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Friday 31 July 2009

Dark Continent


.


File:Schiele - Die Tänzerin Moa - 1911.jpg



The journey in darkness has a trivial jargon

For the cans of black coffee and ears like sprigs

Of an intelligent listening flower

This agitation is a kind of heavy wood

That you could hold a candle to

And never alter its unendurableness

There is nothing to do about voyaging

Fears except to jerk their brilliance

Out ahead of you like a rushlight like this

But what is illumined in the jungle large

Is a girl in narrow white sashes

Seated in your room at your writing desk






Moa the Dancer: Egon Schiele, 1911

12 comments:

human being said...

how beautifully this journey of discovering a soul is pictured...


"This agitation is a kind of heavy wood
That you could hold a candle to
And never alter its unendurableness"


one of the most effective examples of say something indirectly i've ever read...

it really burns much more!

human being said...

*of saying something indirectly

TC said...

Sometimes lately it's occurred to me that the directions dictated by our intentions are not the best directions for either our poems or our lives (well, let me speak for myself anyway). And that has led to the further thought or perhaps understanding that the things we have said indirectly may well have been the things that revealed to us what we really meant to be saying--the true directions we should have taken.

Am I saying the oblique and the parabolic are in the end paradoxically the most direct ways to come to the truth? Maybe. And your poems, and the tradition of poetry in which they are written, have contributed to my recent thinking about this. They say it's never too late to begin learning...

Mariana Soffer said...

Very beautifull inner trip, I like the discover of oneself like this. And please let me know who's drawing is it, cause it is so so soso beautifull, I want one like that to hang it in my bedroom now.
By tom hope you are doing all right

Anonymous said...

Darkness and light. Just in the drawing. A pale image of the body and strong dark eyes crowning the silhouette.

Beautiful.

TC said...

Mariana, Lucy,

Thank you for your vision.

Yes, Lucy, the poem was about darkness and light.

The amazing Schiele drawing is one of many studies he made of Moa the Dancer. This one probably did not take him very long, he captured the essence and then left it. There is a dark continent behind those eyes.

Schiele was amazingly prolific. When imprisoned several weeks for pornography he completed twelve paintings of prison interiors. When drafted into the Great War, he did paintings if not in the trenches then not far from them. He died at 28 and left behind hundreds and hundreds of astonishing paintings and drawings.

Mariana, lovely as it would be to own this sketch, I think the price might be a bit prohibitive. I watch the Schiele auction prices. Last year one of his pieces sold for over ten million dollars. Not long ago Christie's sold a painting (also of Moa) for over five million and a number of drawings in the two to three million range.

And not that it will do Schiele any good, but his work is probably fair value at that. There are no more than a few true geniuses in any era of art. He was one.

human being said...

only those who teach honestly can learn truly...

thanks dear friend for your generous mention... you are a very honest teacher...

really enjoy reading your works...



and re: indirect expression,


we should get lost... to find...

:)

TC said...

Hb,


Forgive me for being reminded of an old romantic ballad standard, performed most movingly by the late Chet Baker:

"Let’s get lost, lost in each other’s arms
Let’s get lost, let them send out alarms
And though they’ll think us rather rude
Let’s tell the world we’re in that crazy mood..."

Mariana Soffer said...

Oh my god that song is amazing! I love you tome, my favourite most romatic song ever is from this trumpeter, it is called "I get along without you very well", and it is pretty sad indeed.
Kiss

TC said...

Para Mariana:

Chet: I Get Along Without You Very Well (en la ventana peligrosa)

Besos, T

human being said...

both songs are so sublime...

thanks my dear friends, Tom and Mariana, for sharing them...

TC said...

HB,

Lovely to hear from you, you are in my thoughts every night...