1889); makes his debut as a composer in Budapest: 3 songs & Symphony #1; begins creation of Symphony #2.

[29] UMBERTO GIORDANO, 1867-1948. Andrea Chénier (1896).

[29] AMY BEACH, 1867-1944. “Following the introduction in 1896 of her “Gaelic” Symphony, she was celebrated as one of America’s leading composers.”  CD notes

[29] RALPH VAUGHN WILLIAMS, 1872-1958. “Took a degree of Doctor of Music in Cambridge  in 1901. Shortly thereafter joined the English Folk Music Society…the turning point of his life.”  HS

[28] SERGEI RACHMANINOV, 1873-1943. 2nd Piano Concerto – “most popular work he ever composed”.  HS

[29] ARNOLD SCHOENBERG, 1874-1951.  Verklärte Nacht – “Caused a near riot at its premiere in 1903.”   Same year he returned to Vienna and began to teach.  Among his first pupils: Webern and Berg – for whom Schoenberg remained a “spiritual father” for the rest of his life.    HS

[30] MAURICE RAVEL, 1875-1937. “When he applied for the Prix de Rome in 1905 he was not permitted to compete…..There was an immediate uproar from the press, and the case became a cause célèbre.”  His first fame.   HS

[28] THOMAS BEECHAM, 1879-1961. Life-changing meeting with Delius in 1907 & became a lifetime champion of his music.  Was at the time in a period of ‘unrest, indecision and self-questioning’ [his own words] because he was uncertain about his future in music. It was during the next year, the year which also marked the real beginning of his championship of Delius’s music, that he decided once and for all to be an orchestral conductor, and that decision, he freely admitted, owed more to the encouragement and conviction of Delius than to anything else.   

[30] 1909 also brought a dramatic change in TB’s relationship with his personal circumstances.  His father had made a considerable fortune and was now anxious to support his son’s musical activities but a family quarrel had kept them apart for years.  They were reconciled and over the next decade father and son were to pour huge sums into music.   CD program notes

[28] IGOR STRAVINSKY, 1882-1971.  Firebird – “made the composer famous overnight”.

[29] Petrushka – “solidified S’s position as the coming man of European music.”  

[31] Le Sacre du Printemps premiere – “was to 1st half of 20th c. what the Beethoven 9th and Tristan were to the 19th c.”;    S. conceived the idea for Le Sacre while working on Firebird: ‘I dreamed of a scene of pagan ritual in which a chosen sacrificial virgin dances herself to death.’   HS

[29] ALBAN BERG, 1885-1935.  Starts work on Wozzeck.

[29] ERICH KORNGOLD, 1897-1957. Das Wunder der Heliane – “the most ambitious project of his entire career”; EK regarded it as his greatest work.

[28] KURT WEILL, 1900-50. Die Dreigroschenoper – KW “never duplicated the success of Die D.”   HS

 

 

Saturn  -   Ignaz Guenther

 

#28 ____ golden rule

 

 

“As you do so shall others do unto you”

Calligrapher : Mustafa Halim Ozyazici  (1898-1964)

Private collection – Istanbul

#27 ____ how light returns

 

How then does light return to the world after the eclipse of the sun?  Miraculously. Frailly.  In thin stripes. It hangs like a glass cage. It is a hoop to be fractured by a tin jar. There is a spark there. Next moment a flush of dun. Then a vapour as if earth were breathing in and out, once, twice, for the first time. Then under the dullness some one walks with a green light. Then off twists a white wraith. The woods throb with blue and green, and gradually the fields drink in red, gold, brown. Suddenly a river snatches a blue light. The earth absorbs colour like a sponge, slowly drinking water. It puts on weight; rounds itself; hangs pendent; settles and swings beneath our feet.

Virginia Woolf, The Waves

 

 

 

photo: Edward Steichen

#26 ____ Travel jots

The future safari.  A group led through a laboratory lined with test-tubes labeled ‘Rhinoceros,’ ‘Elephant,’ ‘Lion’. . .  Children point. Cameras click.

 *

Night train from Paris to Milan.  A few hours of stuffy, sweaty sleep grabbed from the long rocketing arms of the train as it ripped through France.  A night chopped off the tail end of a roller coaster career, slashed rhythmically by light, creased by uneven dreams.

*

Travel accounts like those of the law firm of Durrell, Dinesen & Markham will someday surely serve, and perhaps already do, as snapshots of a sunset.

*

Northern Ireland, Antrim Coast.  Unfortunately they have not strung up the rope bridge across to Carrick-a-Rede so that, for the moment, one can only enjoy a very windy walk along the cliffs.  “Dogs on Leads Please” says the sign.  And a good reminder too, if you don’t want your pooch blown to Dublin in an instant.  One stands on the path and the tears are whisked around the side of the head where they splash against the ears.  There is no need to breath.  Simply open the mouth and the wind rushes in and down the throat-spout, inflates the lungs like two Mickey Mouse ears and away you fly up and over the cliffs, over the wind-combed grass, and the puzzled cows.      

*

Malaysia.  The incense, the joss stick writes out one’s prayers and sweetly mingles them with all the rest of the wishes, hopes.   One’s prayers become the prayers to come become the prayers to come….each merging with the next.  We enter.  We pull the others’ prayers into our lungs. We offer ours.  We underline, with a line of smoke, our unity with the Others.                

 

#25 ____ Sink Arcimboldo

 

#24 ____ Oxford, Summer ‘85

In a fit of adolescent pique, Juliet hurls a candle at her Nurse and misses.  In the garden below:  “But soft! what light through yonder window breaks?”

*

Rousham.  No one on the grounds as I ambled along the path by the Cherwell that lazily sticks a reed-covered elbow into the park creating an ‘L’ that turns away and then skirts the grounds of the manor.  Favorite detail: the man-made rill, a serpentine thread of light, that flows through a copse of trees and leads the visitor to a pool under a dark canopy of branches: the heart of the garden.  Fragments of light filter through the branches as one stares into the water and ponders the leaves at the bottom or the crystalline reflection of the greenery overhead.

*

Binsey.  I want to know why she is not here to enjoy this with me in silence.  Perhaps I would not even be here if she were around, for it is her absence that drives me here.

*

A few fishermen plying the unknown, lines (lives) running tautly into a slow dark current…

*

I cannot plumb my loneliness.  On evenings such as this I am lowered onto a level where I get whiffs of something deeper that sends dark ripples through my thoughts but which I cannot feel strongly enough to understand.  I begin to buy chocolate again; the body craving sweetness that may undergo a metamorphosis and satisfy the soul.  I go to Binsey to watch the sunset, to rinse my sight with the beauty that settles there at twilight, to dab my eyes with water from Frideswide’s well which may open them to a joy as all-encompassing as her name.

*

The meeting with Bill C. after 2-year interval.  After some time with him I felt as though I had been listening to music; felt weak and exposed. Tears came easily out of the starvation I felt from the lack of this kind of presence. It was hard, at times, to look him in the eye; his face made me weak with its beauty.    

*

A week ago A.L. Rowse led a tour through All Souls College and left a different impression on me than the one he had made as he lectured the IBIS students at New College – a rather whiny defense of his Shakespeare ‘translations’. The humor and warmth of the man finally emerged.  His willingness to guide us and his love for All Souls very evident as he walked us around and made personal contact with quite a number of people.  His energy communicated to me physically at one point as he tightly clasped my hand and unconsciously tapped on it with his fingers as he pointed out some of the gargoyles in the Front Quad.

*

Elgin Marbles.   It is not so much the marbles themselves but the vicissitudes of stone itself that affects me today.  As Keats noted, old Time has indeed been a-wasting rudely, especially on the frieze panels of the horsemen.  They have disappeared into a rough, striated cloud, as if the very stoniness of the marble had moved outward and eclipsed them.  The illusion of reality has broken down and it moves me for some reason. The horsemen riding into the cloud… their very stony essence holds their own destruction.  I am most affected by the horses of Apollo on the East pediment, throw-ing their heads to one side as they mount joyfully into the sky. 

*

Boar’s Hill bike ride.  Lying on the grass and listening to the wheat fields on both sides that hissed and crackled as the wind swept over on its way to the distant spires of Oxenford.  Once again, as in Greece, the small red wild poppies dabbed over the wheat, providing wild spots of joy to the eye, like rare friends.

 *

            In Oxford a tutor named Lee

            Felt frustrated by each Trinity.

            He would spend the long vac

            Wanking deep in his sack

            And occasionally exit for tea.

 

            Now the librarian, part-pimp, of the Bodleian,

            Saw that Lee was spending time dawdleian;

            He cried: “Pray do not blench!

            I’ll procure thee a wench

            And turn this musty place into a bawdly Inn.”

 

            So they found a young wench yclept Tamara

            And carried out their nocturnal flim-flamera:

            They danced a lewd Morris

            While misquoting Horace

            And madly hurled books ’round the Camera.

 *

Seamus Heaney’s use of everyday words welded together into tight, polished statements in which the image or idea glows and not the polish itself. I read him as a rower who keeps his eye on a distant point and uses it to align his craft in order not to yaw all over the water.

*

The problem I have reaching the quiddity of the poem parallels my probing into self.  The groove of clarity and simple, flowing expression has yet to be opened.  To find this inner Suez rather than forever circumnavigating a dark continent.

 

#23 _____ CRB, 2002

One day in her fourth year, my wondrous niece Calli Rose crawled into a pile of cushions and quickly, instinctively, with all the self-possession and poise of a performer, assumed the most beguiling attitude and expression.  And I raced for my camera.

 

There is a river in Greece called the Kallirrhois – which means “the beautifully flowing”….

#22 ____ Butterfly Alphabet

 

cfb

 

#21 ____ Monolog of the Salmon

 

A favorite excerpt from The Story of Tuan Mac Cairill  retold by the masterful James Stephens in Irish Fairy Tales.   Best read aloud!

* * *

“Then I grew old, and in my Ulster cave close to the sea I dreamed my dream, and in it I became a salmon. The green tides of ocean rose over me and my dream, so that I drowned in the sea and did not die, for I awoke in deep waters, and I was that which I dreamed.

I had been a man, a stag, a boar, a bird and now I was a fish. In all my changes I had joy and fullness of life. But in the water joy lay deeper, life pulsed deeper. For on land or air there is always something excessive and hindering; as arms that swing at the sides of a man, and which the mind must remember. The stag has legs to be tucked away for sleep, and untucked for movement; and the bird has wings that must be folded and pecked and cared for. But the fish has but one piece from his nose to his tail. He is complete, single and unencumbered. He turns in one turn, and goes up and down and round in one sole movement.

How I flew through the soft element: how I joyed in the country where there is no harshness: in the element which upholds and gives way; which caresses and lets go, and will not let you fall. For man may stumble in a furrow; the stag tumble from a cliff; the hawk, wing-weary and beaten, with darkness round him and the storm behind, may dash his brains against a tree. But the home of the salmon is his delight, and the sea guards all her creatures.”

I became the king of the salmon, and, with my multitudes, I ranged on the tides of the world. Green and purple distances were under me: green and gold the sunlit regions above. In these latitudes I moved through a world of amber, myself amber and gold; in those others, in a sparkle of lucent blue, I curved, lit like a living jewel: and in these again, through dusks of ebony all mazed with silver, I shot and shone, the wonder of the sea.

I saw the monsters of the uttermost ocean go heaving by; and the long lithe brutes that are toothed to their tails: and below, where gloom dipped down on gloom, vast, livid tangles that coiled and uncoiled, and lapsed down steeps and hells of the sea where even the salmon could not go.

I knew the sea. I knew the secret caves where ocean roars to ocean; the floods that are icy cold, from which the nose of a salmon leaps back as at a sting; and the warm streams in which we rocked and dozed and were carried forward without motion. I swam on the outermost rim of the great world, where nothing was but the sea and the sky and the salmon; where even the wind was silent, and the water was clear as clean grey rock.

And then, far away in the sea, I remembered Ulster, and there came on me an instant, uncontrollable anguish to be there. I turned, and through days and nights I swam tirelessly, jubilantly; with terror wakening in me, too, and a whisper through my being that I must reach Ireland or die.

I fought my way to Ulster from the sea.

Ah, how that end of the journey was hard!  A sickness was racking in every one of my bones, a languor and weariness creeping through my every fibre and muscle. The waves held me back and held me back; the soft waters seemed to have grown hard; and it was as though I were surging through a rock as I strained towards Ulster from the sea.

So tired I was!  I could have loosened my frame and been swept away; I could have slept and been drifted and wafted away; swinging on grey-green billows that had turned from the land and were heaving and mounting and surging to the far blue water.

Only the unconquerable heart of the salmon could brave that end of toil. The sound of the rivers of Ireland racing down to the sea came to me in the last numb effort: the love of Ireland bore me up: the gods of the rivers trod to me in the white-curled breakers, so that I left the sea at long, long last; and I lay in sweet water in the curve of a crannied rock, exhausted, three parts dead, triumphant.”

  

 

Heart – Avery Fox

#20 ____ two signatures

 

 

signature in more Bacchantium    -    cfb

 

  

 

 signature of a funambulist    -    cfb

 

 

 

 

#19 ____ jeux de mots

 

      D’Indy, l’indigne dandy, se dandine lundi d’Inde à Dundee.       A done deed!

________

Cheerleaders of the Vatican rugby team (The Indulgences) retire to the sweet Sixtine to vote in a new member. The smoke from a burning sneaker goes up the chimney and the solemn announcement is made :  Habemus pom-pom.

______

Sniffelheim :  Underworld of the runny Norse 

____

Hymn sung after the Mexican baker botched a batch of Communion wafers :   

Hodie Christus nachos est

__

                      E lucevan le stelle sung by Jolson:                  

…Swanee per sempre  il sogno mio d’amore!

 

*

 

#18 ____ “As God be my wetness”

 

[ Excerpt from a letter written at Wat Suon Mokh, a Thai monastery ]

*

My favorite activities in the daily schedule have become the four trips down to the water tanks by the lower men’s dorm.  There are two tanks enclosed in cubicles for privacy and outside, under the trees, a large circular tank which one may use provided that the mid-section is properly covered by a sarong or bathing suit.  At 4 am, with the wake-up gong tolling outside the monk’s quarters and a contingent of monastery dogs howling in sympathetic chorus, plus the usual rooster racket, I walk down through the darkness with the aid of a flashlight for a quick wake-up splash.  I return again around 7 for a formal soaping and dousing after yoga and then at 12 after tai chi to cool off.  The same is true at 5.30 after the crucible temperatures of the afternoon.  Each trip has its own character.

At 4 it is the sharp tingle of epidermal and mental cells jolted awake with the first splash. One morning I pointed my flashlight into one of the cubicle tanks to finally check out the bottom and ascertain whether or not the dark serpent of my imaginings lay coiled there waiting to pierce my earlobe.  To my surprise I discovered several diminutive, gray, shrimp-like creatures moving slowly about whose eyes shown like tiny points of phosphorus in the flashlight beam.  Every niche and corner houses its own particular expression of life here in the tropics, and if you look closely enough there are surprises to be met at every turn.

At 7 it is still blissfully cool and the sun light slants through the trees in a relaxed way, lighting but not burnishing as yet.  A few men brush their teeth or do some washing.  A peaceful, preparatory atmosphere. 

At noon it’s a cooling down job all the way.  The bowl plunges quickly in and out of the tank. The water flies about and I trumpet and whinny and warble my water praises before flip-flopping back up the hill for the icy talcum ritual and then down to lunch.

5.30 is the best time.  Usually I have the outside tank to myself at this hour since the others are off at the kitchen having tea. The day has run its hot marathon and is taking its first cool breath.  Thoughts from my studies are usually pushing through my head but then that crowd quickly disperses and the body re-awakens as I lift up the first bowl of water, grail-like, with both hands and let the contents drop straight onto the crown of my head.  Yellow leaves float on the surface of the water amidst a host of gaunt tree shadows which writhe like black phantoms forced into a shimmying Totentanz by the dripping tap.  Twilight is beginning to lay its foundations around the feet of the trees and at the bottom of the tank there are glintings of light off submerged metal bowls and shiny leaves.  

I think of all the ways the water has served me throughout the day – awakening, refreshing, cleansing – and how it beautifully punctuates and sets into relief my thoughts and activities.  Its mysteries and reflections cause me to reflect, and I see myself then in strange but enlightening forms.  I see, for example, my dreams as tiny, bright-eyed creatures retreating to the depths under the sharp gaze of consciousness.  Or as glintings of sunken treasure.  I see the purity and flow that I seek within myself so simply demonstra-ted in so many ways during these four intervals that I confess I have begun to address the water and pray to it.  I understand more and more that a large part of what I am meant to learn here has to do with the essence of Water.

 

 

 

Photo :  Abelardo Morrell

 

Quote at top: poet Robert Kelly

#17 ____ Bosphorus

 

 

A panorama taken from the hill above my childhood home in Istanbul.  A view and a city celebrated in Chapter 1 of Ganesha’s Mouse (link on G’s M page).

 

#16 ____ Witch Portrait, in miniature

E. stands about 5′, 8″ tall and dresses in black clothing that is always draped with interesting jewelry and stones which also overflow from her purse.  A kinky pile of red hair, cut shorter on the right side and accenting the left, wildly clambers about on top of her head, framing a face of porcelain Irish skin which is all soft lines and curves.  Take two marbles of compressed sea-fog and light them with a green diamond – and you have her eyes.  Her head, with its round, upturned nose, is thrown back to the right and the soundtrack is one of laughter.     

________________

  I knew Ellen 20 years ago while I was working as a volunteer at Interface, a New Age organization in Watertown, MA that attracted a host of interesting people.  She worked as a bar tender, was a coven member in “real life” and was great company.  We knew each other only briefly – I miss her.

#15 _____ Letter from Thailand, 1991

National Holiday.  Here, in Phanat Nikhom [the town next to the large refugee camp where I was teaching English], the festivities commenced early as breakers of cacophonous, static-prickly Thai muzak began crashing over the roofs at 6.30 am and falling into the usual aural porridge of ancient transmission gargle, motorcycle buzz, rooster kyrie, and baby holler.  It sounded as if the local “Easy Listening” radio station was under siege from a gang of hysterical sound-effects men.  The DJ was going down with his mike in a last amplified huzzah as the attackers cold-bloodedly discharged all the weapons of their trade, producing an apocalyptic soundtrack of DeMillian proportions.  The siege, I am happy to report, was finally lifted around 8.   At which point we became the captive audience of an octogenarian monk chanting Buddhist sutras into a loudspeaker at the nearby wat (temple).  Suddenly I was startled from my ’spiritual reverie’ by 2-3 loud explosions in the immediate vicinity.  I was puzzled at first but, noting the heavy wind that had sprung up, deduced that some coconuts had detached from their aerial moorings and landed on the corrugated tin roofs in the backyard.  Thus, sufficiently jangled and shaken, I staggered off to town to bathe my nerves in ice coffee and to relax in the relative peace of downtown traffic.

#14 ____ ALB, 1980

 

 

#13 ____ Twilight in León

An excerpt from the Camino journal - from the draft of the final volume of Ganesha’s Mouse.

*

In Arabic, twilight (shafaq) is cognate with tenderness, compassion (shafaqa).

 

Day Twenty of the Santiago pilgrimage is a rest day in León.  Time to sleep in, have a bath, see the sights and now relax at twilight, dining on tapas and drinking plenty of water.  I sit at a street-side café and take in the scene: the cars moving past, shop signs blinking on, pedestrians with shopping bags: the after-work hour; the slow unrolling of night’s blue/foot –print on the city.  Across the street, a park filled with strolling couples and the rumpus of larricking children.  Milk of sfumato pooling under trees and benches.  Shadow setting its wedges firmly into light’s fault lines, blurring the treaties between This and That.  

Sitting here and breathing, I am aware of how much has been extracted from my body over the past several days of walking.  But, having yielded to, and now trusting implicitly, the road’s challenging ministry, I understand in my bones that pilgrimage, like the harsh sun on the grape, yields an analogous distillation of sweetness.   I know that with a persevering step I can earn the charity of the hard moments (Ashbery), the essential shafaqa of the road.    

 

Light drawing down into the points & planes where Things kiss,

into the placenta of its dying.

 

Through the door behind me spills the splendid cacophony on which socializing Spaniards appear to thrive: video games, slot machines, juke box, TV and gesticulating clientele all choraling in high decibel unison.   In the rare interval of lull, I discern the clacking of stork beaks on chimney-top nests and the cries of swallows relishing their roller-coaster banquet among the skeletal thickets of TV aerials.    A small candle flickers next to the place setting for a party of one diarist: a black pen laid beside the plate of an open note-book.  The fare: sights, sounds and thoughts—at once rich and humble—to push around on the plate; plus a café con leche, sweet and steaming, to one side.   

Countering the bursts of bird-rush, an awareness of a slowing in the current of things.  The sounds and images of the day, suspended until now in its swiftness, dropping into consciousness like silt settling after a long ride in the river’s arms.   A time to mull over the day that has passed and make some sense of its chaotic oratory.     

 

Perhaps, at the mouth of light,

in this momentary Sabbath, the day finds its voice and releases

the word it dared only whisper at dawn.

 

The simple satisfaction in simply noting all of the simple activities around me.   The senses taking them up one-by-one and laying them on the page.   The delight in naming each fragment.  With no thought given to the shape of the whole.  The building of such a list as a conscious dissection of reverie; an anatomie of a happiness.   No haste in this act of gathering, no hurry; in fact, a cultivation of slowness.  A sipping of twilight.  Aware of how each passing face, scrap of gesture, sound bite momentarily fills the runnel of pleasant exhaustion linking mind and body that has been carved through long hours of trekking under hot sun.  How that hollowing adds resonance to my list, as if fatigue had temporarily cleansed my vision of a certain quantum of desire, leaving a margin of detach-ment and tenderness between me and the object of my gaze. Further testimony of the link between amor and anatta, com-passion and emptiness.  I yield to weariness while maintaining the dowser’s vigilance I have learned to adopt when the journal is open.   I pick up the pen and an eyelid within my awareness, like the nictitating membrane of certain night creatures, blinks open. 

 

in twilight’s borderland suddenness      suddenly foreign     

enchants    the way children in crumbling light dive

onto grass in a tumbling fizz         how the eye     

bowled in bird-rush    clips a fletched arc

of swallow rising in wind quiver

drawing a wick of speed

into night’s

pupil

 

*

 

#12 ____ one shade of enlightenment

 

 

#11 _____ The Guardian

 

On the threshold of the page stands the Guardian

drinking the blood of your unwritten poem.

 

 Do not dismay;  it has kept him alive as he listened for your step

on the thirsty road.   His kiss of welcome will sing in your mind

like shrapnel;   his ferocious embrace will shake your heart,

rousing the seeds that have slept there  for so long. 

 

He is the gateway.   Step through!

and leave your journeying word on the bright altar.

 

 cfb

#10 _____ Cirauqui

The Camino de Santiago runs through Cirauqui which, at one stage of its history, was the site of a Roman garrison.   The remains of a bridge coupled to a fair stretch of original Roman road are the highlight of a visit to this Basque town whose name translates to “nest of vipers.”    Musical names of other Basque towns flanking the dotted line of the pilgrim trail:  Burguete, Espinal, Linzoáin, Agorreta, Zubiri, Irure…     I was very attracted to the doorways that I passed in the Navarrese villages, their coats-of-arms and mason markings carved in the lintels and jambs, the ironwork, the wonderfully battered and aged wooden doors.    Here is one from Cirauqui.