Mephisto Waltzes, Weinberg, Sylvie’s Bolero

煢煢

半圓形的天頂被一層月華光澤的膜緊緻地拉扯住，像一只充滿著水的氣球，虛擬著生腥的焦慮與一種無所事事的、完完全全脫離精神性的美與憂鬱。那個午后，是薄如蟬翼且裹上銀粉的新生的卵，適於討論命理與禪。雲以敏捷的腳步滑行於透明且虛弱的藍，泡沫似的溫順與漠然。青春其實是極度缺乏生命力的。在旺盛與浮躁之中貪慕假象的匱乏，而後需索從不曾或缺的旺盛；在柔弱的本質中渴求堅強與信仰，之後因對於軟弱愚蠢的不自覺與惑於自我宣稱的虛偽堅強而尋覓所謂謙恭溫潤的中庸。青春是僅只存活於對純粹的堅持下、一種具備了美卻不易碎的浪費。如果死的優雅與精神性建構了藝術中闡釋生命的美學，則生不過是為襯托死的一種附屬的存在。但是生命卻是無法磨滅的，即使蒼白而無意義，卻無止盡地散發出猩紅的血的氣味。印度神濕婆在宇宙的輪迴當中毀滅自己所創造的鏡花水月，而後使之重生，不斷重複操縱著生與死的轉輪；祂是否也感受到生命中那種匱乏虛弱的美，以及死亡中屬於生之投影的愛與信念？藍所象徵的嫌惡與非難，以清澈且充滿靈性的美存在於自然界的蒼穹。隅隅獨行的生，幾人在腐臭中仍吟哦走了調的聖詩，又幾人能擺脫所有倫常的帷幕而誠摯地憎恨與厭惡？然而這一切的思索總似時間過度充裕的青春所編織的蛛網，純白得美麗亦膚淺得軟弱。當青春終於被擺脫後，生命開始進入下一段對死複雜的戀慕和禁忌，與對消逝的水光緬懷的遺憾。





奔馬

夢先於現實。
而純粹
似花，似血，似詩
，似枯腐前消逝的生。


Runaway Horses (Realistically Synaesthetic Purity)

Dreams, a priori, then reality.
And purity
Resembles a flower, resembles blood, resembles poetry,
Resembles life, a priori, disappearing before decay.

I am lost for words when confronted (and blessed) with such exquisite magnificence—how she tames, commands, and most importantly, marries the movements with and brings out the near-noumenal essence of Ravel’s mesmerising music... I am lost for words, except that I shall miss this feral diamond—beyond doubt, one of the greatest artists of our time—and I am grateful that I have had the privilege of seeing her on stage several times, in Europe and Asia, including a performance from her bittersweet farewell tour.

Watching Sylvie dance, watching her move—it is love and fire and electricity. Thank you Sylvie, for all that you have shared with us, for all that you have given us.

❤

cxii

That Love is all there is,
Is all we know of Love;
It is enough, the freight should be
Proportioned to the groove.

～Emily Dickinson (1830–86), from Part Five of The Single Hound: Poems of a Lifetime by Emily Dickinson, Boston, Little, Brown, and Company, 1914.

“In Search of Soundlessness” (Poets: swallow seeds to grow better Hearts)

dried seeds
from a dead flower
someone wants to swallow these
dried seeds
from a dead flower

a discordant melody sounds
from those dangerously elegant modern ruins
built of shards of glass, reflecting
a shattered moon upon ancient waters

dried seeds
ricochet off frozen ground

shredded ribbons of sunlight
ribbons that create a softly blinding nest
wrapped around her neck

a strong perfume
pushes most eyes closed

most eyes lack
lack the strength of desire
for dead flowers and
dried seeds

will you listen? Seedlings of Hearts:
understand my words
swallow my poems
then discard me
disdain me
all for growing better hearts
to become better poets


a collector
maybe even
a Genghis Khan of poets’ hearts

Croisements, by Thierry Mugny/ tchegg TM. via Couleurs.

+++

seeds are hearts, then inside creates the outside——
...all are in search of soundlessness

*(originally published on 22/May/2013)

a comedy for all the laughables, the laughably craven

A wee writing exercise inspired by darling John, whom I hold in the highest esteem, as ever, as always. ❤

The original (from Keats’ letter to Benjamin Bailey, dated November 22nd, 1817):

...O I wish I was as certain of the end of all your troubles as that of your momentary start about the authenticity of the Imagination. I am certain of nothing but of the holiness of the Heart’s affections and the truth of Imagination — What the imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth — whether it existed before or not — for I have the same idea of all our passions as of love: they are all, in their sublime, creative of essential beauty. In a word, you may know my favorite speculation by my first book, and the little song I send in my last, which is a representation from the fancy of the probable mode of operating in these matters. The imagination may be compared to Adam’s dream, — he awoke and found it truth. I am more zealous in this affair because I have never yet been able to perceive how anything can be known for truth by consecutive reasoning — and yet it must be. Can it be that even the greatest philosopher ever arrived at his goal without putting aside numerous objections? However it may be, O for a life of sensation rather than of thoughts! It is a ‘Vision in the form of Youth,’ a shadow of reality to come. And this consideration has further convinced me, — for it has come as auxiliary to another favorite speculation of mine, — that we shall enjoy ourselves hereafter by having what we called happiness on earth repeated in a finer tone and so repeated. And yet such a fate can only befall those who delight in sensation, rather than hunger as you do after truth. Adam’s dream will do here, and seems to be a conviction that imagination and its empyreal reflection is the same as human life and its spiritual repetition. But, as I was saying, the simple imaginative mind may have its rewards in the repetition of its own silent working coming continually on the spirit with a fine suddenness — to compare great things with small — have you never by being Surprised with an old Melody — in a delicious place — by a delicious voice, felt over again your very Speculations and Surmises at the time it first operated on your Soul — do you not remember forming to yourself the singer’s face more beautiful than it was possible and yet with the elevation of the Moment you did not think so — even then you were mounted on the Wings of Imagination so high — that the Prototype must be here after — that delicious face you will see. What a time! 

I am continually running away from the subject — sure this cannot be exactly the case with a complex Mind — one that is imaginative and at the same time careful of its fruits — who would exist partly on Sensation partly on thought — to whom it is necessary that years should bring the philosophic Mind — such an one I consider yours and therefore it is necessary to your eternal Happiness that you not only drink this old Wine of Heaven, which I shall call the redigestion of our most ethereal Musings on Earth; but also increase in knowledge and know all things. I am glad to hear you are in a fair way for Easter — you will soon get through your unpleasent reading and then! — but the world is full of troubles and I have not much reason to think myself pesterd with many — I think Jane or Marianne has a better opinion of me than I deserve — for really and truly I do not think my Brothers illness connected with mine — you know more of the real Cause than they do nor have I any chance of being rack’d as you have been — You perhaps at one time thought there was such a thing as worldly happiness to be arrived at, at certain periods of time marked out, — you have of necessity from your disposition been thus led away — I scarcely remember counting upon any happiness — I look for it if it be not in the present hour, — nothing startles me beyond the moment. The setting sun will always set me to rights, or if a sparrow come before my window, I take part in its existence and pick about the gravel. The first thing that strikes me on hearing a misfortune having befallen another is this — ‘Well, it cannot be helped: he will have the pleasure of trying the resources of his spirit’ — and I beg now, my dear Bailey, that hereafter should you observe anything cold in me not to put it to the account of heartlessness, but abstraction — for I assure you I sometimes feel not the influence of a passion or affection during a whole week — and so long this sometimes continues, I begin to suspect myself, and the genuineness of my feelings at other times — thinking them a few barren tragedy tears.

Your affectionate friend, 
John Keats

偽，muteness of a Chinese jar。

哥窯自縊後結晶了胭脂蜜：

Being broken by an inferior essence, a failed poem of pretense is made even more poetic than the knees of an antiquarian butterfly.

—“a violent slap of the exquisite” (a melody from the New Aristocrats manifesto)

Very drawn to artist Lukas Wegwerth's series of ceramic works “Crystallisation” displayed at Maison & Objet, Paris—
“The sure, sweet cement, lime and glue of love”* oozing out of celadon crazing of yore... (*Robert Herrick, The Kiss)

All I may, if small,
Do it not display
Larger for the Totalness —
’Tis Economy

To bestow a World
And withhold a Star —
Utmost, is Munificence —
Less, tho’ larger, poor.

～Emily Dickinson, from The Single Hound: Poems of a Lifetime (CXIII.)

“Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts. I was better after I had cried, than before—more sorry, more aware of my own ingratitude, more gentle.”

—Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

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

—Edvard Munch

The Moments of Dominion

That happen on the Soul

And leave it with a Discontent

Too exquisite—to tell—

～Emily Dickinson

Troisième Symphonie de Gustav Mahler
Ballet de l'Opéra de Paris (Nolwenn Daniel & Christophe Duquenne, Mélanie Hurel & Alessio Carbone)
Deuxième Mouvement: Printemps
Choréographie de John Neumeier

Oneiric Sketches of a Broken Poem

Miss Horatia Feilding, half-sister of William Henry Fox Talbot, playing the harp, c. 1842

+

Scents, with their eyelids heavy, 
from the oneiric sketches of our broken poems:

a muser and a paresseuse 
dreaming 
of ephemeral truths, dreaming
in the absence of dreams. 

an evanescent truth 
less sorrowful; that truthful ephemerality
even less perceivable...

the memory of a door lies in its unrecoverable closedness 
to a space imagined,
—traversed and touched only by a fingertip—
to what is left open

and songs sung 
to eyes half asleep

～my sketch composed on 19th September ’15

+

“Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.”

― T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets: Burnt Norton, 1936

William Henry Fox Talbot, photogenic drawing negative using botanical specimens from his garden, taken in 1839, the year he announced his discoveries in photography.

+

天空持續燃放著

無聲的煙火

我們停步

牽著手

於彼大澤

和一隻鹿對望

良久

有鹿

有鹿哀愁

食野之百合 

The silent fireworks continued 

to burn across the sky

We stopped

and held our hands

We laid our gaze upon the deer

opposite the enormous swamp

gazing back at us

for a long time

There was a deer

There was a deer of sorrow

that grazed upon wild lilies 

～《有鹿》許悔之, a poem by Taiwanese poet Hsu Huei-Ji; translated from the Chinese into English by me.

+

“Everything is blooming most recklessly; 

if it were voices instead of colors, 

there would be an unbelievable shrieking 

into the heart of the night.”

～Rainer Maria Rilke

Peak of Dawn, photograph by Katsuyoshi Nakahara, for National Geographic Your Shot.
Shirley poppies bloom in a field near Japan’s Mount Tsukuba, here silhouetted against an early morning sky. The mountain—which can be ascended via a hiking trail or cable car—has two peaks, each rising more than 2,800 feet.

+

to sleep 

bed’d among flowers  

for scent

to wake lovers

children become

mothers and fathers

+

“Often the object of a desire, 

when desire is transformed into hope, 

becomes more real than reality itself.”

― Umberto Eco, The Book of Legendary Lands

detail from an Edgar Degas painting

+

“At first he told them that everything was just the same, that the pink snails were still in the house where he had been born, that the dry herring still had the same taste on a piece of toast, that the waterfalls in the village still took on a perfumed smell at dusk. They were the notebook pages again, woven with the purple scribbling, in which he dedicated a special paragraph to each one. Nevertheless, and although he himself did not seem to notice it, those letters of recuperation and stimulation were slowly changing into pastoral letters of disenchantment. One winter night while the soup was boiling in the fireplace, he missed the heat of the back of his store, the buzzing of the sun on the dusty almond trees, the whistle of the train during the lethargy of siesta time, just as in Macondo he had missed the winter soup in the fireplace, the cries of the coffee vendor, and the fleeting larks of springtime. 

Upset by two nostalgias facing each other like two mirrors, he lost his marvelous sense of unreality and he ended up recommending to all of them that they leave Macondo, that they forget everything he had taught them about the world and the human heart, that they shit on Horace, and that wherever they might be they always remember that the past was a lie, that memory has no return, that every spring gone by could never be recovered, and that the wildest and most tenacious love was an ephemeral truth in the end. ”

― Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

William Henry Fox Talbot (English, 1800-1877), Lace, photogenic drawing negative,
before December 1845, 17.1 x 22.1cm, The J . Paul Getty Museum

+

Aimai-je un rêve?
Mon doute, amas de nuit ancienne, s’achève
En maint rameau subtil, qui, demeuré les vrais
Bois même, prouve, hélas! que bien seul je m’offrais
Pour triomphe la faute idéale de roses.

“Did I love a dream?
My doubt, night’s ancient hoard, pursues its theme
In branching labyrinths, which being still
The veritable woods themselves, alas, reveal
My triumph as the ideal fault of roses.”


～from Stéphane Mallarmé’s poem L’après-midi d’un faune, translated by Henry Weinfeld (read also A.S. Kline's translations of Mallarmé’s poetry)

William Henry Fox Talbot, Adiantum Capillus-Veneris (Maidenhair Fern),
photogenic drawing negative, probably early 1839, 22.5 x 18.3cm.

+

“It is the job of poetry to clean up our word-clogged reality by creating silences around things.”
“Everything that is sacred and that wishes to remain so must envelop itself in mystery.”
“For me, Poetry takes the place of love, because it is enamored of itself, and because its sensual delight falls back deliciously in my soul.”

～Stéphane Mallarmé

une piscine caché

《影；氤氳與流光》

To whom,
is a writer that does not write―
a bard that utters no poems
a dreamer of dreamless dreams?

When does
a piano of soundlessness
sigh, and

How does an underwater flower
pass into decay

without blossoming?

Felice Casorati, Ragazza di Pavarolo (1938)

‘falling is the essence of a flower’

Felice Casorati, La preghiera, 1914 circa, tempera su panno,
Galleria d’Arte Moderna Achille Forti

Self-embrace on Silk Prayer

*With thanks to Hamlet-at-Sea of this incarnation, for being the final catalyst of my poem.


“Is it a blessing for a poet to be a natural poet-magnet?”
The romantic thinker wonders to herself.
‘Oh you Little Fool,’ she whispered,
A foolish thinker I am.

All these men, coming
in and out of me. All this pleasure and pain,
flickering like dying blue flames.
An instant garden trampled upon for hundreds of years
by those he loves with his Life—ah, such blasphemous
Beauty. An instant paradise turned
into the most exquisite ice ablaze.
A bruised garden amidst the flames.
The love and devotion that it takes to create
—such Beauty—
I can never fully comprehend.

Threads of a thousand hues are weaving themselves
in and out of each other; breathing esoteric,
breathing erotic, into
the weakest Bird of the most powerful strength—
A Bird without a name—

Can I be spared—Can I be
abstract like your patterns of this mesmerising nature, again?
I plead with my heart to be
as romantic and as abstract, like
your Little Brother, again.
Tears from the eyes of his heart are still rolling,
shining on my quill
like dews on those pink Oleander flowers—
falling, falling, fallen.

(And in case you were wondering, I was not speaking of
your little brother, I was speaking of
Mine. Like all these quests for Beauty and pleasure—I was
speaking, and thinking, of Mine.)

Breathing erotic. Breathing esoteric.
All these fiery blossoms burning way below sub-zero,
I could faint,
just listening to them.

+

*Title: from Mishima Yukio's last words:

“A small night storm blows

Saying ‘falling is the essence of a flower’

Preceding those who hesitate”

鴉片夢：Opium Dream

Dishonesty of three gnawed fingers:

To have your attention held
between the lips
of what disinterest stirs,

To fixate upon
and name your obsession
what you do not adore—

This must be the flower’s poison
in the imagination
of a Proustian whore.

I have always loved the mystery/horror genre.

Roses, by David Sims for Visionaire

image by John Mangila

It’s quite an artform for one to stay looking golden on the outside, while feeling so profoundly rotten inside—not even sublimely or spectacularly ugly, merely this arid and lacklustre vapidness.

At some point it has got to start showing.

Roses, by David Sims for Visionaire

As if looking through the glass at a white goldfish with angel wings, swimming in water purified by beautiful sorrow. (image by John Mangila)

Scene 1: Lacrima / Scene 2: Du Fu Sings

Lacrima: Caruso-san

His pale blue skin, the voice of the flute,
Curtains rise for the Beautiful One’s play—

The role of the bleeding heart
is not to watch over that silver thread
woven callously, vicariously,
into the forgotten tapestry of the world,
but to shield with swan wings,
violently, majestically,
the other role of eternal unhappiness.
So that the arteries can ossify,
so that the obsolescence
of the bleeding heart and his eternal unhappiness
can encase themselves in a serene sleep
and seem obliviously irrelevant
to all but the Beautiful One.

+ + +

Du Fu Sings

Die yourself into a tree

Decant your breaths

A million times over

Would you walk through that door?

+ + +

Hypocrisy is a form of mental masturbation of the weak.

弔詭／弔念：Cioran and my fragmented poem (Chinese & English)

“By all evidence we are in the world to do nothing.” ～Emil Cioran

The ideal life for a muser and a paresseuse would be: to dream in the absence of dreams, and to dream of the absence of dreams, in other words, to dream nothing at all. The grandest thing to muse upon, would be those intricately-woven, beautifully-entangled illusions of all there is, i.e. nothingness—all of it, that is all there is. It’s just that long and inevitably mundane process (with perhaps some specks of high drama) one has to go through, could seem interminable.

+

Some more words from Emil Cioran to further tickle me:

“To live entirely without a goal! I have glimpsed this state, and have often attained it, without managing to remain there: I am too weak for such happiness.”

“I don’t understand why we must do things in this world, why we must have friends and aspirations, hopes and dreams. Wouldn’t it be better to retreat to a faraway corner of the world, where all its noise and complications would be heard no more? Then we could renounce culture and ambitions; we would lose everything and gain nothing; for what is there to be gained from this world?”

+

the Chinese original of this poem (titled 玉) was written in 1999,
English translation/re-composition (re-titled Celadon) was created in 2011-2

蒼白，是血的原色與美學的逆鱗。

他舌尖的蓮消蝕一如

右頰的月光

聲音是時間與蛇的舞姿

交纏蜿蜒的連綴

而生存，歌詠著水波紊亂

殞落著無性之魅

猩紅，似卵與熱的曲線

錯誤的春花秋月

頹萎之靡交合在古印度的菱鏡

天人於是註定了五衰

水面下的墜

玉

Brett Whiteley, A Day at Bondi, 1984 // etching, black ink on white wove paper

Calling

... an Elgin marble from a waking dream

Would it not be a marvel
to find your calling—your niche—
to be suffering
(emptily, on empty)
draped over
a marvellous throne
where everyone feels
envy, breathlessly
(superficially)?

Dornröschen (Sleeping Beauty) by Louis Sussmann-Hellborn, 1878, via Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin, Germany

Diary fragments from Lady Emily’s lethargic life of yearning (i)

To live a life of truths saturated with ugliness and barren of beauty would be an unjustifiable lie.

+

An anonymous billet-doux arrived this morning. Were I not so intimately familiar with the author’s command of composing erotica-in-disguise, I would have assumed this Prince had fallen in lust with his object of affection after hearing my Goncourt comment. But such is not the case, given I am infinitely acquainted with his style:

Yes, the edge of that precipice offers the most pleasing panorama—a valley teeming with verdure, watered by a stream where the hart quenches his thirst with impunity, happily lapping with a tongue glistening in the warm sun of the temptress. Such places are quoted to us by voices that cry in the night, citing the authority of dreams on its riparian seat, of pillowed ivory, the cheek may rest. 
Impunity, impunity only the bank punished with the hart’s burden as it takes its fill. A stream so beneficent one may lift it towards one’s lips rather than bend towards it. A stream whose source one may also devour. A stream whose waters teach lips eloquence. A stream that engenders others by virtue of the thirst it transfigures, whose moan is answerable to the plash of its puddles plied.

As I sat with the Prince many a blue moon ago, ruminating over the ridiculousness of life, I mused upon his poetic prowess in erotica, “You, dear sir, would make a handsome living writing these words.” To which he mischievously replied with a sparkle in his eye, “My tongue is best employed, when hearts rather than coins are cloyed.”

+

Antoon van Welie (Dutch, 1866–1956), Douleur, pastel, 1895

Goncourt tugged on a string in the womb of my heart tonight, and I say, “I have always derived inexplicable pleasure from singing to a virtuous nobleman, leading him in my hand to the edge of sin and leaving him there to live between the temptation and the fear of that sin.”

+

This afternoon, as languid and as annoyed as any other, Baron Gustave spoke to me about a petty—though entertaining—spectacle amongst the court eunuchs, whose comical adventures of trivialities delighted and somewhat intrigued me. On this person’s extraordinary literary competencies, Baron Gustave concluded, “He would have been an effective priest if he knew how to read anything but music.”

+

Archduchess Maria Isabella

If death has a way of revealing the essence of things, as the poet Stéphane Mallarmé wrote of Edgar Allan Poe, then some of the essence that has been revealed these days is self-righteousness, bigotry, and above all, hypocrisy. The easy way out, the easy way out—always the easy way out. There is no intrinsic value to anything in this world—nor any intrinsic reality. The double-standard (of humanity) and pretentiousness are overwhelming. And then follows the avalanche of apathy.
Why are we such sheep that only blindly follow?

+

Have no fear of happiness—it exists as an illusion only. (This is not to say that happiness does not exist—it exists, like everything else in this apparent world, but as an illusion only.)

+

Thence began the odyssey of a little fool as he decided to write poems for the rest of his life in that faraway city named after a woman.

John William Waterhouse

The music of memento mori：薔薇，無常。

花開花落：The reverie of mono no aware...

Breathing out their swansong. “A flower is perfect, when it is almost old.” An old favourite photograph I took of a rose bouquet I brought home. After having balleted through their beautiful efflorescence, these softly rouged petals dreamed their eventual, eternal slumber scattered upon my piano.

Poetry in the melodies of Eudaimonia’s sigh of bliss.

Protection

birds fluttering feathers beasts secretly cringing
as if musk spreading in the mists astray, fading
then never a sound in Death/ nor breath/ not even heart
Death seals and stagnates the pale wax of light
in her mouth
as if a tooth-filing ceremony as if anaemia as if bleeding

Rebecca Horn, “The Feathered Prison Fan” (from Der Eintänzer), 1978

“It is oblique, magical and ironic, and has none of the in-your-face tone of complaint (men are colonizing thugs, women are victims, and a display of wounds is all you need to make a piece of art) that renders the work of so many of her transatlantic sisters so monotonous.” 
— Robert Hughes, “Art: Mechanics Illustrated.” Time Magazine, 13 Sept 1993; Web. 17 Nov 2009.

玉

蒼白，是血的原色與美學的逆鱗。
他舌尖的蓮消蝕一如
右頰的月光
聲音是時間與蛇的舞姿
交纏蜿蜒的連綴
而生存，歌詠著水波紊亂
殞落著無性之魅
猩紅，似卵與熱的曲線
錯誤的春花秋月
頹萎之靡交合在古印度的菱鏡
天人於是註定了五衰
水面下的墜
玉


Celadon

Paleness, the primary colour of blood,
Aesthetics of one disobedient scale under the Dragon’s throat
The lotus on the tip of his tongue eclipses as if
the moonbeam on his right cheek.
Voices unfold in the dance between Time and the Serpent,
interweaving the movements of musical trills, winding, meandering, murmuring.
And existence, an ode to unquiet rippling, to violent waters,
perishing allures of an androgyne.
Scarlet blood, resembling the curve of an embryo and of heat
I mistake those spring flowers and autumn moon
for the decadently beautiful unison mirrored in ancient India
And angels are thus destined to decline,
falling under the water surface.
Celadon

Rebecca Horn, Dreaming Stones, 2006 (via)

死亡美學（獻詩三島之金閣）

戰後的廢墟，重建
赭色小提琴喤泣聲線
金箔剝蝕的蒸氣與躁動的香

月華清明塗抹石橋
一如滌淨生的 死亡的確知
我兀自佇立文字的金閣
美學修長的眼睫投影
蔭翳，光正自盡。

顫抖顫抖再顫抖，這齣劇本
與血的斑痕纏綿似水
海面痛苦地沉默
光，一如岩礫，一如陰影，光的自縊。

自縊的美學倫理糾結糾結死的似非而，是。
仁波切寂然誦經
呢喃破曉前刻精神與美的歸巢
逐步逐步，緊貼眼睫的哀悽

生的諷刺文體的，死
的潔白墓塚
光正瀉落一湖的私密，若水。

Rebecca Horn, Lenny Silver's Dream, 1990. Sheet music, brass, electric motor. *via Musée des Beaux-Arts de Montréal

煢煢

半圓形的天頂被一層月華光澤的膜緊緻地拉扯住，像一只充滿著水的氣球，虛擬著生腥的焦慮與一種無所事事的、完完全全脫離精神性的美與憂鬱。那個午后，是薄如蟬翼且裹上銀粉的新生的卵，適於討論命理與禪。雲以敏捷的腳步滑行於透明且虛弱的藍，泡沫似的溫順與漠然。青春其實是極度缺乏生命力的。在旺盛與浮躁之中貪慕假象的匱乏，而後需索從不曾或缺的旺盛；在柔弱的本質中渴求堅強與信仰，之後因對於軟弱愚蠢的不自覺與惑於自我宣稱的虛偽堅強而尋覓所謂謙恭溫潤的中庸。青春是僅只存活於對純粹的堅持下、一種具備了美卻不易碎的浪費。如果死的優雅與精神性建構了藝術中闡釋生命的美學，則生不過是為襯托死的一種附屬的存在。但是生命卻是無法磨滅的，即使蒼白而無意義，卻無止盡地散發出猩紅的血的氣味。印度神濕婆在宇宙的輪迴當中毀滅自己所創造的鏡花水月，而後使之重生，不斷重複操縱著生與死的轉輪；祂是否也感受到生命中那種匱乏虛弱的美，以及死亡中屬於生之投影的愛與信念？藍所象徵的嫌惡與非難，以清澈且充滿靈性的美存在於自然界的蒼穹。隅隅獨行的生，幾人在腐臭中仍吟哦走了調的聖詩，又幾人能擺脫所有倫常的帷幕而誠摯地憎恨與厭惡？然而這一切的思索總似時間過度充裕的青春所編織的蛛網，純白得美麗亦膚淺得軟弱。當青春終於被擺脫後，生命開始進入下一段對死複雜的戀慕和禁忌，與對消逝的水光緬懷的遺憾。

Nick Knight, Roses (via)

奔馬

夢先於現實。
而純粹
似花，似血，似詩
，似枯腐前消逝的生。


Runaway Horses (Realistically Synaesthetic Purity)   

Dreams, a priori, then reality.
And purity
Resembles a flower, resembles blood, resembles poetry,
Resembles life, a priori, disappearing before decay.

荒木経惟，花。

A Frightening Angel

I was in high school when I read Rilke for the first time, in an underground “indie” bookstore (a real treasure trove for books) near the National University of Taiwan—an area full of “book caves” and “sequestered nooks for books”—catering for university students and academics alike. It was his Duino Elegies translated into Chinese by a famous poet, and my love affair with Rilke thus began. The verses were heartrendingly powerful in such a way that I was instantly blown away.

My senior high school years were a time I do not care much to remember: the first thing I would do after school everyday, was to go straight into a bookstore—only then would I feel able to breathe. But it was also during that time when I started writing poetry intensely, and my passion for poetry bloomed like wild roses as if they knew there were no tomorrow.

English translation by Stephen Mitchell (my personal favourite translator of Rilke’s works), from the First Elegy of Duino Elegies, 
Shambhala Publications, Inc., 1992.

ʻA Guardian of the Kingdom’ from a Persian version of Qazwini’s ʻAjāʼib al-makhlūqāt wa-gharāʼib al-mawjūdāt,’ “The marvels of creation and the oddities of existence,” commonly known as “The cosmography of Qazwini,”
circa 1500-1550 CE. (image via)

A poem is to be developed from these musings and words which arrived this early evening, and something has been on the back of my mind for quite some time—to work on “Dialogue Poetry”—quite a special genre both in a literary and visual/aesthetic sense.

So, for now, to be continued...

♪

The fifty poems that were published by Albert Giraud (born Emile Albert Kayenbergh) as Pierrot lunaire: Rondels bergamasques in 1884 quickly attracted composers to set them to music, especially after they were translated, somewhat freely, into German (1892) by the poet and dramatist Otto Erich Hartleben. (Hartleben later went on to write his own Pierrot poems—"The Harp" and five rondels titled Pierrot, Married Man.) The best known of these settings is the atonal song-cycle derived from twenty-one of the poems (in Hartleben's translation) by Arnold Schoenberg in 1912: Dreimal sieben Gedichte aus Albert Girauds Pierrot lunaire (Thrice-Seven Poems from Albert Giraud's Pierrot lunaire—Schoenberg was numerologically superstitious). But the poems have dense histories as songs and sets of songs both before and after Schoenberg's landmark Opus 21. The bullet-point that follows lists early twentieth-century musical settings chronologically and notes how many poems were set by each composer (all, except Prohaska's, are in the Hartleben translations) and for which instruments.

Pfohl, Ferdinand: 5 poems ("Moon-rondels, fantastic scenes from 'Pierrot Lunaire'") for voice and piano (1891); Marschalk, Max: 5 poems for voice and piano (1901); Vrieslander, Otto: 50 poems for voice and piano (46 in 1905, 4 more in 1911); Graener, Paul: 3 poems for voice and piano (c. 1908); Marx, Joseph: 4 poems for voice and piano (1909; 1 of 4, "Valse de Chopin", reset for voice, piano, and string quartet in 1917); Schoenberg, Arnold: 21 poems for speaking voice, piano, flute (also piccolo), clarinet (also bass clarinet), violin (also viola), and violoncello (1912); Kowalski, Max: 12 poems for voice and piano (1913); Prohaska, Carl: 6 poems for voice and piano (1920); Lothar, Mark: 1 poem for voice and piano (1921).

*extract of information on Pierrot Lunaire via Wikipedia

A little piece of philosophy I wrote for my love a decade ago...

*Chiliogon in Descartes’ and Leibniz’s Theories of Knowledge: What is a Chiliogon?

In the fourth Meditation, Descartes uses the example of a chiliogon (a polygon with a thousand equal sides) as a thought-experiment to prove that we have at least two approaches to knowledge: imagination and conception. The chiliogon example illustrates this important distinction by showing that while we are able to conceive (or to think of) a chiliogon, we are not able to truly imagine (or to visualise) one. Our mental representation of a chiliogon would either be closer to a 20 to 30-sided polygon, or a circle. However this does not mean we do not possess the concept of a chiliogon.

“... I remark, in the first place, the difference that subsists between imagination and pure intellection [or conception]. For example, when I imagine a triangle I not only conceive (intelligo) that it is a figure comprehended by three lines, but at the same time also I look upon (intueor) these three lines as present by the power and internal application of my mind (acie mentis), and this is what I call imagining. But if I desire to think of a chiliogon, I indeed rightly conceive that it is a figure composed of a thousand sides, as easily as I conceive that a triangle is a figure composed of only three sides; but I cannot imagine the thousand sides of a chiliogon as I do the three sides of a triangle, nor, so to speak, view them as present [with the eyes of my mind].” (Descartes: Meditation VI)

In arguing that all things which “we clearly and distinctly perceive are true” (Meditations 83), Descartes attempts to understand how one can be led to make a false assertion. According to Descartes, one does not perceive everything around him distinctly, and yet one continues to make judgements based on his perceptions, regardless of whether they are clear or not. Although any assertion based upon a clear and distinct perception must be true, falsity can occur when one makes a judgement based on confused perceptions.

“And although, in accordance with the habit I have of always imagining something when I think of corporeal things, it may happen that, in conceiving a chiliogon, I confusedly represent some figure to myself, yet it is quite evident that this is not a chiliogon, since it in no way differs from that which I would represent to myself, if I were to think of a myriogon, or any other figure of many sides; nor would this representation be of any use in discovering and unfolding the properties that constitute the difference between a chiliogon and other polygons.” (Ibid.)

Leibniz also uses the example of a chiliogon in his metaphysics and epistemology, to illustrate the fourth division of knowledge, which shall be discussed later on. In his 1684 essay Meditations on Knowledge, Truth and Ideas, he sets out four divisions of knowledge. The first division is that all knowledge is either obscure or clear. Knowledge is obscure if it fails to provide its holder with enough information to identify the object of that knowledge, while clear knowledge is the opposite. [“Knowledge is clear, therefore, when it makes it possible for me to recognise the thing represented.” (p. 449)] His second division further sets clear knowledge into confused and distinct forms. Clear and distinct knowledge is that of which one is able to detail the features sufficiently to separate it from all others. According to Leibniz, we have such knowledge for “all concepts of which we have a nominal definition [nominalism asserts that abstract concepts, general terms, or universals have no independent existence but exist only as names], which is nothing but the enumeration of sufficient marks” (ibid). These sufficient marks refer to every detailed feature required to identify the substance or concept. The third division he claims is a sub-division of clear and distinct knowledge: it can either be adequate or inadequate. Clear and distinct knowledge can only be called adequate “when every ingredient that enters into a distinct concept is itself known distinctly, or when analysis is carried through to the end” (p. 250). Here Leibniz uses the example of gold to illustrate his argument: one may know the properties of gold well enough to separate it from other bodies and therefore possesses clear and distinct knowledge of gold. However, without carrying out an analysis to such an extent that every predicate of gold is understood distinctly, that clear and distinct knowledge of gold is still inadequate.

The fourth division is another sub-division within clear and distinct knowledge (independent of whether the knowledge is adequate or inadequate), which is the distinction between intuitive and symbolic knowledge. This division is employed when it comes to a complex concept. Here Leibniz uses the Cartesian example of a chiliogon to illustrate his fourth division of knowledge. While Descartes uses a chiliogon to explain the distinction between our two approaches to knowledge – imagination and conception (i.e. what we can imagine and what we can understand/conceive), Leibniz is not concerned with the ability to actually form a mental image (visualisation as imagination). For Leibniz, knowledge is intuitive when it is possible to perceive, clearly and distinctly, all of the parts within this complex concept. While knowledge is symbolic when one possesses clear and distinct knowledge of the entire concept, but fails to hold the same for all the individual parts of the complex whole. Leibniz's chiliogon aims to show how one can have knowledge which is clear and distinct in respect to the whole; yet also have knowledge of this object (a chiliogon) which is said to be symbolic, for it is impossible to think simultaneously of all the concepts involved in this extremely complex geometrical shape (p.450).

This is where Leibniz identifies the truth of an idea with the logical possibility of its existence, and falsity with an idea that contains a contradiction (p. 452). He attacks Descartes’ Cartesian position of establishing truth or falsity of a predication upon the distinctness and clarity of a perception. Leibniz claims that his precise definition and usage of clarity and distinctness are necessary in making useful the Cartesian axiom of “whatever I perceive clearly and distinctly in some thing is true, or may be predicated of it.” Leibniz also insists that an idea is not to be confused with an item of consciousness (a concept). An idea is the foundation of a concept (or an item of consciousness); in other words, concepts are produced by or founded on ideas.

The Loved One: a triptyque

The Loved One

The wind dared not speak
eavesdropping
on the sonorous whispers of those ancient trees:
confusing euphony
sublime cacophony

He too was afraid, of
the marionettes dancing
abandoningly
amongst
the deepest shadows
of her eyelashes imperceptible

Stained-glass velvets drawing upon the Parisian dusk
set your eyes ablaze, and
turned the River ravenously technicoloured—
bejewelled everything magnificently martial.
Rilke's Rose-Window, disappearing
into a gluttonously musical sky.

—So much to say—
(that one must pass over in silence)
But is not all fair in Love and War?

“I don’t think these [words] are any good,” said she.
“You are my poetry,” said he.

～by Ting-Jen Hwang

+++

The tree from whose flower
This perfume comes
Is unknowable.

～Matsuo Basho (1644-1694)

+++

*And... Heifetz’s hauntingly electrifying rendition of Vitali’s Chaconne, with organ. It is perhaps my favourite version of this masterpiece.

From the Poetique-Onirique Archive: The First Poem, for David

“Probably one of the most private things in the world is an egg before it is broken.” ～M. F. K. Fisher

+

(For my husband, whose lullaby is my breathing every night.)

All the secrets I do not share,
and all the secrets I tell no one;
all the secrets absent in my poems,
and all the secrets I do not sing, even in the silent song
of solitude permeating my veins
like the warmth and gentle scent of your amber,
these secrets are buried deep inside, within
the dreams of your belly.
They melt, and are reborn.
They grow wings, and they fly.

In the blueness of your eyes
is the light of a deep ocean that has lived
a thousand years, a thousand years of
meditative loneliness. In your hair, the golden amber grows
into a transparent flower, fragrance of the night.
The amber flower that connects your mind
with your heart.

One day you discovered a pale feather
of an anonymous bird, colour of a pale rose.
A rare feather,
exquisite and fragile, shining under
an old tree of glittering green leaves.
It was nighttime, but the sun was out.
Your one tender kiss awoke the feather, and turned it
into the bird she once was, in a past life she had already forgotten.
The rare and exquisite and fragile bird.
And she has lived with your heart, in your heart, ever since.

Your surrender to nothingness is expansive, and
the warmest embrace there ever is, ever will be.
Your refined detachment of the closest, dearest attachment of tenderness
It gives meaning to what seems to be void of meanings at all,
resembling a delicately and beautifully
cracked porcelain vase,
its slender neck holding all the secrets which are not remembered.
The unbreaking of a broken egg, in the most perfect shade
of pearlescent ivory, with
not even the faintest lines on a rainbow-hued seashell.
I realise in this moment we are regal.
We are angels.
Your elegance is the reddest of all the red peonies
blooming between our bodies and souls.
Us.

You say I can neither understand nor imagine. I close
my eyes and think of
the most beautiful desert moon, or the saddest
love poem, or our daughter
in your arms, in the farthest and nearest yesterday
of our tomorrow.

You spoke to my philosophy professor as if
he was one of your oldest friends.
You talked about Heidegger, and game theory,
and all the dilemmas of life, in a beautiful manner which transcended them all,
as if they were lines from an old poem you had written long ago.
You say the whole life is in The Little Prince, and that you
cannot admire someone who is not an acharya,
however brilliant his thoughts,
however great his legacy.
I look at this perfect man before me, with his
bluest blue eyes and think to myself, “I married
the one rare acharya I know.”

I am your heart, as you are my poetry,
mirror of my aloneness
the soundlessness of my melodies,
the attachment of my detachment,
the meaningfulness of my meaninglessness,
the nothingness of my very own self,

my undefined/undefinable otherness.


You taught me I am myself and I am enough,
in need of no more, like Cocteau's Trinity
that binds my heart in the truest way it longs to be bound.

And so I write, different from how I have ever written poetry,
in the state of being and the state of breathing,
without striving and crafting,
without effort,

as if I was writing
for the very first and the very last time.

～June 2012

Coracias Caudatus (lilac-breasted roller)

With a wide beautiful smile she walks back into his arms, the home of their hearts, like a black swan sweating out of the sweet tropics’ heat and humid scents—she is dressed too warm for the sun and for his embrace. No one can understand the intense ivory in her voice, the aroused gem inside her body, save him, and his eyes: there is wind in the sky, there is gentleness that day in his usually inescapably fiery gaze.

Soon after they live their love she sleeps for two days. When she wakes, she covers herself with a white cashmere shawl. He wonders why she feels cold during a time when her body temperature should naturally be raised a few degrees. “I am always cold. I am a sickly child.” She says in a tone whose intention is to seduce more words from him. He strokes her face and says, “You look good—you look rested.” All she can think about is his hands and his face and how much she longs for a cheesecake made with rose petals.

***

At night, in bed, her thoughts are racing, without logic, with no real purpose. She thinks he has fallen asleep next to her. “What is your emotional state after coming back to me?" Out of the blue he says. Stunned, and almost as if she was a child caught stealing candy from the glass jar, she stays silent for a while, breathing very quietly. “_________________”

She isn’t sure if he is convinced by her answer.


(To be continued...?)

Detail of a gown by Alexander McQueen, Spring 2007 Ready-to-Wear collection.

Hiroshi Sugimoto (Japanese, born 1948), Bust of Venus,
November 26, 1840, 2009. Gelatin silver print.
Image: 36 7/8 x 29 1/2 in. Framed: 48 7/8 x 41 1/2 in. © Hiroshi Sugimoto

我的美麗與哀愁：some fragments on poetry and soul

“Often the object of a desire, when desire is transformed into hope, becomes more real than reality itself.” 

—Umberto Eco, The Book of Legendary Lands

A poet's soul is written down in words and expressed through the soul of his poetry. A sigh becomes the poetic essence of his soul, a recognition of this delicate and evanescent beauty that is universal, paradoxically transient and eternal at the same time. A breath, the pearlescent powder on a butterfly's wing, an evening breeze, colours of the world at dusk, a mirage on sand, a thought, a melody, a poem lasting for as long as it is sung silently, soundlessly. The efflorescence of fallen petals on a floating piano in slumber of emptiness, nonchalantly awaiting reveille from repose.

*
A poet's soul can always foresee the aching sadness that comes with/after beauty－something that "is," and not "caused"－the featherlight imprint of a butterfly's kiss upon one's heart that weighs heavier than the blood of a velvety scarlet rose...

*
This is the moon's phosphorescence... As exquisite and mysterious as the poetry of the moon, of the stirring illusion of crazing inside jade.


I shall quote from one of the poems dearest to my heart－“Invitation to the Harp” by Rafael Alberti (translated by Mark Strand):

Go even farther away than that.
Where the moon is torn between a poplar leaf and a passionate book,
where there are midnight frosts that candelabra conceal
and where death shivers in the unsteady sleep of the candles,
where a puppet in mourning dies over a tuberose,
where a voice from oblivion stirs the sleeping water of pianos.

Go always farther away, farther away.
Go where floors retain the echoes and shadows of footsteps,
where moths watch over the silence of neckties,
where a hundred years is a harp that has been forgotten.

film x-ray radiograph of roses, by bionerd (via flickr)

“Today in my heart
a vague trembling of stars
and all roses are
as white as my pain.”

―Federico García Lorca, from “Canción Otoñal” (Autumn Song)

Mughal gem set gold mounted jade mirror, Northern India, 18th century.

We hardly ever see the moon any more
                                                          so no wonder
   it’s so beautiful when we look up suddenly
and there it is gliding broken-faced over the bridges
brilliantly coursing, soft, and a cool wind fans
       your hair over your forehead and your memories
              of Red Grooms’ locomotive landscape
I want some bourbon/you want some oranges/I love the leather
                jacket Norman gave me
                                                and the corduroy coat David
     gave you, it is more mysterious than spring, the El Greco
heavens breaking open and then reassembling like lions
                                                 in a vast tragic veldt
     that is far from our small selves and our temporally united
passions in the cathedral of Januaries


     everything is too comprehensible
these are my delicate and caressing poems
I suppose there will be more of those others to come, as in the past
                                                  so many!
but for now the moon is revealing itself like a pearl
                                                  to my equally naked heart

～Avenu A, by Frank O’Hara

*
One's heart can be a riddle to oneself. Is it possible, could it be an intimation of not loving one's own soul would there be a soulmate out there with whom one was not in love?

*

“La noche habla suspiros de hojas.

En el silencio,

una sombra camina la huella de mi susurro.”

"Walk my sigh.

I knew there was none reflected in each step."

“It was the night sea

deep breathing silence.

The message of the conch you told in your look from sirens

where dream gorges of fire.

Ancestral Elixir

walking the stone beating.”

～Three poems: Untitled i & ii, and Deep Blue by Nube Alix

from the series Dialog, 1973, by Rudolf Bonvie (via)