Category: Uncategorized

Gratitude to Old Teachers

When we stride or stroll across the frozen lake,
We place our feet where they have never been.
We walk upon the unwalked. But we are uneasy.
Who is down there but our old teachers?

Water that once could take no human weight—
We were students then— holds up our feet,
And goes on ahead of us for a mile.
Beneath us the teachers, and around us the stillness.

Robert Bly (1926 – 2021)

I did like this simple poem as Robert Bly is not always easy to fathom (excuse the pun).

The journey of life is like a walk across a frozen lake. And I remember as an eight-year-old testing a frozen pond with parts too thin to walk on. Our walk or life journey is unique, and we walk on the unwalked.

We have underneath support from others all our life. Sometimes completely…

A random survey of self-portraits created by women through the centuries

Japanese artist and poet Imperial Princess
Akenomiya Teruko (1634-1727)

Self-portrait, ND / Painting / Sennyū-ji Temple Museum Shinsho-den, Kyoto, Japan

[2 embedded links above]

A random survey of self-portraits created by women through the centuries

French/Tuscan painter Elisabeth Chaplin (1890-1982)

1. Two Nudes or Double Self-portrait, c.1918 / Oil on canvas / Private collection

2. Self-portrait with Red Shawl, 1912 / Oil on canvas / Galleria d’Arte Moderna, Palazzo Pitti, Florence, Italy

[3 embedded links above]

Another acquisition this month; Leuthen (Gedicht) by Christian Friedrich Scherenberg.

I have yet to read it all, but the first verse seems to fit well with the famous painting of Fritz after the battle of Kolin.

In Nimburg am Brunnen, die Schatten über sich,
Auf einem alten Röhrstamm sitzt König Friedrich,
Von seiner Zeit schlechtweg der König titulirt,
Wiewohl noch mancher König zu seiner Zeit regiert,
Und malt mit seinem Krückstock, der aller Welt bekannt,
Versunken in sich selber, Figuren in den Sand.

Or indeed the one below, which I’ve never seen before, both painted before the book was written (1852).

To finish, a Zungenbrecher:

Der Leutnant von Leuthen befahl seinen Leuten nicht eher zu läuten, bis der Leutnant von Leuthen seinen Leuten das Läuten befahl.

Does anybody still say this after all these years?

Friday 8 July marked the bicentenary of Shelley (4 August 1792 – 8 July 1822) and below are some lost words only discovered in 2006 from a political pamphlet.

Shelley’s poem was “lost” for nearly 200 years, before a single copy of the pamphlet was“rediscovered” in 2006, and a decade later bought by Oxford’s Bodleian Library, so finally it could be read by the public again

“Shall rank corruption pass unheeded by, 
Shall flattery’s voice ascend the wearied sky; 
And shall no patriot tear the veil away 
Which hides these vices from the face of day?  
Is public virtue dead? – is courage gone?”

These lines are taken fromPoetical Essay on the Existing State of Things, an excoriation of the moral devastation wreaked in late Georgian Britain two centuries ago. It was written by Percy Bysshe Shelley and published anonymously in 1811, in support of the…

Choose an artist whose work you admire deeply. This is Step One. Find a specific picture that is a favorite and copy some part of it. If you can find a detail in a book or on the internet, you can focus your attention on a manageable portion of the picture. I chose a detail that includes several apples, but I think I might focus on just one apple later today… because I’m in a Cezanne mood and individual Cezanne apples are deep.

Step Two involves taking chances. Here the apples are circles. Considerable time passed before I noticed that Cezanne apples are not apple shaped. They’re more Platonic. They are beautiful renditions of a kind of ideal roundness with beautiful gradations of red and yellow. So you can put the apples where you think they go. And if…