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Comments on Greek painting, art, contemporary thought

Our blog is an artistic, cultural guide to the Greek landscapes. At the same time it offers an introduction to the history of Greek fine arts, Greek artists, mainly Greek painters, as well as to the recent artistic movements

Our aim is to present the Greek landscapes in a holistic way: Greek landscapes refer to pictures and images of Greece, to paintings and art, to poetry and literature, to ancient philosophy and history, to contemporary thought and culture...
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greek artists, contemporary thought, greek painters, literature, greek paintings, modern greek artists



Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Death pulls us, more than life, with subtle wile...

And plunge, as in a dream, in either eye,
And in their lashes' shadow sleep awhile!

http://yannisstavrou.blogspot.com
Yannis Stavrou, Portrait of a Young Woman, oil on canvas (detail)  

Charles Baudelaire

Semper Eadem

"Whence," ask you, "does this strange new sadness flow
Like rising tides on rocks, black, bare, and vast?"
For human hearts, when vintage-time is past,
To live is bad. That secret all men know —


An obvious sorrow, with no mystery, shown,
Clear as your joy, to everyone around.
O curious one, seek nothing more profound,
And speak not, though your voice be sweet in tone.


Hush, ignorant! Hush, soul that's still enraptured,
And mouth of childish laughter! Neatly captured,
Death pulls us, more than life, with subtle wile.


Oh let my thought get drunk upon a lie,
And plunge, as in a dream, in either eye,
And in their lashes' shadow sleep awhile!


(Roy Campbell, Poems of Baudelaire, New York: Pantheon Books, 1952)

Charles Baudelaire

Semper Eadem

«D'où vous vient, disiez-vous, cette tristesse étrange,
Montant comme la mer sur le roc noir et nu?»
— Quand notre coeur a fait une fois sa vendange
Vivre est un mal. C'est un secret de tous connu,

Une douleur très simple et non mystérieuse
Et, comme votre joie, éclatante pour tous.
Cessez donc de chercher, ô belle curieuse!
Et, bien que votre voix soit douce, taisez-vous!

Taisez-vous, ignorante! âme toujours ravie!
Bouche au rire enfantin! Plus encor que la Vie,
La Mort nous tient souvent par des liens subtils.

Laissez, laissez mon coeur s'enivrer d'un mensonge,
Plonger dans vos beaux yeux comme dans un beau songe
Et sommeiller longtemps à l'ombre de vos cils!

Sunday, November 17, 2013

Destiny...

The town in the night
Death in a cry
And the child in life...


http://yannisstavrou.blogspot.com
Yannis Stavrou, Destiny, oil on canvas (detail) 

Jacques Prevert 

Family Life

The mother knits
The son is at war
It seems completely natural to the mother
And the father, what does the father do?
He does business
His wife knits
The son is at war
It seems completely natural to the father
And the son, the son?
What does he think, the son?
Nothing
He doesn't think anything... the son
His mother knits
His father does business
He is in the war
When the war is over
He will do business with his father
The war continues
The mother continues knitting
The father continues doing business
The son is killed
He doesn't continue
The father and the mother go to the cemetery
They find it quite natural, the father and the mother
Life goes on, life
Knitting
War
Business
Business, business, business
Life with the cemetery.
The mother knits
The son goes to the war
She finds this quite natural, the mother
And the father?
What does the father do?
He has his business
His wife knits
His son goes to the war
He has his business
He finds this quite natural, the father
And the son
And the son
What does the son find?
He finds absolutely nothing, the son
The son: his mother does her knitting,
His father has his business
And he has the war
When the war is over
He'll go into business with his father
The war continues
The mother continues knitting
The father continues with his business
The son is killed
He doesn't continue
The father and mother visit the graveyard
They find this natural
The father and the mother
Life goes on
A life of knitting, war, business
Business, war, knitting, war
Business, business, business
Life with the graveyard

Familiale

La mère fait du tricot
Le fils fait la guerre
Elle trouve ça tout naturel la mère
Et le père qu'est-ce qu'il fait le père ?
Il fait des affaires
Sa femme fait du tricot
Son fils la guerre
Lui des affaires
Il trouve ça tout naturel le père
Et le fils et le fils
Qu'est-ce qu'il trouve le fils ?
Il ne trouve rien absolument rien le fils
Le fils sa mère fait du tricot son père fait des affaires lui la guerre
Quand il aura fini la guerre
Il fera des affaires avec son père
La guerre continue la mère continue elle tricote
Le père continue il fait des affaires
Le fils est tué il ne continue plus
Le père et la mère vont au cimetière
Ils trouvent ça naturel le père et la mère
La vie continue la vie avec le tricot la guerre les affaires
Les affaires la guerre le tricot la guerre
Les affaires les affaires et les affaires
La vie avec le cimetière.

First Day (*)

White sheets in a closet
Red sheets on a bed
A child in its mother
The mother in agony
The father in the hallway
The hallway in the house
The house in the town
The town in the night
Death in a cry
And the child in life

(*)(Copyright (c) 1997 by Alastair Campbell)
"Poems of Jacques Prévert", Alastair Campbell, 
Apt 1006, 5303 52nd St, Yellowknife, NWT, Canada, XIA-IVI

Thursday, September 26, 2013

We are the vain predetermined river...

We are the vain predetermined river,
in his travel to his sea.
The shadows have surrounded him.
Everything said goodbye to us, everything goes away...

Yannis Stavrou, At the Port, oil on paper

Jorge Luis Borges

We are the time. We are the famous

We are the time. We are the famous
metaphor from Heraclitus the Obscure.

We are the water, not the hard diamond,
the one that is lost, not the one that stands still.

We are the river and we are that greek
that looks himself into the river. His reflection
changes into the waters of the changing mirror,
into the crystal that changes like the fire.

We are the vain predetermined river,
in his travel to his sea.

The shadows have surrounded him.
Everything said goodbye to us, everything goes away.

Memory does not stamp his own coin.

However, there is something that stays
however, there is something that bemoans.

Sunday, September 15, 2013

Our judgments judge us...

That which has been believed by everyone, always and everywhere, has every chance of being false...

Yannis Stavrou, Coffee and Books, oil on canvas (detail)

Paul Valéry

Aphorisms

Two dangers constantly threaten the world: order and disorder.

A great man is one who leaves others at a loss after he is gone.

A poem is never finished, only abandoned.

War: a massacre of people who don’t know each other for the profit of people who know each other but don’t massacre each other.

Politeness is organized indifference.

A man is a poet if difficulties inherent in his art provide him with ideas; he is not a poet if they deprive him of ideas.

A businessman is a hybrid of a dancer and a calculator.





God created man and, finding him not sufficiently alone, gave him a companion to make him feel his solitude more keenly.

Serious-minded people have few ideas. People with ideas are never serious.

Power without abuse loses its charm.

A man who is ‘of sound mind’ is one who keeps the inner madman under lock and key.

An artist never really finishes his work, he merely abandons it.

The folly of mistaking a paradox for a discovery, a metaphor for a proof, a torrent of verbiage for a spring of capital truths, and oneself for an oracle, is inborn in us.

A man’s true secrets are more secret to himself than they are to others.

Politics is the art of preventing people from busying themselves with what is their own business.

God made everything out of nothing, but the nothingness shows through.

The best way to make your dreams come true is to wake up.

Man’s great misfortune is that he has no organ, no kind of eyelid or brake, to mask or block a thought, or all thought, when he wants to.

Our judgments judge us, and nothing reveals us, exposes our weaknesses, more ingeniously than the attitude of pronouncing upon our fellows.

Science means simply the aggregate of all the recipes that are always successful. All the rest is literature.

The history of thought may be summed up in these words: it is absurd by what it seeks and great by what it finds.

To write regular verses destroys an infinite number of fine possibilities, but at the same time it suggests a multitude of distant and totally unexpected thoughts.

Love is being stupid together.

A man is infinitely more complicated than his thoughts.

Books have the same enemies as people: fire, humidity, animals, weather, and their own content.

The future, like everything else, is not what it used to be.

We are enriched by our reciprocate differences.

The universe is built on a plan the profound symmetry of which is somehow present in the inner structure of our intellect.

Long years must pass before the truths we have made for ourselves become our very flesh.

At times I think and at times I am.

History is the science of things which are not repeated.

In poetry everything which must be said is almost impossible to say well.

The trouble with our times is that the future is not what it used to be.