A Man seated reading at a Table in a Lofty Room
Rembrandt or follower, about 1628 – 30
One of the first conditions of happiness is that the link between Man and Nature shall not be broken
The Vision of Saint Eustace
Pisanello (c. 1395 – c. 1455)
When I Buy Pictures
or what is closer to the truth,
when I look at that of which I may regard myself as the imaginary possessor,
I fix upon what would give me pleasure in my average moments:
the satire upon curiousity in which no more is discernible
than the intensity of the mood;
or quite the opposite—the old thing, the medieval decorated hat-box,
in which there are hounds with waists diminishing like the waist of the hour-glass,
and deer and birds and seated people;
it may be no more than a square of parquetry; the literal biography perhaps,
in letters standing well apart upon a parchment-like expanse;
an artichoke in six varieties of blue; the snipe-legged hieroglyphic in three parts;
the silver fence protecting Adam’s grave, or Michael taking Adam by the wrist.
Too stern an intellectual emphasis upon this quality or that detracts from one’s enjoyment.
It must not wish to disarm anything; nor may the approved triumph easily be honored—
that which is great because something else is small.
It comes to this: of whatever sort it is,
it must be “lit with piercing glances into the life of things”;
it must acknowledge the spiritual forces which have made it.
Marianne Moore (1887 – 1972)
Quotation within poem from The Poetry of the Old Testament by Alex R. Gordon (1872 – 1930)
Giotto di Bondone (1266/7 – January 8, 1337)
Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But since no one was listening, everything must be said again.
André Gide
“What’s the use of attempting the enlightenment? What a number of times the destroying angel has triumphed over the different nations of the earth – sucking them up & knocking them down”
Richard Dadd (1 August 1817 – 7 January 1886)
Just as language has no longer anything in common with the thing it names, so the movements of most of the people who live in cities have lost their connexion with the earth; they hang, as it were, in the air, hover in all directions, and find no place where they can settle.
Rainer Maria Rilke (1875 – 1926)
The Goldfinch
