Jigsaw

The sleep of reason (war), the reptilian brain awakened. Peacetime, innocence restored; all is possible, life is trivial. Imbued with meaning or seeming meaningless; saturated with or depleted of experience. Any significance acquires in time, with second thoughts and afterthoughts, rehearsed, then executed. Tiny pieces of a jigsaw puzzle collected then assembled to perfection.

Picture credit: The Tower of Babel after Pieter Brueghel, (Gordian Puzzles), 2007, Vik Muniz (source: WikiArt).

From Journal, May 2022.

While Reading Pushkin

A single sentence, a short paragraph, an economy of words, disciplined prose, and imagination triumphs over my own reality. Fiction and history blended together, towered over by Pushkin's figure.
I see Russia, as does Ibrahim, the Tsar's negro, as 'one huge work-room where only machines were moving and every worker was occupied with his job in accordance with a fixed plan'; and wonder if under Putin it is the same?
I see a ball-room, ladies and gentlemen in two rows, curtseying or bowing low repeatedly to each other to the strains of melancholy music, and Korsakov, fresh from Paris, wide-eyed and biting his lip at this 'peculiar way of passing the time'; and then flouting the rules of Russian etiquette humiliated and forced to drain the Goblet – filled with malmsey wine – of the Great Eagle; and wonder if that scene was as entertaining to write as it was to read?
I see Kiril Petrovich Troyekurov's kennels with over five hundred hounds – though that number seems inconceivable somehow – and hear them 'singing their praises in their canine tongue'; and wonder, though it's wrong, if the Russian military do the same – whine and lick Putin's hand?
A pause...and then my imagination is struck again.
I see a cat saved from a blaze; officials trapped inside, the roof falling in, their screams stopped. Nothing but charred remains.
I see a daughter with the run of her father's extensive library, choosing which French writer of the eighteenth century to read; and wonder about her father's favourite the Perfect Cook – what sort of book was it?
I see dispossessed officer Dubrovsky's pact in the post-master's house with the French tutor; see his transformation from officer to brigand to teacher to brigand again; and wonder if it's true that we always miss what's right before our eyes?
I see the Volga with loaded barges floating on it, and 'little fishing-boats, so aptly called smacks', flashing here and there, and the hills and fields and small villages stretching beyond it; and wonder if those with such a landscape as a view know how fortunate they are?
I see many-coloured lights flare up, whirl about, and fall in 'showers of rain and stars'; and am, like Maria Kirilovna, 'carried away like a child.'
I see, from a distance, an airy shadow approach a trysting-place and meet a bolder shadow, and then, some time later, one disappear among the trees.
Time flies...lost in a dream.
I see a red-haired boy stealing a ring from a hollow oak, and caught see him dragged to and locked in a pigeon-loft with an old poultry woman as his watch, and then brought before the police-captain; and wonder how it feels to be a prisoner, for your fate to be decided?
I see a pistol drawn, one that wounds, one that threatens; and consider how a moment can change everything.
I see two winning cards, three, seven; and wonder nervously, unlike Hermann, if the third will be...? Three, seven....
These idle thoughts, sensations, escape me while reading Pushkin.

Picture credit: Pushkin at the Mikhailovsky, Pyotr Konchalovsky (source: WikiArt).

See The Queen of Spades and Other Stories by Alexander Pushkin (Penguin Classics, translation and footnotes by Rosemary Edmonds). 

Written 9-10^th May 2022.

Anointed

False king, false prophet; false claims, enchantment. Heavenly voices, humanly fabricated stories. A restorer of peace and a channel to it; disturber of peace and an obstacle to it. Divine justice itself in the form of a person; or, evil-thinking, evil-speaking, evil-doing. Tests of battle, victory; interrogation, heresy. Right at the time, wrong years later. A blazing rise, a dying fall; a burning death, a risen star. Human, Saint; the human person dies, the saintly being shines. History rather than memory igniting interest.

Picture credit: Joan of Arc at the Coronation of Charles VII in the Cathedral of Reims, Jean-Auguste Dominique Ingres (source: WikiArt).

See Joan of Arc, A History by Helen Castor. 

Written May 2022.

Embrace

Released from the embrace of art and clasped again in an embrace of politics and history, that of my own country, that of another's, and that of the fifteenth century. History told forwards and learnt backwards. Individuals placed in context of the events that unfolded or are still unfolding – still felt or are of now and may yet be felt by generations to come. Of what are we made? Resistance and violence; joined and severed hands; ill-starred, ill-advised negotiations, enemies-turned-saviours and bogus declarations of peace on which the future stands or falls.

Picture credit: Shadow of the Teacher, 1932, Nicholas Roerich (source: WikiArt).

From journal, May 2022.

Jazz

A final decade, a second life. Things reduced to the simple, yet made profound; resurrected – from death – as a reductionist. Brushes, pencil and charcoal abandoned in favour of coloured paper and scissors. Cut paper like jazz music – improvisational, spontaneous; scissors like a bird in flight, knew what line to take. 'Circuses, folktales, and voyages'; Icarus, a black silhouette, burnt by the sun, with a red circle or star or dot for a heart, tumbling, as myth dictates, to his destruction. Icarus' fate but not Henri Matisse's.

Picture credit: Icarus, Henri Matisse (source: www.metmuseum.org).

From a larger work I call 'The Magician', written May 2022.

See Henri Matisse, A Second Life by Alastair Sooke.