Voici un deuxième poème du recueil Chansons, une joyeuse évocation des jeux d’amour à l’occasion de la collecte des fleurs et des fruits. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…
Fleurs et fruits, par Jean-Baptiste Clément
Settela, the girl with the headscarf
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…
Romance à la jeune Nancy, par le Chevalier Aude
Joseph Aude (dit le Chevalier) est un poète et auteur dramatique français, né le 10 décembre 1755 à Apt et mort le 5 octobre 1841 à Paris. Familier de Buffon, il a écrit la biographie de celui-ci. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…
Lassie, I Love Thee, by John Clare
Here is another charming love poem by John Clare, full of freshness, from his beautiful collection Asylum Poems. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…
Nous n’irons plus au bois, par Jean-Baptiste Clément
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
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…
Thélème sans tabou
La volonté intérieure, θέλημα, libre de tout préjugé, doit nous guider. Elle fera triompher son amour. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…
The Maiden I Love, by John Clare
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…
Child-love and nostalgia in Ernest Dowson’s Jadis
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…
Les Amourettes, par Arnaud Berquin
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…