The Lovers’ Chronicle 12 September – feelin’ – love stories: The Shumanns marry & The Brownings elope – art by Anselm Feuerbach, Fernand Khnopff, Carl Eytel & Ben Shahn

Dear Zazie,  Here is today’s Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag dedicated to his muse.  Follow us on twitter @cowboycoleridge.  Share your feelin’s?  Rhett

The Lovers’ Chronicle

Dear Muse,

an easy to write topic today
“Right, at the core
of what makes lovers go round”
bein’ able to express ’em
“And not afraid to share them”
i did not use mine for years,
so i think it was easy to let ’em go,
when the right inspiration came
“I could sense that
under your stoic demeanor”
part of my armor to keep
my feelin’s under wraps
there was no point
in lettin’ ’em out
till right time, right one

© copyright 2023 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

all to clear in the rearview, the missin’ years, chasin’ what could not be caught, resurrected with zeal though, since the words started comin’, heaps of buried emotions to pull out and spread on the canvas, just had to get started and now just have to ride herd on the flow, to make a little sense, or not, of it all

© copyright 2022.2023 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

i did not want to hear it
did not want to be
anywhere near it

so many years spent
ignorin’ and avoidin’
to the point where
you woulda had to hit
me with a hammer
before i could feel

is it possible as a result
that i feel more intensely
or is that the effect of you

© copyright 2021.2023 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

Pale Love, Pale Rider

how can i pause
the spell you cast
upon me

i want the thoughts
of you to stop invadin’,
hijackin’ my mind

the shape of a cloud
a song
a taste
a quiver
random sensory impulses

all lead back to you

i want
to give in to the urges
to share each thought
to embrace, this, you

© copyright 2020 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

near or far,
the verse appears

in this place
where we feel again
and the past
does not linger
and life resumes
so quickly, how can
we know how far
it will go and what
imprint will we leave

shall we give in
and let it take us
where it will
for we cannot know
how long it lasts

Karen: ‘’I hope that every single day when you look at those mountains that surround you, you’ll remember that I would have moved them for you, if only you’d call.’’

oh, that hits close

© copyright 2019 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

so much it hurts
“Tell me what you’re writing.
I want to know, please.”
oh you know, the usual
all about you

but of course
the verse never does justice
however i form and shape it

when i look back,
in every gesture,
every letter,
every silence,
you have been
entirely you
and i would not change
one word, one look

© copyright 2018 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

play, play on for me
i shall remain here
all evenin’ and listen

the first hesitatin’ notes
murmured faintly
in the quiet air
of golden twilight
in it, the sighin’
of the wind
and heartrendin’ plaints

i listen, lyin’ here
eyes half shut,
lookin’ out
upon the sun
dyin’ over the plains

a somewhat melancholy feelin’
that my past life and it’s places
are recedin’ in the rearview
at this moment of nightfall
i feel at home

© copyright 2017 mac tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved

so much it hurts…
“Tell me what you’re writing
Verse, a song, a story?”
Words can never tell
However form them
Transform them

What I feel for you

© copyright 2016 mac tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved

Took a two hour drive
through damn fine cattle
country. Windows down,
music up loud. A
little unwind time
Drive-time therapy

Well, ol’ D. H.
figured it out,
not surprisin’
Writin’ from the
viewpoint of one
of the loveless

A vision, out there on the waves
Sail flyin’ white under the sun
Sweet one on whom light has broken

© copyright 2015 mac tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved

He remembers; Blankets,
Cushions strewn on the floor
Lovin’ her long into the night
Till slumber comes
Alongside the dyin’ embers

for Kelli

Freshly disheveled hair
And that unruly grin
You know you’re in trouble
Hold on Cowboy
Because this muse,
You cannot be without

© copyright 2014 mac tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved

Today is a good day here at TLC.  We have two love stories to share with you.

Today is the birthday of Anselm Feuerbach (Speyer, Kingdom of Bavaria12 September 1829 – 4 January 1880 Venice); painter. He was the leading neoclassical painter of the German 19th-century school.

Following his death, his step-mother Henriette, to whom he had always been close, and who had always done much to promote his career, wrote a book entitled Ein Vermächtnis (“A Testament” or “A Legacy”), including his letters and autobiographical notes. It proved enormously successful and greatly enhanced his posthumous reputation.

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On this day in 1840 composer Robert Schumann married German pianist Clara Wieck.  In the year 1840, the immensely talented Clara was eagerly awaitin’ the eve of her 21st birthday, when she would be free to legally marry the 30-year old Schumann. The couple had hoped to wed years earlier, but the match was bitterly opposed by Clara’s father.  Clara and Robert kept in touch by letters, which were sometimes intercepted by Papa Wieck.  Schumann, for his part, buried himself in his music, composin’ furiously until Clara would come of age.

Early in 1840 Clara wrote, “Dear Robert: I love you so much it hurts my heart. Tell me what you’re writing. I would so love to know, oh please, please. A quartet, an overture — even perhaps a symphony? Might it by any chance be — a wedding present?”  When the marriage finally took place, just as she had guessed, Robert presented Clara with a musical weddin’ present: not a quartet, overture, or symphony, but a song cycle, “Myrten,” (Myrtle) consisting of 26 songs, which were published as his Opus 25.  The openin’ song, entitled “Widmung” (Dedication), is a settin’ of a Friedrich Rückert poem which contains this refrain: “You are my heart and soul, my rapture and pain, you are the world I live in and the heaven I aspire to, my good angel, my better self.”

On this day in 1846, Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning eloped.  They had been courtin’ in secret for a year and a half, through the mail, unbeknownst to her father.  It had begun when Browning wrote Barrett a gushin’ fan letter, sayin’, “I love your verses with all my heart, dear Miss Barrett … and I love you too.”  She wrote a long letter in return, thankin’ him and askin’ him for ways she might improve her writin’. Barrett was an invalid, and was reliant on morphine, and it was some months before Browning convinced her to meet face to face.  Barrett’s father did not like Browning, and viewed him as a fortune hunter.

On the day of the weddin’, Browning posted another letter to Barrett, which read, “Words can never tell you, however, — form them, transform them anyway, — how perfectly dear you are to me — perfectly dear to my heart and soul. I look back, and in every one point, every word and gesture, every letter, every silence — you have been entirely perfect to me — I would not change one word, one look.”  They were married at St. Marylebone Parish Church, and Barrett returned to her father’s house, where she stayed for one more week before she ran off to Italy with Browning.  She never saw her father again.  After the weddin’, she presented Browning with a collection of poems she had written durin’ their courtship.  It was published in 1850 as Sonnets from the Portuguese.

Tough choice for the poem of the day between Rückert and the Brownings, but I think we will go with Rückert because of the tie-in with Schumann’s song.  The poem of the day originally an unnamed poem from a collection of poems called Liebesfrühling (Dawn of Love):

Dedication

You are my soul, you are my heart,
you are my rapture, you are my pain,
you are my world in which I live,
and the heaven I aspire to
you are my grave, into which
I always put all my grief.
You are rest, you are peace,
you are sent to me from heaven.
That you love me makes me more worthy,
Your glance has transfigured me,
you have me loving beyond myself,
my good spirit, my better self!

For the Song of the Day, we found two versions of Schumann’s “Widmung”; one featurin’ the incomparable Jessye Norman and an instrumental version featurin’ Evgeny Kissin.   

Two examples of dedication.  Dedication to a true love.  Dedication I tried to give.  Dedication I wish I could still give to you.

today is the birthday of Fernand Khnopff (Fernand Edmond Jean Marie Khnopff; Grembergen, Belgium 12 September 1858 – 12 November 1921 Brussels); symbolist painter.

On 25 October 1876, he enrolled for the Cours De Dessin Après Nature (“course of drawing after nature”) at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts. Between 1877 and 1880, Khnopff made several trips to Paris where he discovered the work of Delacroix, Ingres, Moreau and Stevens. At the Paris World Fair of 1878 he became acquainted with the oeuvre of Millais and Burne-Jones. During his last year at the Académie in 1878–1879 he neglected his classes in Brussels and lived for a while in Passy, where he visited the Cours Libres of Jules Joseph Lefebvre at the Académie Julian.

Although not a very open man and a rather secluded personality, he achieved cult status during his life. Acknowledged and accepted, he received the Order of Leopold. His sister, Marguerite, was one of his favorite subjects. His most famous painting is probably Caress of the Sphinx (“L’Art ou Des Caresses”). His art often portrayed a recurring theme found in symbolist art: the dualistic vision of woman as either ‘femme fatale’ or angelic woman.

Khnopff is buried in Laeken Cemetery in Brussels.

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Carl Eytel
Eytel sketching – during his trip with George Wharton James

today is the birthday of Carl Eytel (Maichingen, Böblingen, Kingdom of Württemberg; September 12, 1862 – September 17, 1925 Banning, California); artist who built his reputation for paintings and drawings of desert subjects in the American Southwest.  Immigrating to the United States in 1885.  Wanting to be a cowboy, he worked as a cowhand in the San Joaquin Valley and he eventually settled in Palm Springs in 1903.  Living in small cabins he built himself, Palm Springs remained his home.  Eytel often walked on his travels, covering 400 miles in the Colorado Desert on foot.  On one of his travels he was nearly lynched as a horse thief and in 1918, during a trip to northern Arizona, he was threatened with lynching as a German spy.  With an extensive knowledge of the Sonoran Desert, Eytel traveled with author George Wharton James as he wrote the successful Wonders of the Colorado Desert, and contributed over 300 drawings to the 1908 work.  While he enjoyed success as an artist, he lived as an ascetic and eventually died in poverty.  Eytel’s most important work, Desert Near Palm Springs, hangs in the History Room of the California State Library.

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And today is the birthday of Ben Shahn (Kaunas, Russian Empire (now Lithuania) September 12, 1898 – March 14, 1969 New York City); artist. He is best known for his works of social realism, his left-wing political views, and his series of lectures published as The Shape of Content.

Shahn was married twice; Tillie Goldstein (m. 1924; divorced) and Bernarda Bryson (m. 1935).

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Mac Tag

thanks for stoppin’ by y’all