kempis.nl
Or see the index
Elizabeth (Lizzie) Siddal
(1829-1862)
Love and Hate
Ope not thy lips, thou foolish one,
Nor turn to me thy face;
The blasts of heaven shall strike thee down
Ere I will give thee grace.
Take thou thy shadow from my path,
Nor turn to me and pray;
The wild wild winds thy dirge may sing
Ere I will bid thee stay.
Turn thou away thy false dark eyes,
Nor gaze upon my face;
Great love I bore thee: now great hate
Sits grimly in its place.
All changes pass me like a dream,
I neither sing nor pray;
And thou art like the poisonous tree
That stole my life away.
Elizabeth (Lizzie) Siddal poems
kempis.nl poetry magazine
More in: Archive S-T, Siddal, Lizzy
Elizabeth (Lizzie) Siddal
(1829-1862)
Gone
To touch the glove upon her tender hand,
To watch the jewel sparkle in her ring,
Lifted my heart into a sudden song
As when the wild birds sing.
To touch her shadow on the sunny grass,
To break her pathway through the darkened wood,
Filled all my life with trembling and tears
And silence where I stood.
I watch the shadows gather round my heart,
I live to know that she is gone
Gone gone for ever, like the tender dove
That left the Ark alone.
Elizabeth (Lizzie) Siddal poems
kempis.nl poetry magazine
More in: Archive S-T, Siddal, Lizzy
Elizabeth (Lizzie) Siddal
(1829-1862)
The Lust of the Eyes
I care not for my Lady’s soul
Though I worship before her smile;
I care not where be my Lady’s goal
When her beauty shall lose its wile.
Low sit I down at my Lady’s feet
Gazing through her wild eyes
Smiling to think how my love will fleet
When their starlike beauty dies.
I care not if my Lady pray
To our Father which is in Heaven
But for joy my heart’s quick pulses play
For to me her love is given.
Then who shall close my Lady’s eyes
And who shall fold her hands?
Will any hearken if she cries
Up to the unknown lands?
Elizabeth (Lizzie) Siddal poems
kempis.nl poetry magazine
More in: Archive S-T, Siddal, Lizzy
Elizabeth (Lizzie) Siddal
(1829-1862)
Fragment of a Ballad
Many a mile over land and sea
Unsummoned my love returned to me;
I remember not the words he said
But only the trees moaning overhead.
And he came ready to take and bear
The cross I had carried for many a year,
But words came slowly one by one
From frozen lips shut still and dumb.
How sounded my words so still and slow
To the great strong heart that loved me so,
Who came to save me from pain and wrong
And to comfort me with his love so strong?
I felt the wind strike chill and cold
And vapours rise from the red-brown mould;
I felt the spell that held my breath
Bending me down to a living death.
Elizabeth (Lizzie) Siddal poems
kempis.nl poetry magazine
More in: Archive S-T, Siddal, Lizzy
Elizabeth (Lizzie) Siddal
(1829-1862)
Shepherd Turned Sailor
Now Christ ye save yon bonny shepherd
Sailing on the sea;
Ten thousand souls are sailing there
But they belong to Thee.
If he is lost then all is lost
And all is dead to me.
My love should have a grey head-stonee
And green moss at his feet
And clinging grass above his breast
Whereon his lambs could bleat,
And I should know the span of earth
Where some day I might sleep.
Elizabeth (Lizzie) Siddal poems
kempis.nl poetry magazine
More in: Archive S-T, Siddal, Lizzy
Elizabeth (Lizzie) Siddal
(1829-1862)
A Year and a Day
Slow days have passed that make a year,
Slow hours that make a day,
Since I could take my first dear love
And kiss him the old way;
Yet the green leaves touch me on the cheek,
Dear Christ, this month of May.
I lie among the tall green grass
That bends above my head
And covers up my wasted face
And folds me in its bed
Tenderly and lovingly
Like grass above the dead.
Dim phantoms of an unknown ill
Float through my tired brain;
The unformed visions of my life
Pass by in ghostly train;
Some pause to touch me on the cheek,
Some scatter tears like rain.
A shadow falls along the grass
And lingers at my feet;
A new face lies between my hands –
Dear Christ, if I could weep
Tears to shut out the summer leaves
When this new face I greet.
Still it is but the memory
Of something I have seen
In the dreamy summer weather
When the green leaves came between:
The shadow of my dear love’s face –
So far and strange it seems.
The river ever running down
Between its grassy bed,
The voices of a thousand birds
That clang above my head,
Shall bring to me a sadder dream
When this sad dream is dead.
A silence falls upon my heart
And hushes all its pain.
I stretch my hands in the long grass
And fall to sleep again,
There to lie empty of all love
Like beaten corn of grain.
Elizabeth (Lizzie) Siddal poems
kempis.nl poetry magazine
More in: Archive S-T, Siddal, Lizzy
Special event at Highgate Cemetery London
for the 150th anniversary of Lizzie Siddal’s death
February 11th is the 150th anniversary of Lizzie’s death. To commemorate this, Highgate Cemetery (Lizzie’s final resting place) is having a Talk at the cemetery on that day by Lucinda Hawksley, author of Lizzie Siddal: Face of the Pre-Raphaelites.
From the Highgate Cemetery website: This is a unique and historic occasion as it is in commemoration of the 150th anniversary of Lizzie Siddal’s death: she died on February 11th 1862 and was buried at Highgate Cemetery six days later.
Lizzie Siddal was a nineteenth-century phenomenon: a working-class girl whose beauty made her the Pre-Raphaelite movement’s most celebrated, iconic face. Dante Rossetti, founder and leading light of the movement, painted and drew her obsessively a thousand times. She soon became a poet and artist in her own right.
However, as his lover and finally his wife, Lizzie’s relationship with Rossetti was blighted by his infidelities and neglect. In despair, Lizzie resorted to laudanum to numb her senses. In 1862 she took an overdose and left a suicide note.
Lucinda’s illustrated and vivid account of Lizzie’s meteoric but brief career and her tortured relationship breathes new life into the images of Lizzie frozen in time in galleries around the world.
The talk commences at 6.30 and will last around an hour. Booking: is in advance by email only at events@highgate-cemetery.org. Tickets: cost £10 each (£8 for students) including refreshments and nibbles. Space is limited so early booking is advised.
About Elizabeth Siddal
Elizabeth Siddal (July 25, 1829 – February 11, 1862)
While working in a millinery shop, Lizzie was discovered by the artist Walter Deverell who painted her as Viola in his depiction of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. Lizzie went on to model for other Pre-Raphaelite artists and is most commonly recognized as Ophelia in the painting by John Everett Millais, but was the charismatic Dante Gabriel Rossetti who not only drew and painted her obsessively, but encouraged Lizzie in her own artwork and poetry. Their relationship was intense and rocky, with an engagement that lasted on and off for a decade. Sadly, their marriage was short. The couple suffered a stillborn child and Lizzie was seriously addicted to Laudanum. She died in 1862 due to an overdose. The rest of Lizzie’s tale is eerily famous for its gothic Victorian morbidity: Rossetti, in his grief, buried his only manuscript of his poems with Lizzie. The poems, nestled in her coffin amidst her famous red hair, haunted him. Seven years later, he had her coffin exhumed in order to retrieve the poems for publication. The story was spread that Lizzie was still in beautiful, pristine condition and that her flaming hair had continued to grow after death, filling the coffin. This, of course, is a biological impossibility. Cellular growth does not occur after death, but the tale has added to Lizzie’s legend and continues to capture the interest of Pre-Raphaelite and Lizzie Siddal enthusiasts.
The story of Lizzie’s life is punctuated with dramatic episodes such as falling ill as a result of modeling as Ophelia,, the tales of Rossetti’s dalliances, and her grief at the loss of their stillborn daughter. Our modern society is much more aware and educated than the Victorians regarding mental health issues. Unfortunately for Elizabeth Siddal, she lived in a time where addiction was a taboo subject and little was known about post-partum depression. Lizzie lived within a cycle of illness, addiction and grief with no resources available to her. And although she did have a creative outlet while most women were denied modes of self expression, Lizzie was never able to move beyond the addiction that claimed her life.
Source: website LizzieSiddal.com
kempis.nl poetry magazine
More in: - Art & Poetry News 2012, Galerie des Morts, Siddal, Lizzy
Christina Rossetti
(1830-1894)
In an Artist’s Studio
One face looks out from all his canvases,
One selfsame figure sits or walks or leans;
We found her hidden just behind those screens,
That mirror gave back all her loveliness.
A queen in opal or in ruby dress,
A nameless girl in freshest summer-greens,
A saint, an angel; – every canvass means
The same one meaning, neither more nor less.
He feeds upon her face by day and night,
And she with true kind eyes looks back on him
Fair as the moon and joyful as the light:
Not wan with waiting, not with sorrow dim;
Not as she is, but was when hope shone bright;
Not as she is, but as she fills his dream.
1856
In een schildersatelier
Uit al zijn doeken kijkt slechts één gezicht,
Slechts één figuur die loopt, of zit, of rijst;
We ontdekten haar pal achter elke lijst,
Waar haar lieftalligheid weerspiegeld ligt.
‘n Prinses, gekleed in rood of in opaal,
Een naamloos wicht in zomergroenen fris,
Engel of heilige; – ‘n betekenis
Die steeds dezelfde is, bij allemaal.
Hij leeft bij dag en nacht van haar gezicht,
En zij blikt terug, haar oog van trouw vervuld
Fraai als de maan, en vreugdevol als ‘t licht:
Niet bleek van smart, en niet vol ongeduld;
Niet als ze is, maar was, hoop nog in zicht;
Niet als zij is, maar zoâls zijn droom zij vult.
Volgens een andere broer van Christina en Dante Gabriel zou het beschreven portret dat van Elizabeth Siddal zijn, die later met D.G. Rossetti trouwde.
Uit: Bestorm mijn hart, de beste Engelse gedichten uit de 16e-19e eeuw gekozen en vertaald door Cornelis W. Schoneveld, tweetalige editie. Rainbow Essentials no. 55, Uitgeverij Maarten Muntinga, Amsterdam, 2008, 296 pp, € 9,95 ISBN: 9789041740588
Bestorm mijn hart bevat een dwarsdoorsnede van vier eeuwen lyrische Engelse dichtkunst. Dichters uit de zestiende tot en met de negentiende eeuw dichter onder andere over liefde, natuur, dood en religie. Niet alleen de Nederlandse vertaling is in deze bundel te vinden, maar ook de originele Engelse versie. Deze prachtige bloemlezing, met gedichten van onder anderen Shakespeare, Milton, Pope en Wordsworth, is samengesteld en vertaald door Cornelis W. Schoneveld. Hij is vele jaren docent historische Engelse letterkunde en vertaalwetenschapper aan de Universiteit van Leiden geweest.
kempis.nl poetry magazine
More in: Rossetti, Rossetti, Christina
Choosing’- George Frederic Watts – London 1864 – Oil on strawboard – National Portrait Gallery, London – This painting depicts the young actress Ellen Terry reaching out to the opulent but scentless camellia and discarding the common, but fragrant violets in her hand
Victoria & Albert Museum London
until 17 July 2011 last chance to see
THE CULT OF BEAUTY
THE AESTHETIC MOVEMENT 1860-1900
The exhibition has been arranged in four main chronological sections, charting the development of the Aesthetic Movement in art and design through the decades from the 1860s to the 1890s. As well as paintings, prints and drawings, the show will include examples of all the ‘artistic’ decorative arts, together with drawings, designs and photographs, as well as portraits, fashionable dress and jewellery of the era. Literary life will be represented by some of the most beautiful books of the day, whilst a number of set-pieces will reveal the visual world of the Aesthetes, evoking the kind of rooms and ensembles of exquisite objects through which they expressed their sensibilities.
‘Symphony in White, No. 3′- James McNeill Whistler – London 1867 – Oil on canvas – The Trustees of the Barber Institute of Fine Arts, University of Birmingham – One critic claimed that this painting was ‘not precisely a symphony in white’ because it also included other colours. Whistler retorted that ‘a symphony in F…contains no other note, but a continued repetition of F, F, F-Fool!’
The search for new beauty
1860s
In the 1860s the new and exciting ‘Cult of Beauty’ united, for a while at least, romantic bohemians such as Dante Gabriel Rossetti (and his younger Pre-Raphaelite followers William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones), maverick figures such as James McNeill Whistler, then fresh from Paris and full of ‘dangerous’ French ideas about modern painting, and the ‘Olympians’ – the painters of grand classical subjects who belonged to the circle of Frederic Leighton and G.F.Watts. Choosing unconventional models, such as Rossetti’s muse Lizzie Siddal or Leighton’s sultry favourite ‘La Nanna’, these painters created entirely new types of female beauty.
Rossetti and his friends were also the first to attempt to realise their imaginative world in the creation of ‘artistic’ furniture and the decoration of rooms. In this period, artists’ houses and their extravagant lifestyles became the object of public fascination and sparked a revolution in the architecture and interior decoration of houses that led to a widespread recognition of the need for beauty in everyday life.
Armchair – Lawrence Alma-Tadema – Made by Johnstone, Norman & Co. London 1884-6 – Mahogany, with cedar and ebony veneer, inlay of several woods, ivory and abalone shell – Museum no. W.25:1-1980 – This armchair was designed for a ‘Greek parlour’ and belonged to Henry Gourdon Marquand, the second director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York
Art for Arts Sake
1870s-1880s
One of the most important examples of the mutual influence between artists and designers is to be found in the startling collaborations between James McNeill Whistler and the architect E.W.Godwin who designed the painter’s studio, The White House, and created some of the most innovative furniture of the day. Characterised equally by elegance and eccentricity, Whistler and Godwin’s work drew upon influences as diverse as ancient Greek art and the Japanese prints and other artifacts just beginning to arrive in Europe.
In the 1870s, the leading Aesthetic artists, Whistler, Leighton, Watts, Albert Moore and Burne-Jones evolved a new kind of self-consciously exquisite painting in which mood, colour harmony and beauty of form were all, and subject played little or no part. The opening of the Grosvenor Gallery (with its famous ‘greenery-yallery’ walls) in 1877 at last gave the Aesthetic painters a fashionable and glamorous showcase for their much-discussed art. But the decade closed with intense controversy exemplified by the critic John Ruskin’s savage attack on Whistler, which prompted the painter’s spirited defence of the ideals of ‘Art for Art’s Sake’ in his writings and by the staging of his own exhibitions.
Design for ‘The Sunflower’ wallpaper – Bruce James Talbert – Made by Jeffrey & Co. London 1878 – Watercolour and body colour – Museum no. E.37-1945 Given by Mrs Margaret Warner – The wallpaper manufacturer Jeffrey & Co. employed Aesthetic designers such as Bruce Talbert to bring ‘art’ to their products
Beautiful people and Aesthetic houses
1870s-1880s
The immense success of the Grosvenor Gallery signalled the emergence of a new artistic elite whose social prestige offered an unprecedented challenge to the Royal Academy. Aesthetic painting became the fashionable enthusiasm of a circle that was grand, wealthy and intellectual. As well as buying paintings these new patrons were keen to embrace Aesthetic ideals, commissioning portraits and even adopting the styles of ‘artistic’ dress.
The rise of Aestheticism in painting was paralleled in the decorative arts by a new and increasingly widespread interest in the decoration of houses. Many of the key avant-garde architects and designers interested themselves not only in working for wealthy clients but also in the reform of design for the middle-class home. The notion of ‘The House Beautiful’ became a touchstone of cultured life.
Attracted by the growing popularity of Aesthetic taste, many of the leading firms making furniture, ceramics, domestic metalwork and textiles courted artists such as Walter Crane and a growing band of professional designers, most notably Christopher Dresser. Co-inciding with a period of unprecedented expansion of domestic markets, the styles favoured by Aesthetic designers were among the very first to be exploited and disseminated widely through commercial enterprise.
‘Oscar Wilde’ – Napoleon Sarony – New York 1882 – Albumen panel print – National Portrait Gallery, London – Sarony’s photographs, taken at the beginning of Oscar Wilde’s American lecture tour, fixed his image in the public imagination as the epitome of the Aesthete
Late-flowering beauty
1880s-1890s
Oscar Wilde, the first celebrity style-guru, invented a brilliant pose of ‘poetic intensity’, but initially made his name promoting the idea of ‘The House Beautiful’. By the 1880s Britain was in the grip of the ‘greenery-yallery’ Aesthetic Craze, lovingly satirised by Gilbert and Sullivan in their famous comic opera Patience and by the caricaturist George Du Maurier in the pages of Punch.
In the last decade of Queen Victoria’s reign the Aesthetic Movement entered its final, fascinating Decadent phase, characterised by the extraordinary black-and-white drawings of Aubrey Beardsley in The Yellow Book.
The exhibition ends with a superb group of the greatest late Aesthetic paintings, including masterpieces such as Leighton’s Bath of Psyche, Moore’s Midsummer and Rossetti’s final picture The Daydream, shown alongside the sensuous nude figures sculpted in bronze and precious materials by Alfred Gilbert and other brilliant younger exponents of ‘The New Sculpture’.
‘The Day Dream’ – Dante Gabriel Rossetti – 1880 London – Oil on canvas – Museum no. CAI.3 – Bequeathed by Constantine Alexander Ionides – This is one of the last major oil paintings that Rossetti completed. The lush green leaves match the fullness of Jane Morris’s figure in her green silk dress
Victoria & Albert Museum London
until 17 July 2011 last chance to see
THE CULT OF BEAUTY: THE AESTHETIC MOVEMENT 1860-1900
‘Icarus’ – Alfred Gilbert – Rome and Naples – Cast in the foundry of Sabatino de Angelis 1884 – Bronze – Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales – © National Museum of Wales – Frederic Leighton commissioned Gilbert to produce a bronze statue, leaving him to choose the subject. Gilbert took the mythical figure of Icarus, the ambitious youth who flew too close to the sun
kempis.nl poetry magazine
More in: *The Pre-Raphaelites Archive, Art & Poetry News 2011
.jpg)
George Meredith
(1828 – 1909)
Winter Heavens
Sharp is the night, but stars with frost alive
Leap off the rim of earth across the dome.
It is a night to make the heavens our home
More than the nest whereto apace we strive.
Lengths down our road each fir-tree seems a hive,
In swarms outrushing from the golden comb.
They waken waves of thoughts that burst to foam:
The living throb in me, the dead revive.
Yon mantle clothes us: there, past mortal breath,
Life glistens on the river of the death.
It folds us, flesh and dust; and have we knelt,
Or never knelt, or eyed as kine the springs
Of radiance, the radiance enrings:
And this is the soul’s haven to have felt.
Photos: Hans Hermans 2010 – Natuurdagboek November 2010
Poem: George Meredith
kempis.nl poetry magazine
More in: Hans Hermans Photos, Meredith, George
.jpg)
Dirge in Woods
by George Meredith
(1828 – 1909)
A wind sways the pines,
And below
Not a breath of wild air;
Still as the mosses that glow
On the flooring and over the lines
Of the roots here and there.
The pine-tree drops its dead;
They are quiet, as under the sea.
Overhead, overhead
Rushes life in a race,
As the clouds the clouds chase;
And we go,
And we drop like the fruits of the tree,
Even we,
Even so.
Photos: Hans Hermans 2010 – Natuurdagboek september 2010
Poem: George Meredith
kempis poetry magazine
More in: Hans Hermans Photos, Meredith, George
William Morris
(1834-1896)
A Death Song
What cometh here from west to east awending?
And who are these, the marchers stern and slow?
We bear the message that the rich are sending
Aback to those who bade them wake and know.
Not one, not one, nor thousands must they slay,
But one and all if they would dusk the day.
We asked them for a life of toilsome earning,
They bade us bide their leisure for our bread;
We craved to speak to tell our woeful learning:
We come back speechless, bearing back our dead.
Not one, not one, nor thousands must they slay,
But one and all if they would dusk the day.
They will not learn; they have no ears to hearken.
They turn their faces from the eyes of fate;
Their gay-lit halls shut out the skies that darken.
But, lo! this dead man knocking at the gate.
Not one, not one, nor thousands must they slay,
But one and all if they would dusk the day.
Here lies the sign that we shall break our prison;
Amidst the storm he won a prisoner’s rest;
But in the cloudy dawn the sun arisen
Brings us our day of work to win the best.
Not one, not one, nor thousands must they slay,
But one and all if they would dusk the day.
William Morris poetry
kempis poetry magazine
More in: Morris, William
Thank you for reading KEMP=MAG - kempis.nl poetry magazine - magazine for art & literature