Tag: death

Claire, par Jean Aicard

Photographie post mortem
Photographie post mortem – provient de VK

Il y a une semaine, j’ai publié le poèmes « La Reine de Mai » provenant du recueil Le Livre d’Heures de l’Amour (1887), à propos d’une reine de mai appelée Claire, qu’il aimait et qui mourut dans son enfance.

Treize ans plus tôt, en 1874, Aicard avait publié chez Alphonse Lemerre le recueil Poèmes de Provence, qui obtint le Prix Montyon de l’Académie française et fit de lui le poète de cette région. On y trouve un poème assez semblable, consacré à son amour d’enfance, morte trop tôt. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…

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John Clare’s Asylum Poems

William Hilton - John Clare
William Hilton – John Clare (1820) – National Portrait Gallery, London, NPG 1469

John Clare (b. July 13, 1793; d. May 20, 1864) was an English farm labourer and poet. According to his biographer Jonathan Bate, Clare was “the greatest labouring-class poet that England has ever produced. No one has ever written more powerfully of nature, of a rural childhood, and of the alienated and unstable self.” CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…

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After Many Years, by Ernest Dowson

Post mortem photograph
Post mortem photograph – from VK

Here is a strange and beautiful poem about a dead child. The poet remembers lulling her to sleep several years ago, but now the coldness of her death seems unreal, so he wonders whether it is a dream or he is himself dead. The strangeness of the poem, with its doubts about the boundaries between reality and dream, between the living and the dead, is emphasised by the tortured indentation of its lines. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…

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It is finished, by Ernest Dowson

Post mortem of a young girl lying on a blanket
Post mortem of a young girl lying on a blanket – from user oakenroad on Flickr

Dowson wrote several poems about the death of a child. The best known one is probably “The Dead Child “in the volume Decorations published in 1899. In it, the poet wishes to be dead, to share the child’s rest.

The following poem comes from his collection Poésie Schublade (“Drawer Poetry”), which was published only posthumously. It was probably written in the middle 1880’s. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…

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Deux sonnets de Nicolas Boileau sur la mort d’une parente

Dead girl
Dead girl – provient de mourningportraits.blogspot.com (11 août 2010)

Le poète, écrivain et critique français Nicolas Boileau, dit aussi Boileau-Despréaux, né le 1er novembre 1636 et mort le 13 mars 1711, est connu pour ses Satires et ses Épîtres. Théoricien de la littérature, il défendit l’esthétique classique et fut dès lors considéré comme le « législateur du Parnasse ». On lui doit les célèbres deux vers : CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…

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Little Girl, by Little Girl

Little Girl poster
Little Girl poster

MoonCCat is the pen name of Luc-Santiago Rodriguez, a poet, musician and photographer who finds his inspiration in the 19th century. He puts into music poems by 19th century French and English poets, defends the classical French alexandrine against contemporary “free verse,” and practices argentic photography instead of digital one. He is also a specialist in absinthe, the beverage celebrated by 19th century poets and artists, which was banned during most of the 20th century; at one time he managed an absinthe shop in Paris, Vert d’Absinthe. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…

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Sonnets of a Little Girl, VIII, by Ernest Dowson

Dowson's vandalised grave
Dowson’s vandalised grave (from Find A Grave)

I present now the last of the 8 “Sonnets of a Little Girl.” This 8th one is not about childhood, there is no little girl in it; it rather tells about disappointment and death. A modified version of it, with the title “Epilogue,” appeared in The Savoy, No. 7, November 1896, page 87. With the title “A Last Word,” it was included as the last poem in verse in Dowson’s final collection Decorations: in Verse and Prose, published in December 1899, two months before his death. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…

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