André Masson .... print

etching from Georges Batailles “Sacrifices” (1936)

previous Masson

Elie Grekoff (1914-1985) ... Tiresias...illustrations 1954

from TIRESIAS by Marcel Jouhandeau, 1954

these illustrations are from the Bibliothèque Gay

an interesting essay on Marcel Jouhandeau's Tiresias >>  by Ed Madden
The Anus of Tiresias: Sodomy, Alchemy, Metamorphosis

Leonor Fini... La Galère/Jean Genet ... 1947 drawing..

Drawing for Jean Genet's La Galère 1947,a long poem written as a homage to murderer

Harcamone, the book was condemned in 1954 and Genet was fined 100.ooo francs.

"By the threads of death
the weapons of these nights
carried my arms paralyzed by wine
the azure of nostrils
traversed by the rose gone astray
where a gilded doe shudders under the brush...
I astonish myself and lose myself
in pursuing your course
astonishing river
from the veins of discourse"         

***

"The tree's blue branches
stretch from the salt to the sky. 
My solitude sings
to my vespers of blood
an air of golden bubbles
squeezing from my lips."

Jean Genet - The Galley

Publilius Optatianus Porphyrius 1595...poem...Carmina Figurata

Sometime around the end of the first quarter of the fourth century C.E., a former resident of the imperial city of Rome then living in exile in Achaea began a written campaign for his recall to the capitol. The campaign coincided with the Vicennalia, or twentieth anniverary, of the reign of the first Christian Roman Emperor, Constantine, an event celebrated in July 325 in Nicomedia and again in the summer of 326 at Rome itself. The writing campaign took advantage of this event and consisted of a series of panegyric poems addressed to Constantine in commemoration of both the Vicennalia and Constantine’s earlier defeat of Licinius in 324. The series, included in what is now known collectively as the Carmina or Carmina Figurata, is of an unusual and innovative sort: the poems contain supplementary text “hidden” within the main body of the individual poems and intended to be “discovered” by the reader. These versus intexti poems were apparently intended to dazzle Constantine with their technical virtuosity and thereby inspire the hoped-for recall of their creator, Publilius Optatianus Porphyrius. The campaign was ultimately successful, and the intriguing larger body of work created by Optatianus remains captivating even today, both for its simple visual appeal and for its display of remarkable technical skill.... continued

related previous POST

Victor Brown.... bookplate for Lily Yeats

from Poems by WB Yeats, Cuala Press 1935

"There's nothing but our own red blood

Can make a right Rose Tree..."

wb yeats

Herbert Grass...Thoughts on Love and Religion 1912

Suniti Namjoshi ....Building Babel..The Black Piglet

from Building Babel by Suniti Namjoshi

Every retelling of a myth is a reworking of it. Every hearing or reading of a myth is a recreation of it. It is only when we engage with a myth that it resonates, becomes charged and recharged with meaning...

Hermann Naumann...the Temptation of St Anthony...

Illustration for The Temptation of St. Anthony 1965

"O bliss! bliss! I have seen the birth of life; I have seen the
beginning of motion. The blood beats so strongly in my veins that it
seems about to burst them. I feel a longing to fly, to swim, to bark, to
bellow, to howl. I would like to have wings, a tortoise-shell, a rind,
to blow out smoke, to wear a trunk, to twist my body, to spread myself
everywhere, to be in everything, to emanate with odours, to grow like
plants, to flow like water, to vibrate like sound, to shine like light,
to be outlined on every form, to penetrate every atom, to descend to the
very depths of matter--to be matter!"

The Temptation of St. Anthony or A Revelation of the Soul - 

 Gustave Flaubert

Julius Klinger... Sodom...1909

Julius Klinger - illustration for Sodom or The Quintessence of Debauchery by John Wilmot. 1909

previous Klinger

Tadanori Yokoo...Sublime images part 2

Some of my favourite  images the wondrous work of Tadanori Yokoo illustration from Genka (“Illusory Flowers”), a historical novel by Harumi Setouchi.

PART 1

a nice link to Yokoos poster works at the wondrous A Journey Round My Skull

The heart of man...1851

the rest of emblems can be found here

Birthday greetings...Aleister Crowley...

 Aleister Crowley Self portrait 1920

October 12th 1875 - December 1st 1947

from Magick Without Tears 1954

 "Lift yourselves up, my brothers and sisters of the earth! Put
beneath your feet all fears, all qualms, all hesitancies! Lift
yourselves up! Come forth, free and joyous, by night and day, to
do your will; for "There is no law beyond Do what thou wilt."
Lift yourlseves up! Walk forth with us in Light and Life and
Love and Liberty, taking our pleasure as Kings and Queens in
Heaven and on Earth."

from my favourite Crowley book!

Early Manuscripts... Latin Gospels...

Latin Gospels with beast-headed evangelist portraits made at Landévennec, Brittany, late 9th or early 10th century

from the  Bodleian Library

The graphics works of Arthur Boyd (4 Jul 1920–24 Apr 1999) part 2

Arthur Boyd was one of Australia’s most widely respected and prolific artists. He was born in 1920 in Melbourne, Victoria and was part of a dynamic generation of artists and thinkers, which included Sidney Nolan, Albert Tucker, and Joy Hester. Boyd was brought up in a lively family of practicing artists, with whom he studied and developed his painting and printmaking.

My favourite of his pieces are collaborations with one of my favourite poets fellow Australian Peter Porter, whom he collaborated with on 4 books during 70s and 80s.

Jonah 1973, The Lady and the Unicorn 1975, Mars 1988 and 

Narcissus 1984 ( images shown below)

Narcissus, Seckers & Warburg London 1984

"But what Arthur & I was trying to do in Narcissus was sort of turn upside & like the rest of us when you look in the water we are turned upside down. that we wanted to produce, of really really how the Natural world doesn't . . . we don't see ourselves in the Natural world. The Natural world, in fact, enters us and becomes ,well, becomes really a kind of life, it has a pilgrimage through us. "

Peter Porter

A wonderful collection of drawings and prints

at the ART GALLERY NSW

Part 1

Unica Zürn...excerpts from The House of Illnesses...part 2

a few more scans from one of my favourite books

The House of Illnesses PART 1

Astrological Blood-letting... Unknow source

Maurice Scève (1501-c.1560)...Delie ...Emblems of Desire 1544

Delie object de plus hault vertu was first published in 1544 in Lyon by Sulpice Sabon for the bookseller, Antoine Constantin. The subsequent 1564 edition, published in Lyon by Nicolas Du Chemin, follows the first edition closely, but moves the initial huitain (“A SA DELIE”) to the very end of the volume and includes an index of figures and first lines. The woodcut figures present significant changes from one edition to the other. The Délie has a mathematical layout; many suggestions have been made about its significance and about the relationship between text and image inasmuch as this work has a visual and spatial component. The Délie is composed of one decasyllabic huitain (an epigram of eight lines of verse), 449 decasyllabic dizains (epigrams of ten lines of verse), fifty woodcut emblems (each with a motto and a figure, surrounded by an ornamental border) which appear at regular intervals.

Paris : Nicolas du Chemin, 1564.

Scève’s Délie is a syncretic work, which bears the mark of the poet’s erudition and high concept of poetry. The work conveys the thoughts and feelings of a lover suffering from unrequited love and striving for perfection. Throughout the Délie, love is an obsessive and complex experience in which the sacred and the profane are intertwined. The question of Délie’s identity has tantalized critics; some have assimilated her to the Lyonnese poet Pernette Du Guillet, whose posthumous Rymes sometimes echo Scève’s Délie. La Croix du Maine, in contrast, saw the name “Délie” as the anagram of “L’Idée” (Idea), and stressed the Neo-platonic aspects of the lover’s quest. Yet, Délie eludes any attempt to define her; her composite persona combines references to Petrarch’s Rime Sparse and Petrarchan poetry, the Bible and Christian literature, classical texts and iconography, mythology, French and Neo-Latin sources. The concise quality of the dizains, and their convoluted syntax contribute to the complexity of this fascinating work.

from the Gordon Collection at the University of Virginia

* * *

43

The less i see her, the more i hate her:

The more i hate her, the less anger i feel.

The more i adore her, the less it means:

The more i flee her, the more i wish her near.

Love with hate & pleasure with pain,

The two arrows fall on me in a single rain.

And the love i great which thereby gains

As hate sinks in & cries out for revenge:

Thus my vain desire makes me detest

The one my heart so infallibly requests.

* * *

163

For this kindness let me at least commend you,

Of which i note both occasion & site

Where, all atremble, you heard me undo

This mortal knot into which my heart was tied.

I saw you, like me, now grown tired

Of my travail, more out of compassion

Than any sense of this great passion

I still feel, though less so than at the start.

For as you extinguished my affliction,

You secured this burnt offering of my heart.

* * *

To whom it may concern... Harry Crosby...

from BLACK SUN PRESS

previous Harry Crosby posts > 1 2

Bayardi (Ottavio Antonio) ... 1752

Plates from the The Antiquities of Herculaneum- BAYARDI, Ottavio Antonio

The Sphinx...Oscar Wilde & Alastair...1920

Your lovers are not dead, I know;

They will rise up, and hear your voice,

And clash their cymbals, and rejoice,

And run to kiss your mouth, -- and so

Set wings upon your argosies! 

more on the background of this book and other illustrators  > THE SPHINX 

previous Alastair posts L'Anniversaire de L'Infante

Devour the fire