Category: Poetry

Maldoror ambivalent face à la jeune fille, chez Lautréamont

Frans De Geetere - Les Chants de Maldoror
Frans De Geetere – illustration pour Les Chants de Maldoror (vol. 2, p. 6), Paris, Blanchetière (1927)

Dans l’article « Les Chants de Maldoror, par Isidore Ducasse, Comte de Lautréamont », j’ai présenté cette œuvre déroutante, tournant autour du personnage de Maldoror, anti-héros révolté se déclarant maudit et en guerre contre Dieu et l’humanité. Au fil des pages l’auteur nous livre de façon décousue les pensées et imprécations de cet homme, et occasionnellement ses actions, certaines assez insignifiantes, d’autres spectaculaires, comme collaborer au carnage d’une femelle requin avant de faire l’amour avec elle (Chant 2, strophe 13). CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…

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The Proposals, by Nathalia Crane

Ruth Jonas - "The Proposals"
Ruth Jonas – illustration for “The Proposals” in Venus Invisible (1928)

In 1928 appeared Nathalia Crane’s fourth collection of poetry, Venus Invisible and Other Poems. Again, the title comes from one of the poems, but in this case not a noteworthy one. In my opinion, the most important work in the book is the long poem “Tadmor,” a strange oriental love tale with dreams and premonitions, ending in mutual worship; it is organised like an opera, alternating story, dialogues and chorus songs. In this book, the 15-year-old author shows her fully adult sophistication, which she had displayed growingly in her previous collections of verses. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…

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Red Poppy, by Aleister Crowley

Cicely Mary Barker - Fairy-Rings: The Poppy Fairy
Cicely Mary Barker – Fairy-Rings: The Poppy Fairy

From the collection Alice: An Adultery, a beautiful love poem for Mary Alice Rogers, a married woman with whom Crowley had a passionate affair in Hawaii. In the privately published 1903 edition, there was an 11th stanza , I reproduce it below. In the 1905 edition published by the Society for the Propagation of Religious Truth, it was titled “The Poem”, so in the 1906 edition of Crowley’s Collected Works, there was a footnote to the title, indicating “The poem in question.” CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…

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The Advisers, by Nathalia Crane

Jagubal - girl with lorito
Jagubal – girl with lorito, San Martin, Peru (2009) – from flickr, 22 January 2010

In the poem “The First Reformer” from Lava Lane, and Other Poems, Nathalia Crane told of a hummingbird who by his sweet words, kisses and caresses, persuades flowers not to be ashamed of their nudity. Now in the following poem from The Singing Crow and Other Poems, a young girl is taunted by an older girl “of the narrow shin” for openly indulging in the pleasures of love. But she finds a good advice from a philosopher parrot, a “painted Plato” who instructs her not to grieve because of the reproaches of narrow-minded people: “Love and the rites it sentries / Only the vexed condemn; / There are the lower branches— / There is the goblin stem.” CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…

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Poetic Eros

Odilon Redon - The birth of Venus
Odilon Redon – The birth of Venus (1912) – from WikiArt

In the post “Components of Love” I presented the three types of love and friendship according to the ancient Greeks:

  • Eros is sexual love, generally driven by beauty; it is discriminating and it can be versatile, blooming or withering fast.
  • Storge is natural love, as it exists between members of a family, or the love of parents for children; contrarily to Eros, it is unconditional and long-lasting, and it grows slowly.
  • Philia is friendship, generally within a group, mediated by activities shared in common; it includes also philanthropy and humanitarian work.

The ancient Greeks also used the word Agape for affection and tenderness, similar to Storge. Then in Christianity, this word evolved to mean a purely spiritual, selfless and undemanding love embracing all humanity; in fact, such an ideal love is extremely rare in real human beings. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…

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