apple picking

AFTER APPLE-PICKING







My long two- pointed ladder's sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still,
And there's a barrel that I didn't fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn't pick upon some bough.

But I am done
with apple-picking now.
Essence of winter sleep
is on the night,
The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.


I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight
I got from looking through a pane of glass
I skimmed this morning
from the drinking trough
And held against the world of hoary grass.

It melted, and I let it fall and break.
But I was well
Upon my way to sleep
before it fell,
And I could tell
What form my dreaming was about to take.

Magnified apples appear and disappear,
Stem end and blossom end,
And every fleck of russet showing clear.
My instep arch not only keeps the ache,
It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.

I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.
And I keep hearing from the cellar bin
The rumbling sound
Of load on load of apples coming in.
For I have had too much
Of apple-picking: I am overtired
Of the great harvest I myself desired.

There were ten thousand thousand
fruit to touch,
Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.

For all
That struck the earth,
No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble,
Went surely to the cider-apple heap
As of no worth.


One can see what will trouble
This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.
Were he not gone,
The woodchuck could say
whether it's like his
Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,
Or just some human sleep.

Robert Frost

Degas, as he lives in my memory

Memoirs
Excerpts

József Rippl-Rónai

It is not easy to write on Degas the man; he shared his private life with few and was, anyway, a difficult man to approach, preferring to live in isolation, the sculptor Bartholomé was, so to speak, his only friend. With his help, Toulouse-Lautrec was the only one of our lot to cross the threshold of Degas' studio. What I know of Degas comes from Lautrec's stories, told in his characteristic, direct manner at our regular afternoon gatherings at the offices of the Revue Blanche, where several writers were also there to listen to him, thus Ernest La Jeunesse, Paul Adam, Félix Féneon, the two Natansons and many others, whose names I cannot remember right now. Oh yes!—one of them, to be sure, was that strange man, Alfred Jarry.

Lautrec told us that Degas jealously guards his best pieces, you might say that he alone takes his delight in them. He would not part with them for the world, certainly not to exhibit them. How happy that lucky man will be who now, after his death, will inherit them.

They say that in the late eighties he nearly lost the sight of his eyes. At that time he did not paint but modelled, but what is most intriguing, he fervently turned to photography, but to photography as an art. He posed real Degas pictures but in a painterly version. I have often heard it said that these photographs are marvellous, and since they mirror Degas' mind and soul, they are highly regarded as art. I can understand this love of beautiful, call them spoilt plates, because long before him I had made them myself, or had them made.

We, who were young at the time and decadent (in the best sense of the term) could see the works of this great painter only at Durand-Ruel's in the company of Toulouse-Lautrec, whose circle also included Maurice Denis, Valloton, Bonnard, and others, and later in the Caillebotte collection at the Galérie Luxembourg. At first we hesitated to do so, afraid to be clipped on the ears by someone in authority in front of Manet's Olympia, for instance, but, Renoir, Degas and the others were almost all also considered worse than lepers. To stand in front of any of these, staring at the painting for hours, was asking for trouble. We all remember well the shameless and impudent stipulation that these lepers could only exhibit in a small isolated room in the back, and only if Caillebotte was ready to add his stamp collection which was considered priceless. Preposterous, and my blood still boils when I recall that it was only after giving way to such an infamous demand that these artists—who are today loved by every man of good taste and sound judgement—could be heard or were allowed to breathe. Among them was Degas, the condemned.

I would not say that he was well-disposed towards young, ambitious searching artists of our kind. In fact, he showed little interest and would visit our exhibitions only in secret. And he was not alone in this. Cézanne, too, and Renoir did much the same. They knew scarcely anything about us, albeit we organized group shows at the most distinguished places, including Durand-Ruel's. If we had not helped ourselves, they would never have helped us. We had to stand firm by our convictions if we wanted to reach our goal which, thank the Lord, everyone of us in that small group was able to do. Later all of us, including the sculptor Maillol, made it to dry land. But except for Lautrec, who was more sociable than we were, we could never get near them, especially not into their studios.

I exhibited the paint- ing My Grand- mother in Paris about fifteen years ago. It caught the attention of a company of artists who had much sympathy for each other's work. Several of them are outstanding artists today, whom everyone talks about. About eight months ago Bernheim showed those of their works which Thadée Natanson now owns. Mirbeau provided a preface for the catalogue. Vuillard, Bonnard and Valloton are well represented. I often saw them after I moved from Paris to nearby Neuilly. They came to visit me on Sundays. Denis, Serusier, Ranson and for a time Cottet were also of the company, and Toulouse-Lautrec, too, until his death. The pioneers, and in part the most important predecessors of these artists were Cézanne, Gauguin, Renoir, Pissarro, Degas, Seurat and Signac among the painters, and Rodin among the sculptors, and of course Maillol, of whom I have previously spoken. I am sure I do not have to explain to anyone familiar with modern art who these artists are. 1

i find it so interesting, the similarities in the work of many of these men. the "nabi look." of course each artist also had many looks. to see much more of rippl-ronai, check out this site.

ranson's world

Paul Ranson (1861-1909)
Lustral
Tempera on canvas
H. 35.5; W. 24.3 cm
© photo RMN, Gérard Blot

Lustral

Paul Ranson, one of the Nabis, developed an original style with Symbolist and esoteric resonances. In 1891, he made two versions of Lustral, including this one, which belonged to his friend Maurice Denis.

Apart from its enigmatic title, the work can be classed as a genre scene. It can be seen as a female nude at her toilette. A sponge and bar of soap are laid on a mat at her feet alongside an ornate pottery pitcher. Ranson has multiplied details that give the scene a more symbolic meaning; the fabric which unfurls above the bather like a snake, the swan-necked fountain with its shell-shaped basin or the flower blooming on the wall invite a more erotic reading. The ablutions of the young women are a purification rite, as the title suggests. Apart from its esoteric connotations, the term "lustral" refers to medieval mysticism: lustral water is supposed to purify souls and drive out demons. It is still used for baptisms.

Ranson invites us to attend this intimate purification, almost by breaking and entering. The colour range is reduced to a palette of greens and blues conjuring up the night. The young woman's orange-brown body emerges sharply against this dark background. Keenly interested in decorative art, Ranson has surrounded his figure with arabesques and floral motifs. The deliberate flattening of form and the simplified treatment of the colour explain the nickname Ranson was given: "The Nabi who is more Japanese than the Japanese Nabi," an allusion to Bonnard. 1

(there is a very weird blogger thing wherein if you post an image either centered or 'not placed' it will not allow type to flow normally around it. i had had two images posted like that in the 'ducks post,' so i ended up changing them both. what i didn't know, until harlequinpan's question on that post, was that in doing so i would be making changes i didn't expect. knowing he wouldn't have asked unless he didn't have access to the information on the post, i checked it out. sure enough, all the images but the ones i had re-posted were no longer live. ie. you couldn't click them to see them larger, nor find out any information attached to them. fixed.)

white ducks

Darkening waves –
cry of wild ducks,
faintly white.

Ocean waves are dark,
only calls of ducks
faintly lighten in the sky.

Dusk falls upon the sea as
ducks call
faintly in the whiteness.

The sea darkening . . .
oh voices of the
wild ducks
Crying, whirling, white.

The sea darkens;
the voices of the wild ducks
are faintly white.

The sea grows dark.
The voices of the wild ducks
turn white.