The Lovers’ Chronicle 12 December – ever – birth of Gustave Flaubert – art by Edvard Munch

Dear Zazie,  Here is today’s Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag dedicated to his muse.  Are you askin’ Sandman to let someone come to you in your dreams, to come softly ever the same?  Rhett

The Lovers’ Chronicle

Dear Muse,

had to search but i found
a Neil Young song;
“I love the sound of laughter
And music in the air
And in the ever after
I know it’s always there”
“Not one I know but any
of his songs anytime”
it is not clear
whether he was writin’
about the romantic kind,
or the afterlife kind
i have not written about
the ever after of two as one,
somethin’
i came not to believe in
but now i look around
and i see, we are there

© copyright 2023 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

agree with Flaubert, the pursuit of “le mot juste” is what matters, goin’ on seven years in my search, balancin’ the flow with findin’ the right ones, but that is as far as i want to follow Flaubert, he flamed out at fifty-eight, perhaps he never met “la bonne femme”, might have changed things for the better for him, it did for me

© copyright 2022.2023 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

definitely not the same
if the years had themes
last year would be, transitions
this year would be, acceptance

finished with fictional encounters,
stories created to pass the night
no need for dream rendezvous
just have to reach over and say,
hey baby with feelin’s
ever the same

© copyright 2021.2023 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

Pale Love, Pale Rider

we are readin’ poetry to each other
while the wind blows and the snow falls

i pause from readin’
to look at you

your great eyes
fix on me

we have so much to say to each other
but in this moment it does not occur,
to tell each other how we feel
or wonder why
we just are…

© copyright 2020 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

enterin’ solitude,
obsessed
with these thoughts
that you will come

last night it worked
you came and hugged me,
felt myself flowin’ into you
told you it had been so, so long

sayin’ nothin’ you just held on
asked you to stay, but you left

always askin’
ever holdin’ on
all i ask
allow this
my only comfort
to be with you
ever the same

© copyright 2019 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

obsessed with these thoughts,
this solitude, ever the same

come, let yourself go
it has been so long

words flowin’, hold on
to what emerges,
to this occurrence
of everything

these feelin’s
at last carry
the meanin’
of all that will be

© copyright 2018 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

come to me
the totem spins…

oh hold on,
not sure which way
this one is goin’…

sittin’ by a fireplace
in a mountain cabin
we are readin’ poetry
to each other
while the wind blows
and the snow falls

i pause from readin’
to look at you
your great eyes
fix on me
have we nothin’ more
to say to each other
not hardly
but certainly we know
more meaningful
ways to talk
it does not occur,
to tell each other
how we feel
or wonder why
we just are…

ah, damnit,
losin’ it…

the flames die down
either exhausted or choked
little by little, quenched
by absence
and regret,
smothered
by routine
the fiery glow
vanishes

© copyright 2017 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

Cain’t be handled
But maybe held;
For a little while
So if you want;
Come on and hold on

So, that is what you want
“Yes”
Well, you just never know
“Why”
Well, you just never know,
which way the wind
is gonna blow

The lies that were told
The lines that were blurred
The lives that were used

About, regret
About, too late
About what now

bodies
together
in the darkness
flesh
trembles
into this dream
thoughts
to return
into the arms

© copyright 2015 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

Come To Me Ever The Same

Enterin’ the dark solitude
Obsessed with this thought, this hope, this…
That you will come to me in dreams
Some nights it works, some it will not
Blessed by the Sandman last evenin’
You came to me and you hugged me
Felt myself flowin’ into you
Told you it had been so, so long
Sayin’ nothin’ you just held on
Asked you to stay but no you left
Always askin’, askin’ Sandman…
All I ask is this, all I ask
Allow this my only comfort:
To plunge into dreams into you
To be with you ever the same
To fall asleep in your shadow
To come to me ever the same
To come softly ever the same
To come to me, to come softly
Ever the same, ever the same

© 2012 Cowboy Coleridge

The Song of the Day is “Come to Me Softly” by Jimmy James and the Vagabonds.

Gustave Flaubert

Today is the birthday of Gustave Flaubert (Rouen 12 December 1821 – 8 May 1880 Croisset, Rouen); novelist who, in my opinion, was the leading exponent of literary realism in France.  Perhaps best known for his first published novel, Madame Bovary (1857), for his Correspondence, and for his devotion to his style and aesthetics.  The short story writer Guy de Maupassant was a protégé of Flaubert.  Flaubert believed in, and pursued, the principle of finding “le mot juste” (“the right word”), which he considered as the key means to achieve quality in literary art.

From 1846 to 1854, Flaubert had a relationship with the poet Louise Colet.  According to his biographer Émile Faguet, his affair with Colet was his only serious romantic relationship.  From Rouen, he made occasional visits to Paris and England, where he apparently had a mistress.  Flaubert never married.

With his lifelong friend Maxime Du Camp, he traveled in Brittany in 1846.  In 1849–50 he went on a long journey to the Middle East, visiting Greece and Egypt.  In Beirut he contracted syphilis.  He spent five weeks in Istanbul in 1850.  He visited Carthage in 1858 to conduct research for his novel Salammbô.  Flaubert was very open about his sexual activities with prostitutes in his writings on his travels.

He died from a cerebral hemorrhage at the age of 58.  He was buried in the family vault in the cemetery of Rouen.  A monument to him by Henri Chapu was unveiled at the museum of Rouen.

Quotes

Madame Bovary, 1857

C’est la faute de la fatalité !

• Phrase récurrente
• Madame Bovary (1857), Gustave Flaubert, éd. Éditions Garnier Frères, coll. « Classiques Garnier », 1955, partie 3, chap. XI, p. 323

[…], la parole est un laminoir qui allonge toujours les sentiments.

• Madame Bovary (1857), Gustave Flaubert, éd. Éditions Garnier Frères, coll. « Classiques Garnier », 1955, partie 3, chap. I, p. 218 (texte intégral sur Wikisource).

Le plus médiocre libertin a rêvé des sultanes, chaque notaire porte en soi les débris d’un poète.

• Madame Bovary (1857), Gustave Flaubert, éd. Eugène Fasquelle, 1905, p. 264

Cette lâche docilité qui est pour bien des femmes comme le châtiment tout à la fois la rançon de l’adultère

• Madame Bovary (1857), Gustave Flaubert, éd. Eugène Fasquelle, 1905, p. 314

Il y a toujours après la mort de quelqu’un comme une stupéfaction qui se dégage, tant il est difficile de comprendre cette survenue du néant et de se résigner à y croire.

• Madame Bovary (1857), Gustave Flaubert, éd. Eugène Fasquelle, 1905, p. 379

Il ne faut pas toucher aux idoles, la dorure en reste aux mains.

• Madame Bovary (1857), Gustave Flaubert, éd. Éditions Garnier Frères, coll. « Classiques Garnier », 1955, partie 3, chap. VI, p. 263

Edvard Munch
A photograph of Munch

And today is the birthday of Edvard Munch (Ådalsbruk, Løten, Norway 12 December 1863 – 23 January 1944 Oslo); painter and printmaker whose intensely evocative treatment of psychological themes built upon some of the main tenets of late 19th-century Symbolism and greatly influenced German Expressionism in the early 20th century.  One of his most well-known works is The Scream of 1893.

Munch spent most of his last two decades in solitude at his nearly self-sufficient estate in Ekely, at Skøyen, Oslo.  Many of his late paintings celebrate farm life, including several in which he used his work horse “Rousseau” as a model.  Without any effort, Munch attracted a steady stream of female models, whom he painted as the subjects of numerous nude paintings.  He likely had sexual relations with some of them.

To the end of his life, Munch continued to paint unsparing self-portraits, adding to his self-searching cycle of his life and his unflinching series of takes on his emotional and physical states. In the 1930s and 1940s, the Nazis labeled Munch’s work “degenerate art” (along with that of Picasso, Paul Klee, Matisse, Gauguin and many other modern artists) and removed his 82 works from German museums.

Munch died in his house at Ekely near Oslo, about a month after his 80th birthday.  His Nazi-orchestrated funeral suggested to Norwegians that he was a Nazi sympathizer, a kind of appropriation of the independent artist.

From my rotting body,
flowers shall grow
and I am in them
and that is eternity.

Gallery

thanks for stoppin’ by y’all

Mac Tag