Today we begin something new.
Each Friday we will provide the link to the blogger who is hosting a weekly celebration of poetry around the blogosphere. There you can find the links to the many other blogs that are posting poems (new and old), discussions of poems, and reviews of poetry books. It’s also a great way to explore the internet.
Enjoy the festivities!
Today’s host is Karen Edmisten. You can visit her here.
(I and the Village by Marc Chagall, 1887-1985,
Russian-French artist)
“Men, even when they do not require one another’s help, desire to live together,” said Aristotle (384-322 B. C.) in Politics, “and are in fact brought together by their common interests in proportion as they severally attain to any measure of well-being. This is certainly the chief end, both of individuals and of states.”
The good life, then, is at one and the same time the chief end or goal, both of each person and of the true civil society.
DO YOU SEE THE TOWN?
Do you see the town, how it rests over there,
whispering, it nestles in the cloak of night?
The moon pours her silvery silken stream
down upon it in magical splendor.
The gentle night wind wafts its breath from there,
so ghostly, a dying, gentle sound:
It cries in dreams, it breathes deeply and heavily,
it whispers, mysterious, alluringly frightened . . .
The dark town, it sleeps in my heart
with brilliance and fire, with painfully colored splendor:
But its reflection floats around you, flatters you,
Hushed to a whisper, gliding, through the night.
~ Hugo von Hofmannsthal (1874-1929), Austrian poet
5 comments:
Beautiful, Maria! The painting is gorgeous, too. Glad to have you join us.
Love Chagall -- saw this painting in an exhibit once and it inspired me to write a children's story :).
This blog is a wonderful resource. I'll definitely come back to visit often.
I couldn't help but gasp aloud when I saw this painting by Marc Chagall - I know of him and have seen most of his works but this is the first time I saw this one - and so fittingly matched by Hofmannsthal's poetry. Absolutely beautiful. Thank you for sharing!
I'm so glad you'll be joining us for Poetry Friday and I look forward to following your poetry/art choices not just on Fridays! (Your poem for today -- Saturday 8/12 -- speaks to me in a way that makes me think I need to print it out or copy it out and keep it where I can read it often and remind myself I should be "standing still and learning to be astonished")
So dellighted to discover your blog! Thank you for sharing Friday's evocative poem and art. I second Mary Lee's signaling out that line from the Mary Oliver poem posted today (Sat.).
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