The Lovers’ Chronicle 20 October – survive – art by Aelbert Cuyp & Frits Thaulow – birth of Rimbaud

Dear Zazie,  Here is today’s Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag dedicated to his muse.  What is your winter dream?  Do your realities converge with your dreams? Have you survived une saison en enfer? Rhett

The Lover’s Chronicle

Dear Muse,

a nod to Rimbaud
and spendin’ time in a dark place
then emergin’ to tell of it
“I was tuning up
to sing some Gloria”
i know you were
and it is good song
but i never had
that kind of loss
you know my seasons
so no need to retrieve
those stories,
just want to raise a glass
to all survivors and say
you can find your way out

© coyright 2023 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

not all dark on this day for Rimbaud, though you know my affinity, there is this; surround with the words, the vision, soak in the orange-yellow light of the sunrise, a survivor ready for seasons in whatever is the opposite of hell without gittin’ too dramatic, maybe this, seasons with you

© coyright 2022.2023 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

oh, still feel the pull
no point in denyin’
how can one not
on this day

there was certainty there
and comfort
of a resigned sort

but now,
i need but think of you,
to feel,
to see another way

a way with

is that not why
the verse was sent

why you were sent

© coyright 2021 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

Pale Love, Pale Rider

almost have to write one
for Rimbaud

i read parts of
une saison en enfer
every year
i understand well the part
where he has beauty
and then finds her bitter,
will not bore with the tales
of havin’ been there
more than once

he goes on to write
that life is a farce
we are forced to endure

i git it, we certainly were not
given a choice regardin’
our attendance

yet you can smooth out the lows
by controllin’ your expectations
and knowin’ your limitations
now, will that lop off some highs
well maybe, but better that
than another season in hell

© copyright 2020.2023 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

well of course
i feel the pull

i try to be another

i do what i can only do
my muse, i put it out there
and hope for the best

does anyone understand
can anyone see a better
purpose than this

i swear on all that is vital
that i have tried to no avail

and so we have what we have

© copyright 2019 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

a stellar autumn night
for a trip…

a long overdue
rendezvous awaits
the culmination
of a journey
that began
eight years ago

whatever has been,
mere prelude
to what will be

do you see me comin’
up that tree lined drive

would ’twere
that it were now

need there be
a reason for survivin’

in this case
it is so

the one constant
over time and distance

it is time
we have arrived

© copyright 2018 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

And you will say: “Take me!” pullin’ me close,
And we will take our time findin’ that place
For those who travel this far…

i have written, often,
that beauty and sorrow
are all that matter
so of course,
i revere Rimbaud
no one ever
wrote it better

for Rimbaud it was hope
that was extinguished
for me, need

i survived
deux saisons en enfer
i do not need another

© copyright 2017 mac tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved

Ah yes, this the place…
Sippin’ absinthe
Readin’ Rimbaud
What was sown
You have to own…
I believe
So I am

Une saison en enfer
I believe, so I am
A season stretches
Into a life
What was sown,
You must own

I too found Her bitter
And I too cursed Her

© copyright 2016 mac tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved

Turn silences and darkness
into words
and write down
what is unutterable
Make the whirlin’ world stand still

To whom shall I yield?
What beast must I serve?
What hearts must I break?
What lie must I live?
And in what blood tread?

Say to the other,
“Go on, let it go!”
Great scar of the one
To desire nothin’
and everythang, at
once and all the time

Learnin’ how to hold
hopelessness, to see
beyond what cannot
be held, to live with
what has been done and
what has not been done

© copyright 2015 mac tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved

Took her and held
Her firmly. She
Let herself flow
Into the strength
Of his embrace
An embrace that
From then on would
Always be there

© copyright 2014 mac tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved

Rimbaud wrote a poem “A Winter Dream” that served as inspiration for this poem.  We return to two of our favorite themes here at TLC; dreams and the film Inception.  Hope you like today’s POD:

A Winter Deam

In winter we will travel by horseback
Into the mountains
We will be fine… A warm rendezvous waits
In a cabin in the woods

You will shut your eyes, to see through the dream,
Advancin’ shadows of visions,
Those swirlin’ memories, a totem spins
Realities converge with illusions

Then you will feel upon your lips…
A little kiss, and my fingertips,
Will run over your skin…

And you will say: “Take me!” pullin’ me close,
And we will take our time findin’ that place
For those who travel this far…

© copyright 2012 mac tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved

The Song of the Day is “A Winter’s Dream” by Symphony X

Today is the birthday of Aelbert Cuyp (Aelbert Jacobsz Cuyp; Dordrecht, Netherworld; October 20, 1620 – November 15, 1691 Dordrecht); one of the leading landscape painters of the Dutch Golden Age in the 17th century.  The most famous of a family of painters, the pupil of his father Jacob Gerritsz Cuyp (1594–1651/52), he is especially known for his large views of the Dutch countryside in early morning or late afternoon light.

He is known to have been married to Cornelia Bosman in 1658, a date coinciding so directly with the end of his productivity as a painter that it has been accepted that his marriage played some sort of role in the end of his artistic career.

gallery

today is the birthday of Frits Thaulow (Christiania, Norway 20 October 1847 – 5 November 1906 Volendam, Netherlands); Impressionist painter, best known for his naturalistic depictions of landscape.

Thaulow was married twice.  In 1874 he married Ingeborg Charlotte Gad (1852–1908).  The marriage dissolved in 1886.  In 1886 he married Alexandra Lasson (1862–1955), the daughter of Carl Lasson (1830–1893), a noted Norwegian attorney.

gallery

Arthur Rimbaud

And Today is the birthday of Arthur Rimbaud (Jean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud; Charleville, Ardennes, France; 20 October 1854 – 10 November 1891 Marseille); poet who is known for his influence on modern literature and arts, which prefigured surrealism.  Rimbaud started writing at a very young age and was a prodigious student, but abandoned his formal education in his teenage years to run away from home amidst the Franco-Prussian War.  After running away, during his late adolescence and early adulthood, he began the bulk of his literary output, but completely stopped writing at the age of 21, after assembling one of his major works, Illuminations.

Rimbaud was known to have been a libertine and for being a restless soul, having engaged in a volatile romantic relationship with fellow poet Paul Verlaine, which lasted nearly two years.   After the end of his literary career, he traveled extensively on three continents as a merchant before his death from cancer just after his thirty-seventh birthday.  As a poet, Rimbaud is well-known for his contributions to Symbolism and, among other works, Une Saison en Enfer 1873 (A Season in Hell), which was a significant precursor to modernist literature.

Versi (Verse)

• Je est un autre.
  • I am another.
  • Letter to Georges Izambard; Charleville, 13 May 1871
• Ô mes petites amoureuses,
  Que je vous hais !
  • Oh my little mistresses,
    How I hate you!
  • Poésies (1871), “Mes petites amoureuses”
• J’allais sous le ciel, Muse! et j’étais ton féal.
  • I went out under the sky, Muse! and I was your vassal.
  • Ma Bohéme. Fantaisie (My Bohemian Life (Fantasy)), st. 1
• Mon auberge était à la Grande-Ourse.
  Mes étoiles au ciel avaient un doux frou-frou.
  • My tavern was the Big Bear.
    My stars in the sky rustled softly.
  • Ma Bohéme. Fantaisie (My Bohemian Life (Fantasy)), st. 2
• Mon triste coeur bave à la poupe.
  • My sad heart foams at the stern.
  • Le Coeur Volé (The Stolen Heart, st. 1
• A noir, E blanc, I rouge, U vert, O bleu: voyelles,
  Je dirai quelque jour vos naissances latentes !
  • Black A, white E, red I, green U, blue O: vowels,
    Someday I shall recount your latent births.
  • Voyelles (Vowels (1871)
• Elle est retrouvée,
  Quoi ? — L’Éternité.
  C’est la mer allée
  Avec le soleil.
  • It is found again.
    What? Eternity.
    It is the sea
    Gone with the sun.
  • L’Éternité (1872)
  • Variant translation:
    It has been recovered.
    What? — Eternity.
    It is the sea escaping
    With the sun.
• O saisons, ô châteaux,
  Quelle âme est sans défauts ?
  • O seasons, O castles,
    What soul is without flaws?
  • Bonheur (Happiness)
• J’ai embrassé l’aube d’été.
  • I have embraced the summer dawn.
  • Illuminations. Aube (Dawn) (1874)
  • Variant translation: I have kissed the summer dawn.
• Il pleut doucement sur la ville.
  • It rains softly on the town.
  • From a lost poem
• Je dis qu’il faut être voyant, se faire voyant. Le poète se fait voyant par un long, immense et raisonné dérèglement de tous les sens.
  • I say one must be a seer, make oneself a seer. The poet makes himself a seer by an immense, long, deliberate derangement of all the senses.
  • Letter to Paul Demeny (May 15, 1871)

Le Bateau Ivre (The Drunken Boat) (1871)

• Plus léger qu’un bouchon j’ai dansé sur les flots.
  • Lighter than a cork I danced on the waves.
  • St. 4
• Plus douce qu’aux enfants la chair des pommes sures,
  L’eau verte pénétra ma coque de sapin.
  • Sweeter than apples to children
    The green water spurted through my pine-wood hull.
  • St. 5
• Je me suis baigné dans le Poème
  De la Mer…
  Dévorant les azurs verts.
  • I have bathed in the Poem
    Of the Sea…
    Devouring the green azures.
  • St. 6
• J’ai vu le soleil bas, taché d’horreurs mystiques,
  Illuminant de longs figements violets,
  Pareils à des acteurs de drames très-antiques.
  • I have seen the sunset, stained with mystic horrors,
    Illumine the rolling waves with long purple forms,
    Like actors in ancient plays.
  • St. 9
• J’ai vu des archipels sidéraux! et des îles
  Dont les cieux délirants sont ouverts au vogueur:
  Est-ce en ces nuits sans fond que tu dors et t’exiles,
  Million d’oiseaux d’or, ô future Vigueur ?
  • I have seen starry archipelagoes! and islands
    Whose raving skies are opened to the voyager:
    Is it in these bottomless nights that you sleep, in exile,
    A million golden birds, O future Vigor?
  • St. 25

Une Saison en Enfer (A Season in Hell) (1873)

• Un soir, j’ai assis la Beauté sur mes genoux. – Et je l’ai trouvée amère. – Et je l’ai injuriée.
  • One evening, I sat Beauty in my lap. — And I found her bitter. — And I cursed her.
• Je parvins à faire s’évanouir dans mon esprit toute l’espérance humaine.
  • I found I could extinguish all human hope from my soul.
• La vie est la farce à mener par tous.
  • Life is the farce we are all forced to endure.
• Jadis, si je me souviens bien, ma vie était un festin où s’ouvraient tous les coeurs, où tous les vins coulaient.
  • Once, I remember well, my life was a feast where all hearts opened and all wines flowed.
• Je suis esclave de mon baptême.
  • Baptism enslaved me.
• La vieillerie poétique avait une bonne part dans mon alchimie du verbe.
  • Old poetics played a large part in my alchemy of the word.
• L’amour est à réinventer, on le sait.
  • Love is to be reinvented, that is clear.
• Moi ! moi qui me suis dit mage ou ange, dispensé de toute morale, je suis rendu au sol.
  • I! I who fashioned myself a sorcerer or an angel, who dispensed with all morality, I have come back to earth.
• Il faut être absolument moderne.
  • One must be absolutely modern.
• Je me crois en enfer, donc j’y suis.
  • I believe I am in Hell, and so I am there.

Mac Tag

If she, my liege, can make me know this clearly, I’ll love her dearly, ever, ever dearly.

– Shakespeare

I turned silences and nights into words. What was unutterable, I wrote down. I made the whirling world stand still.

– Arthur Rimbaud

Can our dreams ever blur the intransigent lines which draw the shape that shuts us in?

– Sylvia Plath

Follow us on twitter @cowboycoleridge