Today I wanted to glow and make my life photogenic. So I bounced to the bar at my neighborhood park for an aperitif.
Since I was alone, I took a book. You know, an old woman drinking Campari late in the morning could give the wrong impression. But if you are reading something other than a smart phone, it gives your presence a totally different vibe.
The book I took was Irine Brin’s Olga a Belgrado. Irene Brin (1914-1969) was a writer, art dealer, and creator of Made in Italy (read more about her HERE). Strangely enough, few Italians seem to know who she is.
Irene was born into a progressive Ligurian family that believed in education. She was thus very well read and spoke four languages. Unfortunately, the National Fascists Party governed the Kingdom of Italy from 1922-1943 so it was the dominating political party when Irene was growing up.
In her early 20s while dancing at the Hotel Excelsior in Rome, she met a young officer, Gasparo del Corso, who shared her interest in Proust, art, and travelling. The couple married in 1937 and, in 1941, Irene joined her husband in Yugoslavia where he was involved as an officer on the Balkan front. Initially the couple was to stay there only six months. But as the war continued, so did their permanency. Irene now could see first-hand the brutal consequences of war and occupation. Instead of focusing on articles for the publication she worked for as planned, Irene was too overwhelmed by the abandoned villages, the arid fields, and so many people degraded by poverty to remain detached. She responded by writing about what she saw first-hand in this world torn up by conflict.
With her elegant, orderly, and direct style, Irene told the stories of people whose lives had been brutally disrupted, with the help of fascists, by the ego and arrogance of the Nazi regime. The result was a collection of vignettes, Olga a Belgrado, published in 1943. The book did not have much success because, as Irene tells us, “it was seized almost everywhere because the title and content seemed too favorable to the Yugoslav partisans”.
Totalitarian governments ban and seize books to restrict collective critical thinking. Because ignorance gives them power. And for this reason, when someone tries to restrict your thoughts, dump them. Because they just want to use you.
The 1950s was a period of cultural evolution and modification. The Second World War had modified many beliefs related to the meaning of life. And for many, life became exceeding existential.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti (1919-2021), poet, publisher, and activist, was born in New York. His dad was an Italian and “wops” were not well liked in NYC at the time. The stress from being an immigrant caused his dad to have a heart attack just a short time before Lawrence was born. His mom, of Portuguese Jewish descent, was totally overwhelmed by the difficult situation she was in. She was susequently committed to a mental institution. The young Lawrence was shipped off to live with an aunt before being put into a foster home.
Your childhood follows you wherever you go and that of Lawrence was no different.
Struggling to find his place in the world, Ferlinghetti studied journalism at the University of North Carolina. He got his MA from Colombia having written his thesis on John Ruskin and J. W. Turner. Although he was intimate with words, he liked visuals, too.
In 1951, Ferlinghetti moved to San Francisco where he founded City Lights, an independent bookstore-publisher. Ferlinghetti now focused much of his energy on Beat Poets (although he is often categorized as a Beat poet, Ferlinghetti claimed with emphasis that he was not). In 1956, City Lights published Alan Ginsberg’s “Howl” provoking Ferlinghetti’s arrest for publishing obscene literature. Luckily, he was acquitted.
“Saturn devouring his son” byFrancisco Goya
Ekphrastic poetry was part of Ferlinghetti’s literary repertoire. One of his better known examples is “In Goya’s Greatest Scenes We Seem to See . . .” In this poem, Ferlinghetti writes of the “suffering humanity” in Goya’s paintings and describes gory scenes with groaning babies, butchered cadavers, and hollering monsters. Terrible stuff, says Ferlinghetti. But you can easily compare the suffering you see in Goya’s paintings with the suffering of Americans on their interstate highways. The landscape may be different but the theme is the same—people still seem to be victims of a “senseless, predatory power.”
Cover of MERAKI; Meraki Opus Press 2019
Writer, artist, and designer Jayne Harnett-Hargrove publishes the quarterly “Meraki”, a seriously playful magazine exploding with visual poetry. Jayne and I have been Blog Buddies for some time so when I learned that she’d attended a performance of Ferlinghetti’s poetry reading, I asked if she would be willing to write her own ekphrastic response to Ferlinghetti’s reading:
“Onto Ekphrastic” by Jayne Harnett-Hargrove
Afterward, + for a long time, i wanted to publish something, ANYTHING, a chapbook,
broadside, or perhaps an omnibus while he was still top editor + curator at that SF City Lights
publishing house. Since he has past, not so much …
i don’t remember clearly, clearly my mind is a bit rough. But when Ferlinghetti took the stage, or
really, as he wedged himself in front of the stuffed-in crowd at the City Light Bookstore that
afternoon, i became spell-cast.
He introduced his book Seeing Pictures, a slim volume of ekphrastic poetry. Having introduced
the bait, we were all eager to bite. He was eloquent + humble in the reading. Amusing + candid.
A slight asemic art feel overtook me. The feeling of words blurring w/ optic meaning, + pictures
overlying words in time lapse – the way the i love lucy cursive was magically handwritten on the
tv show intro. i had always been a visual artist. i had never placed writing into a categoric queue.
Everyone i knew wrote; some much better than others. This turning a visual into words grew
provocative + engaging. If a picture is worth a thousand words what’s a word worth? Why nail
down an emotional feeling? Don’t words belie an essence? Isn’t visual a more universal +
immediate art? Can not the appointed picture convey what we feel to be true? i had a question
that needed answering. + the question kept changing.
i have always drawn quickly w/ a bit of an expressionism + i feel my best work is done fast,
never closing the lines. On the other hand i spend so-too much time organizing thoughts. i can
get them down quickly, but organizing words in such a way as to be understood becomes an
Atlasian struggle. There are rules, there exists a playbook, there are limits – perhaps the canon of
writing helps w/ the universality of understanding the intended.
Talking to me is much like playing charades, i know the word somewhere deep inside though i
don’t know the way to pull it out, nor do i often have the patience to do so. Too much hunting +
pecking for the right word, too much designing + crafting. Then the flash of relearning, every
time, somewhere in-process i can write as though i was painting. Make a sketch. Fill it in by
corralling words a section at a time, color it, push it toward an understandable meaning. Massage
it till it sings. As in visual art, by covering my mistakes w/ the next step the process becomes not
so difficult. Editing + spit polishing is deliberate. Actually i think that’s where the arts + letters
craft merge. No matter what process you use to write – in the end it becomes deliberate.
The quarterly experiment that is Meraki Issues came about in wanting to satisfy an urge to mix
the visual + the word. There is so very much work that does not have an out. The zine format
accommodates, keeps me on the rails + keeps me honest. Our minds crave stories + so can put
even the abstract sequential into meaning. Each issue is an attempt to create a themed work,
where i exhaust the possibilities in a n abbreviated way. i realize the outcome is tragically
truncated. But w/ this practice i raise other ideas that will be blown up + out in future work. Art
records the moment. + every moment has its own logic.
A friend has said, paintings are never finished they only stop in interesting places.
i can say the same for ekphrastic prose. Eloquently speaking in a thousand tongues. The intent is
Beauty is my favorite medicine. And, as I’ve been feeling grated and all zested out, my daughter and I went to see the current exhibition at Rome’s Scuderie del Quirinale. The exhibition, “Napoli Ottocento”, focuses on 19th century Naples and its artistic activity.
From the 17th to the early 19th century, young upper-class men were expected to make the Grand Tour of Europe to complete their education. And while touring, they were expected to collect books and cultural artifacts to be displayed back home. Italy was obviously the prime destination for Grand Tourers because of its abundance of artistic treasures. Travelers would often continue travelling south towards Naples where they could see the archaeological sites of Herculaneum and Pompeii and, if daring enough, they could try climbing Mount Vesuvius.
in front of the Vesuvius
The eruption of the Vesuvius in 79 A.D. caused the thriving city of Pompeii to be totally obliterated by ash and volcanic debris. The subsequent excavation of Pompeii in the mid-1700s helped marked the beginnings of modern archeology. And, as the Vesuvius was such an attraction, it became a favorite theme for artists.
Here’s a painting by the Austrian artist Josef Rebell (1787-1828) showing the Port of Granatello with a puffing Vesuvius in the background.
“Thérèse De Gas”, Edgar Degas, Musee d’Orsay, Parigi,
From 1856 to 1859, the young Edgar Degas went to Italy to copy the old masters. His father was from Naples and Degas would often go visit his father’s family and often stay for some months. Degas became very good friends with many local artists. Degas even learned the Neapolitan dialect and Neapolitan songs. His friend, the poet Paul Valery, said that “Degas mimicked Naples where there is no word without a gesture, no person with without a multitude of other characters, always there and always ready.”
Degas was in Naples when the Neapolitan painter, Domenico Morelli (1823-1901), was active. Morelli was both painter and politician. Morelli, as with many painters, often used his canvases as a playground where he could imagine himself elsewhere such as in the Orient and began painted people and places he’d never seen. And he made enough religious paintings to earn him a merit badge in Heaven.
Some of the other artists in the exhibition include: Antonio Mancini (1852-1930) + Giuseppe De Nittis (1846-1884) + Ercole and Giacinto Gigante + Anton van Pitloo (1790-1837) + Teodoro Duclere (1816-1869) + Salvatore Fergola (1796-1874) + Hans von Marées (1837-1887) who died in Rome and was buried in the Protestant Cemetery + Thomas Jones (1742-1803) a Welsh painter living in Naples + Franz Ludwig Catel (1778-1856) was a German artist who spent time in Naples but actual lived in Rome. He was buried in the Basilica of Santa Maria del Popolo.
The Scuderie del Quirinale where the exhibition is held is a work of art in itself. And the windowed stairway leading away from the exhibition provides an opportunity to see Rome in a way impossible to see from the street.
Naturally Rome is full of church domes scattered acreoss the city.
Love is for the colorblind and childhood is our lifelong shadow. Sometimes it’s a friend, sometimes it’s a foe. One hot summer afternoon, in The Secret Life of Bees, two girls are in the yard playing with the water’s sprinkler.
The girls have a difficult rapport. It’s a tug of war. But the fighting turns into play. The barriers are broken and the two overcome their difficulties.
So, instead of using guns and wars, why not go out into the garden and fight it out with a hose?
The Narrative Within 