Wednesday 4 March 2009

is love a flame

Te mistuie iubirea? Credeai că-i o păpuşă, Să-ţi faci un joc cu toane, ca în copilărie. Când ea-ţi cerea o fire de salamandră vie, În tainica-i văpaie să arzi făr' de cenuşă. Ea nu stă-n trup, stăpână a cărnii şi-a plăcerii, Înflăcăratu-i spirit, urgie, le consumă; Îşi cată-n noi duh geamăn... şi, de-l îmbii cu humă, Rămâi o biată urnă cu zgurile durerii... Te ispiteşte jindul să-mbraci şi fericirea Cum pui, pentru petreceri, o rochie de brocarte? Dar trebuie-nfruntată cu spaimă, ca o moarte... Căci ea, ca să pătrundă, îţi sparge-alcătuirea, Preface în genune lăuntrul tău, anume Ca să încapă-acolo, cu ea, întreaga lume.
CLXXIII  de Vasile Voiculescu (Ultimele sonete închipuite ale lui Shakespeare în traducere imaginara de Vasile Voiculescu)
Is love a flame? You thought it was a doll,
To play with, like a child, with fickle glee,
A salamander she wants you to be,
Devour’d by the same flame in which you fall.
She is the cruel mistress of the flesh,
And pleasure, as her spirit both consumes;
Twin soul she seeks in our heart's frail bloom...
Don’t tempt her, or you’ll end up in her mesh,
A slag-filled urn of pain. Does your lust claim
To dress your joy as though a party dress?
You dread her like she’s death and nothing less…
For, to succeed, she breaks your human frame,
         It turns you into an abyss, so there
         She and th’entire world will worm a lair.
CLXXIII
by Vasile Voiculescu 
(from Shakespeare's Last Imagined Sonnets, in the fictional translation of Vasile Voiculescu)
trans. Cristina Hanganu-Bresch
Kubla  wrote this poem after seeing my pictures, I am both honoured and grateful:
your hair blown across your face
I see the white of your eyes from a distance I see the hair blown across your face and how you blow this sunset to pieces how your hair shades your face and what I would give to live in that shade under the shade of your hair blown across your face
witness this blown sunset witness too the falling shadows after the shade after the visible white of your 
eyes have shaded everything that lives inside me and now the peripheral night is gathering its 
gloomy shade but what can it know of a face that is shaded by 
hair what does it know of shade and hair and your 
face and the visible invisible white of your eyes
your lips too are covered with the blown strands of your hair that has blown this sunset to pieces 
and has shaded every shade into nothingness and 
how silent everything seems now and how loud this silence 
is

19 comments:

  1. However though.. love is the only source of energy.. like a sun for all the living or non-living things in solar ecology..

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  2. Roxana, hi.

    you show how worthless words are! these pictures are nothing less than a miracle of invention, for in pic 2 when you scroll down, you blow words to pieces. that pic. i really find close to myself, of how i feel sometimes. women and hair, shade and melancholy, a teasing withheld promise, the surmise of conjecture, the hope of fruition, the promise of at last saying what has been left unsaid, this is what these pictures mean to me.

    the poem is brilliant too.

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  3. hi again....

    after seeing pic no 2, i have taken the liberty of writing a few impromptu lines on my blog. please don't mind. the "you" in these lines is someone i don't know and not the face in the pic. certainly!

    btw, your word verification sounds like retaliate! ( retellyt)

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  4. Peter :-)
    and thus the scientist reveals his true romantic nature :-P

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  5. Kubla, your words are certainly not worthless, you describe everything so beautifully... I always think of you when I show pictures of 'my women'...
    and I have been so touched by your poem that I took the liberty of posting it, hoping that you wouldn't have anything against. I think it fits perfectly the mood in my pictures and I like to read your lines in-between.
    thank you, once again.

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  6. ...
    and I am afraid
    of the language in my head
    I am alone, alone with language
    and without meaning
    coming back to something written years ago:
    our words misunderstand us
    ...

    from Adrienne Rich, Tear Gas
    --------
    i can't explain why , but the words above came to mind as the gaze in the last photo seemed to go right through me...

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  7. Great photos! Those eyes are like those of the 'houri'. For some strange reason the first poem sounds awfully familiar.

    salaams,

    b.

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  8. "her mesh"? is she a fisherwoman?

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  9. I agree with Kubla Khan, even if I wouldn't go quite as far as "worthless". Your poems are fun, butthe pictures are supreme.

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  10. Manuela, thank you for these lines, they echo what I often feel myself. You are familiar with many poets that I have only discovered now, thanks to my blogging friends. And I (think) I can follow your intuition, as to why you associated this poem with the picture.

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  11. billoo, what a surprise and what a joy! I had thought you had finally got bored with my pictures and stopped reading my blog, it's been ages since you haven't been here...

    but of course she has a fisher net, how can you imagine love without that? or are you only familiar with Cupidon and his arrow? :-)

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  12. oh, Dave, thank you for liking my pictures that much.

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  13. Great, very very beautiful, my favorit it's maybe the first ! Your blog is amazing, i put a link from my blog to here, thank's and see you soon !

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  14. hi, Tibo, and welcome! :-) I am happy that you like what I do and thank you for linking to me. I will come to see your work, too.

    (tu peux ecrire en francais, si tu veux :-)

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  15. impressive
    intriguing
    striking
    sensible
    clever

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  16. Cornel, I was looking at your work when I got your comment :-) such synchronicity :-)

    thank you for coming and I will write more soon.

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  17. Un regard si divine , tristesse du geste, qui laisse une certain vertige de la liberté, cette situation comme une enfantine provoqué.

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  18. Me? Bored? Zzzz...sorry, what were you saying?

    But yes, you're right, it's been ages since I haven't been here.

    Oh, I dunno, there are many types of nets by which to catch or trap a fish-or so I'm told. How can you imagine love without that!?

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