Valentine's Day of the Dead (Part III) - A Country at War (Revised July 16, 2026)

 

Queen of Spades - screen print - 2022, Mahdieh Farhadkiaei

"In Iranian culture, women have historically cut their hair off in mourning, and over the past week we have seen videos of women snipping their locks at the funerals of loved ones killed by security forces. The act has also become a symbol of bodily autonomy and resistance against the oppressive regime."

- Via the 2022 Guardian article: Something in me sparked’: the Iranian women using art to protest.

"To walk among Iran’s rose gardens in spring is to experience a sensory and cultural journey. The air is thick with the heady scent of blossoms; the early morning sun glints off dew-laden petals; villagers hum songs while harvesting; poets and painters find inspiration in the delicate folds of each bloom. It is a celebration of nature, art, community, and history—a testament to a love affair that has endured for millennia.

In Iran, the rose is more than a flower. It is  memory, passion, spirituality, and identity rolled into a single, fragrant bloom. It embodies the Iranian understanding of beauty and impermanence, connecting the material and the divine, the ordinary and the transcendent. It is, quite simply, the flower of the nation’s heart."

- Excerpted from the online article: Iran’s Enduring Love Affair with the Rose. This information was, believe it or not, new to me and represented yet another thread in the weird web of synchronicities I found myself entangled in.

As it so happens, from mid-May to mid-June in the province of the ancient and beautiful city of Isfahan, Iran, there is the thousand-year old festival of Golab giri, a celebration of rosewater made from the fragrant Damask Rose (inset right), Iran's national flower which grows in abundance there. 

 

•

"I am like a schoolchild madly

in love with her geometry books.

I am forlorn

and imagine it is possible to take the garden to a hospital.

I imagine I imagine

And the garden’s heart has swollen in the heat

of this sun, its mind slowly drains of its lush memories."

- From I Pity the Garden, a poem written by beloved Iranian poet, film-maker, artist and feminist writer Forugh Farrokhzad (December 29, 1934 - February 13, 1967) and translated by Sholeh Wolpé.

Previously in the poem she mourns: "Our neighbors plant bombs and machine guns, instead of flowers, in their garden soil.
They cover their ponds, hiding bags of gunpowder..." and, "I fear the age that has lost its heart, the idleness of so many hands
the alienation in so many faces."

Often compared to Sylvia Plath, her poetry has a similar sense of urgency and rebellion. Their lives shared a similar tragic cast. Unlike Plath, however, Farrokhzad's  material can be wildly erotic and, at the same time, in the Persian tradition of Rumi, the Rose & the Nightingale and the Language of the Birds, strangely mystical.*

I am particularly moved by the line "I fear the age that has lost its heart."

I fear that age is now.

(Continued below the jump...)

Once upon a transdimensional day...

 

Four Seasons - oil painting - 2020, Petras Lukosius.

A Walk

by Rainer Maria Rilke, 1924

(Translated by Robert Bly)

"My eyes already touch the sunny hill

going far ahead of the road I have begun.

So we are grasped by what we cannot grasp;

it has inner light, even from a distance

and changes us, even if we do not reach it,

into something else, which, hardly sensing it,

we already are; a gesture waves us on

answering our own wave...

but what we feel is the wind in our faces."

***

Reveal Arriving - oil painting - 2020, Petras Lukosius.

Evening

by Rainer Maria Rilke

(Translated by A. S. Kline)

Slowly the evening draws on its coat

Held out to it by a row of ancient trees:

You gaze: and the landscape splits in two,

One part lifting skywards, while one falls,

Leaving you not quite part of anything,

Not quite so dark as the house, the silent one,

Not quite as surely invoking the eternal,

As that which turns to star each night, rising -

Leaving you (indescribably, to unravel)

Your anxious, immense, and ripening life:

So that, now bounded, and now grasped,

It becomes, in turn, stone in you, and star.

In a Field of Whispers (Ode to a Jack-o'-lantern)

 

One minute, you were there,

facing a moon enshrined by clouds.

Then, the lights went out.

And, the clouds came down in long, luminous spirals

clinging to your skin with cool, misty tendrils.

Ice silvers the rims of your darkened eyes and hollow mouth;

your last breath lost in a field of whispers...

where, slowly, you will coalesce, drop by crucial drop,

with those who creep upon the earth, and the hallowed grounds they cross.

- 2025, DS. Cloud timestamps: 1) October 7, 2025, 6:33 pm, 2) October 7, 2025, 6:33 pm, 3) June 25, 2025, 4:41 pm, 4) October 7, 2025, 6:32 pm, 5) July 31, 2025, 7:04 pm.

(More below the jump...)

The Imaginarium (Complete, final revision: 9/20/25))

The sky erupts in a vaporous vision;

(Aqua Vitae,

the Water of Life,

the Living Water.)

•

Welcome to the Imaginarium

where a vacant space

in a timeless place

becomes a gateway

to the extraordinary.

•

We live in an aviary,

an aerial aquarium,

beneath gliding apparitions,

made of ice-coated pearls.

Phantom leviathans

encircle our perimeters,

(Continued below the jump...)

The Philosopher's Cloud (Revised June 26, 2025)

If all the World's

Wisdom

were written in the clouds...

who would be

the wiser?

***

The five cellphone photographs above document an interesting procession of low flying cumulus clouds passing over the Sandia Mountains in Albuquerque on June 15th of this year.

Incidentally, this single line of clouds went on for miles and miles.

Text and photos: 2025, DS.

The First of May

 

Rose Pentacle (Rose Detail) - clay pattern - 2025, DS.

The Philosopher's Rose

Why is it that some of us must fight

to create (in) this world?

Why is it that some of us must fight

to stay alive?

Therein lies the Logos of

a Dying God.

But, then, I wonder:

why is it that the Rose

continues to unfold so

magnificently?

- May 2, 2025, DS.

Amo, ergo sum.
(I love, therefore I am.)

Spring (Interlude)

 

Nature's Signature

Nature is sexy by nature.

Sexy is tactile and, yet,

magically enabled to cross all boundaries

w/ one vibrant,

undulating

curve.

- 2025, DS.

Video credit: Remmzo.

Spring sky, April 22, 2025, Albuquerque, NM - DS.

Contrails, April 22, 2025, Albuquerque, NM - DS 

Dark Eros & Gothic Dreams

Untitled painting, detail, 1960, Leonora Carrington. (Click to enlarge)
The full image can be found below the jump-break....

(From) Spirits of the Dead by Edgar Allen Poe

"Thy soul shall find itself alone

'Mid dark thoughts of the grey tombstone;

Not one, of all the crowd, to pry

Into thine hour of secrecy.

Be silent in that solitude,

Which is not loneliness - for then

The spirits of the dead, who stood

In life before thee, are again..."

(From) Speak, God Of Visions by Emily Brontë

"So, with a ready heart I swore

To seek their altar-stone no more;

And gave my spirit to adore

Thee, ever-present, phantom thing—

My slave, my comrade, and my king.

A slave, because I rule thee still,

Incline thee to my changeful will,

And make thy influence good or ill;

A comrade, for by day and night

Thou art my intimate delight..."

(From) Elm by Sylvia Plath

"I am inhabited by a cry.   

Nightly it flaps out

Looking, with its hooks, for something to love.

I am terrified by this dark thing   

That sleeps in me;

All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity.

Clouds pass and disperse.

Are those the faces of love, those pale irretrievables?   

Is it for such I agitate my heart?"

(From) Letter to Sainte-Beuve and a prose poem by Charles Baudelaire

"Poet, is it an insult, or a well-turned compliment?

For regarding you I’m like a lover, to all intent,

faced with a ghost whose gestures are caresses,

with hand, eye of unknown charms, who blesses,

in order to drain one’s strength. – All loved beings

are cups of venom one drinks with eyes unseeing,

and the heart that’s once transfixed, seduced by pain,

finds death, while still blessing the arrow, every day."

"Dreams! Always dreams! And the more aspiring and fastidious the soul, the more its dreams exceed the possible. Every man has within him his dose of natural opium, endlessly secreted and renewed, and how many hours do we count, from birth to death, that are filled with positive pleasure, by successful deliberate action? Shall we ever truly live, ever enter this picture my mind has painted, this picture that resembles you?"

***

No tricks, just treats. Have a great holiday... with hidden pleasures... and mysterious treasures.

(Below:  Apocalypse by Cigarettes After Sex with some clips from Tim Burton's The Corpse Bride.)

(continued below...)

Venus in the Dovecote (Part I)

Dovecote at Nymans Gardens, West Sussex, England.

(All images on this page have been altered for design continuity.)

Poems to Venus

written by Sappho, Lucretius, Empedocles, Arthur Rimbaud, Aleister Crowley,

Marina Tsvetaeva, and myself

“Golden Aphrodite Kypria, who stirs up sweet passion in the gods

and subdues the tribes of mortal men . . ." - Homeric Hymn 5 to Aphrodite

______________________________________

From Hymn to Aphrodite

by Sappho

"Aphrodite, subtle of soul and deathless,

Daughter of God, weaver of wiles, I pray thee

Neither with care, dread Mistress, nor with anguish,

Slay thou my spirit!

But in pity hasten, come now if ever

From afar of old when my voice implored thee,

Thou hast deigned to listen, leaving the golden

House of thy father

With thy chariot yoked; and with doves that drew thee,

Fair and fleet around the dark earth from heaven,

Dipping vibrant wings down the azure distance,

Through the mid-ether;

Very swift they came; and thou, gracious Vision,

Leaned with face that smiled in immortal beauty,

Leaned to me and asked, What misfortune threatened?

Why I had called thee?"

- Excerpt from the Hymn to Venus, the only complete poem which has come down to us from the ancient Greek female poet, Sappho (630-570 BC). Via the same source we have another poem by Sappho (below) in its entirety, found on this page.

Although she was most often considered a lesbian icon in contemporary times - and, eventually a feminist icon - allegedly "she killed herself by leaping from the Leucadian cliffs due to her unrequited love for the ferryman Phaon."

The image (inset left) is a detail from an early Victorian confection by American illustrator, Walter Crane: The Renaissance of Venus (1840).

______________________________________

Aphrodite's Doves

by Sappho

"When the drifting gray of the vesper shadow

Dimmed their upward path through the midmost azure,

And the length of night overtook them distant

Far from Olympus;

Far away from splendor and joy of Paphos,

From the voice and smile of their peerless Mistress,

Back to whom their truant wings were in rapture

Speeding belated;

Chilled at heart and grieving they drooped their pinions,

Circled slowly, dipping in flight toward Lesbos,

Down through dusk that darkened on Mitylene's

Columns of marble;

Down through glory wan of the fading sunset,

Veering ever toward the abode of Sappho,

Toward my home, the fane of the glad devoted

Slave of the Goddess;

Soon they gained the tile of my roof and rested,

Slipped their heads beneath their wings while I watched them

Sink to sleep and dreams, in the warm and drowsy

Night of midsummer."

- The image inset right is a detail from François Boucher's Venus on the Waves, 1769.

(Note: Paphos, Cyprus, is traditionally the birthplace of Venus Aphrodite.)

_______________________________________

 From Lucretius: On the Nature of Things

(De rerum natura)

"Mother of Rome, delight of Gods and men,

Dear Venus that beneath the gliding stars

Makest to teem the many-voyaged main

And fruitful lands - for all of living things

Through thee alone are evermore conceived,

Through thee are risen to visit the great sun -

Before thee, Goddess, and thy coming on,

Flee stormy wind and massy cloud away,

For thee the daedal Earth bears scented flowers,

For thee waters of the unvexed deep

Smile, and the hollows of the serene sky

Glow with diffused radiance for thee!

...And since 'tis thou alone

Guidest the Cosmos, and without thee naught

Is risen to reach the shining shores of light,

Nor aught of joyful or of lovely born,

Thee do I crave co-partner in that verse

Which I presume on Nature to compose..."

-  A fragment of De rerum natura by Roman poet and philosopher, Lucretius (99 – 55 BC). In it, we are informed that Venus Aphrodite was not merely a goddess, but, as in the case of her son, Eros, she was a primeval cosmic force. She was also Lucretius's chosen muse for his verse about "nature." Was his praise merely made in an attempt to court her?

From the Wiki entry we find that scholars tend to minimize the importance of Aphrodite's presence in the poem, finding the references to her as both goddess and Creatrix inconsistent and baffling. However, we are introduced to an obscure philosopher named Empedocles,* purportedly a Pythagorean: "The choice to address Venus may have been due to Empedocles's belief that Aphrodite represents 'the great creative force in the cosmos.'"

Incidentally, the quoted verses were taken from the William Ellery Leonard translation. For another translation, try Lamberto Bozzi's, (2019). 

_______________________________________

(More poems after the jump...)

The Master's House and The Tower Card

The Master's House

(In memory of A. Lorde)

The Master's house is in disrepair;

the seals have been broken.

Rats are in the walls.

Pigeons shit on the front stoop.

There's a hole in the roof

bats fly through...

Windows with glass teeth

where weeds wind through.

Echoes of screams

in the living room.

Grey ash fills the corners;

 all four:

riders on horseback,

all dead.

- 2023, DS 

- My poem owes a nod to Audre Lorde's 1984 essay: The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House. Another line from that article:

"Only within a patriarchal structure is maternity the only social power open to women."

- Image: Les Quatre Chevaliers de l'Apocalypse - ink on paper - 1937, André Fougeron. Tate Museum, UK.

***

“Empires and churches are born under the sun of death.”

- A line from Albert Camus', The Fall.

"Whereas the Death card is usually the card people are terrified of, out of all of the cards in the deck, The Tower is the one you really need to brace yourself for. The Tower Tarot card represents chaos and destruction. It is the Major Arcana card of sudden upheaval and unexpected change. This change usually is scary, life changing and often unavoidable. A negative Tower event can be akin to a bomb going off in your life. You don’t know how you will survive but somehow you will and later you will realize that while it was a tremendously difficult thing to go through and you wouldn’t wish it on your worst enemy, it has made you into the person you are. One positive aspect of The Tower is that the destruction it brings is usually directed at something that was built on a false beliefs and foundations or unrealistic goals and dreams. Also on the bright side, the destruction The Tower brings is always followed by renewal and creation."

- Excerpt from a tarot page found here.

"So what does it mean to call the tower card "The Foundation of Beauty?" Simply put, those possessing true inner beauty will reach the crown, Kether, and their spiritual goals. Here is the realm of creative fantasy, a place of refuge from the harsh "realities" of the earth sphere. Through the Tower, the seeker casts aside false ideas and thoughts about herself or her world. The seeker will discover her true path, the path leading to emotional and spiritual fulfillment. However, like the pictures on the Tower card, the way to the path can be violent and chaotic. Reed likens the experience of the Tower card to having the top of your head lifted and a lightning bolt striking through your brain and down to your toes. It is a searing light that burns into your deepest heart and shows you the imperfections there. It shows how much you have to learn, and by comparison, how little you have learned. It goes through your feet and makes a hole in the ground that you very much want to crawl into."

- Excerpt from this Llewellyn "Tower" page.

***

This post is, more or less, an addendum to my previous post: Dancing with the Ghost of Albert Camus wherein I describe my own "Tower moment" using the image above (inset right).

It is one of the earliest "Tower" cards - from The Tarot of Marseille deck - but, as we can see, it's actual name is "La Maison Dieu" or God House, which was, in the Middle Ages a hospital-monastery intended to accommodate pilgrims. (See this tarot forum page.) Perhaps the original symbolism of the card was, likewise, somewhat different.

Needless to say, there are towers... and, then, there are towers... and there are masters... and, then, there are masters.

Once Possessed - The "Madness" of Vaslav Nijinsky

Russian dancer Vaslav Nijinsky in his 1911 role as the "Rose Ghost"
from the ballet "Le Spectre de la Rose." (Also here, and another related article in French).
Click all images in this post to enlarge.

"Ô toi qui de ma mort fus cause,

Sans que tu puisses le chasser

Toute la nuit mon spectre rose

A ton chevet viendra danser.

Mais ne crains rien, je ne réclame

Ni messe, ni De Profundis;

Ce léger parfum est mon âme

Et j’arrive du paradis."

("O you, who caused my death

Without the power to dispel,

All night long my fragrant specter

Will dance at your bedside.

But fear nothing, I require

Neither psalms nor sacred rites;

This delicate scent is my soul

And I’ve come from paradise.")

- From the poem Le Spectre de la Rose by Théophile Gautier which inspired Michel Fokine's ballet about a young woman haunted by the spirit of a rose she had received at her debut. Later that night, while she dozes in a chair, the spirit of the wilted rose visits her in a dream. (Note: So much tends to be lost in mere word translations of French poetry... specifically: the poetry! I've seen several translations of this particular stanza but found myself dissatisfied with all of them. So, I tweaked it. In other words, if this translation is also problematic, the fault is mine.)

The rose (inset right) is named for a man... as many roses are. Did you know that? It's name is Fantin Latour, named for the French artist who was known for his elegant paintings of flowers... especially his roses. More of his work can be found here. There might, in actuality, be a variety of rose named Nijinsky - well, there ought to be - but, if so, I haven't found it.

"His dancing has the unbroken quality of music, the balance of a great painting, the meaning of fine literature, and the emotion inherent in all these arts. There is something of transmutation in his performances; he becomes an alembic, transforming movement into a finely wrought and beautiful work of art. The dancing of Nijinsky is first an imaginative triumph, and the spectator, perhaps, should not be interested in further dissection of it..."

- From "The Russian Ballet and Nijinsky" by Carl van Vechten found in Nijinsky, an illustrated Monograph edited by Paul Magriel, 1946. Also found within the pages of the book are the 3 b/w photos of Nijinsky as the Rose found inset left, inset right (below) and below the jump.

"In December 1917, Vaslav Nijinsky, the most famous male dancer in the Western world, moved into a Swiss villa with his wife and three-year-old daughter and started to go insane. This diary, which he kept in four notebooks over six weeks, is the only sustained, on-the-spot account we have by a major artist of the experience of entering psychosis. Nijinsky's diary was first published in 1936, in a heavily bowdlerized version that omitted almost half of his text. The present edition, translated by Kyril FitzLyon, is the first complete version in English, and the first version in any language to include the fourth notebook, written at the very edge of psychosis. It contains Nijinsky's last lucid thoughts - on God, sex, war, and the nature of the universe, as well as on his own broken life."

- A description of The Diary of Vaslav Nijinsky. The New York Times has archived a small portion of the newer translation of the diary here.

"Nijinsky's Diary was written during the six weeks he spent in Switzerland before being committed to the asylum, combining elements of autobiography with appeals for compassion toward the less fortunate, and for vegetarianism and animal rights. Nijinsky writes of the importance of feeling, as opposed to reliance on reason and logic alone, and he denounces the practice of art criticism as being nothing more than a way for those who practice it to indulge their own egos rather than focusing on what the artist was trying to say. The diary also contains bitter and conflicted thoughts regarding his relationship with Diaghilev."

- Excerpt from the Wiki entry for Nijinsky.


"The man who is right is the one who feels but does not understand."

- A quote from Nijinsky's Diary found here.

***

A Less Common Kind of Guy

If someone had told me years ago that one day in the far future I would fall in love with a man dressed as a flower, I would've probably just figured they (or I) had inhaled one flower too many. And, yet, that's just what I did one recent Pandemic night, as I gazed at a photo of the Russian dancer, Vaslav Nijinsky. The photo was found in a slim red book with the name "Nijinsky" written in a thin, black script on its spine; a book I might have easily overlooked had it not fallen under my creative radar earlier in the day. And what to my wondering eyes did appear, as I opened the book to a random page, but a photograph of Nijinsky in his role from the ballet "Le Spectre de la Rose"... that is, the ghost or spirit of the rose, which I learned had been inspired by a French poem of the same name.

Lovely, lovely, exquisitely lovely. As it so happens, roses (and spirits) figure prominently in a current art project of mine - a project devoted to the mysteries of the power of love - and, well, I'd be the last one to ignore the quirky habits of fate. Unfortunately, as I began reading the book (into the wee hours of the morning) it became apparent that I had another tragic artist on my hands and, worse still, another misunderstood "mad" artist. At which point I realized Nijinsky would eventually have to make his way to Trans-D... the home of the misunderstood "mad" artist.

As a young dancer, Vaslav Nijinsky (March 12, 1889 – April 8, 1950) was beautiful, graceful, luminous, beloved by both men and women, and considered the greatest dancer and most innovative choreographer of his time. This was during the latter years of the Fin de Siècle when all sorts of dark romanticism, spiritualism - and debauchery - transpired. Tragically, his life - and (allegedly) his mind - began to unravel around the age of 29 (apparently the shelf-life of many a brilliant flame). He was eventually diagnosed with schizophrenia and was to spend his remaining 30 years in and out of mental institutions. Professionally, he would never dance again... reminding us (to our dismay), that, yes, for an artist, there are fates worse than death... and almost all of them are in some way related to institutions.

Nijinsky is and was most often referred to as gay: the stereotypical effeminate ballet dancer - and, while looking at his "Rose" photographs, you might've  thought so, too - as if grace and beauty (and some great eye-shadow) are exclusively found in feminine form. This a fairly modern misconception. The classical world entertained a broader, unbiased perspective, glorifying both their pretty boys and pretty girls equally in art and poetry. Then again, in ancient Greece and Rome, one's sexual orientation wasn't the socially definitive issue it became in the modern world. In fact, no precise Latin words for "homosexual" or "heterosexual" existed. As for Nijinsky, well, he married a woman, fathered two children and employed a number of female prostitutes, while his few documented relationships with men - specifically Sergei Diaghilev, the founder of the renowned Ballets Russes in which Nijinsky found his fame - seem to be based predominately on Nijinsky's artistic opportunism and his partner's egocentric, abusive indulgences. "Love" did not seem to have been the operative term in their relationship. But, for Nijinsky, love was all. And, his feeling was so strong, he believed he was love's personification. In a letter to Diaghilev, Nijinsky wrote:

"You are the one who wants death and destruction, although you are afraid of death.
I love love, but I am not the flesh and blood, I am the spirit, the soul. I am love..."

Ultimately, whether Nijinsky was gay, bi, straight - or some permutation thereof - doesn't really interest us here. I'm more inclined to agree with Dorothy Parker's remark:

“Heterosexuality is not normal, it’s just common.”

 So, let's just accept that Nijinsky was a less common kind of guy and move on...

Pandemic Moments: Masks and Binaries

Is there anybody out there?
Or, as Dorothy Parker once said:
"What fresh hell is this?"

(Note: The poem which originally appeared in this spot has moved to an area below the jump.)

In a word: "Fuck."

I was going to put up several different posts during the last few months but - as you may have noticed - I was not successful. And, then - presto change-o - along came the ongoing pandemic pandemonium (you know the one) and suddenly a surreal, inexplicable sci-fi miasma fell upon us: the world went on hold, governments went bat-shit, small businesses went down the tubes, Wall Street imploded, people began dying off at a rapid rate, and, all the while, not a soul knows which end is up or what's going down apart from some mysterious, virulent DISEASE (origin unknown) which, if it isn't poised to dive into your proverbial blow-hole, is climbing into your eyeballs or insinuating itself under your skin.

The graphic featuring van Gogh inset left pretty much sums up my response. (Thanks, BG!)

In the end, I realized I couldn't bring myself to post anything... at the same time feeling I MUST avoid all reference to the present global affairs. I've had enough of contaminants in my recent past, and enough of various forms of "official" posturing (predominately from affluent male sources and without meaningful content) to last several lifetimes. Perhaps, I'll have something to say when the dust clears. Perhaps, not.

But, if you're reading this, I'm going to assume you're not seeking the expected... nor obligatory blah-bah regarding current events. Good. Because neither are my strong suit. Moreover, due to my continuing refugee status, isolation-at-home does not seem like a half-bad state of affairs. In other words, if I had a home I'd be quite happy staying in it, thank you! As for social distancing, well, for introverts and all those people whose job it is to magically pull attractive and meaningful things out of their heads (and hands), it's a requirement.

Admittedly, I am in the throes of new art projects... which will hopefully be revealed in future Pandemic Moments. Meanwhile, the two photos of myself  (taken by myself) document a couple of failed attempts creating masks. I did wear the blue one (at the top of the post) a few times while wandering about in the Outside but, ultimately, facial coverings - although useful for espionage - kind of give me the heebie-jeebies when everyone is wearing one. On the other hand, there's something to be said for face coverings. One reveals absolutely nothing. Stay tuned: with a little more innovation, they could become the Next Big Fashion Trend!

Sub Rosa (Another Interlude)

At the Garden Gate - digital - 2019, DS.
(Click-on post images for enlargements.)

"In the driest whitest stretch of pain's infinite desert, I lost my sanity and found this rose."

- Attributed to the Sufi mystic and poet Rumi.

“Mystery glows in the rose bed and the secret is hidden in the rose...”

- Attributed to the twelfth-century Persian poet and alchemist, Farid ud-din Attar, about whom Rumi once said: "Attar has traversed the seven cities of Love, We are still at the turn of one street."

"Le ciel clair de minuit, sous mes paupières closes,
Rayonne encor… Je suis ivre de tant de roses
Plus rouges que le vin.

Délaissant leur jardin, les roses m’ont suivie…
Je bois leur souffle bref, je respire leur vie.
Toutes, elles sont là."

(The clear midnight sky, under my closed lids,
Still shines....I am drunk from so many roses
Redder than wine.

Leaving their garden, the roses have followed me....
I drink their brief breath, I breathe their life.
All of them are here.)

- From the poem Les roses sont entrées (Roses Rising) by Symbolist poète maudit, Renée Vivien. I've written more about Vivien here. Inset right is Pre-Raphaelite John Waterhouse's 1908 painting The Soul of the Rose.


"Come into the garden, Maud, 

For the black bat, night, has flown, 
Come into the garden, Maud, 
I am here at the gate alone; 
And the woodbine spices are wafted abroad, 
And the musk of the rose is blown.

For a breeze of morning moves, 
And the planet of Love is on high, 
Beginning to faint in the light that she loves 
In a bed of daffodil sky, 
To faint in the light of the sun she loves, 
To faint in his light, and to die."

- From Alfred, Lord Tennyson's controversial 1854 "monodrama" Maud, which was eventually set to music. Part I of the poem can be found here, and Part II here. Inset left is the 1875 image Maud by the British photographer Julia Cameron.

"I am the dove whose wings are murder.

My name is love."

- From the short poem Au Revoir by the poet Charles Causley, the "most unfashionable poet alive." Like the symbol of the rose, the dove is also associated with Venus (Aphrodite), the goddess of love. The pentagram, on the other hand, is often associated with the planet Venus.

***

Spring is officially here, and, like most humans, my thoughts predictably turn to... well, love.   Suffice to say, while duty calls me back to my feminist artist series, my muse - who generally errs on the side of passion - has other intentions. And, for an artist, there is no dilemma involved. The answer is simple: follow the muse or be damned. Hence, another interlude.

Today's offering emerged from the image which introduces this post... an image which has haunted me this past month, inspired by a similar rose and pentagram motif on the ruined facade of a Templar church (found here). In my vision, it lies in shadow on the exterior of a garden wall flanking a wrought-iron gate. But, not just any garden, mind you; specifically a night garden... the garden of poets.

Inset left is another image I finished recently which had originally been intended for this post - a live scan of a bracelet - (added April 9).

Judging by his poem Maud, Tennyson would've known the night garden intimately... but, then, many critics and scholars came to regard his "monodrama" Maud as the work of deluded man with bipolar disorder. Meanwhile, Tennyson considered it his favorite and most successful composition. Inset right is an image of Tennyson reading Maud by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. The moral to this story? For an artist or poet, attending to the opinions of critics and scholars is comparable to throwing ones body beneath a swiftly moving vehicle.

As it happens, my purpose of writing this post is not entirely clear to me. But, something about the relativity of love, roses... souls... and silence seems to be the underlying theme. Ultimately, it is silence which enables the ancient mystery of love to survive. For an artist, the allusion (and illusion) must suffice. And, yet, while I can't exactly elucidate, I can leave you with this: a definition of sub rosa I found in a book about Freemasonry:

"The rose, and especially the red rose had been from ancient times the symbol of Aphrodite or Venus, the goddess of love. It was symbolic of love, and making love was something private and not to be discussed openly. Cupid (Eros) therefore dedicated the rose to Harpocrates, the god of silence. Hence, the red rose of Aphrodite became the general symbol of silence and secrecy, and perhaps also of invisibility. Anything spoken sub rosa - under the rose - was confidential."

- From The Origins of Freemasonry, Scotlands Century 1590 - 1710  (via a discussion about the Rosicrucians) by David Stevenson, 1988.

On the other hand, from the Wiki article on Harpocrates we have: "One other tale relates the story about the Greek gods. Aphrodite gave a rose to her son Eros, the god of love; he, in turn, gave it to Harpocrates to ensure that his mother's indiscretions (or those of the gods in general, in other accounts) were kept under wraps. This gave roses the connotation of secrecy (a rose suspended from the ceiling of a council chamber pledged all present – sub rosa "under the rose"), which continued through the Middle Ages and through the modern era."

Baudelaire, Rodin & the "Crouching Woman" (A Speculation)

Detail of Je suis belle (I am beautiful), a 1882 sculpture (plaster)
by Auguste Rodin housed in the Musée Rodin in Paris; it was
originally entitled L'Enlèvement (Rape and/or Abduction).

"Mystérieuse faculté que cette reine des facultés ! ...C’est l’imagination qui a enseigné à l’homme le sens moral de la couleur, du contour, du son et du parfum. Elle a créé, au commencement du monde, l’analogie et la métaphore. Elle décompose toute la création, et, avec les matériaux amassés et disposés suivant des règles dont on ne peut trouver l’origine que dans le plus profond de l’âme, elle crée un monde nouveau, elle produit la sensation du neuf. Comme elle a créé le monde (on peut bien dire cela, je crois, même dans un sens religieux), il est juste qu’elle le gouverne."

("How mysterious is Imagination, that queen of the faculties! ...It is Imagination that first taught man the moral meaning of colour, of contour, of sound and of scent. In the beginning of the world it created analogy and metaphor. It decomposes all creation, and with the raw materials accumulated and disposed in accordance with rules one cannot find save in the furthest depths of the soul, it creates a new world, it produces the sensation of newness. Since it has created the world, (so much can be said, I think, even in a religious sense) it is proper that it should govern it.")

- Excerpt from La Reine des Facultés, one of Baudelaire's critical essays from his Salon de 1859 (French only). Inset right is the cover page from an online illustrated edition of Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du mal, 1857, a .pdf in both French and English. (Note: downloads immediately.) For views of the many different covers of Baudelaire's masterpiece published over the years, see this page (click on the arrows).

"Je suis belle, ô mortels! comme un rêve de pierre,
Et mon sein, où chacun s'est meurtri tour à tour,
Est fait pour inspirer au poète un amour
Eternel et muet ainsi que la matière."

("I am beautiful, O mortals! as a dream of stone,
And my breast where each one in turn has bruised himself
Is made to inspire in the poet a love
As eternal and silent as matter.")

- The first 4 lines of Baudelaire's poem, "La Beauté," from Les Fleurs du mal inscribed at the base of Rodin's bronze sculpture Je suis belle (inset left). The original (1882) plaster was entitled L'Enlèvement (Rape, or Abduction), but when it was cast in bronze Rodin added the lines from Baudelaire's poem, and retitled the piece to Je suis belle. Mysteriously, he also altered the last line of Baudelaire's quatrain to read: "Etant alors muet ainsi que la matière," ("So being mute as matter"). (See here.)

"These lines might not seem fitting for a piece originally exhibited as The Rape in 1900. But this past title, the sculpture's current title and the poem inscribed on its base all speak to an ambiguity that characterizes much of the installation. I am Beautiful presents two figures—a more masculine standing figure and one that is more feminine grasped in the former’s arms. Are the two locked in an embrace, the female figure having leapt into her lover’s arms just moments before? Or is it darker, showing a scene of abduction?"

- Excerpt from Love and Lust at the Rodin Museum, a review of an 2017 exhibition at the Rodin Museum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (USA).

"This two-figure group appeared in 1880 at the top of the righthand pilaster of The Gates of Hell. It is a combination of Crouching Woman  and Falling Man, whose back seems to arch under the strain of holding her in his outstretched arms. Also known as The Abduction, Carnal Love or The Cat, the group began its life as an independent sculpture circa 1882...

It illustrates Rodin’s use of assemblages, which became one of the characteristic features of his working method. The sculptor thus profoundly altered the meaning of Crouching Woman, a very open female figure whose posture may appear either obscene or erotic, by turning her over and folding her up into a closed ball, which the man lifts into the air like Atlas..."

- From the Musée Rodin page describing Je suis belle.  Inset right (above) is allegedly the first incarnation of the "Crouching Woman" Rodin created in 1880 for his Gates of Hell. (Note: I have also seen this same figure referred to as Andromeda.) There is also a second crouching female figure at the top of the left-hand pilaster (not shown). Lastly, there is a third figure: a separate piece Rodin created and actually entitled La Femme Accroupie (The Crouching Woman) in 1882 (inset right below), the same year he created L'Enlèvement (Je suis belle). Inset left is the "Falling Man," located directly beneath the female figure on the Gates of Hell. Rodin recycled the Falling Man again, as well, in 1882.

"Rodin had illustrated this poem with an image of a reclining woman encircled in the halo of her hair, presenting a much more serene interpretation of the poem. In the sculpture, however, the original title of The Rape as well as the opposition between masculine and feminine, vertical and horizontal, and round and erect shapes suggest a vision of the “rêve de pierre” as tainted by a certain violence and conveys a message that is more difficult to decipher."

- A reference to the poem "La Beauté," from the 1857 edition of Les Fleurs du mal Rodin illuminated with some of his own drawings in late 1887 and 1888.

"Have pity, cruel girl, I can’t go on, I can’t spend another day without seeing you. Otherwise the atrocious madness. It is over, I don’t work anymore, malevolent goddess, and yet I love furiously. My Camille be assured that I feel love for no other woman, and that my soul belongs to you. … Ah! Divine beauty, flower who speaks and loves, intelligent flower, my darling. My dear one, I am on my knees facing your beautiful body which I embrace."

- A reposted quote, taken from a 1886 letter Rodin wrote to Camille Claudell in the early days of their affair, currently at the Musée Rodin.

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Well, my friends, It appears I'm continuing to embrace the inevitable online distractions I've (continuously) been presented with all month... while researching - and attempting to finish - the post-that-shall-not-be-named (again). But, I couldn't resist posting my latest "find" as it relates so deeply to my previous find.

Once again we are presented with a sculpture... this time a creation by Auguste Rodin (Fr) (inset left, as a dapper young dude), Camille Claudel's lover. I confess, when I first set eyes on the full version of Je suis belle (see photos above) I was appalled. Especially as the first example I discovered online was entitled "The Rape." In ways, I suppose, I'm still appalled, but, in trying to solve the mystery of Rodin's (possibly) most bizarre creation and, at the same time, coming across its connection to poète maudit, Charles Baudelaire, well, I am compelled to elucidate.

As it stands, it appears many critics find Je suis belle disturbing, but, none seem to grasp just exactly why. While they might admit the odd coupling seems "tainted by a certain violence" or, conveys "a message that is difficult to decipher," or, resort to adjectives like "darker," one gets the impression the critics are lost at sea. My favorite understatement: it "embodies a difficult notion of beauty."

I'll say it does! Because, if you look very closely at the women's face, she's obviously insensible. And, if you take into consideration the position of her body - her dangling limbs, and a compression unlikely to be achieved by a living body - she may, In fact, be a true homage to Baudelaire (and/or the Symbolists in general): that is, a fresh corpse...