vulgarly sentimental

[filisida]

Любимое стихотворение- подарено когда-то студенткой, которая этим самым Каммингсом занимается. Current mood: in love

e. e. cummings
somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skillfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands

Comments

[roger-kuin.livejournal.com]

I have had this poem on the door of my office for over a year. Some of my friends think it vulgarly sentimental. It makes me catch my breath and come out in gooseflesh all over. It's one of the not all that many fine 20thC love poems. Try Robert Graves' "Symptoms of Love".

vulgarly sentimental

[filisida.livejournal.com]

Thanks, Ruggiero.

I have started to write a comment to your own entry about Christmas but it was somehow eaten up by the system. I was going to tell you: reading you gives me a feeling of pure joy and hope that in twenty-thirty-forty years' time I can live as gracefully as you do.

As for "vulgarly sentimental"- I very often catch myself liking these "vulgarly sentimental" things. Like Alfons Mucha? Or Pre-Rafaelites? Or even photographs of that Victorian woman (what's-her-name) who would take pictures of people beautifully dressed up as persons from the Bible or Ancient Greece? Perhaps my taste is not too refined (or not refined at all!), but I would always prefer an effort to capture the momentous beauty of everyday life to those highly intelligent (but very often sterile) works of True Contemporary Art/True (post)Postmodern Thought or whatever.

Re: vulgarly sentimental

[roger-kuin.livejournal.com]

Her name was Julia Margaret Cameron. And it seems that a taste for the vulgarly sentimental is something we have in common -- do you know Maxfield Parrish? Yum......

Re: vulgarly sentimental

[filisida.livejournal.com]

Not that it surprises me- it isn't the ONLY taste that we have in common :-)

Yes, Cameron, thanks for reminding me (but I am ashamed- I am, after all, a photography critic now, but was too lazy to check her name anywhere). And Maxfield Parrish is wonderful. What other vulgar interests do we have in common? Do you like Pierre and Giles? And I just *love* those old erotic photographs of 1910s-20s. There is I think a group dedicated solely to discussing and looking at them- may be my student and friend Kunstkamera will help, because I think I have once gone there from her Live Journal (hey, Kunstkamera! has the baby arrived safely after his/her journey? reminds one of Dickens and his Bella in "Our mutual friend"). Ah yes, I think it is called vintage_sex. Or is it vintagephoto?

[roger-kuin.livejournal.com]

Here, by the way, is Parrish -- a lovely man, and a very nice website, I think:

http://parrish.artpassions.net/parrish.html

[roger-kuin.livejournal.com]

And here's Julia Margaret Cameron -- the Eastman link is excellent:

http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/cameron_julia_margaret.html