art-and-high-culture

[art-and-high-culture]

“Dolores” (Notre-Dame des Sept Douleurs)

BY ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE

Cold eyelids that hide like a jewel      Hard eyes that grow soft for an hour; The heavy white limbs, and the cruel      Red mouth like a venomous flower; When these are gone by with their glories,      What shall rest of thee then, what remain, O mystic and sombre Dolores,      Our Lady of Pain? Seven sorrows the priests give their Virgin;      But thy sins, which are seventy times seven, Seven ages would fail thee to purge in,      And then they would haunt thee in heaven: Fierce midnights and famishing morrows,      And the loves that complete and control All the joys of the flesh, all the sorrows      That wear out the soul. O garment not golden but gilded,      O garden where all men may dwell, O tower not of ivory, but builded      By hands that reach heaven from hell; O mystical rose of the mire,      O house not of gold but of gain, O house of unquenchable fire,      Our Lady of Pain! O lips full of lust and of laughter,      Curled snakes that are fed from my breast, Bite hard, lest remembrance come after      And press with new lips where you pressed. For my heart too springs up at the pressure,      Mine eyelids too moisten and burn; Ah, feed me and fill me with pleasure,      Ere pain come in turn. In yesterday's reach and to-morrow's,      Out of sight though they lie of to-day, There have been and there yet shall be sorrows      That smite not and bite not in play. The life and the love thou despisest,      These hurt us indeed, and in vain, O wise among women, and wisest,      Our Lady of Pain. Who gave thee thy wisdom? what stories      That stung thee, what visions that smote? Wert thou pure and a maiden, Dolores,      When desire took thee first by the throat? What bud was the shell of a blossom      That all men may smell to and pluck? What milk fed thee first at what bosom?      What sins gave thee suck? We shift and bedeck and bedrape us,      Thou art noble and nude and antique; Libitina thy mother, Priapus      Thy father, a Tuscan and Greek. We play with light loves in the portal,      And wince and relent and refrain; Loves die, and we know thee immortal,      Our Lady of Pain. Fruits fail and love dies and time ranges;      Thou art fed with perpetual breath, And alive after infinite changes,      And fresh from the kisses of death; Of languors rekindled and rallied,      Of barren delights and unclean, Things monstrous and fruitless, a pallid      And poisonous queen. Could you hurt me, sweet lips, though I hurt you?      Men touch them, and change in a trice The lilies and languors of virtue      For the raptures and roses of vice; Those lie where thy foot on the floor is,      These crown and caress thee and chain, O splendid and sterile Dolores,      Our Lady of Pain. There are sins it may be to discover,      There are deeds it may be to delight. What new work wilt thou find for thy lover,      What new passions for daytime or night? What spells that they know not a word of      Whose lives are as leaves overblown? What tortures undreamt of, unheard of,      Unwritten, unknown? Ah beautiful passionate body      That never has ached with a heart! On thy mouth though the kisses are bloody,      Though they sting till it shudder and smart, More kind than the love we adore is,      They hurt not the heart or the brain, O bitter and tender Dolores,      Our Lady of Pain. As our kisses relax and redouble,      From the lips and the foam and the fangs Shall no new sin be born for men's trouble,      No dream of impossible pangs? With the sweet of the sins of old ages      Wilt thou satiate thy soul as of yore? Too sweet is the rind, say the sages,      Too bitter the core. Hast thou told all thy secrets the last time,      And bared all thy beauties to one? Ah, where shall we go then for pastime,      If the worst that can be has been done? But sweet as the rind was the core is;      We are fain of thee still, we are fain, O sanguine and subtle Dolores,      Our Lady of Pain. By the hunger of change and emotion,      By the thirst of unbearable things, By despair, the twin-born of devotion,      By the pleasure that winces and stings, The delight that consumes the desire,      The desire that outruns the delight, By the cruelty deaf as a fire      And blind as the night, By the ravenous teeth that have smitten      Through the kisses that blossom and bud, By the lips intertwisted and bitten      Till the foam has a savour of blood, By the pulse as it rises and falters,      By the hands as they slacken and strain, I adjure thee, respond from thine altars,      Our Lady of Pain. Wilt thou smile as a woman disdaining      The light fire in the veins of a boy? But he comes to thee sad, without feigning,      Who has wearied of sorrow and joy; Less careful of labour and glory      Than the elders whose hair has uncurled: And young, but with fancies as hoary      And grey as the world. I have passed from the outermost portal      To the shrine where a sin is a prayer; What care though the service be mortal?      O our Lady of Torture, what care? All thine the last wine that I pour is,      The last in the chalice we drain, O fierce and luxurious Dolores,      Our Lady of Pain. All thine the new wine of desire,      The fruit of four lips as they clung Till the hair and the eyelids took fire,      The foam of a serpentine tongue, The froth of the serpents of pleasure,      More salt than the foam of the sea, Now felt as a flame, now at leisure      As wine shed for me. Ah thy people, thy children, thy chosen,      Marked cross from the womb and perverse! They have found out the secret to cozen      The gods that constrain us and curse; They alone, they are wise, and none other;      Give me place, even me, in their train, O my sister, my spouse, and my mother,      Our Lady of Pain. For the crown of our life as it closes      Is darkness, the fruit thereof dust; No thorns go as deep as a rose's,      And love is more cruel than lust. Time turns the old days to derision,      Our loves into corpses or wives; And marriage and death and division      Make barren our lives. And pale from the past we draw nigh thee,      And satiate with comfortless hours; And we know thee, how all men belie thee,      And we gather the fruit of thy flowers; The passion that slays and recovers,      The pangs and the kisses that rain On the lips and the limbs of thy lovers,      Our Lady of Pain. The desire of thy furious embraces      Is more than the wisdom of years, On the blossom though blood lie in traces,      Though the foliage be sodden with tears. For the lords in whose keeping the door is      That opens on all who draw breath Gave the cypress to love, my Dolores,      The myrtle to death. And they laughed, changing hands in the measure,      And they mixed and made peace after strife; Pain melted in tears, and was pleasure;      Death tingled with blood, and was life. Like lovers they melted and tingled,      In the dusk of thine innermost fane; In the darkness they murmured and mingled,      Our Lady of Pain. In a twilight where virtues are vices,      In thy chapels, unknown of the sun, To a tune that enthralls and entices,      They were wed, and the twain were as one. For the tune from thine altar hath sounded      Since God bade the world's work begin, And the fume of thine incense abounded,      To sweeten the sin. Love listens, and paler than ashes,      Through his curls as the crown on them slips, Lifts languid wet eyelids and lashes,      And laughs with insatiable lips. Thou shalt hush him with heavy caresses,      With music that scares the profane; Thou shalt darken his eyes with thy tresses,      Our Lady of Pain. Thou shalt blind his bright eyes though he wrestle,      Thou shalt chain his light limbs though he strive; In his lips all thy serpents shall nestle,      In his hands all thy cruelties thrive. In the daytime thy voice shall go through him,      In his dreams he shall feel thee and ache; Thou shalt kindle by night and subdue him      Asleep and awake. Thou shalt touch and make redder his roses      With juice not of fruit nor of bud; When the sense in the spirit reposes,      Thou shalt quicken the soul through the blood. Thine, thine the one grace we implore is,      Who would live and not languish or feign, O sleepless and deadly Dolores,      Our Lady of Pain. Dost thou dream, in a respite of slumber,      In a lull of the fires of thy life, Of the days without name, without number,      When thy will stung the world into strife; When, a goddess, the pulse of thy passion      Smote kings as they revelled in Rome; And they hailed thee re-risen, O Thalassian,      Foam-white, from the foam? When thy lips had such lovers to flatter;      When the city lay red from thy rods, And thine hands were as arrows to scatter      The children of change and their gods; When the blood of thy foemen made fervent      A sand never moist from the main, As one smote them, their lord and thy servant,      Our Lady of Pain. On sands by the storm never shaken,      Nor wet from the washing of tides; Nor by foam of the waves overtaken,      Nor winds that the thunder bestrides; But red from the print of thy paces,      Made smooth for the world and its lords, Ringed round with a flame of fair faces,      And splendid with swords. There the gladiator, pale for thy pleasure,      Drew bitter and perilous breath; There torments laid hold on the treasure      Of limbs too delicious for death; When thy gardens were lit with live torches;      When the world was a steed for thy rein; When the nations lay prone in thy porches,      Our Lady of Pain. When, with flame all around him aspirant,      Stood flushed, as a harp-player stands, The implacable beautiful tyrant,      Rose-crowned, having death in his hands; And a sound as the sound of loud water      Smote far through the flight of the fires, And mixed with the lightning of slaughter      A thunder of lyres. Dost thou dream of what was and no more is,      The old kingdoms of earth and the kings? Dost thou hunger for these things, Dolores,      For these, in a world of new things? But thy bosom no fasts could emaciate,      No hunger compel to complain Those lips that no bloodshed could satiate,      Our Lady of Pain. As of old when the world's heart was lighter,      Through thy garments the grace of thee glows, The white wealth of thy body made whiter      By the blushes of amorous blows, And seamed with sharp lips and fierce fingers,      And branded by kisses that bruise; When all shall be gone that now lingers,      Ah, what shall we lose? Thou wert fair in the fearless old fashion,      And thy limbs are as melodies yet, And move to the music of passion      With lithe and lascivious regret. What ailed us, O gods, to desert you      For creeds that refuse and restrain? Come down and redeem us from virtue,      Our Lady of Pain. All shrines that were Vestal are flameless,      But the flame has not fallen from this; Though obscure be the god, and though nameless      The eyes and the hair that we kiss; Low fires that love sits by and forges      Fresh heads for his arrows and thine; Hair loosened and soiled in mid orgies      With kisses and wine. Thy skin changes country and colour,      And shrivels or swells to a snake's. Let it brighten and bloat and grow duller,      We know it, the flames and the flakes, Red brands on it smitten and bitten,      Round skies where a star is a stain, And the leaves with thy litanies written,      Our Lady of Pain. On thy bosom though many a kiss be,      There are none such as knew it of old. Was it Alciphron once or Arisbe,      Male ringlets or feminine gold, That thy lips met with under the statue,      Whence a look shot out sharp after thieves From the eyes of the garden-god at you      Across the fig-leaves? Then still, through dry seasons and moister,      One god had a wreath to his shrine; Then love was the pearl of his oyster,      And Venus rose red out of wine. We have all done amiss, choosing rather      Such loves as the wise gods disdain; Intercede for us thou with thy father,      Our Lady of Pain. In spring he had crowns of his garden,      Red corn in the heat of the year, Then hoary green olives that harden      When the grape-blossom freezes with fear; And milk-budded myrtles with Venus      And vine-leaves with Bacchus he trod; And ye said, "We have seen, he hath seen us,      A visible God." What broke off the garlands that girt you?      What sundered you spirit and clay? Weak sins yet alive are as virtue      To the strength of the sins of that day. For dried is the blood of thy lover,      Ipsithilla, contracted the vein; Cry aloud, "Will he rise and recover,      Our Lady of Pain?" Cry aloud; for the old world is broken:      Cry out; for the Phrygian is priest, And rears not the bountiful token      And spreads not the fatherly feast. From the midmost of Ida, from shady      Recesses that murmur at morn, They have brought and baptized her, Our Lady,      A goddess new-born. And the chaplets of old are above us,      And the oyster-bed teems out of reach; Old poets outsing and outlove us,      And Catullus makes mouths at our speech. Who shall kiss, in thy father's own city,      With such lips as he sang with, again? Intercede for us all of thy pity,      Our Lady of Pain. Out of Dindymus heavily laden      Her lions draw bound and unfed A mother, a mortal, a maiden,      A queen over death and the dead. She is cold, and her habit is lowly,      Her temple of branches and sods; Most fruitful and virginal, holy,      A mother of gods. She hath wasted with fire thine high places,      She hath hidden and marred and made sad The fair limbs of the Loves, the fair faces      Of gods that were goodly and glad. She slays, and her hands are not bloody;      She moves as a moon in the wane, White-robed, and thy raiment is ruddy,      Our Lady of Pain. They shall pass and their places be taken,      The gods and the priests that are pure. They shall pass, and shalt thou not be shaken?      They shall perish, and shalt thou endure? Death laughs, breathing close and relentless      In the nostrils and eyelids of lust, With a pinch in his fingers of scentless      And delicate dust. But the worm shall revive thee with kisses;      Thou shalt change and transmute as a god, As the rod to a serpent that hisses,      As the serpent again to a rod. Thy life shall not cease though thou doff it;      Thou shalt live until evil be slain, And good shall die first, said thy prophet,      Our Lady of Pain. Did he lie? did he laugh? does he know it,      Now he lies out of reach, out of breath, Thy prophet, thy preacher, thy poet,      Sin's child by incestuous Death? Did he find out in fire at his waking,      Or discern as his eyelids lost light, When the bands of the body were breaking      And all came in sight? Who has known all the evil before us,      Or the tyrannous secrets of time? Though we match not the dead men that bore us      At a song, at a kiss, at a crime — Though the heathen outface and outlive us,      And our lives and our longings are twain — Ah, forgive us our virtues, forgive us,      Our Lady of Pain. Who are we that embalm and embrace thee      With spices and savours of song? What is time, that his children should face thee?      What am I, that my lips do thee wrong? I could hurt thee — but pain would delight thee;      Or caress thee — but love would repel; And the lovers whose lips would excite thee      Are serpents in hell. Who now shall content thee as they did,      Thy lovers, when temples were built And the hair of the sacrifice braided      And the blood of the sacrifice spilt, In Lampsacus fervent with faces,      In Aphaca red from thy reign, Who embraced thee with awful embraces,      Our Lady of Pain? Where are they, Cotytto or Venus,      Astarte or Ashtaroth, where? Do their hands as we touch come between us?      Is the breath of them hot in thy hair? From their lips have thy lips taken fever,      With the blood of their bodies grown red? Hast thou left upon earth a believer      If these men are dead? They were purple of raiment and golden,      Filled full of thee, fiery with wine, Thy lovers, in haunts unbeholden,      In marvellous chambers of thine. They are fled, and their footprints escape us,      Who appraise thee, adore, and abstain, O daughter of Death and Priapus,      Our Lady of Pain. What ails us to fear overmeasure,      To praise thee with timorous breath, O mistress and mother of pleasure,      The one thing as certain as death? We shall change as the things that we cherish,      Shall fade as they faded before, As foam upon water shall perish,      As sand upon shore. We shall know what the darkness discovers,      If the grave-pit be shallow or deep; And our fathers of old, and our lovers,      We shall know if they sleep not or sleep. We shall see whether hell be not heaven,      Find out whether tares be not grain, And the joys of thee seventy times seven,      Our Lady of Pain.

[art-and-high-culture]

Sol Aurum of Louis XIV, The Sun King and Builder of Versailles

[art-and-high-culture]

[art-and-high-culture]

“Realize your essence, and you shall witness the End Without Ending.”  —  Daodejing

[art-and-high-culture]

“Day In Autumn”

By Rainer Maria Rilke AFTER THE summer's yield, Lord, it is time to let your shadow lengthen on the sundials and in the pastures let the rough winds fly. As for the final fruits, coax them to roundness. Direct on them two days of warmer light to hale them golden toward their term, and harry the last few drops of sweetness through the wine. Whoever's homeless now, will build no shelter; who lives alone will live indefinitely so, waking up to read a little, draft long letters, and, along the city's avenues, fitfully wander, when the wild leaves loosen.

[art-and-high-culture]

“Our Vortex”

By Wyndham Lewis 

OUR VORTEX is not afraid of the Past: it has forgotten its existence.

Our vortex regards the Future as as sentimental as the Past.

The Future is distant, like the Past, and therefore sentimental.

The mere element “Past” must be retained to sponge up and absorb our melancholy.

Everything absent, remote, requiring projection in the veiled weakness of the mind, is sentimental.

The Present can be intensely sentimental—especially if you exclude the mere element “Past.”

Our vortex does not deal in reactive Action only, nor identify the Present with numbing displays of vitality.

The new vortex plunges to the heart of the Present.

The chemistry of the Present is different to that of the Past. With this different chemistry we produce a New Living Abstraction.

The Rembrandt Vortex swamped the Netherlands with a flood of dreaming.

The Turner Vortex rushed at Europe with a wave of light.

We wish the Past and Future with us, the Past to mop up our melancholy, the Future to absorb our troublesome optimism.

With our Vortex the Present is the only active thing.

Life is the Past and the Future.

The Present is Art.

[art-and-high-culture]

“Hugh Selwyn Mauberley”

By Ezra Pound 

FOR THREE YEARS, out of key with his time, He strove to resuscitate the dead art Of poetry; to maintain “the sublime” In the old sense. Wrong from the start— No, hardly, but, seeing he had been born In a half savage country, out of date; Bent resolutely on wringing lilies from the acorn; Capaneus; trout for factitious bait: “Idmen gar toi panth, os eni Troie Caught in the unstopped ear; Giving the rocks small lee-way The chopped seas held him, therefore, that year. His true Penelope was Flaubert, He fished by obstinate isles; Observed the elegance of Circe’s hair Rather than the mottoes on sun-dials. Unaffected by “the march of events,” He passed from men’s memory in l’an trentiesme De son eage; the case presents No adjunct to the Muses’ diadem. {II} The age demanded an image Of its accelerated grimace, Something for the modern stage, Not, at any rate, an Attic grace; Not, not certainly, the obscure reveries Of the inward gaze; Better mendacities Than the classics in paraphrase! The “age demanded” chiefly a mould in plaster, Made with no loss of time, A prose kinema, not, not assuredly, alabaster Or the “sculpture” of rhyme. III The tea-rose, tea-gown, etc. Supplants the mousseline of Cos, The pianola “replaces” Sappho’s barbitos. Christ follows Dionysus, Phallic and ambrosial Made way for macerations; Caliban casts out Ariel. All things are a flowing, Sage Heracleitus says; But a tawdry cheapness Shall reign throughout our days. Even the Christian beauty Defects—after Samothrace; We see to kalon Decreed in the market place. Faun’s flesh is not to us, Nor the saint’s vision. We have the press for wafer; Franchise for circumcision. All men, in law, are equals. Free of Peisistratus, We choose a knave or an eunuch To rule over us. A bright Apollo, tin andra, tin eroa, tina theon, What god, man, or hero Shall I place a tin wreath upon? IV These fought, in any case, and some believing, pro domo, in any case ... Some quick to arm, some for adventure, some from fear of weakness, some from fear of censure, some for love of slaughter, in imagination, learning later ... some in fear, learning love of slaughter; Died some pro patria, non dulce non et decor” ... walked eye-deep in hell believing in old men’s lies, then unbelieving came home, home to a lie, home to many deceits, home to old lies and new infamy; usury age-old and age-thick and liars in public places. Daring as never before, wastage as never before. Young blood and high blood, Fair cheeks, and fine bodies; fortitude as never before, frankness as never before, disillusions as never told in the old days, hysterias, trench confessions, laughter out of dead bellies. There died a myriad, And of the best, among them, For an old bitch gone in the teeth, For a botched civilization. Charm, smiling at the good mouth, Quick eyes gone under earth’s lid, For two gross of broken statues, For a few thousand battered books.

[art-and-high-culture]

“At Melville’s Tomb”

By Hart Crane

OFTEN BENEATH the wave, wide from this ledge The dice of drowned men’s bones he saw bequeath An embassy. Their numbers as he watched, Beat on the dusty shore and were obscured. And wrecks passed without sound of bells, The calyx of death’s bounty giving back A scattered chapter, livid hieroglyph, The portent wound in corridors of shells. Then in the circuit calm of one vast coil, Its lashings charmed and malice reconciled, Frosted eyes there were that lifted altars; And silent answers crept across the stars. Compass, quadrant and sextant contrive No farther tides ... High in the azure steeps Monody shall not wake the mariner. This fabulous shadow only the sea keeps.

[art-and-high-culture]

“The Stranger”

By Rudyard Kipling 

THE STRANGER within my gate,  He may be true or kind, But he does not talk my talk—  I cannot feel his mind. I see the face and the eyes and the mouth,    But not the soul behind. The men of my own stock  They may do ill or well, But they tell the lies I am wonted to,  They are used to the lies I tell.   And we do not need interpreters  When we go to buy and sell. The Stranger within my gates,  He may be evil or good, But I cannot tell what powers control—    What reasons sway his mood; Nor when the Gods of his far-off land  Shall repossess his blood. The men of my own stock,  Bitter bad they may be,   But, at least, they hear the things I hear,  And see the things I see; And whatever I think of them and their likes  They think of the likes of me. This was my father’s belief   And this is also mine: Let the corn be all one sheaf—  And the grapes be all one vine, Ere our children’s teeth are set on edge  By bitter bread and wine.

[art-and-high-culture]

“The Green Mountaineer”

By John Greenleaf Whittier

Ho—all to the borders! Vermonters, come down, With your britches of deerskin and jackets of brown; With your red woolen caps and your moccasins come, To the gathering summons of trumpet and drum. Come down with your rifle! Let gray wolf and fox Howl on in the shadow of primitive rocks; Let bear feed securely from pig-pen and stall; Here's two-legged game for your powder and ball. Then cheer, cheer, The Green Mountaineer! Then cheer The Green Mountaineer! On the south came the Hessians, our land to police; And armed for the battle while canting of peace; On our east came the British, that red-coated band To hang up our leaders and eat up our land. Ho—all to the rescue! For Satan shall work No gain for the legions of Sas'nid and Turk! They claim our possessions—the pitiful knaves— The tribute we pay shall be prisons and graves! Then cheer, cheer, The Green Mountaineer! Then cheer The Green Mountaineer! We owe no allegiance, we bow to no throne, Our ruler is law, and the law is our own; Our leaders themselves are our own fellow men, Who can handle the sword and the scythe and the pen Hurrah for Vermont! For the land that we till Must have sons to defend her from valley and hill Our vow is recorded — our banner unfurled, In the name of Vermont we defy all the world! Then cheer, cheer, The Green Mountaineer! Then cheer The Green Mountaineer!

[art-and-high-culture]

“The Kiss” 

— Gustav Klimt, 1908

[art-and-high-culture]

[art-and-high-culture]

“Et in Arcadia Ego”  

— Nicolas Poussin, 1639

[art-and-high-culture]

“My lover comes to me with a rose on her bosom The moon is dancin' purple all through her black hair And her ladies-in-waiting, she'll stand 'neath my window And the sun will rise soon on the false and the fair

She tells me she comes from my mother the mountain And her skin fits her tightly and her lips do not lie She silently slips from her throat a medallion Slowly she twirls it in front of my eyes   

I watch her, I love her, and I long for to touch her The satin she's wearin' is shimmering blue And outside my window, her ladies are sleeping My dogs are gone hunting, their howling is through  

So I reach for her hand and her eyes turn to poison And her hair turns to splinters and her flesh turns to brine She leaps across the room, she stands in the window Screams that my first-born will surely be blind

And she throws herself out to the black of the nightfall She's parted her lips, but she makes not a sound I fly down the stairway and I run to the garden No trace of my true love is there to be found

So walk these hills lightly and watch who you're lovin' By mother the mountain, I swear that it's true And love not a woman with hair black as midnight And her dress made of satin all shimmering blue 

Ah my lover comes to me with a rose on her bosom The moon's dancing purple all through her black hair And her ladies-in-waiting, she'll stand 'neath my window And the sun will rise soon on the false and the fair.” 

— Townes van Zandt, “Our Mother the Mountain”

Gustav Klimt (1862-1918) Hygeia

[art-and-high-culture]

“Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites.” 

— Edmund Burke, A Vindication of Natural Society

The Triumph of Virtue over Vice, 1556, Paolo Veronese

Medium: oil,canvas

[art-and-high-culture]

“The spirit that never dies is called the Mysterious Feminine. Although she becomes the whole universe, her immaculate purity is never lost. Although she assumes countless forms, her true identity remains intact. The gateway to the mysterious female is called the root of creation.” — Daodejing, Verse 6

Balcony, Eugene de Blaas

Medium: oil,canvas

[art-and-high-culture]

On Dedication

"Nihil aliud scit necessitas quam vincere." — Syrus