Martin van Maele (1863 - 1926) ~ illustration for Hysterical poems 1883

Antoine Monnier (1846-?) ~ Etchings for Eccentric Sonnets and Strange Poems, 1873

Born today...Charles Pierre Baudelaire, poet, April 9, 1821, Paris, France

The Spiritual Dawn

When upon revellers the stained dawn breaks 

The fierce ideal comes with it; at that hour, 

Stirred by some terrible avenging power, 

An angel in the sated brute awakes. 

Above the stricken, suffering man there glow 

Far azure plains of unimagined bliss 

Which draw his dreaming spirit like the abyss. 

O pure, beloved Goddess, even so 

O'er the smoked wrecks of stupid scenes of shame 

Brighter and rosier thy sweet memory 

Hovers before my wide eyes hauntingly...

The Sun has dimmed and charred the candles' flame, 

And thus, my glorious all-conquering one, 

Thy shade is peer to the immortal Sun

~ Fleurs du mal / Flowers of Evil

image: Carlo Farneti (1892-1961) illustration for Les Fleurs du Mal 1935

Alastair (Baron Hans Henning Voigt) (1887-1969) ... illustration for Red Skeletons, selected poems of Harry Crosby 1927

Temple De La Douleur - Poem by Harry Crosby

My soul has suffered breaking on the wheel,

Flogging with lead, and felt the twinging ache

Of barbéd hooks and jagged points of steel,

Peine forte et dure, slow burning at the stake,

Blinding and branding, stripping on the rack,

The canque and kourbash and the torquéd screw,

The boot and branks, red scourging on the back,

The gallows and the gibbet. All for you.

These tortures are as nothing to the pain

That I have suffered when you gaze at me

With cold disdainful eyes. You do not deign

To smile or talk or even set me free-

Yet once you let me hold your perfumed hand

And danced with me a stately saraband.

Marcus Behmer (1879-1958) ...etching for Paul Verlaine, Hombres (Hommes) 1920

Jef Van Tuerenhout (1926-2006) ...etching, Lilith 2 1979

Clovis Hugues(1851-1907)... illustration for poem 'Ode au vagin' 1933

Andrei Bely ... “Overview of Blok’s poetry”, 1923.

Andrei Bely ~ “Overview of Blok’s poetry”. Illustration to “Lectures about Blok”, 1923. Pencil, coloured pencil and watercolour on paper.

Born today... Andrei Bely, 26 October 1880, Moscow Russia

Once upon a time there were no grasses, nor "Earths", nor flints, nor granites; it was - flamy; laminae of flying gas diffused through the Cosmos; the earth was gurgling like a fiery flower; it was developing, confluing from the Cosmic sphere; and these gestures of the fires later duplicated themselves: in the petals of flowers; because of this the cosmic light is - the colored flower of the fields; all flowers/colors are - memories about the fires of the limitless, cosmic sphere; all words are - memories of the sound of an ancient meaning.

Once upon a time there were no concepts in our sense: a conceptual crust surrounded the image of the word; once there was not even the image itself of the word; later the images surrounded the imageless root; previously there had been no root; all roots are - serpent skins; the living serpent is - the tongue; once that snake had been streams, the palate had been - the sail of rhythms, carried along; the cosmos, as it firmed up, became the cavity of the mouth; a stream of air - this dancer of the world is - our tongue.

Glossolalia~ A Poem about Sound 1922

Ithell Colquhoun.... Autumnal Equinox, oil on canvas 1949

Muin (Sept 2nd-30th)

I am the month of Muin, month of the vine

Exhilaration is mine through the garland of fruit

Draped from the right shoulder across the swell

Of a belly like Primavera's; yet mine of early

Fall is the realm. On the head too are grapes

And the vine-leaves wreathing my autumn-coloured hair

My robe the bluish mist of a sky pregnant

With the first heavy dews.

How calm I am! Yet is there perhaps hidden

AN anger that gives authority to my poise?

I drank from the horn-cup and swam into a trance

So deep that only attraction amethystine

Recalls me, after a voyage through gates of horn

I come now to bless and renew dreams that are true

-Ithell Colquhoun

Born today... Georg Trakl ,February 3, 1887, Salzburg, Austria, Self portrait & poems

Mourning 

The dark eagles, sleep and death, 

Rustle all night around my head: 

The golden statue of man 

Is swallowed by the icy comber 

Of eternity. On the frightening reef 

The purple remains go to pieces, 

And the dark voice mourns 

Over the sea. 

Sister in my wild despair 

Look, a precarious skiff is sinking 

Under the stars, 

The face of night whose voice is fading.

Georg Trakl, self portrait, 1913

Whispered In The Afternoon

Feebly glints the sun's thin ray,

From the tree the ripe fruit falleth,

In the deep blue distance dwelleth

Silence--'tis an endless day.

Sharp a shot the stillness cleaves,

Prone to earth its victim bringing.

Harsh refrain of brown girls singing

Dies amid the fall of leaves.

Dream-wings o'er God's forehead play,

And He thinketh but in color.

Shadows round the hill grow duller,

Bordered by a dim decay.

Twilight, drunken with repose;

Sad guitar-notes trickle faintly.

Back unto his lamplight saintly

In a dream the wanderer goes.

Song of the Departed

To Karl Borromaeus Heinrich

The flight of birds is full of harmonies. At evening

The green forests have gathered to more silent huts;

The crystal meadows of the doe.

A dark shape calms the ripple of the brook, the damp shadows,

And the flowers of summer which ring beautifully in the wind. 

Already the brow of the pondering man grows dark. 

And goodness, a small lamp, shines in his heart 

And the peace of the meal; because bread and wine are sanctified 

By God's hands, and out of nocturnal eyes 

The brother silently gazes at you, so that he rests from thorny wanderings. 

O the dwelling in the soulful blueness of night. 

The silence in the room also lovingly embraces the shadows of ancestors, 

The purple martyrs, lament of a mighty race 

That now dies piously in the lonely grandchild. 

Because from black minutes of insanity the long-sufferer 

Always awakens more radiant at the petrified threshold 

And the cool blueness embraces him enormously and the bright decline of autumn, 

The still house and the telling of the forest, 

Measure and law and the lunar paths of the departed.

Springtime of the Soul

Outcry in sleep; through black alleys the wind falls,

The blue of spring beckons through breaking branches,

Purple night-dew and stars extinguish all around.

Greenish the river dawns, silverly the old avenues

And the towers of the city. O gentle drunkenness

In the gliding boat and the dark calls of the blackbird

In innocent gardens. Already, the rosy veil thins.

Solemnly the waters murmur. O the moist shadows of the floodplain,

The striding animal; greening shapes, flowering branches

Touch the crystal forehead; shimmering boat-sway.

Quietly the sun sounds in the rose-colored clouds by the hill.

Great is the stillness of the fir forest, the earnest shadows at the river.

Purity! Purity! Where are the terrible paths of death,

Of gray stony silence, the rocks of night

And the peaceless shadows? Abyss radiant with sun.

Sister, when I found you at the lonely clearing

In the forest, it was midday and the silence of the animal great;

Whiteness under wild oak, and the thorn bloomed silver.

Enormous dying and the singing flame in the heart.

Darker the waters flow around the beautiful play of fishes.

Hour of mourning, silent vision of the sun;

The soul is a strange shape on earth. Spiritually blueness

Dusks over the pruned forest; and a dark bell rings

Long in the village; peaceful escort.

Silently the myrtle blooms over the white eyelids of the dead.

Softly the waters whisper in the subsiding afternoon

And the wilderness on the bank greens more darkly; joy in the rosy wind;

The brother's gentle song by the evening hill.

Born today...Hugo von Hofmannsthal February 1, 1874, Landstraße, Vienna, Austria

Creatures of Flame

We are all creatures of flame. The butterfly: the intensity of a short life and fragility

become color. My death is like shadow, my life aquiver, a pulse in the light; I am so 

close to death it makes me proud, cruel and demonic.

Unmoved, I flutter from Helen's lips to Adonis' wound. 

I love my death, the flame, more than anything.

Creature of the Flood

Poem of the Mussels

We are alone in the dark. You up there have lips, rolled-up leaves, hands entwined with rosy blood and bluish veins, we are alone and cannot touch. We live our life fully, our fate is to resist the waves, that is what we become, and triumph and pain color us as the reflection of fall and of the sun colors the waves there near the surface.

Paul Holman... Tara Morgana, excerpt, 2014

from Tara Morgana by Paul Holman published by Scarlet Imprint and illustrated by the photography of Paul Lambert

Rikki Ducornet ...poem and watercolour & gouache ... 1989

The lunatic algebra

of Love.

The frenzied orbits

of Mood.

The malarial temperatures

of Wound.

Symbols of the Cult

of Seizure:

This flesh, this amulet

incised.

This hot spoor

of predators.

This zodiac savaged

in the sky.

The Cult of Seizure 1989

Born Today ... Rosaleen Miriam "Roie" Norton, October 2, 1917, Dunedin, New Zealand

image: The Hag , watercolour

...My home is the house of winds,

With great songs of Space ringing wild in my ears

Whose shouting heart leaps to their tune.

I mock at the shapes, plodding thickly, through lamplight:

stupid and cruel - or kind -

They are alien, Other, I'm touched with uneasiness...

Fear of these human.... and glide away sidelong:

Yet joying in fear, in my stealthy aloofness,

To know they are They and I'm I.

Towers of old cities are spiralling over me, Night-conjured,

rising from Time

And I hear, through the seething of luminous silence -

Secretive, vibrant, the sound of the Solitude -

Calling of others like me

Quietly they come, flitting softly as secrets; light-footed,

velvety, swift...

With eyes gleaming green, lambent flame of the Opal.

Kindred... we signal our quick recognition.

I am I ... but I know we are we

Panther of silence; god of Night; Lord of the wild inhuman

stars:

You are my own; teeming soul of solitude.

Here is no loneliness, secret Master -

You, Dark Spirit are with me. RN

Georg Trakl (1887-1914)... Self Portrait & poem. .. 1913

Born, February 3, 1887 - Died, November 3, 1914

Painted Probably on 11.30.1913, Innsbruck in the studio of Max von Esterle

The Deep Song

From deep night I was released.

My soul is astonished in immortality,

My soul listens over space and time

To the melody of eternity!

Not day and lust, not night and suffering

Is the melody of eternity,

And since I listened to eternity,

I feel no more lust and suffering!

more HERE

Memento Mori... print & poem.. Christina Georgina Rossetti

Memento Mori

Poor the pleasure

Doled out by measure,

Sweet though it be, while brief

As falling of the leaf;

Poor is pleasure

By weight and measure.

Sweet the sorrow

Which ends to-morrow;

Sharp though it be and sore,

It ends for evermore:

Zest of sorrow,

What ends to-morrow.

Christina Georgina Rossetti

Frans de Geetere & Arthur Rimbaud... The Stupra... 1925

Frans de Geetere ~ illustration for The Stupra 1925

The ancient beasts...

The ancient beasts bred even on the run,

Theirs glans encrusted with blood and excrement. 

Our forfathers displayed theirs members proudly

By the fold of the sheath and the grain of the scrotum.

In the middle ages, for a female, angel or sow,

A fellow whose gear was substantial was needed;

Even a Kléber, judging by his breeches which exagerate

Perhaps a little, can't have lacked resources.

Besides, man is equal to the proudest mammal;

We are wrong to be surprised at the hugeness of their members;

But a sterile hour has struck: the gelding

And the ox have bridled their ardours, and no one

Will dare again to raise his genital pride

In the copses teeming with comical children.

Arthur Rimbaud ~ The Stupra 1925

George Russell 'AE' (1867-1935)... Tired...drawing and poem

Tired, Ink and wash, 

                         

Star Teachers

EVEN as a bird sprays many-coloured fires,

The plumes of paradise, the dying light

Rays through the fevered air in misty spires

    That vanish in the heights.

These myriad eyes that look on me are mine;        

Wandering beneath them I have found again

The ancient ample moment, the divine,

    The God-root within men.

For this, for this the lights innumerable

As symbols shine that we the true light win:        

For every star and every deep they fill

    Are stars and deeps within.

George William (“A. E.”) Russell (1867–1935).  Collected Poems by A.E.  1913.

M. Fröhlich... illustration... Else Lasker-Schüler 1907

 

illustration of Else Lasker-Schüler from "Tino of Baghdad" by Else Lasker-Schüler  1907

To the Barbarian

The rough drops of your blood

Bring sweetness to my skin.

Do not call my eyes traitresses

Because they’re floating around your skies;

I’m resting on your night, smiling

And teaching your stars how to play.

And I’m walking through the rusty gate

Of your bliss with a song.

I love you and am coming nearer, in white

And transfigured on pilgrimage toes,

I’m taking your haughty heart,

Pure chalice, with me to the angels.

I love you as if I’d died

And my soul were spread across you –

My soul took in all the pain,

Its bitter images will shatter you.

But there are so many roses in bloom

I’d like to give you;

I’d like to bring you all the gardens

Woven into a wreath.

I keep thinking of you

Until the clouds drop down;

We’d like to kiss,

Wouldn’t we?

by  Else Lasker-Schüler