The Edgar Allan Poe Cottage, The Bronx, New York City
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…
Sulamith Wülfing – The Young Girl (1942) – from Pigtails in Paint
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…
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…
Kate Greenaway – Brother and sister – iamachild.wordpress.com
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…
Navarana and Peter Freuchen in Thule (1916-1917) – Photo: Arktisk Institut
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…
Minou Drouet et René Julliard (février 1956) – Le Figaro
Minou Drouet et René Julliard entretenaient une relation complexe mais asymétrique. Pour l’éditeur, Minou fut tout d’abord un écrivain à succès, même si tous deux se lièrent d’amitié et correspondirent. Mais pour la petite fille, Julliard fut d’abord un ami, qu’elle surnommait « ma Sonate », et comme avec ses autres amis, elle lui exprima tout son amour ; mais bientôt elle souhaita qu’il fût son père (elle vivait uniquement avec sa mère et sa grand-mère adoptives) : CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…
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…
