Saturday, May 26, 2012

Monday, May 21, 2012

Vladimira Milashevskago...illustrations ...Zanaveshennye kartinki (Curtained pictures) ...1920



Poems by Mikhail Kuzmin, Illustrated by Vladimir Milashevsky 1920




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k09

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Sun, Sun

Sun, sun,
divine Ra-Helios,
you delight
the hearts of kings and heroes,
sacred horses neigh to you,
in Heliopolis they sing hymns to you;
when you shine,
lizards crawl out onto rocks
and boys go laughing
to swim in the Nile.
Sun, sun,
I am a pale scribbler,
a library recluse,
but I love you, sun, no less
than a tanned sailor
smelling of fish and salt water,
and no less
than his accustomed heart
rejoices
at your royal rising
from the ocean,
my heart trembles,
when your dusty, but flaming ray
slips
through the narrow window by the ceiling
onto my filled page
and my thin, yellowish hand,
writing out in vermilion
the first letter of a hymn to you,
O Ra-Helios sun!

 


Sunday, May 13, 2012

Ex Libris... Milan Bauera





bauermarv 


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bauerstast 


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 Milana Bauera website here


Saturday, May 12, 2012

Ex Libris... Italo Zetti (1913-1978)...1947



1933732


Paolo Farinati...The Punishment of Marsyas...1573


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Agathias (c. 536-582 AD)
translated by Richard Garnett

Satyr, whose listening ear so low is bent
Breathes with spontaneous strain thine instrument?
Smiling and silent thou remainest bound
In silvery fetters of delightful sound;
For sure that lifelong figure here doth dwell
Fixed not by Painting's, but by Music's spell.


Thomas Sturge Moore... wood engravings & poem



TSTURGEMOORECentaurs1stLove

The Centaur's first love


P9945-R-2-1

Bookplate of Campbell Dodgson

a small collection HERE



Value and Extent
The more they peer through lenses at the night,
The finer they split the rays of stellar light,
The vaster their estimates
Of distances, of movements, and of weights!

The stupor of this unimagined size
Like a mole’s eyelid palls the keenest eyes.
Yea, like unearthed moles,
We, by truth tortured, writhe outside those holes…

Dark homely galleries of confined thought,
Whose utmost reach must now be held as naught
Compared with that grand space
Which those unlike us may superbly grace.

Substance more subtle, forms of comelier growth,
Diviner minds, nothing but mental sloth
Prevents me thus to bid
Against the size revealed, with worth still hid.

No reason can be urged why all this room
Should hold no more life than, within a tomb,
The first small worm that stirs;
For all known life is less in the universe.

Undreamable communications, sun
To sun, may be the hourly routes they run,
Swifter even than light,
On business purer than a child’s delight!

But that I can, like scornful Plato, fear
Our fine things but poor copies of true worth;
Proportioned to this earth,
There thrill and shape small genuine glories here
.

Thomas S Moore


Thursday, May 3, 2012

Augustus John ...Self Portrait...Tete Farouche... 1899-1900



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Alastair (Baron Hans Henning) & Harry Crosby... illustrations & poem



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  TheYoung Lovers

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The Passionate EmbraceThe Passionate Embrace
 The Passionate Embrace

more HERE


Lit de Mort

I shall not die within a mad man's cell
Or in the city of unconquered pain
Nor on the ocean in a cockle shell
When mad March winds are blowing hurricane.

I shall not die among the multitude
Or as a martyr tortured at the stake,
I shall not die in business servitude
Nor as a soldier for my country's sake;

But i shall die within my lady's arms
And from her mouth drink down the purple wine
And tremble at the touch of naked charms
With silver fingers seeking to entwine.

My dying words shall be a lover's sighs
Beyond the last faint rhythm of her thighs.



Tuesday, May 1, 2012

Austin Osman Spare... Self Portrait... 1908



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a scan from a new title by Fulgur

The Exhibition Catalogues of Austin O. Spare

compiled and edited by Robert Ansell


As an Individual I resent this cant re "self -expression." a catch phrase to hide every form of delinquency -- the excuse to perpetuate the worst whithin us at other's expense.
"Looking within, to the depths of one's Soul" is another inverse cliche: personally, my experience of  "looking within" has been exactly like looking into an empty bucket!
As an inveterate believer in the Soul, I have experienced the "Touch"... and all stimuli of inspiration at any level are an effulgent refraction from something we have glimpsed from without and excreated from the machine within. So far
we have made a sorry mess of the Anatomy of the Mind. The Soul is apart--becoming
tactual of sincerity when our level of values is near equity -- its language is a baffling symbolism to all untruth: human nature being the most unstable thing known -- correspondance is rare