Rudolf Breslauer – Settela Steinbach (1944) – from Romedia Foundation
The above picture shows a girl looking terrified as she is locked inside a goods wagon in a train bound for the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp. She wears a headscarf made from a torn sheet, because the Nazis shaved her head under the pretext of preventing lice. It was taken from a film shot on May 19, 1944 in the Westerbork transit camp (The Netherlands) by a Jewish prisoner, Rudolf Werner Breslauer, on the orders of the commander of the camp, Albert Konrad Gemmeker. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…
Edward Matthew Hale – The Mermaid’s Rock – from fineartamerica.com
Dowson’s collection of poems Decorations (1899) contained verses, which were reproduced in The Poems and Prose of Ernest Dowson, With a Memoir by Arthur Symons (1905), available as Project Gutenberg Ebook, and in modern Internet collections such as The Poems of Ernest Dowsont on ELCore.Net, the website of E. L. Core. It is not well-known that the collection ended with five poems in prose. They seem to have been written in June 1899, while Dowson was giving the last touch to the publication; indeed he mentions them in two letters to his publisher Leonard Smithers dated that month (see The Letters of Ernest Dowson, no. 397 and 398, pages 414–415). These five short texts are full of sadness and pessimism. Indeed, Dowson was deeply disappointed with his family because of disputes over the inheritance from his deceased parents, his heart was broken as his beloved Adelaide had married another man, and he was sick with tuberculosis, which would kill him a few months later. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…
William-Adolphe Bouguereau – Au Bord du Ruisseau (1875) – from Art Renewal Center
Asylum Poems, the fabulous collection of verses written by John Clare when he was interned in an lunatic asylum, is a real treasure full of beautiful love poems. I give here a charming one, devoted to a young beauty seen walking among the wild flowers of the mountain. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…
Julia Margaret Cameron – May du Maurier (1871) – from J. Paul Getty Museum
According to Desmond Flower, the poem Jadis was written on August 24, 1889, and it was then called “Rondeau.” It seems that it was first published in Dowson’s volume Decorations in 1899. The title is the French translation of the poem’s first word “Erewhile.” CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…
František Kupka – Girl shading her eyes (c.1908) – J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
I give here yet another love poem from Asylum Poems, the fascinating collection of verses that John Clare composed when he was interned in an insane asylum because of his schizophrenic hallucinations. Contrasting with his numerous sentimental poems, this piece is sensuous and wild; behind poetic images—and a silence—hides the poet’s fullness of heat and passion. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…
Pati Bannister – Angel Child – from madamkartinki.blogspot.fr
Dowson’s poem Transition was probably first published in the volume Decorations in 1899. According to Desmond Flower, Dowson wrote it on December 26, 1890 (thus a few weeks after Ad Domnulam Suam, of October 19, 1890). In a letter to Arthur Moore dated the same day, he wrote (the misspelling of the name “Carroll” is Dowson’s, not mine): CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…
Removal of photographs of works by Duchamp, Michelangelo and Caravaggio from an exhibition – from Newcastle Herald (1984)
What spirit is so empty and blind, that it cannot recognise the fact that the foot is more noble than the shoe, and skin more beautiful than the garment with which it is clothed?
— Michelangelo
In recent years, Pigtails in Paint suffered repeated attempts at censorship, and Poets and Lovers became a “collateral damage” of these attacks. Today I will discuss the first source of censorship, so-called “child protection” organisations. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…
Pati Bannister – Hollyhocks – from madamkartinki.blogspot.com
This is probably one of the best-known poems of John Clare. Again, it comes from the collection Asylum Poems that he wrote while he was interned in a lunatic asylum. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…
In a recent post, I gave some excerpts of love letters exchanged by Katharine Bradley and Edith Cooper in 1885, the year they celebrated their private marriage. Today, I give two beautiful short quotes from further love letters. Again, they are taken from their complete correspondence edited by Sharon Bickle, and I will refer to these letters by their number in that collection. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…
