Comments & Greek artists, Greek painters: Man is a god when he dreams and a beggar when he thinks...

What has always made a hell on earth has been that man has tried to make it his heaven...

Friedrich Hölderlin

In My Boyhood Days

In my boyhood days
Often a god would save me
From the shouts and from the rods of men;
Safe and good then I played
With the orchard flowers
And the breezes of heaven
Played with me.

And as you make glad
The hearts of the plants
When toward you they stretch
There delicate arms.

So you made glad my heart,
Father Helios, and like Endymion
I was your darling,
Holy Luna.

O all you loyal,
Kindly gods!
Would that you knew how
My soul loved you then.

True, at that time I did not
Evoke you by name yet, and you
Never named me, as men use names,
As though they knew one another.

Yet I knew you better
Than ever I have known men,
I understood the silence of Aether,
But human words I΄ve never understood.

I was reared by the euphony
Of the rustling copse
And learned to love
Amid the flowers.

I grew up in the arms of the gods.


from In Lovely Blue

Like the stamen inside a flower

The steeple stands in lovely blue

And the day unfolds around its needle;

The flock of swallows that circles the steeple

Flies there each day through the same blue air

That carries their cries from me to you;

We know how high the sun is now

As long as the roof of the steeple glows,

The roof that’s covered with sheets of tin;

Up there in the wind, where the wind is not

Turning the vane of the weathercock,

The weathercock silently crows in the wind.


Quotes

What has always made a hell on earth has been that man has tried to make it his heaven.

We are nothing; what we search for is everything.

Man is a god when he dreams and a beggar when he thinks.

We were eager to have done and trusted to luck.

Comments & Greek artists, modern Greek artists: I Had Been Leaving Coast of Misty Albion...

Marina Tsvetaeva

I Had Been Leaving Coast of Misty Albion

"I had been leaving coast of misty Albion."
How divine they are - this sadness and this height!
I see the dingy waves fall down and rise on,
The dingy firmament... I know that all by hart.

I see the youth that leaned upon the high mast's rope,
As beautiful as if he were by fairies born,
Wrapped in a coat. O! Let every virgin sob!
Cry, manhood! Cry, my misty Albion!

It's done! He is alone between these sky and flow!
There is a school for you who have been ‘gainst schools all!
And in a fatal heart, pierced with a star's arrow,
There enters in the king of fatal winds - Aeoll!


The roar of dingy waves is making the new ballad
Of wonderful his death from stars that libeled him on
Cry, Youth! Cry, Love! Cry, World! O, sob my dear Aellad!
Cry, little Ada! Cry, my misty Albion!


Marina Tsvetaeva (1892-1941)

The Seafarer

Rock me down, o starry skiff!
My head tired from waves, so stiff!

Very long I look for abode, –
My head tired from passions, hot:

Laurels – hymns – hydras – heroes, brazed, –
My head tired from senseless plays!

Lay me down mid leaves and grass, –
My head tired from ceaseless wars.

From Mirror's Plane Where...

From mirror's plane where clouds flow
In a dreamy way
I tried to force a path you go,
The final quay.

I see a mast in salty breeze --
You stand by side...
You go by train -- a dusky heath
Yields evening plight...

The evening heath is set in dew,
Crows are bold...
I bless you: let you go to
Four sides of world!

Comments & Greek artists, painters: The appeal of the artist...

Art and truth. Art and human nature. Art and temperament...

The appeal of the artist...

Joseph Conrad

About the work of art
from the preface of The Nigger Of The 'Narcissus'

A work that aspires, however humbly, to the condition of art should
carry its justification in every line. And art itself may be defined
as a single-minded attempt to render the highest kind of justice to
the visible universe, by bringing to light the truth, manifold and one,
underlying its every aspect. It is an attempt to find in its forms, in
its colours, in its light, in its shadows, in the aspects of matter and
in the facts of life what of each is fundamental, what is enduring and
essential--their one illuminating and convincing quality--the very truth
of their existence. The artist, then, like the thinker or the scientist,
seeks the truth and makes his appeal. Impressed by the aspect of the
world the thinker plunges into ideas, the scientist into facts--whence,
presently, emerging they make their appeal to those qualities of our
being that fit us best for the hazardous enterprise of living. They
speak authoritatively to our common-sense, to our intelligence, to
our desire of peace or to our desire of unrest; not seldom to our
prejudices, sometimes to our fears, often to our egoism--but always
to our credulity. And their words are heard with reverence, for their
concern is with weighty matters: with the cultivation of our minds and
the proper care of our bodies, with the attainment of our ambitions,
with the perfection of the means and the glorification of our precious
aims.


Joseph Conrad (1857-1924)

It is otherwise with the artist.

Confronted by the same enigmatical spectacle the artist descends within
himself, and in that lonely region of stress and strife, if he be
deserving and fortunate, he finds the terms of his appeal. His appeal is
made to our less obvious capacities: to that part of our nature which,
because of the warlike conditions of existence, is necessarily kept out
of sight within the more resisting and hard qualities--like the
vulnerable body within a steel armour. His appeal is less loud, more
profound, less distinct, more stirring--and sooner forgotten. Yet its
effect endures forever. The changing wisdom of successive generations
discards ideas, questions facts, demolishes theories. But the artist
appeals to that part of our being which is not dependent on wisdom; to
that in us which is a gift and not an acquisition--and, therefore, more
permanently enduring. He speaks to our capacity for delight and wonder,
to the sense of mystery surrounding our lives; to our sense of pity,
and beauty, and pain; to the latent feeling of fellowship with all
creation--and to the subtle but invincible conviction of solidarity that
knits together the loneliness of innumerable hearts, to the solidarity
in dreams, in joy, in sorrow, in aspirations, in illusions, in hope, in
fear, which binds men to each other, which binds together all
humanity--the dead to the living and the living to the unborn.

It is only some such train of thought, or rather of feeling, that can
in a measure explain the aim of the attempt, made in the tale which
follows, to present an unrestful episode in the obscure lives of a few
individuals out of all the disregarded multitude of the bewildered, the
simple and the voiceless. For, if any part of truth dwells in the
belief confessed above, it becomes evident that there is not a place of
splendour or a dark corner of the earth that does not deserve, if only
a passing glance of wonder and pity. The motive then, may be held to
justify the matter of the work; but this preface, which is simply
an avowal of endeavour, cannot end here--for the avowal is not
yet complete. Fiction--if it at all aspires to be art--appeals to
temperament. And in truth it must be, like painting, like music, like
all art, the appeal of one temperament to all the other innumerable
temperaments whose subtle and resistless power endows passing events
with their true meaning, and creates the moral, the emotional atmosphere
of the place and time. Such an appeal to be effective must be an
impression conveyed through the senses; and, in fact, it cannot be made
in any other way, because temperament, whether individual or collective,
is not amenable to persuasion. All art,' therefore, appeals primarily to
the senses, and the artistic aim when expressing itself in written words
must also make its appeal through the senses, if its highest desire is
to reach the secret spring of responsive emotions. It must strenuously
aspire to the plasticity of sculpture, to the colour of painting, and to
the magic suggestiveness of music--which is the art of arts. And it is
only through complete, unswerving devotion to the perfect blending of
form and substance; it is only through an unremitting never-discouraged
care for the shape and ring of sentences that an approach can be made to
plasticity, to colour, and that the light of magic suggestiveness may be
brought to play for an evanescent instant over the commonplace surface
of words: of the old, old words, worn thin, defaced by ages of careless
usage.

Comments & Greek artists, modern Greek artists: Throughout the course of the generations men constructed the night....

Jorge Luis Borges

History of Night

Throughout the course of the generations
men constructed the night.
At first she was blindness;
thorns raking bare feet,
fear of wolves.
We shall never know who forged the word
for the interval of shadow
dividing the two twilights;
we shall never know in what age it came to mean
the starry hours.
Others created the myth.
They made her the mother of the unruffled Fates
that spin our destiny,
thev sacrificed black ewes to her, and the cock
who crows his own death.
The Chaldeans assigned to her twelve houses;
to Zeno, infinite words.
She took shape from Latin hexameters
and the terror of Pascal.
Luis de Leon saw in her the homeland
of his stricken soul.
Now we feel her to be inexhuastible
like an ancient wine
and no one can gaze on her without vertigo
and time has charged her with eternity.

And to think that she wouldn't exist
except for those fragile instruments, the eyes.

Comments & Greek artists, Greek painters: Under the brown fog of a winter noon...

Unreal City
Under the brown fog of a winter noon...

T.S. Eliot
The Waste Land
to Ezra Pound, "Il miglior fabbro"

(from) III. The Fire Sermon

The river's tent is broken; the last fingers of leaf
Clutch and sink into the wet bank. The wind
Crosses the brown land, unheard. The nymphs are departed.
Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song. The river bears no empty bottles, sandwich papers,
Silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes, cigarette ends
Or other testimony of summer nights. The nymphs are departed.
And their friends, the loitering heirs of City directors;
Departed, have left no addresses.
By the waters of Leman I sat down and wept ...
Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song,
Sweet Thames, run softly, for I speak not loud or long.
But at my back in a cold blast I hear
The rattle of the bones, and chuckle spread from ear to ear.
A rat crept softly through the vegetation
Dragging its slimy belly on the bank
While I was fishing in the dull canal
On a winter evening round behind the gashouse
Musing upon the king my brother's wreck
And on the king my father's death before him.
White bodies naked on the low damp ground
And bones cast in a little low dry garret,
Rattled by the rat's foot only, year to year.
But at my back from time to time I hear
The sound of horns and motors, which shall bring
Sweeney to Mrs. Porter in the spring.
O the moon shone bright on Mrs. Porter
And on her daughter
They wash their feet in soda water

Et O ces voix d'enfants, chantant dans la coupole!

Twit twit twit
Jug jug jug jug jug jug

So rudely forc'd.
Tereu


T. S. Eliot (1888-1965)

Unreal City
Under the brown fog of a winter noon
Mr. Eugenides, the Smyrna merchant
Unshaven, with a pocket full of currants
C.i.f. London: documents at sight,
Asked me in demotic French
To luncheon at the Cannon Street Hotel
Followed by a weekend at the Metropole.

At the violet hour, when the eyes and back
Turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits
Like a taxi throbbing waiting,
I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives,
Old man with wrinkled female breasts, can see
At the violet hour, the evening hour that strives
Homeward, and brings the sailor home from sea,
The typist home at teatime, clears her breakfast, lights
Her stove, and lays out food in tins.
Out of the window perilously spread
Her drying combinations touched by the sun's last rays,
On the divan are piled (at night her bed)
Stockings, slippers, camisoles, and stays.
I Tiresias, old man with wrinkled dugs
Perceived the scene, and foretold the rest -
I too awaited the expected guest.
He, the young man carbuncular, arrives,
A small house agent's clerk, with one bold stare,
One of the low on whom assurance sits
As a silk hat on a Bradford millionaire.
The time is now propitious, as he guesses,
The meal is ended, she is bored and tired,
Endeavours to engage her in caresses
Which are still unreproved, if undesired.
Flushed and decided, he assaults at once;
Exploring hands encounter no defence;
His vanity requires no response,
And makes a welcome of indifference.
(And I Tiresias have foresuffered all
Enacted on this same divan or bed;
I who have sat by Thebes below the wall
And walked among the lowest of the dead.)
Bestows one final patronising kiss,
And gropes his way, finding the stairs unlit...
She turns and looks a moment in the glass,
Hardly aware of her departed lover;
Her brain allows one half-formed thought to pass:
'Well now that's done: and I'm glad it's over.'
When lovely woman stoops to folly and
Paces about her room again, alone,
She smoothes her hair with automatic hand,
And puts a record on the gramophone.
'This music crept by me upon the waters'
And along the Strand, up Queen Victoria Street.
O City city, I can sometimes hear
Beside a public bar in Lower Thames Street,
The pleasant whining of a mandoline
And a clatter and a chatter from within
Where fishmen lounge at noon: where the walls
Of Magnus Martyr hold
Inexplicable splendour of Ionian white and gold.

The river sweats
Oil and tar
The barges drift
With the turning tide
Red sails
Wide
To leeward, swing on the heavy spar.
The barges wash
Drifting logs
Down Greenwich reach
Past the Isle of Dogs.

Weialala leia
Wallala leialala

Elizabeth and Leicester
Beating oars
The stern was formed
A gilded shell
Red and gold
The brisk swell
Rippled both shores
Southwest wind
Carried down stream
The peal of bells
White towers

Weialala leia
Wallala leialala