Readers who do not understand French may feel frustrated by the great number of posts about Minou Drouet, all written in that language, and looking quite informative. I have written in Pigtails in Paint a long article on Minou’s life, which contains many details unknown to the general public. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…
Né à Gand le 10 décembre 1870 et mort à Paris le 4 juin 1925, l’écrivain français Pierre Louÿs s’illustra par des romans, contes, poèmes en vers et en prose. Il pratiqua aussi le canular, d’ailleurs son œuvre la plus connue, Les Chansons de Bilitis, un recueil de poèmes érotiques en prose, en fut un : il la fit passer pour une traduction d’une poétesse grecque contemporaine de Sappho. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…
Around May 1846, Edgar Allan Poe moved in a small and humble cottage in The Bronx, New York City, with his wife Virginia Eliza Clemm and her mother Maria. It would be the last home of the couple. Virginia died of tuberculosis in the cottage’s first floor bedroom on January 30, 1847; then Edgar died in mysterious circumstances in Baltimore on October 7, 1849, while he was travelling back home from Richmond. Upon hearing the news of his death, his mother-in-law Maria moved out of the cottage. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…
Un beau poème de Minou Drouet dédié à son premier amour, Lucette Descaves, sa professeure de piano. Au moment de sa composition, Mme Descaves avait 41 ans de plus que Minou, alors âgée de 8 ou 9 ans. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…
The poet sings his beloved and her sweet face. But fear hides the light of her love. Now the kiss is master of fear, so love is stronger than shame, and the climax comes unupbraided. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…
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…
Minou Drouet se passionnait pour la musique, ses poèmes chantaient en elle. Aussi son premier amour fut Lucette Descaves, son professeur de piano. Mais bientôt elle fit la connaissance d’un garçon de quinze ans, Philippe, amoureux d’elle, qu’elle finit par aimer. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…
L’amour réclame l’ivresse. Les nuits rouges se préparent dans les heures vertes, les lèvres des baisers enflammés se sont allumées avec un doux breuvage. Ma lointaine bien-aimée, la magie de la fée verte pourra-t-elle t’amener à moi ? CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…
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…
The Danish explorer and ethnologist Peter Freuchen (1886–1957) is famous for exploring the Arctic, in particular with his colleague and friend Knud Rasmussen (1879–1933). He lived many years in North-West Greenland, trading with Inuits, befriending them and adopting their way of life. In 1911 he married an Inuit girl, Navarana. Being born around 1898, she was thus aged approximately 13 at their marriage, while he was 25-year-old. Most biographies avoid mentioning this detail, referring to her as an “Inuit woman”. But in his 1935 book Arctic Adventure: My Life in the Frozen North he first mentions her as a “little girl,” and just after their marriage as “my little wife,” and in the 1961 book Peter Freuchen’s Book of the Eskimos edited by his widow Dagmar, he refers to her as a “little girl, just reaching the marriageable age,” but he also mentions that “Eskimo girls marry so very young that a girl will often continue to play with the other children right up to the time of her first pregnancy.” CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…
