Poetic Oneirism: Precious Photos of Pianists/Piano

“peut-être n’y a-t-il que le beau qui nous humanise”

～Alain, Propos sur l’esthétique, 1923

We live only to discover beauty. All else is a form of waiting.

There is a space between man's imagination and man's attainment that may only be traversed by his longing.

～Kahlil Gibran

昔者莊周夢為胡蝶，栩栩然胡蝶也。自喻適志與！不知周也。俄然覺，則蘧蘧然周也。不知周之夢為胡蝶與？胡蝶之夢為周與？周與胡蝶，則必有分矣。此之謂物化。

《莊周夢蝶》

Our hands imbibe like roots, so I place them on what is beautiful in this world. And I fold them in prayer, and they draw from the heavens, light.

～St. Francis of Assisi

To feel most beautifully alive means to be reading something beautiful, ready always to apprehend in the flow of language the sudden flash of poetry.

～G. Bachelard

I would define the poetic effect as the capacity that a text displays for continuing to generate different readings, without ever being completely consumed.

～Umberto Eco

Innate in nearly every artistic nature is a wanton, treacherous penchant for accepting injustice when it creates beauty and showing sympathy for and paying homage to aristocratic privilege.

～Thomas Mann

Stay, little ounce, here in/ Fleece and leaf with me, in the evermore/ Where swans trembled in the lake around our bed of hay and morning/ Came each morning like a felt cloak billowing/ Across the most pale day. It was the color of a steeple disappearing/ In an old Venetian sky. (...)

Would they take/ You now from me, like Leonardo's sleeve disappearing in/ The air. And when I woke I could not wake/ You, little sphinx, I could not keep you here with me./ Anywhere, I could not bear to let you go. Stay here/ In our clouded bed of wind and timothy with me./ Lie here with me in snow.

~For a Snow Leopard in October, Lucie Brock-Broido

Monday 6 April 2009

Precious Photos of Pianists/Piano

Jorge Bolet (taken around 1950's)

Absolutely adore this one!

Publicity shot of Horowitz, most likely from the '30s or '40's.

Horowitz, possibly at the Russian consulate, premiering one of the Prokofiev "War" sonatas. With many musical luminaries in the audience - Samuel Chotzinoff, Leonid Brezhnev, Gregor Piatigorsky, Bruno Walter, George Szell, Nathan Milstein, Virgil Thomson, Carl Friedberg, Leonard Bernstein, and Michael Rabin, to name a few.