Writing Love Letters

Detail of Young Girl Writing a Love Letter (1755) by Pietro Antonio Rotari

This week, we've got a bunch of holidays crowded together. When celebrating Mardi Gras, two days ago, I posted up an appropriate work of art from the local art collection. I figured that would be a fun thing to do again with today's Valentine's Day post.

Therefore, here's Pietro Rotari's Young Girl Writing a Love Letter, one of my favorite paintings from the Norton Simon Museum. I adore her coquettish, sidelong glance and confident, almost saucy, demeanor. Her actions indicate that she's daydreaming about the object of her adoration, but her pose implies that this object is actually the viewer!!! It's a playful piece that I enjoy visiting time and again, both to appreciate the work and to observe how other viewers react to it.

It's especially fun to see the difference in reaction between women and men. ;-)

Anyways, we can't have a holiday post without Barbie.

Queen of Hearts Barbie (1994, designed by Bob Mackie) says "Happy Valentine's Day!!!"

Likewise, whether you have a sweetheart or are currently going solo, this day, like every other, can be as good as you can make it. So, seek out that which makes you happy and have a wonderful time!!!

Amongst the Clouds of Gold

Detail from Avalance in the Alps (1803) by Philip James de Loutherbourg

Even for those familiar with operatic repertoire, the name of Alfredo Catalani draws a momentary blank; it sounds familiar, but what did he write? As the mental list of titles runs through the mind, a sweet and haunting song rises from the unconscious.

"Ebben? Ne andrò lontana"

The famous aria from La Wally!!! The one-hit wonder of Italian opera! That's Catalani. If YouTube had existed back in the 1890s, people would have been Catalani-rolled.

Well, that's not really fair. Given his short life, he produced a respectable body of work. They aren't "works of genius" but they're enjoyable bits of music, charming and graceful. The rise of modernism and experimental operatic concepts resulted in an already obscure composer falling into even greater obscurity. But the music remains beautiful, a ghostly echo of traditional opera, a style that was fading away even as Catalani was penning these notes.

Detail from The Dance (1856) by William-Adolphe Bouguereau

But we don't have to let his music fade away. Instead, let's celebrate it tonight, marking his birth date, June 19, 1854.

Friday Flowers: Holly and Poinsettia

Poinsettia: Euphorbia pulcherrima


GIC to HAR
(By Kenneth Rexroth)

It is late at night, cold and damp
The air is filled with tobacco smoke.
My brain is worried and tired.
I pick up the encyclopedia,
The volume GIC to HAR,
It seems I have read everything in it,
So many other nights like this.
I sit staring empty-headed at the article Grosbeak,
Listening to the long rattle and pound
Of freight cars and switch engines in the distance.
Suddenly I remember
Coming home from swimming
In Ten Mile Creek,
Over the long moraine in the early summer evening,
My hair wet, smelling of waterweeds and mud.
I remember a sycamore in front of a ruined farmhouse,
And instantly and clearly the revelation
Of a song of incredible purity and joy,
My first rose-breasted grosbeak,
Facing the low sun, his body
Suffused with light.
I was motionless and cold in the hot evening
Until he flew away, and I went on knowing
In my twelfth year one of the great things
Of my life had happened.
Thirty factories empty their refuse in the creek.
On the parched lawns are starlings, alien and aggressive.
And I am on the other side of the continent
Ten years in an unfriendly city.


This is one of those poems that "speaks to me" and makes memories come bubbling up from my subconscious mind, like the grosbeak. I'm the type of person who likes paging through an encyclopedia, stumbling across random articles that triggers thoughts, associations, and images. The manner in which Kenneth Rexroth captures that experience is simply awesome.

Holly: Ilex cornuta burfordii

And since this is the Friday before Christmas, it seemed appropriate to celebrate with some poinsettia and holly. ;-)