The Lovers’ Chronicle 10 May – remember – birth of Benito Pérez Galdós – art by Léon Bakst

Dear Zazie, Today’s Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag to his muse. Visit us on Twitter @cowboycoleridge. Rhett

The Lovers’ Chronicle

Dear Muse,

frequent topic here, memories played a pivotal roll in gittin’ by, tonight recallin’ what has been left out, not all has been told, have not told this; the talkative, opinionated kid in high school who was always hangin’ out with friends or girlfriends, started becomin’ a loner in college, takin’ long walks on campus, readin’, playin’ records in my room, even did a little studyin’, that loner guy is still inside, but he knew he needed to step aside for you

© copyright 2022.2024 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

all of this
written as a way
of understandin’
guidin’, quotin’,
verse, ours and others,
aloud, whispered, muttered

and what has been found, holdin’
how you feel, how you look

somethin’
you just knew
had been waitin’

cannot have come this far
and not be overcome
with gratitude

Pale Love, Pale Rider

the mornin’
we can return to

remember when
it all started
born of somethin’
urgent, not to be
denied, nor withheld

el verdadero amor
somethin’
you just know
out there waitin’

i remember
when our lips would touch,
and our fingers clutched
as we moved together

the struggle is real y’all

light the candles
and climb into
this cold bed

read a few pages from
The Living and the Dead,
before fatigue overtakes

blow out the candles
and drift, considerin’
what was said and put aside
how you replied, how you looked

write of light for the way
guidin’ where i stumble
quotin’, for understandin’,
verse, ours and others,
aloud, whispered, muttered…

how can we hear and be not moved
sit silent at what was bequeathed
what these can only memorize

remember…
becomin’ aware
of the possibility
of the search

that was it
to be onto somethin’
and without
was to be in despair

but the searches
always ended
in despair

the search is tricky
it likes to show you
takin’ up with “the one”,
sets about provin’
to everyone
what a nice person you are,
and settles you down
with a vengeance

then it wakes you up one day
and you are so sunk
in everydayness
that you might
just as well be dead

lookin’ at the mountains
the sun above the ridges
the shadows comin’ on
and there close behind
the mornin’
you could never
go back to

never learned,
always known
remember when…
movin’ together
born of somethin’
urgent, not to be
denied, nor understood
the rest is invention

never learned,
always known
el verdadero amor
somethin’ you just knew
was out there waitin’…
the rest is desperation

i remember when your lips
would touch mine,
and our fingers clutched
and we moved together

langourously

if only time could be turned back

Do you want to
see the darkness
Do you want to
know it; feel it
Do you want to
be the Darkness
Then come with me

Today is the birthday of Benito Pérez Galdós (Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Canary Islands, Spain; May 10, 1843 – January 4, 1920 Madrid); realist novelist. In my opinion, second only to Cervantes in stature as a Spanish novelist. He was the leading literary figure in 19th century Spain. He remains popular in Spain, and it is considered an equal to Dickens, Balzac and Tolstoy.

His play Realidad (1892) is important in the history of realism in the Spanish theatre. The Pérez Galdós museum in Las Palmas, Gran Canaria features a portrait of the writer by Joaquín Sorolla.

Pérez Galdós was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1912, but his opposition to religious authorities led him to be boycotted by conservative sectors of Spanish society, and traditionalist Catholics, who did not recognize his literary merit.

The novelas españolas contemporáneas, from La desheredada (1881) to Angel Guerra (1891), a loosely related series of 22 novels which are the author’s major claim to literary distinction, including his masterpiece Fortunata y Jacinta (1886–87). They are bound together by the device of recurring characters, borrowed from Balzac’s La Comédie humaine. Fortunata y Jacinta is almost as long as War and Peace. It concerns the fortunes of four characters: a young man-about-town, his wife, his lower-class mistress, and her husband. The character of Fortunata is based on a real girl whom Pérez Galdós first saw in a tenement building in Madrid, drinking a raw egg – which is the way in which the fictional characters come to meet.

quotes

El amor es un arte que nunca se aprende y siempre se sabe. (Love is an art that will never learn and always know.)

El verdadero amor, el sólido y durable, nace del trato; lo demás es invención de los poetas, de los músicos y demás gente holgazana. (True love, solid and durable, is born of treatment; the rest is invention by poets, musicians and other lazy people.)

And today is the birthday of Léon Bakst (Lev (Leib) Samoilovich Rosenberg, Grodno (Belarus) 10 May 1866 – 28 December 1924 Rueil Malmaison, near Paris); painter and scene and costume designer. He was a member of the Sergei Diaghilev circle and the Ballets Russes, for which he designed exotic, richly coloured sets and costumes.

After the Revolution of 1917 one of Leon’s sisters died from hunger in Russia. When Bakst received the news, he suffered a nervous breakdown, becoming so ill that he couldn’t tolerate any irritants such as light, noise, or touch. His servant, Linda, exploited his condition to steal his money — she took all the honoraria that came to the house and intimidated the artist, forcing him to include her and her husband as heirs to his will. By chance he managed to send a note to an influential friend and patron Alice Warder Garrett (1877–1952), an art philanthropist, who helped his other sister Sofia rescue Léon. They first met in Paris in 1914, when Mrs. Garrett was accompanying her diplomat husband in Europe, Bakst soon depended upon Garrett as both a confidante and agent.

Gallery

Conte Crayon drawing of Ida Rubinstein lower torso, 1915

Terror Antiquus, 1908

Operatic costume designs (1911)

Ménade, from The Book of the Homeless

Model, 1905

Supper, 1902

One of Bakst’s last paintings: Portrait of Rachel Strong, future Countess Henri de Boisgelin; 1924, oil on canvas, 130×89 cm, Museum of Avant-Garde Mastery