Nous n’irons plus au bois, par Jean-Baptiste Clément

Trent Gudmundsen – A Spring Morning

Le chansonnier Jean-Baptiste Clément, né à Boulogne-sur-Seine (Boulogne-Billancourt) le 31 mai 1836 et mort à Paris le 23 février 1903, est connu pour ses chansons « Le Temps des cerises » et « La Semaine sanglante ». Militant ouvrier, il participa à la Commune de Paris, et beaucoup de ses chansons denoncent la misère des prolétaires ainsi que l’avidité et la cruauté des classes possédantes. D’autres, plus joyeuses, exaltent l’amour, la nature et les plaisirs de la vie. La musique de nombre de ses chansons a été composée par Darcier. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…

The Fortunate Islands, by Ernest Dowson

Edward Matthew Hale - The Mermaid's Rock
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…

Les Amourettes, par Arnaud Berquin

Jules-Alexis Muenier - La ronde des enfants
Jules-Alexis Muenier – La ronde des enfants (1902) – provient de Tutt’Art

Arnaud Berquin, né à Bordeaux le 25 septembre 1749 et mort à Paris le 21 décembre 1791, est un écrivain, dramaturge et pédagogue français. Il débuta par deux recueils poétiques, les Idylles (1775) et les Romances (1776), et se spécialisa ensuite dans la littérature pour la jeunesse ; il est connu en particulier pour L’Ami des enfants, publié en 12 volumes de 1782 à 1783. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…

Maid of the Wilderness, by John Clare

František Kupka - Girl shading her eyes
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…

Transition, by Ernest Dowson

Pati Bannister - Angel Child
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…