Poem of the Day -- "Ode to Salvador Dali" by Federico Garcia Lorca

We've featured several of Lorca's greatest poems on eNothing before - including "The Guitar" and "Ode to Walt Whitman" -- and so I thought it would be fitting to include another of his greatest poems, his personal tribute to his great friend, Salvador Dali.

The friendship between Lorca and the great Dali is a legendary tale and well documented both in works as well as stories and photographs.  The met in Madrid, Spain in the early 1920's when Lorca arrived to attend art school - to learn to draw and paint. See the sketch that Lorca drew of Dali (beginnings of Surrealism, here)

They became inseparable, strong friends and along with Luis Buñuel, the filmmaker, and other friends, they spent their time together talking, drinking, smoking, reading, and playing countless practical jokes and games.

Lorca and Dali influenced each others works greatly and Dali even designed the set for one of Lorca's early plays.  In several of Dali's paintings, Lorca's image can be seen floating about amidst severed bodies and ants and clouds.

They both embraced the influential French surrealism movement and became the movements more famous protagonists...in the end, Dali more so after he took up residence in Paris to grow with the surrealist movement.

Here is Lorca's Ode to his friend (which his friend took exception to as too critical when it was published) - a poem which is of global importance for it's subject matter and it's place in the history of art during the early 20th century.  

Enjoy! 

Ode to Salvador Dali

By Federico Garcia Lorca

A rose in the high garden you desire.
A wheel in the pure syntax of steel.
The mountain stripped bare of Impressionist fog,
The grays watching over the last balustrades.

The modern painters in their white ateliers
clip the square root's sterilized flower.
In the waters of the Seine a marble iceberg
chills the windows and scatters the ivy.

Man treads firmly on the cobbled streets.
Crystals hide from the magic of reflections.
The Government has closed the perfume stores.
The machine perpetuates its binary beat.

An absence of forests and screens and brows
roams across the roofs of the old houses.
The air polishes its prism on the sea
and the horizon rises like a great aqueduct.

Soldiers who know no wine and no penumbra
behead the sirens on the seas of lead.
Night, black statue of prudence, holds
the moon's round mirror in her hand.

A desire for forms and limits overwhelms us.
Here comes the man who sees with a yellow ruler.
Venus is a white still life
and the butterfly collectors run away.


*

Cadaqués, at the fulcrum of water and hill,
lifts flights of stairs and hides seashells.
Wooden flutes pacify the air.
An ancient woodland god gives the children fruit.

Her fishermen sleep dreamless on the sand.
On the high sea a rose is their compass.
The horizon, virgin of wounded handkerchiefs,
links the great crystals of fish and moon.

A hard diadem of white brigantines
encircles bitter foreheads and hair of sand.
The sirens convince, but they don't beguile,
and they come if we show a glass of fresh water.


*

Oh Salvador Dali, of the olive-colored voice!
I do not praise your halting adolescent brush
or your pigments that flirt with the pigment of your times,
but I laud your longing for eternity with limits.

Sanitary soul, you live upon new marble.
You run from the dark jungle of improbable forms.
Your fancy reaches only as far as your hands,
and you enjoy the sonnet of the sea in your window.

The world is dull penumbra and disorder
in the foreground where man is found.
But now the stars, concealing landscapes,
reveal the perfect schema of their courses.

The current of time pools and gains order
in the numbered forms of century after century.
And conquered Death takes refuge trembling
in the tight circle of the present instant.

When you take up your palette, a bullet hole in its wing,
you call on the light that brings the olive tree to life.
The broad light of Minerva, builder of scaffolds,
where there is no room for dream or its hazy flower.

You call on the old light that stays on the brow,
not descending to the mouth or the heart of man.
A light feared by the loving vines of Bacchus
and the chaotic force of curving water.

You do well when you post warning flags
along the dark limit that shines in the night.
As a painter, you refuse to have your forms softened
by the shifting cotton of an unexpected cloud.

The fish in the fishbowl and the bird in the cage.
You refuse to invent them in the sea or the air.
You stylize or copy once you have seen
their small, agile bodies with your honest eyes.

You love a matter definite and exact,
where the toadstool cannot pitch its camp.
You love the architecture that builds on the absent
and admit the flag simply as a joke.

The steel compass tells its short, elastic verse.
Unknown clouds rise to deny the sphere exists.
The straight line tells of its upward struggle
and the learned crystals sing their geometries.


*

But also the rose of the garden where you live.
Always the rose, always, our north and south!
Calm and ingathered like an eyeless statue,
not knowing the buried struggle it provokes.

Pure rose, clean of artifice and rough sketches,
opening for us the slender wings of the smile.
(Pinned butterfly that ponders its flight.)
Rose of balance, with no self-inflicted pains.
Always the rose!


*

Oh Salvador Dali, of the olive-colored voice!
I speak of what your person and your paintings tell me.
I do not praise your halting adolescent brush,
but I sing the steady aim of your arrows.

I sing your fair struggle of Catalan lights,
your love of what might be made clear.
I sing your astronomical and tender heart,
a never-wounded deck of French cards.

I sing your restless longing for the statue,
your fear of the feelings that await you in the street.
I sing the small sea siren who sings to you,
riding her bicycle of corals and conches.

But above all I sing a common thought
that joins us in the dark and golden hours.
The light that blinds our eyes is not art.
Rather it is love, friendship, crossed swords.

Not the picture you patiently trace,
but the breast of Theresa, she of sleepless skin,
the tight-wound curls of Mathilde the ungrateful,
our friendship, painted bright as a game board.

May fingerprints of blood on gold
streak the heart of eternal Catalunya.
May stars like falconless fists shine on you,
while your painting and your life break into flower.

Don't watch the water clock with its membraned wings
or the hard scythe of the allegory.
Always in the air, dress and undress your brush
before the sea peopled with sailors and ships.

POEM OF THE DAY -- "A Poem" by Pablo Picasso

As you all know, I am a big fan of surrealistic poetry.

Really makes me think.

It can be said that the surrealistic movement is most famous among the masses for the popular appeal of the art of the time - Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali, etc. But the art-form which has influenced me the most stems from words themselves, hence you will find plenty of work here from Andre Breton, Paul Eluard, etc.

Yet Bretons "Manifesto of Surrealism" is a written document, a decree, which paints its own picture.

Here for your enjoyment is an interesting twist - a surrealist poem by the master surrelasit painter himself, Pablo Picasso (well I we should not ignore Dali - he wrote some mean poetry too).

Picasso, like so many others of the period, really believed in the surrealist movement. So whether it be a sketch, drawing, photo or painting, whatever Picasso produced during this period was an extension of his beliefs -- and his poetry, like his paintings, profoundly expressed this influence.


A POEM

By Pablo Picasso

in secret
be quiet say nothing
except the street be full of stars
and the prisoners eat doves
and the doves eat cheese
and the cheese eats words
and the words eat bridges
and the bridges eat looks
and the looks eat cups full of kisses in the orchata
that hides all with its wings
the butterfly the night
in a cafe last summer
in Barcelona

-

"POEM" - an excerpt from the "Manifesto of Surrealism" by Andre Breton

This excerpt I'm sharing with you was taken from a section of Andre Breton's first Manifesto of Surrealism, and is a particular favorite in that it has inspired yours truly to drop all creative pretenses, etiquettes and rules in favor of random creativity from a seemingly controlled source (edited newspaper copy/headlines), and in effect "unediting" them into a new reality or a surreality -- which is how I choose to define surrealism (can't be defined so there).

What lurks between the lines is a sense of meaning, a message - a freedom. Enjoy:

"Everything is valid when it comes to obtaining the desired suddenness from certain associations. The pieces of paper that Picasso and Braque insert into their work have the same value as the introduction of a platitude into a literary analysis of the most rigorous sort. It is even permissible to entitle POEM what we get from the most random assemblage possible (observe, if you will, the syntax) of headlines and scraps of headlines cut out of the newspapers:

POEM

A burst of laughter

of sapphire in the island of Ceylon

The most beautiful straws

HAVE A FADED COLOR

UNDER THE LOCKS

on an isolated farm

FROM DAY TO DAY

the pleasant

grows worse

coffee

preaches for its saint

THE DAILY ARTISAN OF YOUR BEAUTY

M^ADAM,

a pair

of silk stockings

is not

A leap into space

A STAG

Love above all

Everything could be worked out so well

PARIS IS A BIG VILLAGE

Watch out for

the fire that covers

THE PRAYER

of fair weather

Know that

The ultraviolet rays

have finished their task

short and sweet

THE FIRST WHITE PAPER

OF CHANCE

Red will be

The wandering singer

WHERE IS HE?

in memory

in his house

AT THE SUITORS’ BALL

I do

as I dance

What people did, what they’re going to do"

POEM OF THE DAY "Less Time" by Andre Breton

Well, here you are.  Hangin out recently with eNothing, you've been on an enjoyable little cruise, this poetic journey through Whitman, Stevens, Poe, etc. and so on .  You've been with eNothing for a long time and you've usually enjoyed some good material, perhaps even a different perspective on some of the most traditional material.

You've been safe.  You've shared this material with others (thank you).

If you've been with eNothing all along, welcome back.  This is where we're from.  It's not safe here.  This is impressionism, surrealism.

This is where my mind resides.  As some of my friends have told me - "your mind is a dangerous place for me to be".  Well okay.  As you'll see in our next few posts, it may be "dangerous".  But it's a lot of fun...

And so here, from the founder of "surrealism" -- is "Less Time" by Andre Breton.  His poetry, as that from the likes of Paul Eluard and others, is to poetry what someone like Dali is to painting.

Follow eNothing for more surrealism (art and poetry) over the coming days.

Less Time  

by Andre Breton

Less time than it takes to say it, less tears than it takes to die; I've taken account of everything,
there you have it. I've made a census of the stones, they are as numerous as my fingers and some
others; I've distributed some pamphlets to the plants, but not all were willing to accept them. I've
kept company with music for a second only and now I no longer know what to think of suicide, for
if I ever want to part from myself, the exit is on this side and, I add mischievously, the entrance, the
re-entrance is on the other. You see what you still have to do. Hours, grief, I don't keep a
reasonable account of them; I'm alone, I look out of the window; there is no passerby, or rather no
one passes (underline passes). You don't know this man? It's Mr. Same. May I introduce Madam
Madam? And their children. Then I turn back on my steps, my steps turn back too, but I don't
know exactly what they turn back on. I consult a schedule; the names of the towns have been
replaced by the names of people who have been quite close to me. Shall I go to A, return to B,
change at X? Yes, of course I'll change at X. Provided I don't miss the connection with boredom!
There we are: boredom, beautiful parallels, ah! how beautiful the parallels are under God's
perpendicular. 

-

POEM OF THE DAY -- "Liberty" by Surrealist Paul Eluard

Here we are, day 4 in what has become "Surrealism Week" at eNothing - and really, what a beautiful journey into the Poetry, Art and Politics of the fantastic Surrealist period.  Paul Eluard, friend of Picasso, political outcast and disciple of Breton...with one of his most famous poems -- "Liberte" which was written while in hiding during the Nazi occupation of France.

By the way, the illustration of Eluard, right, is actually a portait of him by Salvadore Dali - his friend and the guy who stole his first wife from him.

And the book (see link below) featured is Capital of Pain - considered his first great work.

Liberty

By Paul Eluard


On my notebooks from school
On my desk and the trees
On the sand on the snow
I write your name

On every page read
On all the white sheets
Stone blood paper or ash
I write your name

On the golden images
On the soldier’s weapons
On the crowns of kings
I write your name

On the jungle the desert
The nests and the bushes
On the echo of childhood
I write your name

On the wonder of nights
On the white bread of days
On the seasons engaged
I write your name

On all my blue rags
On the pond mildewed sun
On the lake living moon
I write your name

On the fields the horizon
The wings of the birds
On the windmill of shadows
I write your name

On the foam of the clouds
On the sweat of the storm
On dark insipid rain
I write your name

On the glittering forms
On the bells of colour
On physical truth
I write your name

On the wakened paths
On the opened ways
On the scattered places
I write your name

On the lamp that gives light
On the lamp that is drowned
On my house reunited
I write your name

On the bisected fruit
Of my mirror and room
On my bed’s empty shell
I write your name

On my dog greedy tender
On his listening ears
On his awkward paws
I write your name

On the sill of my door
On familiar things
On the fire’s sacred stream
I write your name

On all flesh that’s in tune
On the brows of my friends
On each hand that extends
I write your name

On the glass of surprises
On lips that attend
High over the silence
I write your name

On my ravaged refuges
On my fallen lighthouses
On the walls of my boredom
I write your name

On passionless absence
On naked solitude
On the marches of death
I write your name

On health that’s regained
On danger that’s past
On hope without memories
I write your name

By the power of the word
I regain my life
I was born to know you
And to name you

LIBERTY