~*Revue_Blanche*~

As I’ve learnt from comments, some people never heard of the artist Karl Briullov (1799–1852) and are interested. Here is one more his picture:

A horse, a child, pet dogs--a woman cannot desire for more.

I’d like to recommend one more artist, who is more famous, Valentin Serov (1865-1911).
This is his portrait of the last Russian Tsar:

and his portrait of Princess Orloff in silks and sables (a “high society mere whore”, as some her contemporaries said):

The vine loves the sun. Beauty of these female images is obviously Mediterranean. Its perfection and originality seem timeless. The artist’s notion of beauty seems to be in concordance with that of the ancients, therefore we can imagine that the sunshine, which we can see in these pictures, is that of ancient times, which in some miraculous way has reached our eye in the 21st century. However, is the way so miraculous? We, the 21st century viewers can see it through the 19th century artist’s insight. Artist: Karl Briullov


Personally I hate the sun of summer days, and the Sun god is not kind to me either. But the question is not me now.

Come to see the sun tatting-clad everyday life of Laurent Parcelier:
http://laurentparceliercollection.com/

Sir Anthony van Dyck. Lord John and Lord Bernard Stuart (c. 1638)

loving long-haired men, though a man’s long hair tells about nothing but the man’s love for his own long hair.

Sir Anthony van Dyck. Thomas Killigrew and (?) William, Lord Croft (1638)

Does anybody love men with shaven heads?

my 'read' shelf:

This is the very by-street, where I was attacked by the raven, mentioned in my story:
http://ohlala007.blog.co.uk/2008/07/17/the-dead-season-4459369/

and thi is the very place--

The old sunlit poplars, which we can see in the pictures, which have survived since the old times, and which produce the deep pleasant shade, make me remember one poem--

The Poplar
By Vladimir Nabokov

Before this house a poplar grows
Well versed in dowsing, I suppose,
But how it sighs! And every night
A boy in black, a girl in white
Beyond the brightness of my bed
Appear, and not a word is said.
On coated chair and coatless chair
They sit, one here, the other there.
I do not care to make scene:
I read a glossy magazine.
He props upon his slender knee
A dwarfed and potted poplar tree.
And she--she seems to hold a dim
Hand mirror with an ivory rim
Framing a lawn, and her, and me
Under the prototypic tree,
Before the pillared porch, last seen
In July, nineteen seventeen.
This is the silver lining of
Pathetic fallacies: the sough
Of Populus that taps at last
Not water but the author’s past.
And note: nothing is ever said.
I read a magazine in bed
Or the Home Book of Verse; and note:
This is my shirt, that is my coat.
But frailer seers I am told
Get up to rearrange a fold.

1952

The poem above refers to more poems by VN written in English. This is one of them:

Rain
By Vladimir Nabokov

How mobile is the bed on these
nights of gesticulating trees
when the rain clatters fast,
the tin-toy rain with dapper hoof
trotting upon an endless roof,
travelling into the past.

Upon old roads the steeds of rain
slip and slow down and speed again
through many a tangled year;
but they can never reach the last
dip at the bottom of the past
because the sun is there.

1956

The printed source of VN poetry, which I used, well may have some misprints, so if anybody has more exact text of this last poem, please let me know.

JUNE 2 – Nabokov’s death day (1977).