Throughout their adult life, Katharine Bradley and her niece Edith Cooper lived together as lovers and, under the pen name Michael Field, wrote jointly poetry and drama. One generally assumes that their love started in a Platonic mode when Edith was a teenager, and became sexual when she reached adulthood. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…
The English writer Ernest Christopher Dowson (1867–1900) remains famous for his poetry, but he also wrote novels (with Arthur Moore) and short stories, and translated in English several works of French literature. He belonged to the group of writers and artists who called themselves ‘Decadents,’ ‘the movement’ or ‘fin de siècle. With a vague feeling of the decay of civilisation and of its imminent collapse, they rejected Victorian moralism and sentimentality, and strove for the beauty of art for art’s sake. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…
Voici mon troisième choix dans Les matins d’or et les nuits bleues, la première partie du recueil Les pommiers en fleur : idylles de France et de Normandie (1891). Le poète tente d’éveiller son aimée qui se complaît dans le sommeil, il la gronde comme une enfant. Il l’invite à l’accompagner dans les bois pour y célébrer leur amour. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…
Although Ashby-Sterry loved girls of various ages, he clearly stated his preference for 16-year-old ones, while he often called younger ones ‘pet.’ This shows that he did not love them in the same manner as older ones, and in some way he considered them as inferior beings. Sometimes, he presented them as little animals. For instance one poem in the collection Boudoir Ballads is titled “Little Chinchilla” (with subtitle “A Symphony in Fur”), and on first reading one wonders whether it is about a girl or a little furry animal; now, a poem in his other collection The Lazy Minstrel, titled “January,” confirms that he writes about a girl: one reads “A merry maiden” and “To Miss Chinchilla you confide, / How proud you are to be her guide.” Another poem in the latter collection, “The Kitten,” explicitly compares a 10-year-old girl to a kitten. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…
The English poet and playwright Katharine Harris Bradley was born on October 26 or 27, 1846, the second daughter of Charles Bradley, a tobacco merchant, and Emma Harris. Her father died in 1848. Her elder sister Emma, born in 1835, married John Robert Cooper in 1860. Their first daughter Edith Emma Cooper was born on January 12, 1862. After the birth of her second daughter Amy Katharine in 1865, Emma Cooper became invalid for life. In July 1867, Katharine Bradley and her widowed mother joined the Cooper family, and Katharine took care of the household and her two nieces. Her mother Emma Harris died in 1868, leaving Katharine as legal guardian of Edith and Amy. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…
Dans Les matins d’or et les nuits bleues, la première partie du recueil Les pommiers en fleur : idylles de France et de Normandie d’Émile Blémont (1891), j’ai choisi ce beau poème, plein de tendresse, où l’auteur chante l’éveil et l’amour envers sa « petite inspiratrice », avec qui il veut être « comme Dante et Béatrice » et cueillir des fleurs qui ne se faneront jamais. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…
The poet offers his beloved a necklace with sixteen white pearls, one for each of her years. Indeed, this age is the one Ashby-Sterry prefers in girls. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…
Wilfrid and Alice Meynell had eight children: Sebastian, Monica, Everard, Madeleine, Viola, Vivian, Olivia, and Francis. In the “Biographical Note” introducing the book Selected Poems of Francis Thompson, Wilfrid Meynell writes of Francis Thompson:
The children of the family in London, into which he was received, were the subjects of Poppy, The Making of Viola, To Monica Thought Dying, To my Godchild—all in the first book of Poems; while two of their number have a noble heritage in Sister Songs. Constant to the end, when he died some newly pencilled lines were found, addressed “To Olivia,” a yet younger sister, recalling the strains of fifteen years before.
Indeed, this poem dedicated to the youngest Meynell daughter, born in 1890, was published by Wilfrid Meynell several years after Thompson’s death in 1907. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…
Un soleil sombre illumine le cœur des amants hérétiques qui créent le bonheur et l’harmonie par l’union intime des contraires. Leurs yeux brûlants perçoivent un avenir étrange et beau. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…
Voici mon troisième extrait du recueil Comme je te le dis ! publié par la Pédagogie Freinet en 1978 chez Casterman. Tout comme le précédent, ce poème sans titre a été écrit par une fille de l’école de Mornac (Charente). Sa beauté repose sur une grande simplicité, où le sentiment s’exprime directement, sans détour. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…
