colouringreflections

Welcome! This is a space in which forms, or fragments, of art meet: painting, photograph, literature and music – images of vibrations, captures of light, compositions of words, syntheses of sounds. The visitor is invited to navigate relying on their feelings and to enjoy the full experience – but, as always, the choice is yours.

[colouringreflections]

MEMENTOES’ MEMOIRS 

Painting: El Greco, El soplón (Boy Blowing on a Taper)

Photograph: Fritz Eschen, Girl with Blowing Bubble, 1947

From experience, both our own as well as our precursors’, our colleague writers’, we can affirm that in dialogues within narration there are three thorny, controversial issues: the world of the child, the world of the drunk, and the world of the phoney or talentless man. None of these three has ever been expressed authentically, and memories play tricks on everyone. With respect to such matters, we all have our own views – you see, we do not remember ourselves as children, we have no recollections of ourselves being drunk, and we never admit that we’re phoney or talentless. “That’s not how children talk”, “That’s not how children think” – that’s the most common criticism one receives whenever one is attempting to depict a child’s point of view. […] Life’s blows have caught “grown-ups” in such a nasty way that “grown-ups” don’t have the courage anymore to be as serious as children. If they ever realised this, they’d be seriously disheartened, disarmed, and debilitated. Maybe that barrier in our memory, that prevents us from remembering ourselves as children, is a nature thing after all?

Andrei Bitov, Pushkin House (translated by Colouringreflections)

Music: Jean Françaix, L’Heure du Berger (suggested interpretation: Kammervereinigung Berlin)

[colouringreflections]

WITH THE EYES TO SEE 

Painting: Mary Cassatt, In the Loge, 1878

Photograph: Pierre Boulat, featuring Maria Callas on the set of Medea, 1969

Uncle Mitya caught Liova’s glance, and, even more discomfited, he grasped Dahl’s Dictionary, making an attempt at their usual game: “Tell me, as concisely and precisely as possible, what’s a lorgnette?” “Well,” Lyova replied rather sluggishly, “it’s something halfway between binoculars and spectacles that people used to hold in front of their eyes at the theatre or a ball…” “You call that concise?!” unlce Mitya said in an angry tone of voice, and turned to Dahl: “Spectacles with a handle – and thatsit!”

Andrei Bitov, Pushkin House (translated by Colouringreflections)

Music: Domenico Scarlatti, Five Sonatas (suggested interpretation: Maria Grinberg)

[colouringreflections]

UNDERGROUND SKIES

Painting: Albert Birkle, The Last Cavalier, c. 1926 

Photograph: Lisette Model, Woman with Veil, San Francisco, 1949

We’re all drunken sots here, and whores,

How sombre it is among our crowd!

The flowers and birds on the walls

Pine for a breezy cloud.

  You have your black pipe between your lips,

Your smoke lingers so strangely.

And I wear my tight dress,

Yearning to move more gracefully.

 The windows here are forever shut:

How’s the weather – windy rain or rime ice?

You look around like a vigilant cat,

Watching closely with your wary eyes.

 My heart is led to gloom and sadness!

Is it my final hour yet?

And that woman who dances in half-darkness,

We’ll meet again in Hades, I bet.

Anna Akhmatova, Untitled, 1913 (translated by Colouringreflections

Music: Arthur Lourié, Cinq préludes fragiles, op. 1 (suggested interpretation: Jenny Lin)

[colouringreflections]

THE BRAIN IS WIDER THAN THE SKY 

Painting: Jean Delville, The Wheel of Fortune, 1940 

Photograph: Fan Ho, As Evening Hurries By, 1955 

… And to glance with an eye or show a bean in its pod confounds the learning of all times,

And there is no trade or employment but the young man following it may become a hero,

And there is no object so soft but it makes a hub for the wheel’d universe,

And I say to any man or woman, Let your soul stand cool and composed before a million universes…

Walt Whitman, Song of Myself, 48

Music: Ludwig van Beethoven, Violin Romance no 1 in G major, Op. 40 (as performed by Jascha Heifetz; unknown orchestra)

With many thanks to: blackbirdspots and Casa da Biqueira

[colouringreflections]

UNMEASURED FLIGHTS

Painting: Nikolai Alexandrovich Tarkhov, Chimera of Notre-Dame, Hanging over the City, 1902

Photograph: Félix Thiollier, Emma Thiollier painting on top of one of the towers of Notre-Dame, photographed by her father, 1907

A Route of Evanescence,

With a revolving Wheel –

A Resonance of Emerald

A Rush of Cochineal –

And every Blossom on the Bush

Adjusts its tumbled Head –

The Mail from Tunis – probably,

An easy Morning’s Ride –

Emily Dickinson, A Hummingbird

Music: A. G. Schnittke, Declaration of Love (suggested interpretation: Kaliningrad Philharmonic Chamber Orchestra)

[colouringreflections]

SUMMER WAS GRAND

Painting: Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin, Strawberry Basket, c. 1760

Photograph: Frank Hamrick, Blackberries, 2016

Must I, who came to travail through you,

Grow your fixed subject, because you are true? …

Venus heard me sigh this song,

And by love’s sweetest part, variety, she swore,

She heard not this till now; and that it should be so no more.

[…]

Poor heretics in love there be,

Which think to ’stablish dangerous constancy.

But I have told them, Since you will be true,

You shall be true to them who are false to you.

John Donne, The Indifferent

Music: Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev, Symphony in D major, Classical, op. 25 (suggested interpretation: London Symphony Orchestra; director: Claudio Abbado)

[colouringreflections]

OUT OF THE SHOT AND DANGER OF DESIRE 

Painting: Isaac Ilyich Levitan, Autumn Day. Sokolniki, 1879

Autochrome: Charles Corbet, Lady in Park Avenue, c. 1910

For Hamlet and the trifling of his favour,

Hold it a fashion and a toy in blood,

A violet in the youth of primy nature,

Forward, not permanent, sweet, not lasting,

The perfume and suppliance of a minute; No more.

William Shakespeare, Hamlet (Act I, Scene 3)

Music: Robert Schumann, Papillons, op. 2 (suggested interpretation: Sviatoslav Teofilovich Richter)

[colouringreflections]

DREAMING AWAKENINGS 

Painting: John Everett Millais, The Somnambulist, 1871 

Photograph: Trent Parke, from Minutes to Midnight

What care the Dead, for Chanticleer –

What care the Dead for Day?

’Tis late your Sunrise vex their face –

And Purple Ribaldry – of Morning

                          ***

Pour as blank on them

As on the Tier of Wall

The Mason builded, yesterday,

And equally as cool –

                            ***

What care the Dead for Summer?

The Solstice had no Sun

Could waste the Snow before their Gate –

And knew One Bird a Tune –

                             ***

Could thrill their Mortised Ear

Of all the Birds that be –

This One – beloved of Mankind

Henceforward cherished be –

                              ***

What care the Dead for Winter?

Themselves as easy freeze –

June Noon – as January Night –

As soon the South – her Breeze

                               ***

Of Sycamore – or Cinnamon –

Deposit in a Stone

And put a Stone to keep it Warm –

Give spices – unto Men –

Emily Dickinson

Music: Anton Stepanovich Arensky, Chant Triste (suggested interpretation: violoncello: Andreas Heinig; piano: Nino Gurevich)

[colouringreflections]

A WRITER’S DECISIVE MOMENT

Painting: Taf Wallet, Nature morte aux saurets (Still Life with Bucklings)

Photograph: Boris Ivanovich Smelov Still Life

I didn’t feel like having lunch in the newspaper’s office, so I went to a tavern on Moskovskaya street. I had a glass or two of vodka, a bite of herring; I was looking at the fish’s head, laid open on the plate, and I thought to myself: “I must make a note of this: the herring’s cheeks shine like mother-of-pearl.” Then I ate a warm soup. The place was pretty crowded, a smell of battercakes and fried sparlings was lingering around, in the next room the air was heavy with smoke […] It felt as if last night’s dream was still continuing, I was slightly drunk and dazed after the vodka, the soup, the childhood memories, and tears welled up in my eyes…

Ivan Alexeyevich Bunin, The Life of Arseniev (translated by Colouringreflections)

Music: Joseph Haydn, Andante and variations in F minor (suggested interpretation: Alfred Brendel)

[colouringreflections]

THE ELUSIVE NOW 

Etching: Érik Desmazières, Les Roues, 1974 

Photograph: Louis Stettner, from the series Penn Station, 1958 

We are living in a culture entirely hypnotized by the illusion of time in which the so-called present moment is felt as nothing but an infinitesimal causative past and an absorbingly important future. We have no present. Our consciousness is almost completely preoccupied with memory and expectation. We do not realise that there never was, is, or will be any other experience than present experience. We are therefore out of touch with reality. We confuse the world as talked about, described, and measured with the world which actually is.

Alan Watts, The Way of Liberation

Music: Nikolai Yakovlevich Miaskovski, Cello Concerto in C minor, op. 66 (Suggested interpretation: Russian National Orchestra; conductor: Mikhail Pletnev; cello: Mischa Maisky)

[colouringreflections]

AUTUMNAL BREEZES

Painting: August Strindberg, Alley

Photograph: Yvonne Vionnet (via Semiotic apocalypse)

As Summer into Autumn slips

And yet we sooner say

“The Summer” than “the Autumn”, lest

We turn the sun away,

 And almost count it an Affront

The presence to concede

Of one however lovely, not

The one that we have loved –

 So we evade the charge of Years

On one attempting shy

The Circumvention of the Shaft

Of Life’s Declivity.

Emily Dickinson

Music: Anton Stepanovich Arensky, Piano Trio No. 2 in F minor, op. 73 (Suggested interpretation: Maro Shinozaki in Trio Ferne)

[colouringreflections]

LANDSCAPES OF THE MIND

Painting: Eduardo Rosado Marcos, Lane with Balconies (Callejuela con balcones) 

Photograph: Eugène Atget, Hôtel de Sens, rue de l’Hôtel de Ville, Paris, early 1900s

Sometimes, as obscure thoughts and hazy daydreams were running through my mind, I fell asleep. Those days, I used to sleep many hours, and dreams were an integral part of my life – almost every night I was having dreams. I still remembered them in the morning, I attached great importance to them, I believed them to be omens, I tried to figure out their hidden meaning. Some of them were recurring – a fact that I always found astonishing and odd. There was this one dream in particular that was unusually distressing: I walk down a narrow, poorly paved street of an old city, on my right and left I am surrounded by tall stone buildings with pointed rooftops. I am searching for my father, he is still alive but for some reason is hiding from us and lives in one of these houses.

Ivan Sergeyevich Turgeniev, The Dream (translated by Colouringreflections)

Music: George Enescu, Piano sonata no. 1 in F-sharp minor, op. 24 (Suggested interpretation: Cristian Petrescu)

[colouringreflections]

WINGS OF PERCEPTION

Etching: Francisco de Goya, Way of Flying (Modo de volar), 1864

Photograph: Alex Timmermans, Icarus, 2014

No man can reveal to you aught but that which already lies half asleep in the dawning of our knowledge.

The teacher who walks in the shadow of the temple, among his followers, gives not of his wisdom but rather of his faith and his lovingness.

If he is indeed wise he does not bid you enter the house of wisdom, but rather leads you to the threshold of your own mind.

The astronomer may speak to you of his understanding of space, but he cannot give you his understanding.

The musician may sing to you of the rhythm which is in all space, but he cannot give you the ear which arrests the rhythm nor the voice that echoes it.

And he who is versed in the science of numbers can tell of the regions of weight and measure, but he cannot conduct you thither.

For the vision of one man lends not its wings to another man.

And even as each one of you stands alone in God’s knowledge, so must each one of you be alone in his knowledge of God and in his understanding of the earth.

Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

Music: Alexandr Nikolayevich Scriabin, Sonata no. 3, op. 23 (Highly suggested interpretation: Vladimir Vladimirovich Sofronitsky)

[colouringreflections]

TONALITIES OF BEAUTY

Painting: Yannis Tsarouchis, Rose in a Glass, 1979

Photograph: Josef Sudek, White Rose in a Glass, 1952

All things uncomely and broken, all things worn out and old,

The cry of a child by the roadway, the creak of a lumbering cart,

The heavy steps of the ploughman, splashing the wintry mould,

Are wronging your image that blossoms a rose in the deeps of my heart.

 The wrong of unshapely things is a wrong too great to be told;

I hunger to build them anew and sit on a green knoll apart,

With the earth and the sky and the water, remade, like a casket of gold

For my dreams of your image that blossoms a rose in the deeps of my heart.

W. B. Yeats, “Aedh tells of the Rose in his Heart” from The Wind among the Reeds

Music: Benjamin Britten, Night-Piece (Notturno) (suggested interpretation: Stephen Hough)

To my good friend Tanya Luca – with her poetic as well as realistic glance Tanya provided me with the images’ combination

[colouringreflections]

THE VAGARIES OF RESISTANCE 

Painting: Arsène Chabanian, A Torrent in the Moonlight (Torrent au clair de lune)

Photograph taken by Serge Ramelli in Merced River, Yosemite Valley, as homage to the work of Ansel Adams

Water does not resist. Water flows. When you plunge your hand into it, all you feel is a caress. Water is not a solid wall, it will not stop you. But water always goes where it wants to go, and nothing in the end can stand against it. Water is patient. Dripping water wears away a stone. Remember that, my child. Remember you are half water. If you can’t go through an obstacle, go around it. Water does.

Margaret Atwood, The Penelopiad

Music: Wolfgang Amadus Mozart, Violin concerto No 5 (Suggested interpretation: Anne-Sophie Mutter and the Camerata Salzburg)

[colouringreflections]

THE MISTS OF REALITY

Lithograph: Odilon Redon, I saw a glimmer of light, large and pale (Je vis une lueur large et pâle), 1896

Photograph: Eugène Atget, Hôtel de la Marquise de Brinvilliers (otherwise known as Hôtel d’Aubrey, c. 1900)

What truly terrified the cadets was the thought that, at the end of one of the castle’s corridors, was situated the room that used to be the bedchamber of the departed emperor Pavel I, and to which one night the late tsar retired in fine feather only to be removed the following morning bereft of life. The older students claimed, in a tone of deep conviction, that the spirit of the emperor inhabited that room and every night slipped out and inspected his beloved castle – and the rookies fell for it. The room was kept firmly locked at all times, with several bolts; however it is a well-known fact that no locks or latches can keep a ghost restrained. Furthermore, rumour had it that there was a secret passage to that chamber – and there actually was. As the legend goes, some older cadets found their way in and kept entering at will, until one of them committed an utter stupidity that cost him dearly.

Nikolai Semyonovich Leskov, The Ghost of the Engineers’ Castle (translated by Colouringreflections)

Music: Valeriy Alexandrovich Gavrilin, “Grand Waltz” from Anyuta ballet (suggested interpretation: presumably the Leningrand State Concert Orchestra)

[colouringreflections]

LABOURING SOULS

Painting: Vasili Grigorievich Perov, Troika (Apprentice Workmen Carrying Water), 1866 

Photograph: Lewis Wickes Hine, Young Chicken Vendors, Cincinnati, 1908

Man is the only creature that consumes without producing. He does not give milk, he does not lay eggs, he is too weak to pull the plough, he cannot run fast enough to catch rabbits. Yet he is lord of all the animals. He sets them to work, he gives back to them the bare minimum that will prevent them from starving, and the rest he keeps for himself.

George Orwell, Animal Farm

Music: Johannes Brahms, Six Pieces for Piano, op. 118 (suggested interpretation: Radu Lupu)