Give Back, O Silver Stream and Fountain Bright.... Michelangelo

    Give back, O silver stream and fountains bright,
the constant spring you borrowed from my eyes,
the power not yours that makes you swell and rise,
the flow that nature never made so great.
     And you, dense air, that shade the heavenly light
from these sad orbs and thicken with my sighs,
restore them to the heart that weary lies,
clear your dark faces to my new sharpened sight.
     Now let the earth give back my foot's hard print
that grass may grow on what was trodden bare,
echo, long deaf, send back my loud lament; 
     and may your holy lights at last set free
my longing looks to sometime love another
beauty, since you have no delight in me.

Michelangelo
Probably to T. C.

Buonarroti, Michelangelo. "Poems". Michelangelo; Poems and Letters. Translated with an Introduction and Notes by    Anthony Mortimer. London, England: Penguin Classics, 2007.

No matter who Michelangelo's heart belonged to his works were rarely rivaled.  His sketches are quite telling of the amount of time and attention given to his art, which I suspect was is true love before all else.....

Ideal Head, Michelangelo. Print available by appointment at the Ashmolean Museum  print room by appointment http://www.ashmolean.org/departments/westernart/printroom/collections/?s=Michelangelo

Ideal Head of a Woman, Michelangelo, Drawing, British Museum

Study of A Head, Michelangelo

A Youth Beckoning, Pen and brown ink on paper. c. 1504-05. The British Museum, London 

The World Is Too Much With Us

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers,
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;

It moves us not. --Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.

~William Wordsworth, 1807
(Pickering et. al. 1994)

Duquesne Steel Factories At Night, Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, c. 1900, Anonymous 

Traffic on Dearborn and Randolph, Chicago, Illinois, 1909

Triton Blowing his Horn - part of the Fontana di Trevi (Trevi Fountain), 1762, Baroque Genre, Rome, Italy, First designs were drafted by Bernini; however after Pope Urban VIII passed and Pope Clement XII became the new Pope Clement XII commissioned Nicola Salvi. Image retrieved from http://www.aviewoncities.com/rome/trevi.htm

Even Wadsworth in 1807 saw the dangers to nature and the eco-system.  Wadsworth wrote this about the dangers of the Industrial Revolution as losing sight of coexisting with nature and the destruction of the self via materialism.  

It is interesting that the words Sea and Nature are capitalized in various places during this poem; to me it signifies that Wadsworth accepted them as individuals, per say, and not objects. Truer today than in 1807 is the actuality that industrial sites, “progress”, and materialism are removing us from our reality that we are part of nature and the lack of connection with nature is what Wadsworth was referring to when he wrote, “The world is too much with us; late and soon, / Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers: / Little we see in Nature that is ours…”. 

Humans have powers that are often perceived to defy even the powers of nature, yet Wadsworth, a romantic and proponent of living in harmony with nature, knew in 1807 and we know in our day that this simply is not true.  We have far too long attempted to maintain a façade of control over the forces of Nature, yet now she is fighting back. ~ fred

Nature V. Industry, Photography, 2010, Jeniffer Sams

Poem from: Pickering, J.H., and J. D. Hoeper. Questions To Ask About Poetry. Literature. Edited by D. Anthony English. New York, NY: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1994.


For more information about Pollution and the pollution of the Industrial Revolution the History Channel's Water and Air Pollution Link - http://www.history.com/topics/water-and-air-pollution is a wonderful place to begin.

In Zakynthos

Birth of Venus, 1862, Oil On Canvas,
Eugène Amaury-Duval (copyright at bottom)

No more and never will touch the sacred shores
where the little boy lay my body, 
Zakynthos mine that mirrors you nell'onde 
the greek virgin birth came in off sea 

Venus and fea those fertile islands
with his first smile,
so not silent clear your clouds
and your leaves
towards the illustrious man who waters 

Ulysses Returns Chryseis to her Father, c. 1644,
Oil on Canvas, Claude Lorrain (copyright at bottom)

sang fatal, and a different exile 
so nice of fame and misfortune 
kissed her stony Ithaca Ulysses. 

You do not have nothing but the singing of his son,
or my mother earth, we prescribed 
Fate illacrimata burial. 

Alone, Illustration for Edgar Allen Poe, Edmund Dulac

~ Ugo Foscolo

"The sonnet begins with a triple negation (which is a bitter realization of the poet's loss of his home), and ends with the final judgment of his exile and his illacrimata burial in a foreign land. Between these two poles is contained negative, through the binding of the images and wonderful nostalgic representation of the ideal world of the poet of childhood and the mythical transfiguration of his own experience of exile that is through the analogy between his figure is that of Ulysses. Ulysses, "looking for fame and misfortune" is the image of the poet, himself an exile magnanimously opposed by fate and by man, but above all represents the new concept of the romantic hero, the great strength and dignity with which bears the ravages of misfortune (the exile hesitated, however, will be different; Foscolo unlike Ulysses will be buried in a foreign land and no one will pay for the teardrops on his grave). Other mythic images are also present in the verses, which is that of Homer's poetry eternatrice and heroism of the highest values ​​and Venus, according to myth was born from the foam of the sea, symbol of the fertilizing nature, beauty and harmony, which With her smile has made fruitful and flourishing homeland of the poet (http://www.antelitteram.com/antologia/foscolo.htm)." 

"Fate illacrimata burial" is essentially an unmourned and unlamented burial..... 

Birth of Venus, Eugène Amaury-Duval, 1862, Oil On Canvas, 197x109 cm, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lille,Image and original data provided by Réunion des Musées Nationaux / Art Resource, N.Y., http://www.artres.com/c/htm/Home.aspx, Rights -Contact information: Ryan Jensen, General Manager, Art Resource, 536 Broadway (5th floor), New York, N.Y. 10012; Tel No: (212) 505-8700; Fax: (212) 505-2653; Email: RJensen@artres.com / Please note that if this image is under copyright, you may need to contact one or more copyright owners for any use that is not permitted under the ARTstor Terms and Conditions of Use or not otherwise permitted by law. While ARTstor tries to update contact information, it cannot guarantee that such information is always accurate. Determining whether those permissions are necessary, and obtaining such permissions, is your sole responsibility.


Ulysses Returns Chryseis to her Father, Claude Lorrain, c. 1644, Oil on Canvas, 119x150 cm, Musée du Louvre,Image and original data provided by SCALA, Florence/ART RESOURCE, N.Y. / http://www.artres.com/c/htm/Home.aspx & http://www.scalarchives.com / Image Rights:(c) 2006, SCALA, Florence / ART RESOURCE, N.Y. Please note that if this image is under copyright, you may need to contact one or more copyright owners for any use that is not permitted under the ARTstor Terms and Conditions of Use or not otherwise permitted by law. While ARTstor tries to update contact information, it cannot guarantee that such information is always accurate. Determining whether those permissions are necessary, and obtaining such permissions, is your sole responsibility.

The Broken Heart

El Abrazo, Oil on Canvas, 2006, Santiago Carbonell

He is stark mad, whoever says,
    That he hath been in love an hour,
Yet not that love so soon decays,
    But that it can ten in less space devour ;
Who will believe me, if I swear
That I have had the plague a year?
    Who would not laugh at me, if I should say
    I saw a flash of powder burn a day?

Ah, what a trifle is a heart,
    If once into love's hands it come !
All other griefs allow a part
    To other griefs, and ask themselves but some ;
They come to us, but us love draws ;
He swallows us and never chaws ;
    By him, as by chain'd shot, whole ranks do die ;
    He is the tyrant pike, our hearts the fry.

Don't You Remember, Ryan DeLaurentis His Weblink

If 'twere not so, what did become
    Of my heart when I first saw thee?
I brought a heart into the room,
    But from the room I carried none with me.
If it had gone to thee, I know
Mine would have taught thine heart to show
    More pity unto me ; but Love, alas !
    At one first blow did shiver it as glass.

Yet nothing can to nothing fall,
    Nor any place be empty quite ;
Therefore I think my breast hath all
    Those pieces still, though they be not unite ;
And now, as broken glasses show
A hundred lesser faces, so
    My rags of heart can like, wish, and adore,
    But after one such love, can love no more.

~ John Donne

Love at first sight, in an instant can affect us and make our world feel whole and complete.... make a flash ('a flash of powder burn a day) feel like eternity until love destroys the heart that feels love, but like a mirror shattered on the floor a broken heart ('Those pieces still, though they be not unite; And now, as broken glasses show - A hundred lesser faces....') shattered shows love even in the shattered heart.... It is part of the broken hearted only amplified and reflected hundreds of times over.  The heart of the love lost remains, but in painful shards. After such a strong, passionate, love at first sight and whole love described Donne writes 'But after one such love, can love no more.' - perhaps it is not that love is not possible, but this kind of love is a once in a lifetime love, not shattered and painfully gone.

Henry Miller and new Art

by: Bliss by Constantine Lvovich

“Nothing can be given or taken away; nothing has been added or subtracted; nothing increased or diminished. We stand on the same shore before the same mighty ocean. The ocean of love. There it is - in perpetuum. As much in a broken blossom, the sound of a waterfall, the swoop of a carrion bird as in the thunderous artillery of the prophet.

by: Dale Terbush

We move with eyes shut and ears stopped; we smash walls where doors are waiting to open to the touch; we grope for ladders, forgetting that we have wings; we pray as if God were deaf and blind, as if He were in a space. No wonder the angels in our midst are unrecognizable.
One day it will be pleasant to remember these things.”

by: Elena Dudina

― Henry Miller

I love this artist's interpretation of 'Angels and Demons too.... How true it is......

Ode - The Past and Present Dreamers of Dreams

Ode

Golden Dreams, Richard Johnson

We are the music makers, 
And we are the dreamer of dreams, 
Wandering by lone sea-breakers, 
And sitting by desolate streams; 
World-losers and world-forsakers, 
On whom the pale moon gleams: 
Yet we are the movers and shakers 
Of the world for ever, it seems. 

With wonderful deathless ditties, 
We build up the world's great cities, 
And out of a fabulous story 
We fashion an empire's glory: 
One man with a dream, at pleasure, 
Shall go forth and conquer a crown; 
And three with a new song's measure 
Can trample an empire down. 

Le Danse de la Sylphide, Richard Johnson 

We, in the ages lying 
In the buried past of earth, 
Built Nineveh with our sighing, 
And Babel itself with our mirth; 
And o'erthrew them with prophesying 
To the old of the new world's worth; 
For each age is a dream that is dying, 
Or one that is coming to birth. 


A breath of our inspiration, 
Is the life of each generation. 
A wondrous thing of our dreaming, 
Unearthly, impossible seeming- 
The soldier, the king, and the peasant 
Are working together in one, 
Till our dream shall become their present, 
And their work in the world be done. 

They had no vision amazing 
Of the goodly house they are raising. 
They had no divine foreshowing 
Of the land to which they are going: 
But on one man's soul it hath broke, 
A light that doth not depart 
And his look, or a word he hath spoken, 
Wrought flame in another man's heart. 

Break of Day, Richard Johnson

And therefore today is thrilling, 
With a past day's late fulfilling. 
And the multitudes are enlisted 
In the faith that their fathers resisted, 
And, scorning the dream of tomorrow, 
Are bringing to pass, as they may, 
In the world, for it's joy or it's sorrow, 
The dream that was scorned yesterday. 


But we, with our dreaming and singing, 
Ceaseless and sorrowless we! 
The glory about us clinging 
Of the glorious futures we see, 
Our souls with high music ringing; 
O men! It must ever be 
That we dwell, in our dreaming and singing, 
A little apart from ye. 

For we are afar with the dawning 
And the suns that are not yet high, 
And out of the infinite morning 
Intrepid you hear us cry- 
How, spite of your human scorning, 
Once more God's future draws nigh, 
And already goes forth the warning 
That ye of the past must die. 

Evening Comes, Richard Johnson

Great hail! we cry to the corners 
From the dazzling unknown shore; 
Bring us hither your sun and your summers, 
And renew our world as of yore; 
You shall teach us your song's new numbers, 
And things that we dreamt not before; 
Yea, in spite of a dreamer who slumbers, 
And a singer who sings no more. 

Arthur William Edgar O’Shaughnessy (1844-1881)

Richard S. Johnson Fine Arts - http://rjohnson.fineartstudioonline.com/

Donne Meets Martinakis

I have long been a fan of John Donne's poetry and of course I am in love with art.  As part of my journey at UF the other grad students will post when they come across artists, museums, ideas, schools, ect of interest and we are able to really share some really amazing work.  One artist I had not seen before was Adam Martinakis.  This is primarily because I specialize in Renaissance and Baroque and appreciate all other arts with sheer joy...  I was delighted to see the works and have passed his work on to many many of my peers.... Today when I came across 'The Ecstasy' to post I knew I had to post Martinakas' 'Last Kiss' with this poem... So I am hoping he doesn't mind and this is his blog, please check him out -http://adamakis.blogspot.com/

Last Kiss, Adam Martinakas, http://adamakis.blogspot.com/

THE ECSTACY
by John Donne


WHERE, like a pillow on a bed, 
    A pregnant bank swell'd up, to rest 
The violet's reclining head, 
    Sat we two, one another's best. 


Our hands were firmly cemented 
    By a fast balm, which thence did spring ; 
Our eye-beams twisted, and did thread 
    Our eyes upon one double string. 


So to engraft our hands, as yet 
    Was all the means to make us one ; 
And pictures in our eyes to get 
    Was all our propagation. 


As, 'twixt two equal armies, Fate 
    Suspends uncertain victory, 
Our souls—which to advance their state, 
    Were gone out—hung 'twixt her and me. 


And whilst our souls negotiate there, 
    We like sepulchral statues lay ; 
All day, the same our postures were, 
    And we said nothing, all the day. 


If any, so by love refined, 
    That he soul's language understood, 
And by good love were grown all mind, 
    Within convenient distance stood, 


He—though he knew not which soul spake, 
    Because both meant, both spake the same— 
Might thence a new concoction take, 
    And part far purer than he came. 


This ecstasy doth unperplex 
    (We said) and tell us what we love ; 
We see by this, it was not sex ; 
    We see, we saw not, what did move : 


But as all several souls contain 
    Mixture of things they know not what, 
Love these mix'd souls doth mix again, 
    And makes both one, each this, and that. 


A single violet transplant, 
    The strength, the colour, and the size— 
All which before was poor and scant— 
    Redoubles still, and multiplies. 


When love with one another so 
    Interanimates two souls, 
That abler soul, which thence doth flow, 
    Defects of loneliness controls. 


We then, who are this new soul, know, 
    Of what we are composed, and made, 
For th' atomies of which we grow 
    Are souls, whom no change can invade. 


But, O alas ! so long, so far, 
    Our bodies why do we forbear? 
They are ours, though not we ; we are 
    Th' intelligences, they the spheres. 


We owe them thanks, because they thus 
    Did us, to us, at first convey, 
Yielded their senses' force to us, 
    Nor are dross to us, but allay. 


On man heaven's influence works not so, 
    But that it first imprints the air ; 
For soul into the soul may flow, 
    Though it to body first repair. 


As our blood labours to beget 
    Spirits, as like souls as it can ; 
Because such fingers need to knit 
    That subtle knot, which makes us man ; 


So must pure lovers' souls descend 
    To affections, and to faculties, 
Which sense may reach and apprehend, 
    Else a great prince in prison lies. 


To our bodies turn we then, that so 
    Weak men on love reveal'd may look ; 
Love's mysteries in souls do grow, 
    But yet the body is his book. 


And if some lover, such as we, 
    Have heard this dialogue of one, 
Let him still mark us, he shall see 
    Small change when we're to bodies gone.

Creativity Begins

As one person wrote, "An empty canvas, apparently really empty, that says nothing and is without significance. Almost dull, in fact. In reality, however, [it's] crammed with thousands of undertone tensions and [is] full of expectancy. Slightly apprehensive lest it should be outraged ... It can contain anything but cannot sustain everything ... An empty canvas is a living wonder -- far lovelier than certain pictures." (~ Wassily Kandinsky).

No matter our medium, we have a vast potential for opportunity or a vast potential for waste and the difference is our attitude.  Perhaps our creativity works over time, after lessons, after great pains, or if we are lucky after the inspiration 'gods/goddesses' stuck us; however it works for us, it will only work if we turn the creativity we are stuck with, fight the fear and get to work.  Creativity alone is simply imagination, but true creativity is imagination in action - it produces and creates.  Creativity is what binds us all and creativity is not exclusive to some.  What differentiates us is that creativity must be harnessed into action of value.  The artists who work in their valuable ways are no different than a professor/instructor/teacher who inspires even one student or community member, art historian/historians who preserves history for future generations and in the mind of one human, business persons figuring an ad campaign or creating a marketing strategy, lawyers arguing a trial, accountant working on numbers, the person who does land acquisition dreaming of what will become of the space, IT programer using binary code to create a new cyber world, and so on....

All humans are creative in their own way. They each start with an empty canvas and cram it with expectancy!