tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5010170380967519230.post4868091158655740096..comments2024-03-23T20:37:37.891-07:00Comments on First Known When Lost: TwilightStephen Pentzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14882220887712092005noreply@blogger.comBlogger10125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5010170380967519230.post-89486028446717173932015-10-10T21:49:55.801-07:002015-10-10T21:49:55.801-07:00Deb: I have the same feelings about Lawrence. As...Deb: I have the same feelings about Lawrence. As a person, I find him off-putting, but, as you say, he wrote some wonderful poems. Your sharing of the passage by Christmas Humphreys is perfect in this context. (I wasn't aware of "Poems I Remember", but I have fond memories of Christmas Humphreys: his books helped introduce me to Buddhism many years ago. So it is a pleasant surprise to have you quote him.) His point is an excellent one, and I completely understand his temptation to print the poems without identifying the poets. <br /><br />But it is sometimes difficult to get past a poet's personality, isn't it? I confess that my fondness for, say, Edward Thomas and Thomas Hardy as people (although I am well aware of their faults) makes it easier for me to return more often to their poetry. Whereas with, say, Yeats and Lawrence, there is something of a hesitation. But their personalities don't keep me away entirely. It is an interesting conundrum. We tend to want to know something about a poet's background, but we might not like what we find.<br /><br />Thank you very much for visiting again and for sharing your thoughts. And thank you as well for your kind words about the post.Stephen Pentzhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14882220887712092005noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5010170380967519230.post-87153623667512416902015-10-10T21:19:51.524-07:002015-10-10T21:19:51.524-07:00Mr. Floyd: Thank you very much for sharing the po...Mr. Floyd: Thank you very much for sharing the poem by Joyce, which is new to me. It is a lovely poem. And it certainly has an 1890s feel to it. From doing a bit of Internet research, I discovered that it appears in Chamber Music, which was published in 1907. The source I found states: "with a recommendation from Arthur Symons, it was published in London in May 1907 by Elkin Mathews." The Symons connection is a nice coincidence. I can see why Symons would have liked Joyce's poetry. I can hear both him and Ernest Dowson in this poem.<br /><br />Thank you for the poem, and for your own thoughts on twilight, which fit perfectly here.Stephen Pentzhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14882220887712092005noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5010170380967519230.post-57974491329129591222015-10-10T18:48:37.618-07:002015-10-10T18:48:37.618-07:00I too can have trouble reading work by those I do ...I too can have trouble reading work by those I do not like personally for some reason. And yet, though I find much about D.H.Lawrence's politics and attitudes disagreeable, some of his poems move me in a way that no others have ever been able to. Some of them also make me cringe. <br /><br />In the introduction to "Poems I Remember", Christmas Humphreys asks us to<br /><br />"Love then the poem, and let the poet be. Does it matter that he had three wives at once, or was 'pink' in his politics? Is the poem lovelier for knowing that the writer was usually drunk, and died in penury at twenty-two? Or even that he was profoundly influenced by A and B and had some influence on C? Holding the answer to be No, I have given in this volume no biographies, nor even dates, and indeed was tempted to present the poems without their authors - leaving those trifling matters for an index at the end...."<br /><br />Thank you for yet another beautiful blog post :-)Debnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5010170380967519230.post-75718678004557209642015-10-10T14:07:40.507-07:002015-10-10T14:07:40.507-07:00The twilight turns from amethyst
To deep and deep...The twilight turns from amethyst <br />To deep and deeper blue, <br />The lamp fills with a pale green glow <br />The trees of the avenue. <br /><br />The old piano plays an air, <br />Sedate and slow and gay; <br />She bends upon the yellow keys, <br />Her head inclines this way. <br /><br />Shy thought and grave wide eyes and hands <br />That wander as they list -- - <br />The twilight turns to darker blue <br />With lights of amethyst.<br /> --James Joyce<br /><br />Mention James Joyce and most people who are familiar with him will think of the great modernist novelist--a complex and often cryptic writer, the crafter of high and serious and literary fiction--fiction at its highest and most serious and most literary. <br /><br />Unless one knew, one would not suppose the delicate little poem above, one filled with a soft melancholy, is by Joyce. The meter immediately catches one's ear, the alternating iambic lines of tetrameter and trimeter. The unrhymed first and third lines of each stanza prevent the poem from being singsong. By my count, a cursory one, fifty-five of the sixty-eight words in the poem are one syllable. The alliteration and assonance, though unobtrusive, endow the poem with sweet sounds, like Caliban's island. <br /><br />In truth, Joyce shows his mastery of words and their sounds in this poems as much as he does in his novels. The poem is a masterpiece of tone. And yet the entire poem hangs upon the fact that what happens in the poem happens at twilight.<br /><br />As you note, twilight has magic, a frail legerdemain, one soft and tender, that beguiles the human imagination, prophesizing to it in words that the tongue cannot translate into meaning. This unriddling must be done by the heart.<br /><br />The twilight turns from amethyst <br />To deep and deeper blue, <br />The lamp fills with a pale green glow <br />The trees of the avenue. <br /><br />The old piano plays an air, <br />Sedate and slow and gay; <br />She bends upon the yellow keys, <br />Her head inclines this way. <br /><br />Shy thought and grave wide eyes and hands <br />That wander as they list -- - <br />The twilight turns to darker blue <br />With lights of amethyst.Bruce Floydnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5010170380967519230.post-63941416847272544322015-10-10T09:12:51.232-07:002015-10-10T09:12:51.232-07:00Acornmoon: I'm pleased you enjoyed Palmer'...Acornmoon: I'm pleased you enjoyed Palmer's paintings. He is wonderful in any season or setting, but his twilight and harvest paintings (and engravings as well) are particularly evocative, I think.<br /><br />Thank you for the reference to Gennady Spirin. I was not familiar with his work, but I have now viewed some of it on the Internet. Lovely! I'm not sure if it is the scene you are referring to, but I did find an illustration from "The Children of Lir" which shows four white swans flying over fields being harvested by farmers, with sheaves of grain, a thatched cottage, and a stone church, beside a deep blue sea. Perhaps this is the painting you had in mind? It is beautiful.<br /><br />Thank you very much for visiting again. It is always a pleasure to hear from you.Stephen Pentzhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14882220887712092005noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5010170380967519230.post-15107139718849948392015-10-10T03:01:00.817-07:002015-10-10T03:01:00.817-07:00I am enjoying feasting my eyes once again on the p...I am enjoying feasting my eyes once again on the paintings of Samuel Palmer which you have chosen to accompany the poems. I wonder if you are familiar with the work of Gennady Spirin? There is a beautiful harvest scene in "The Children of Lir" which evokes that end of summer into autumn "quickening rise to brilliance".Acornmoonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14982884920388966786noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5010170380967519230.post-45252433536117324222015-10-09T16:39:21.027-07:002015-10-09T16:39:21.027-07:00Mr. Richter: Thank you very much for visiting aga...Mr. Richter: Thank you very much for visiting again, and for the information you have provided about Arnold Bax, Yeats, and "twilight." As usual, you are a wonderful source of information about the connections between 20th (and 21st) century music and poetry. I do have a recording of Bax's "Tone Poems," but I was not aware of the pieces you mention. I have now tracked them down on the Internet and listened to them: they are all lovely. I particularly like (perhaps no surprise here!) "Pensive Twilight." Thank you for providing this perfect connection to the themes of the post.<br /><br />I share your feelings about Yeats: I am not fond of him as a person, and I think, as I suggested in the post, that his poetry (including his poetry of the Nineties) is often marred by self-dramatization and rhetoric. And I have no time at all for his political poetry. Still, I cannot get around the fact that he wrote dozens of beautiful poems. I suppose that my continuing attachment to his poetry is attributable to the circumstance that I first encountered it in my "impressionable youth" (as the saying goes), and I thus retain a romantic fondness for the poems.<br /><br />As always, it is very nice to hear from you. Thank you again for sharing your thoughts and your knowledge, and for your kind words about the post.Stephen Pentzhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14882220887712092005noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5010170380967519230.post-24710117820743033572015-10-09T16:15:40.291-07:002015-10-09T16:15:40.291-07:00Fred: You and I are in agreement. The idea of &q...Fred: You and I are in agreement. The idea of "avant garde" art (including literature) amuses me: what conceit to imagine that one's version of art supersedes, or improves upon, all that has come before. As if human nature changes, much less "improves." This, as you know, is what is wonderful about poetry: the Chinese T'ang poets, the Japanese classical haiku poets, and the poets of the Nineties (to cite just three examples) are often saying the same thing: as you say, "differently," but "progression" does not enter into it.<br /><br />Thank you very much for stopping by again. It is always a pleasure to hear from you.Stephen Pentzhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14882220887712092005noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5010170380967519230.post-6914246169145126222015-10-09T12:46:21.118-07:002015-10-09T12:46:21.118-07:00Inspired by the poetry of Yeats the English compos...Inspired by the poetry of Yeats the English composer Arnold Bax became obsessed with Ireland in his youth. One may also say he became obsessed with twilight. Titles like "Pensive Twilight", "The Grey Dancer in the Twilight" or just "Into the Twilight" represent this interest. The last mentioned is a tone poem written in 1908 and prefaced with Yeats' poem. It originated from an aborted opera project based on the Deirdre story. My feelings towards Yeats, the man and the poet, are ambiguous; I avoided him largely. So I was not aware of this connection until now. <br /><br />Thank you for this lovely pensive blog, Mr Pentz!Mathias Richterhttp://andrew-young.de.tlnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5010170380967519230.post-39056370588329301102015-10-09T08:37:56.048-07:002015-10-09T08:37:56.048-07:00Stephen,
Different? Yes. Progressed? NoStephen,<br /><br />Different? Yes. Progressed? NoFredhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10233846613173866140noreply@blogger.com