The Lovers’ Chronicle 30 August – À bout de souffle – art by Jacques-Louis David, Isaac Levitan & Leonor Fini – birth of Mary Shelley

Dear Zazie, Here is today’s Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag dedicated to his muse. Follow us on twitter @cowboycoleridge. Who comes to you in your dreams? Rhett

The Lovers’ Chronicle

Dear Muse,

À bout de souffle mais pas de rêves…
Walking  up the stairs
of the Hôtel de Suède in Paris
they, he and the pretty redhead,
pass a young couple going down;
hey that was Jean and Jean-Paul
”I wore my New York Herald Tribune
shirt just in case we saw her”
fabulous, but let’s stay away
from them, we might get shot;
They reach the door of their room,
but when they open it they step
into what looks like the parlor
of a house from the early 1800’s,
and sitting at a desk they see a girl
in her late teens writing;
oh wow, that looks like Mary Shelley
”She must be writing Frankenstein”
which means Percy is nearby
and we are in Lake Geneva,
wait i have an idea;
He sits down at a desk which has a pen
and an inkwell and a stack of blank paper
”You aren’t going to write a ghost story are you”
ha, no, not gonna go Prometheus on you;
She watches over his shoulder
as he writes these lines;
it was a beautiful night in November 
that i beheld the sight of you in bed
for the first time, the first of many
times that i have found myself
breathless with you

© copyright 2024 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

all about the movie with
Jean Seberg and
Jean-Paul Belmondo
“I haven’t seen it”
highly recommend it
which tells you something
“Yes, that it’s sad”
correct baby
put another way,
it is a film that makes you feel
“Well, that’s what they should do”
right, the purpose of art
“Can we talk about another purpose”
to take each other’s breath away

what was happenin’, good question, from afar i can guess; it was a tuesday night, probably warm and humid, normal conditions for late august. workin’ on one of the blogs, talkin’ about Mary Shelley, not Frankenstein, and we had just discovered Fini, what strikin’ images; typical tuesday

the verse asks and we receive
this sensation, granted more
figurative than literal but,
still how i would describe
the feelin’ of bein’ with
the one you do not
want to be without

also a dream theme
runnin’ through this day
before we became,
how many times
were they a sanctuary

those were the nights

Pale Love, Pale Rider

to feel again
À bout de souffle

to awaken
visions renew
makes me want

wallow in the reverie
of your skin, your hands
the verse given, the songs,
the sketches, the time spent
holdin’ you and feelin’
myself flow into you

it has been so long

come to me
i will for you,
come

suppose this has always been
about chasin’ that feelin’,
from the southern High Plains
to the Hill Country, to the Gulf Coast
from there to the Carolinas then
to the northern High Plains
and now deep in the South,
only ever findin’ it
in fleetin’ moments
but at what cost

perhaps it is time
to stop lookin’

’twas thus told
only to awaken

verse veils the night
visions renew
my vows to thee

breathless once
makes me want

come to me
i will for you,
come

watchin’ À bout de souffle,
again, how many times now

really must start sooner
to give you somethin’ worthy
sleep pulls and i resist

searchin’ the memory
of your eyes, your hands
the verse given, the songs,
the sketches, the time spent
come to me, to be
breathless again

Yes, enter often, darkness, pale rider
Wish to lie, inure the reality
Original beauty and pain, rendered

Last night, I dreamed
a dark-haired beauty…

I had been workin’ out and she
came to me and hugged me
I told her I was sweaty,
but she did not care
I held her and felt
myself flow into her
I told her it had been
so long,
so long
She held me tighter
Who was she
Did wishful thinkin’
make her appear
Is she a premonition

Last night, I dreamed
a dark-haired beauty

Jacques-Louis David
Self portrait, 1794, Musée du Louvre

Today is the birthday of Jacques-Louis David (Paris 30 August 1748 – 29 December 1825 Brussels); painter in the Neoclassical style, in my opinion, the preeminent French painter of the era. In the 1780s his cerebral brand of history painting marked a change in taste away from Rococo frivolity toward a classical austerity and severity, heightened feeling harmonizing with the moral climate of the final years of the Ancien Régime.

David later became an active supporter of the French Revolution and friend of Maximilien Robespierre (1758–1794), and was effectively a dictator of the arts under the French Republic. Imprisoned after Robespierre’s fall from power, he aligned himself with yet another political regime upon his release: that of Napoleon, The First Consul of France. At this time he developed his Empire style, notable for its use of warm Venetian colours. After Napoleon’s fall from Imperial power and the Bourbon revival, David exiled himself to Brussels, then in the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, where he remained until his death. David had a large number of pupils, making him the strongest influence in French art of the early 19th century, especially academic Salon painting.

David was granted lodging in the Louvre, an ancient and much desired privilege of great artists. When the contractor of the King’s buildings, M. Pécoul, was arranging with David, he asked the artist to marry his daughter, Marguerite Charlotte. This marriage brought him money and eventually four children. David had his own pupils, about 40 to 50, and was commissioned by the government to paint “Horace defended by his Father”, but he soon decided, “Only in Rome can I paint Romans.” His father-in-law provided the money he needed for the trip, and David headed for Rome with his wife and three of his students.

Gallery

Cupid and Psyche (1817), Cleveland Museum of Art

Paris and Helen (1788), Musée du Louvre, Paris (detail)

Jupiter et Antiope (1768), an early work showing the influence of Greuze

Venitienne A Sa Toilette

Mars Being Disarmed by Venus and the Three Graces, David’s last great work (1824)

Portrait of Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier and his wife (1788), Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

The Farewell of Telemachus and Eucharis (1818), J. Paul Getty Museum

The Anger of Achilles (1819), Kimbell Art Museum

The Sisters Zénaïde and Charlotte Bonaparte (1821), J. Paul Getty Museum

Portrait Of A Young Woman In A Turban

Mademoiselle Guimard as Terpsichore, 1774–1775, an early work

Madame Récamier (1800), Musée du Louvre, Paris

Marguerite-Charlotte David

Suzanne Le Peletier de Saint-Fargeau (1804), The J. Paul Getty Museum

Portrait of Madame de Verninac (1798–1799), born Henriette Delacroix, elder sister of Eugène Delacroix, Musée du Louvre, Paris

Portrait of Anne-Marie-Louise Thélusson, Comtesse de Sorcy (1790), Neue Pinakothek, Munich

The Death of Marat(1793)

Today is the birthday of Mary Shelley (Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin; Somers Town, London 30 August 1797 – 1 February 1851 Chester Square, London); writer. She is the author of Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818), which is considered the first science fiction novel ever written, and was the wife of English Romantic poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley. Godwin may have first met the radical poet-philosopher Shelley in the interval between her two stays in Scotland. By the time she returned home for a second time on 30 March 1814, Shelley had become estranged from his wife, Harriet, and was regularly visitin’ Godwin’s father, whom he had agreed to bail out of debt. Mary and Percy began meetin’ each other secretly at Mary Wollstonecraft’s grave in St Pancras Churchyard, and they fell in love. She was sixteen, he nearly twenty-one. To Mary’s dismay, her father disapproved and tried to thwart the relationship and salvage the “spotless fame” of his daughter. On 28 July 1814, the couple secretly left for France, takin’ Mary’s stepsister, Claire Clairmont, with them, but leavin’ Shelley’s pregnant wife behind. They married in late 1816 after the suicide of Shelley’s wife. On 12 March 1818, they left England for Italy where Shelley would die in 1822.

Shedied at the age of fifty-three from what her physician suspected was a brain tumour. According to her daughter, Jane Shelley, Mary had asked to be buried with her mother and father; but her son Percy and Jane, judging the graveyard at St Pancras to be “dreadful”, chose to bury her instead at St Peter’s Church, Bournemouth, near their new home at Boscombe. On the first anniversary of Mary’s death, the Shelleys opened her box-desk. Inside they found locks of her dead children’s hair, a notebook she had shared with Shelley, and a copy of his poem Adonaïs with one page folded round a silk parcel containing some of his ashes and the remains of his heart.

My heart was fashioned to be susceptible of love and sympathy, and when wrenched by misery to vice and hatred, it did not endure the violence of the change without torture such as you cannot even imagine.

Mary Shelley, the monster in Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus

The poem of the day is from Mary:

Come to Me in Dreams

Oh, come to me in dreams, my love!
…I will not ask a dearer bliss;
Come with the starry beams, my love,
…And press mine eyelids with thy kiss.

‘Twas thus, as ancient fables tell,
…Love visited a Grecian maid,
Till she disturbed the sacred spell,
…And woke to find her hopes betrayed.

But gentle sleep shall veil my sight,
…And Psyche’s lamp shall darkling be,
When, in the visions of the night,
…Thou dost renew thy vows to me.

Then come to me in dreams, my love,
…I will not ask a dearer bliss;
Come with the starry beams, my love,
…And press mine eyelids with thy kiss.

Isaac Levitan
Self portrait, 1880

Today is the birthday of Isaac Levitan (Isaac Ilyich Levitan; Kibarty, Augustów Governorate in Congress Poland, a part of the Russian Empire (present-day Lithuania) 30 August 1860 – 4 August 1900 Moscow); classical landscape painter who advanced the genre of the “mood landscape”.

In the 1890s, he had an on-again, off-again affair with an older married woman; the painter Sofia Kuvshinnikova, which led to a small scandal — and a play by Anton Chekhov (“The Grasshopper”) and a threatened duel with the playwright. Chekhov published the story in January 1892. The story concerns a lecherous man who has an affair with a married woman, whose husband dies of an accident (that may have been suicide) after she leaves him. Levitan and Kuvshinnikova were both offended although the central figure in the story was a young wife and Kuvshinnikova was 42. Moreover, she was dark haired and a talented painter, whereas Chekhov’s character was blonde and not an artist. The stronger similarity was that her husband was tolerant of her disloyalty to him, as was “The Grasshopper” who forgave his wife’s indiscretions. She, Levitan and her husband travelled together and were considered a ménage à trois.

Gallery

Portrait of Sofia Kuvshinnikova by Levitan (1888)

Autumn day. Sokolniki. 1879

Silence (1898)

dusk 1900

" Brouillard sur l' eau " 1895 “Brouillard sur l’ eau ” 1895

And today is the birthday of Leonor Fini (Buenos Aires; August 1907 – 18 January 1996 Paris); surrealist painter, designer, illustrator, and author, known for her depictions of powerful and erotic women. Born to Malvina Braun Dubich (born in Trieste, with German, Slavic and Venetian ancestry) and Herminio Fini (with ancestry from Benevento, Italy).

by van Vechten

She moved to Milan at the age of 17, and then to Paris, in either 1931 or 1932. There, she became acquainted with Carlo Carrà and Giorgio de Chirico, who influenced much of her work. She also came to know Paul Éluard, Max Ernst, Georges Bataille, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Picasso, André Pieyre de Mandiargues, and Salvador Dalí. She traveled Europe by car with Mandiargues and Cartier-Bresson where he took photographs, some of his best known, of her naked in a pool with her then partner, de Mandiargues (see below).

Fini, Italy, 1933 by Cartier-Bresson

Fini was openly bisexual and polyamorous. She told Whitney Chadwick in 1982: “I am a woman, therefore I have had the ‘feminine experience’, but I am not a lesbian”. She also said: “Marriage never appealed to me, I’ve never lived with one person. Since I was 18, I’ve always preferred to live in a sort of community – a big house with my atelier and cats and friends, one with a man who was rather a lover and another who was rather a friend. And it has always worked.”

de Mandiargues and Fini, Italy, 1933 by Cartier-Bresson

Married once, for a brief period, to Federico Veneziani, they were divorced after she met the Italian Count, Stanislao Lepri, who abandoned his diplomatic career shortly after meeting Fini and lived with her thereafter. She met the Polish writer Konstanty Jeleński, known as Kot in Rome in January 1952. She was delighted to discover that he was the illegitimate half-brother of Sforzino Sforza, who had been one of her favorite lovers. Kot joined Fini and Lepri in their Paris apartment in October 1952 and the three remained inseparable until their deaths. She later employed an assistant to join the household, which he described as “a little bit of prison and a lot of theatre”. One of his jobs was to look after her beloved Persian cats. Over the years she acquired as many as 23 of them; they shared her bed and were allowed to roam the dining-table at mealtimes. The ‘inner circle’ expanded to include the American artist, Richard Overstreet and the Argentine poet Juan-Bautista Pinero.