The Cabinet of the Solar Plexus

Friday, February 13, 2015

Heinrich Lutz ... She emeciates Him! ...18th May 1918

Heinrich Lutz ~ She emeciates Him! 18th May 1918

From The Prinzhorn Collection currently being exhibited at Sammlung Scharf-Gerstenberg, Berlin

Wednesday, February 4, 2015

Dolorosa de la Cruz... Evoking Lunar Paths, February 2015

Dolorosa de la Cruz ~ Evoking Lunar Paths (to Georg Trakl), goauche and pencil, February 2015

Tuesday, February 3, 2015

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.

Sunday, February 1, 2015

Toyen (1902-1980)... At the Mercy of Their Gaze, 1957

Toyen ~ At the Mercy of Their Gaze, oil on canvas 1957

Ithell Colquhoun (1906-1988)... Imbolc... Feb 2 1972

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.