Painters speak...

Just found some wonderful sayings of some of the greatest painters the world has seen. Publishing them here, lest I should lose them.

Paul Cezanne:

It took me 40 years to find out that painting is not sculpture.

A work of art which did not begin in emotion is not art.

All my life I have worked to be able to earn my living, but I thought that one could do good painting without attracting attention to one's private life. Certainly, an artist wishes to raise himself intellectually as much as possible, but the man must remain obscure. The pleasure must be found in the work.

Henri Matisse:

I do not literally paint that table, but the emotion it produces upon me.

Hatred, rancor, and the spirit of vengeance are useless baggage to the artist. His road is difficult enough for him to cleanse his soul of everything which could make it more so.

Claude Monet:

It's on the strength of observation and reflection that one finds a way. So we must dig and delve unceasingly.

Vincent Van Gogh:

I am not an adventurer by choice but by fate.

I am not strictly speaking mad, for my mind is absolutely normal in the intervals, and even more so than before. But during the attacks it is terrible - and then I lose consciousness of

everything. But that spurs me on to work and to seriousness, as a miner who is always in danger makes haste in what he does.

I am risking my life for my work, and half my reason has gone.

I tell you, the more I think, the more I feel that there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.

The emotions are sometimes so strong that I work without knowing it. The strokes come like speech.

Leonardo Da Vinci:

One can have no smaller or greater mastery than mastery of oneself.

The color of the object illuminated partakes of the color of that which illuminates it.

He who possesses most must be most afraid of loss.

Andy Warhol:

Being born is like being kidnapped. And then sold into slavery.

Fantasy love is much better than reality love. Never doing it is very exciting. The most exciting attractions are between two opposites that never meet.

I suppose I have a really loose interpretation of 'work', because I think that just being alive is so much work at something you don't always want to do.

Salvador Dali:

You have to systematically create confusion, it sets creativity free. Everything that is contradictory creates life.

The desire to survive and the fear of death are artistic sentiments.

Thoughts...

Nothing is more memorable than a smell. One scent can be unexpected, momentary and fleeting, yet conjure up a childhood summer beside a lake in the mountains; another, a moonlit beach; a third, a family dinner of pot roast and sweet potatoes during a myrtle-mad August in a Midwestern town. Smells detonate softly in our memory like poignant land mines hidden under the weedy mass of years. Hit a tripwire of smell and memories explode all at once. A complex vision leaps out of the undergrowth.

~Diane Ackerman, A Natural History of the Senses.


One summer night, out on a flat headland, all but surrounded by the waters of the bay, the horizons were remote and distant rims on the edge of space. Millions of stars blazed in darkness, and on the far shore a few lights burned in cottages. Otherwise there was no reminder of human life. My companion and I were alone with the stars: the misty river of the Milky Way flowing across the sky, the patterns of the constellations standing out bright and clear, a blazing planet low on the horizon. It occurred to me that if this were a sight that could be seen only once in a century, this little headland would be thronged with spectators. But it can be seen many scores of nights in any year, and so the lights burned in the cottages and the inhabitants probably gave not a thought to the beauty overhead; and because they could see it almost any night, perhaps they never will.~Rachel Carson

Poem Recordings

I found this wonderful site where you can hear rare recordings of poems by the poets themselves. Click on each poem to read and listen.

There's a plethora of great poets you can pick from. The link to the most striking one, that of T.S. Eliot, I give here: http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoet.do?poetId=7069

As I Walked Out One Evening

As I walked out one evening,

Walking down Bristol Street,

The crowds upon the pavement

Were fields of harvest wheat.

And down by the brimming river

I heard a lover sing

Under an arch of the railway:

'Love has no ending.

'I'll love you, dear, I'll love you

Till China and Africa meet,

And the river jumps over the mountain

And the salmon sing in the street,

'I'll love you till the ocean

Is folded and hung up to dry

And the seven stars go squawking

Like geese about the sky.

The years shall run like rabbits,

For in my arms I hold

The Flower of the Ages,

And the first love of the world.'

But all the clocks in the city

Began to whirr and chime:

'O let not Time deceive you,

You cannot conquer Time.

'In the burrows of the Nightmare

Where Justice naked is,

Time watches from the shadow

And coughs when you would kiss.

'In headaches and in worry

Vaguely life leaks away,

And Time will have his fancy

To-morrow or to-day.

'Into many a green valley

Drifts the appalling snow;

Time breaks the threaded dances

And the diver's brilliant bow.

'O plunge your hands in water,

Plunge them in up to the wrist;

Stare, stare in the basin

And wonder what you've missed.

'The glacier knocks in the cupboard,

The desert sighs in the bed,

And the crack in the tea-cup opens

A lane to the land of the dead.

'Where the beggars raffle the banknotes

And the Giant is enchanting to Jack,

And the Lily-white Boy is a Roarer,

And Jill goes down on her back.

'O look, look in the mirror,

O look in your distress:

Life remains a blessing

Although you cannot bless.

'O stand, stand at the window

As the tears scald and start;

You shall love your crooked neighbour

With your crooked heart.'

It was late, late in the evening,

The lovers they were gone;

The clocks had ceased their chiming,

And the deep river ran on.

- W.H. Auden

Listen to this poem in the voice of Dylan Thomas: http://static.salon.com/mp3s/premium/thomas/dylan_thomas_collection/cd5_a_visit_to_america/05_as_i_walked_out.mp3

Lines from Kurt Tucholsky

“Those who hate most fervently must have once loved deeply; those who want to deny the world must have once embraced what they now set on fire.”

“Nothing is more difficult and nothing requires more character than to find oneself in open opposition to one's time (and those one loves) and to say loudly: No!”

Lines Written In Early Spring -William Wordsworth

I HEARD a thousand blended notes,

While in a grove I sate reclined,

In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts

Bring sad thoughts to the mind.

To her fair works did Nature link

The human soul that through me ran;

And much it grieved my heart to think

What man has made of man.

Through primrose tufts, in that green bower,

The periwinkle trailed its wreaths;

And 'tis my faith that every flower

Enjoys the air it breathes.

The birds around me hopped and played,

Their thoughts I cannot measure:—-

But the least motion which they made,

It seemed a thrill of pleasure.

The budding twigs spread out their fan,

To catch the breezy air;

And I must think, do all I can,

That there was pleasure there.

If this belief from heaven be sent,

If such be Nature's holy plan,

Have I not reason to lament

What man has made of man?

Gabriel's words...

...If I would know that these will be the last minutes that I will see you, I will say to you "I love you" and wouldn't assume that you would know it....

- Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Again and again

Again and again , however we know the landscape of love
and the little churchyard there, with its sorrowing names,
and the frighteningly silent abyss into which the others
fall: again and again the two of us walk out together
under the ancient trees, lie down again and again
among the flowers, face to face with the sky.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines...

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
Write, for example, "The night is shattered and the stars are blue and shiver in the distance."
The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.
Through nights like this one I held her in my arms.
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.
She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.
To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.
What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is shattered and she is not with me.
This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.
My sight tries to find her as though to bring her closer.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.
The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.
I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.
Another's. She will be another's. As she was before my kisses.
Her voice, her bright body. Her infinite eyes.
I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.
Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.
Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer and these the last verses that I write for her.

Time (Waqt), Javed Akhtar

The following is the translation fo the orignal in Hindi.

What is time?
What is this thing that goes on without pause?
If it did not pass,
Then where could it have been?
It must have been somewhere.
It has passed.
So where is it now?
It must be somewhere.
Where did it come from? Where did it go?
Where did the process start? Where will it end?
What is time?
These events
Incidents
Conflicts
Every grief
Every joy
Every torment
Every pleasure
Every smile
Every tear
Every song
Every scent,
It may be the pain of a wound
Or the magic of a tender touch,
Or lonely voice or cries around;
Success and failures assailing the mind;
The upheavals of care, the tumult of the heart.
All feelings
All emotions
Are like leaves
Floating on the surface of the water.
As they swim along
Now here,
Now there,
And now they disappear,
Gone from site, but
There must be something
Flowing along.
What is this river?
What hills has it come from?
To what sea is it going?
What is time?
Sometimes I think
When I see trees from a moving train,
It seems
They go in the opposite way.
But in reality
The trees are standing still.
So can it be
That all our centuries,
Row upon row, are standing still?
Can it be that time is fixed,
And we alone are in motion?
Can it be that in this one moment
All moments,
All centuries are hidden?
No future
No past.
What has gone by
Is happening now.
I think -
Can it be possible
That this is true,
That we are in motion?
We pass by,
And what we imagine
Is moving
Is really motionless.
Moving, not moving?
Whole or divided?
Is it frozen,
Or is it melting?
Who knows?
Who can guess?
What is time?
This glorious universe
It seems
Even today is not content
With all its glory.
At every moment
It becomes wider and more vast.
It stretches out its arms
And with its fingers like galaxies
Touches other parts of space.
If this is true,
Outside the bounds of all we can imagine
Somewhere there will certainly be a part of space,
Which
So far it has not touched
With its fingers like galaxies,
Where nothing has happened.
A part of space,
Which has not heard the Creator's command,
'Be!'
Where God does not yet exist.
And in that place
There will be no time
One day
This glorious universe will reach
This untouched part of space.
And then with its whole existence
It will cry:
'Be!'
Time will be born there also.
If there is birth, then there is death.
I think
It is not true
That time has no end and no beginning.
The thread is very long
But
Somewhere the thread will have an end.
Now mankind is confused
Because it was born in this cage of time.
It was brought up and raised here.
But now man has discovered
That outside the cage of time
There lies another part of space.
So he thinks,
He asks,
What is time?
................................................................................
Read about Javed Akhtar.
................................................................................

"Only in Sleep" by Sara Teasdale

Only in sleep I see their faces,
Children I played with when I was a child,
Louise comes back with her brown hair braided,
Annie with ringlets warm and wild.
Only in sleep Time is forgotten —
What may have come to them, who can know?
Yet we played last night as long ago,
And the doll-house stood at the turn of the stair.
The years had not sharpened their smooth round faces,
I met their eyes and found them mild —
Do they, too, dream of me, I wonder,
And for them am I too a child?

Childhood -Rilke

It would be good to give much thought, before

you try to find words for something so lost,

for those long childhood afternoons you knew

that vanished so completely -and why?

We're still reminded-: sometimes by a rain,

but we can no longer say what it means;

life was never again so filled with meeting,

with reunion and with passing on

as back then, when nothing happened to use

except what happens to things and creatures:

we lived their world as something human,

and became filled to the brim with figures.

And became as lonely as a sheperd

and as overburdened by vast distances,

and summoned and stirred as from far away,

and slowly, like a long new thread,

introduced into that picture-sequence

Girl in Love - Rilke

That's my window. This minute
So gently did I alight
From sleep--was still floating in it.
Where has my life its limit
And where begins the night?

I could fancy all things around me
Were nothing but I as yet;
Like a crystal's depth, profoundly
Mute, translucent, unlit.

I have space to spare inside me
For the stars, too: so full of room
Feels my heart; so lightly
Would it let go of him, whom

For all I know I have started
To love, it may be to hold.
Strange, as if never charted,
Stares my fortune untold.

Why is it I am bedded
Beneath this infinitude,
Fragrant like a meadow,
Hither and thither moved,

Calling out, yet fearing
Someone might hear the cry,
Destined to disappearing
Within another I.

Neruda once more...

Sonnet LXXXI

And now you’re mine. Rest with your dream in my dream.
Love and pain and work should all sleep, now.
The night turns on its invisible wheels,
And you are pure beside me as a sleeping amber.

No one else, Love, will sleep in my dreams. You will go,
We will go together, over the waters of time.
No one else will travel through the shadows with me,
Only you, evergreen, ever sun, ever moon.

Your hands have already opened their delicate fists
And let their soft drifting signs drop away;
Your eyes closed like two gray wings, and I move
After, following the folding water you carry, that carries
Me away. The night, the world, the wind spin out their destiny.
Without you, I am your dream, only that, and that is all.

Words of Shakespeare

Give me my Romeo; and when he shall die,
Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night
And pay no worship to the garish sun.

Thoughts from Pablo Neruda

Sonnet LXIX

Maybe nothingness is to be without your presence,
Without you moving, slicing the noon
Like a blue flower, without you walking
Later through the fog and the cobbles,
Without the light you carry in your hand,
Golden, which maybe others will not see,
Which maybe no one knew was growing
Like the red beginnings of a rose.


In short, without your presence: without your coming
Suddenly, incitingly, to know my life,
Gust of a rosebush, wheat of wind:


Since then I am because you are,
Since then you are, I am, we are,
And through love I will be, you will be, we'll be.

In words of Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act II, Sc. I
I'll put a girdle round about the earth
In forty minutes.

Antony and Cleopatra, Act II, Sc. II
Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale
Her infinite variety.

As You Like It, Act I, Sc. II
The little foolery that wise men have makes a great show.

As You Like It, Act V, Sc. I
The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.

Hamlet, Act IV, Sc. V
We know what we are, but know not what we may be.

Hamlet, Act IV, Sc. V
You must wear your rue with a difference.
There 's a daisy; I would give you some violets, but they withered.

Julius Caesar, Act IV, Sc. III
The deep of night is crept upon our talk,
And nature must obey necessity.

King Henry IV. Part I, Act II, Sc. III
Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.

King Henry IV. Part II, Act I, Sc. II
Some smack of age in you, some relish of the saltness of time.

King John, Act III, Sc. IV
Life is as tedious as a twice-told tale
Vexing the dull ear of a drowsy man.

You who never arrived in my arms - Rilke

You who never arrived in my arms,
Beloved, who were lost
from the start,
I don't even know what songs
would please you.
I have given up trying to recognize
you in the surging wave of the next moment.
All the immense images in me -- the far-off, deeply-felt
landscape, cities, towers, and bridges, and
unsuspected turns in the path,
and those powerful lands that were once
pulsing with the life of the gods--
all rise within me to mean
you, who forever elude me.

You, Beloved, who are all
the gardens I have ever gazed at,
longing. An open window
in a country house-- , and you almost
stepped out, pensive, to meet me.
Streets that I chanced upon,--
you had just walked down them and vanished.
And sometimes, in a shop, the mirrors
were still dizzy with your presence and,
startled, gave back my too-sudden image.
Who knows? Perhaps the same
bird echoed through both of us
yesterday, separate, in the evening...

Story - Stephen Dunn

A woman's taking her late-afternoon walk
on Chestnut where no sidewalk exists
and houses with gravel driveways
sit back among the pines. Only the house
with the vicious dog is close to the road.
An electric fence keeps him in check.
When she comes to that house, the woman
always crosses to the other side.
I'm the woman's husband. It's a problem
loving your protagonist too much.
Soon the dog is going to break through
that fence, teeth bared, and go for my wife.
She will be helpless. I'm out of town,
helpless too. Here comes the dog.
What kind of dog? A mad dog, a dog
like one of those teenagers who just loses it
on the playground, kills a teacher.
Something's going to happen that can't happen
in a good story: out of nowhere a car
comes and kills the dog. The dog flies
in the air, lands in a patch of delphiniums.
My wife is crying now. The woman who hit
the dog has gotten out of her car. She holds
both hands to her face. The woman who owns
the dog has run out of her house. Three women
crying in the street, each for different reasons.
All of this is so unlikely; it's as if
I've found myself in a country of pure fact,
miles from truth's more demanding realm.
When I listened to my wife's story on the phone
I knew I'd take it from her, tell it
every which way until it had an order
and a deceptive period at the end. That's what
I always do in the face of helplessness,
make some arrangements if I can.
Praise the odd, serendipitous world.
Nothing I'd be inclined to think of
would have stopped that dog.
Only the facts saved her.