“If he/she wanted to he/she would” is the most overused and misguided phrase in consolation. By saying it, the person on the other end attempts to provide his friend with tough-love, to say without saying: You need to move on. It’s akin to the saying: She’s just not that into you. Yet, most of the time, she’s just not that into anyone. But the tough-love crowd doesn’t seem to get it.
Romance has a multitude of barriers: income, self-image, fear of criticism from the prospective partner or one’s circle, fear of abandonment, fear of guilt, lack of sexual chemistry (which may be more internal than external), and so on. Yet, we’re keen on reducing rejection to the last barrier on that list and not only that, but to the version of sexual chemistry which implies that you just aren’t doing it for her/him. As you can imagine, this version of…
Well indeed, the weather has picked up and the magnolia is in blossom in the gardens. I have just been reading the new collection of poems by Christopher Reid entitled “The Late Sun“ and finding it simply excellent. My favourite poem in his collection at the moment is a collaborative translation with Renata Senktas from the Polish of Konstanty Ildefons Gałczyński. It is called from A Trip to Świder
The poem ends with a literary allusion and is infused with a gentle melancholy-
Children in prams, woodpeckers, a birch growing at a slant, the river, and the blind man who drank beer at the station;
and this house with its pointed roof hidden among raspberry bushes, and this shadow… as in Three Sisters by Anton Chekhov.
An informative Polish Website at https://przekroj.pl/en/literature/a-playful-nostalgia-for-a-lost-world-renata-senktas-and-christop interestingly comments that, “hermetic as it sometimes appears, A Trip to Świder is carried along by its musical brio, its dream-like marriage of fantasy and truth, and its kaleidoscopic blending of dissimilar tones and images, which, to quote Czesław Miłosz, “chase one another with the speed of a hurtling train”.“
The Late Summer is replete with great poetry and well worth the effort to read over and over. As a result of reading its 79 pages and not having presently been otherwise engaged by a novel- too many new webinars-I have found much to ponder over between cafetieres of coffee- the poems open up vistas of travel and return to the delights of London. Which thought reminds me of my first encounter with Reid via the wonderful poem-play “The Song of Lunch” world-wearily but delightfully intoned by Alan Rickman with Emma Thompson.
Broncia Koller-Pinell (February 23, 1863-April 26, 1934) was an Austrian Expressionist painter said to be the first to bring attributes of French Impressionism into Austrian painting. Biography on Jewish Women’s Archive: https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/koller-pinell-broncia
This clip may give some idea of the range of Tissot’s oeuvre.
My personal response to Tissot
There are two factors which have drawn my attention to Tissot recently. Firstly, reading various books and articles by Julian Barnes, who is well versed in French Artists of the Nineteenth Century. Secondly there are particular paintings of his that are especially intriguing. Especially those that seem to show early relationships between the French and English in London. However, more importantly, I seem to remember small illustrated texts from Sunday School back in the 1950s whose subject matter were similar in style and content to those religious paintings that seem to have taken up much of Tissot’s time. Finally, there is of course the insight into the times that these Tissot paintings give.
He doesn’t look too happy does he? But at least, although somewhat contorted in posture and attracting the attention of others, he has his coffee strong and black. He invokes a strong feeling of nostalgia for a seemingly lost world. In this case the mittel europa of the 1920s. He may even have a croissant at his elbow. I particularly like the evocation of the blue-violet-brown of the enclosing satin draping. This work is by the little known Croatian artist -Young Man in a Cafe, c.1923 by Marijan Trepše (1897 – l964). Born into the latter days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, you may read more about this artist and how he travelled to Prague via Paris at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marijan_Trep%C5%A1e
It is unsurprising, looking at this painting, to read that this expressionist later became a significant set designer.
Using the magical utility of a reverse image search. There is a very useful such device a TinEye. I happened upon the following:-
Much as I miss the congenial and convivial ambience of just sitting around and chatting away with friends, these characters do not exactly look very warm types. Their faces are mask like and reminiscent of harlequins. We certainly have had enough of face-masks. It is interesting how the hands link across the table but touch perhaps slightly. There seems something of considerable interest off-frame to the right. Nevertheless, something of considerable artistic import is being discussed. The juxtaposition of the feet seems a little more cosy and relaxed. It is the combination of tones such as the contrast between the brown of one gent and the blue of the artist which I find attractive.
It is interesting to compare and contrast these two painters who might well have met up over un petit café noir in Montmartre in the 1920s. They would certainly have much to talk about if they could converse easily.
Rose glow of ambience, turned faces recognise, smiles and greetings made. Hands reach out, cheek to cheek kisses, “Bonjour” and “Ça va” spoken. “Un petit café noir, si’l vous plait”. “A small black coffee please”.
A chair is offered, news exchanged, dialogue and dispute, advice and acrimony. Journal passed in turn, maybe a game of Belotte (cards). Another round of coffees, morning ritual slowly ends. “A demain matin”, “See you tomorrow morning”.
Which is the Stefan Zweig? A great writer imho! Hope you had a great Birthday and you prompted my memories for Vermouth which I seem to remember was a favourite tipple of W.H.Auden!
I had a birthday this week, so my TBR pile, officially already out of control, has become even more so.
Four books arrived from my parents, I unwrapped a book each from my son and my youngest daughter, and a pal dropped off a book, so my new pile looks like this (including the two books at the front that I was already reading):
I’m expecting to review the French TV series Call My Agent for the blog this month, plus Tahmima Anam’s first novel ‘A Golden Age’, set in Bangladesh, and Jacob Ross’s Caribbean crime novel ‘The Bone Readers’. I’ll also be looking at the work of Malian photographer Seydou Keita and reviewing a heart-warming romantic movie from Niger.
Meanwhile, in a little extra birthday news, my eldest daughter made me a fab frog cake, and I have some daffodils blooming in my little kitchen. Enjoying some simple…
Image from a Dutch magazine “Het Leven” (via Spaarnestadt Archive).
Here is a typical Berlin Balkonia, little man’s and woman’s green paradise, in its rooftop edition: as a small garden and a chicken-pen.
This model example of self-sufficiency was necessary to survive dire food-shortages of the First World War – shortages which were particularly acute in the capital and led to long periods of starvation not only among the poorest. Many Berlin children did not survive those and if they did, they often suffered their consequences – mentally and health-wise – for the rest of their lives.
This idyllic image is a witness to a very bitter truth: that unless you were able to provide your own food yourself, your family was in danger. And that in 99% of the cases this responsibility had to be shouldered by women – whose children were at great risk.
When I read Cyril Connolly’s collection “The Evening Colonnade” some considerable time ago, I was as impressed by the writings but also the cover, the title having been derived from a poem of Pope on Lady Mary Wortley Montagu:-
“What are the gay parterre, the chequer’d shade
The morning bower, the ev’ning colonnade
But soft recesses of uneasy minds
To sigh unheard in, to the passing winds?”
I imagine that many a his moment feel a sense of isolation and confinement that make an impact on our uneasy minds. So in a sense of splendid and slightly superior sense of looking down on events I came across a very interesting poem by Derek Mahon in his New Selected Poems (page 108) called Balcony of Europe. It is dedicated to Aidan and Alannah Higgins. So this is a poem about a novel with the title written to the author and his wife. There is a new imprint of the original book which is about Spain as discussed in the Irish Times, some two years ago. https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/life-as-story-told-1.633867
However, when I first read the poem the view I conjured up was of some Eastern European Country after the fall of some dictator. The first stanza reads:-
The dictator’s portrait dominated the airport
in those days, the first thing you noticed
after the cold police; his arms, a vivid
fistful of forked lightning, blazed
on the bus station and the road north-east
to the olive hills where the novelist lived.
The kitchen tap gave only a dry cough;
it was pitch black up there with the light off.
This short poem has underlying classical themes and moves from the darkness under the dictator to light and liberation. it is a metamorphosis in which not only does time move on but also seeing a youngster on the beach the poet from a bar filled with music invokes a somewhat scary but idyllic antiquity.
when she wasn’t just a girl but a creature
of myth, a Phoenician king’s abducted daughter
with a white bull between her knees,
borne out to a sun-white sea shaking with fear
and exhilaration, far from her shocked sisters,
gripping the horns, clutching the curly hair,
et tremulae sinuantur flamine vestes
(‘her floaty garments fluttering in the breeze’)
Aidan Higgins from The Irish Times
Tto mere is a very useful Open University site on classical links to modern poetry, and for the above poem see
The Mother of the Artist by Broncia Koller-Pinell
Image from a Dutch magazine “Het Leven” (via Spaarnestadt Archive). 
penwithlit 