Short poems and a wandering mind. Life and love in the twinkle of a bird's eye.
"Evening light fits the cove rock, a mouthful of gold. Cormorant bathes in amber, deeply still..."
#29 non-fiction, #38 poetry. #5 haiku! These are in lots of differ...
Please start the video of Rodin's garden, and then also play the blackbird song so they play simultaneously. I hope it takes you there :)
in Rodin's garden
early May magnolias
sculpt the air we breathe
a blackbird is here
shifting old leaves astutely
until our eyes meet
naturally proud you
smash the shell off a huge snail
and wipe your beak clean
you can come again
with your culinary skills
you're in the right place
can I come back too
sip late tea in this garden
and remember you
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Rodin is the artist who sculpted The Kiss, sculpting so the figures emerge from the stone. He doesn't ask the stone to pretend to be what he's carving. He agrees with stone. We are all from stone, and will go back to it. So he carves beautiful images, telling us the life of the stone, letting stone show us our life emerging and going back into stone.
Reminds me of TS Eliot, Four Quartets: we are the wall, the wainscot and the mouse.
Auguste Rodin, 12 November 1840 - 17 November 1917, failed repeatedly to get into art school at home in Paris, and worked as a decorator. Vitally he was encouraged in art by the religious order that would not keep him as a monk. Rejected from military service for the Franco-Prussian War, he went as a decorator to Belgium, and was finally recognized..
Inspired by Michelangelo, he worked through 1900, and the Art Nouveau Era, la Belle Epoque. I write about this extraordinary time elsewhere.
He was also inspired by his student and inspiration, Camille Claudel, who like so many female artists, really must not be forgotten.
Video links to youtube, different authors named at source.
'Sleep' by Rodin: white marble, blending traditional smoothed rock incorporating maker's chisel marks, with contrasting depth, energy and flow. Ground-breaking. Musee Rodin, Paris, France. Photo by me.
