Author: Christian

Author for Pigtails in Paint since September 2014; associate editor since November 2015. Administrator of the late Agapeta on WordPress (2015/01/09 - 2019/03/01), and now of Poets and Lovers.

Yvonne of Brittany, by Ernest Dowson

In his lifetime, Ernest Dowson published two volumes of poetry, Verses in June 1896, and Decorations: in Verse and Prose in December 1899, two months before his death. Except the poems in prose at the end of Decorations, they were included in The Poems and Prose of Ernest Dowson, With a Memoir by Arthur Symons, available on the web as a Project Gutenberg Ebook, and they can also be seen on ELCore.Net, Website of E. L. Core.

The volume Verses is dedicated to Adelaide Foltinowicz, a Polish girl born in 1878, with whom Dowson was in love. Having had hopes for a common future, many poems have a light and happy side, contrasting with the dark ones at the end of Decorations, written in bitter disappointment after Adelaide’s marriage with another man. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…

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John Clare’s Asylum Poems

William Hilton - John Clare
William Hilton – John Clare (1820) – National Portrait Gallery, London, NPG 1469

John Clare (b. July 13, 1793; d. May 20, 1864) was an English farm labourer and poet. According to his biographer Jonathan Bate, Clare was “the greatest labouring-class poet that England has ever produced. No one has ever written more powerfully of nature, of a rural childhood, and of the alienated and unstable self.” CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…

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Le cher parfum, par Jean Aicard

Daniel F. Gerhartz - The daughter of the nature - a woman
Daniel F. Gerhartz – The daughter of the nature – a woman – from Wikiart

Provenant du recueil de vers Le Livre d’Heures de l’Amour (1887), voici un beau poème brûlant de sensualité. Goûter la bien-aimée comme un fruit, respirer son corps aux odeurs envoûtantes d’herbes et de fleurs, le désir du poète se pare de parfums, et quand la belle n’est pas là, ceux-ci viennent hanter ses souvenirs. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…

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Back Door Man

Howlin' Wolf
Howlin’ Wolf

Chester Arthur Burnett (1910–1976), known as Howlin’ Wolf, is one of the greatest American blues singers. In 1960 Willie Dixon (1915–1992), the bass player in his band, wrote for him the song “Back Door Man,” which was recorded in Chicago in June, then released in 1961 as the B-side to “Wang Dang Doodle.” CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…

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A London phantom, by R. Thurston Hopkins

London fog
London fog

As it describes Ernest Dowson’s look and behaviour, this strange text has been included in the edition by Flower & Maas of Dowson’s letters. The ghost-like appearance of a repulsive man who seems a living dead carrying mould from his own grave, but who also notices every movement of Dowson and Thurston, seems quite surrealistic. But it is also a dire testimony to the poverty and misery that existed in London at the end of the 19th century.

This text relating events at the end of the 1890’s is undated, but it mentions the 1932 film Cynara directed by King Vidor, it was thus written more than 30 years after the incident. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…

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Une allée au Luxembourg, par Gérard de Nerval

Yuri Krotov – Fille au parapluie rouge (2003) – provient de artyurikrotov.com

L’écrivain et poète Gérard de Nerval, de son vrai nom Gérard Labrunie, est une figure majeure du romantisme français. Né le 22 mai 1808 à Paris, il perdit à deux ans et demi sa mère, qu’il n’avait pratiquement jamais vue, et cet évènement semble avoir durablement marqué son psychisme. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…

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