In Search of Spencer's Cookham.

I took a trip to find the some of the places, in his beloved Cookham, that Sir Stanley Spencer included in his paintings.

Click for photos.

"One day, as I viewed the faded portrait of a young girl in an album, someone passed who spoke a name...

"And so I knew you; having heard your name, you, I shall dream of you."

- Edourard Dujardin (Antonia, 1891).

Picture: My photo detail of Jelly d'Aranyi from a photo of the three d'Aranyi sisters.

"Masculinity and femininity, as they are usually understood, are obstacles to humanity¹ [...] Only a gentle masculinity, only an autonomous femininity are right, true and beautiful. And if this is so, one must not further exaggerate the character of the sex in any way [...] but rather seek to soften it by means of counter-measures, so that everyone in what is proper to him or her, is able to find a space as boundless as possible in which to move freely, according to pleasure and love, in the entire sphere of humanity"

- Friedrich Schlegel (On Philosophy - To Dorothea. An open letter to Brendel Veit in Volume 2 (1) of his Athenaeum journal, 1799).

Picture: "Penthésilée – Pentesiléia" by Raul Ubac (1937).
(Penthesilea was the Amazon Queen who went to die in the Trojan war after killing Hippolyta)

1. This first part of the quote is widely attributed online to Karoline von Günderrode, pretty much wherever her name is mentioned, from Wikipedia onwards (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karoline_von_Günderrode). Whilst the idea would no doubt fit her writing I can find no evidence in my books or online that she actually wrote it, and those that quote it do not indicate a source. I am certain, on the other hand, though that Schlegel committed the lines to paper in the place cited. I have a correction/query pending with Wikipedia etc but if anyone happens to have a better knowledge of Karoline von Günderrode's work and can set me straight then please do. Till then I am chalking it up as another in my win column in the battle of Me v Internet.

The holiest of all holidays are those
Kept by ourselves in silence and apart;
The secret anniversaries of the heart,

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (from Holidays)

Picture: "Le Chartier du Quartier Latin" by André Kertész (1934)

Imagination, the traitor of the mind, has taken my solitude and slain it.
No peace but many companions; the hateful-eyed
And human-bodied are all about me: you that love multitude may have them.

- Robinson Jeffers (from 'Prelude' in 'The Women At Point Sur', 1927).

Picture: "Franz Brasz, The Artist" by Virna Haffer (circa 1937).

"During the time of our experiment, I discovered that I liked to eat the legs and breasts of women, for as in other animals, these parts are delicacies. I also savored young women's breaded ribs. Best of all, however, I relished women's brains in vinaigrette."

-Diego Rivera

Picture: “Nieves”, A model for Diego Rivera, 1943

Diego Rivera - An Experiment in Cannibalism.

I open it in lamplight,
the yellowed book smells of grass and mould.

I skim the pages, a rain-like sound is born
and a thin wind passes from page to page

and over the battlefield.
The smoke of cartridges disperses like dandelion fluff.

Din; silence. Many horses roam
and horseless men. Through shutters

country sounds and smells. Swallows' shrill cry.
Fennel, and cow parsley. Poppy, dandelion fluff

and on the pages of the book, wisps from cartridges.
The soft ring of the lamp encloses the battlefield.

- Eeva-Liisa Manner.

Picture: Joseph Cornell (untitled and undated but circa 1960-70)

Along the embankment, along the bridge, along

the whole soul, lined by the rainstorm,

the wind strains point-blank

at the gulf that got wild overnight.

White clouds race under black clouds,

snagging on sparkling spires,

and the flung open river

stirs chains like a shaman.

Oh my soul, freeze in this foul weather,

on the bridges along their railings,

and witch-like stir into me

this night, this north, this water.

There is such womanhood in these splashes

that it will yet lead me to suicide,

and it will suddenly open in the sad Baltic Grail

like an emptiness.

- Leonid Aronzon

Picture: "Out of the Rain, Iran" by Kian Elyassi Bakhtiari (2006).

“ To achieve harmony in bad taste is the height of elegance" 

- Jean Genet, "The Thief’s Journal" (1949).

Picture: Les Krims (ca. 1970).

"The exceeding brightness of the early sun

makes me conceive how dark I have become."

- Wallace Stevens (This Sun This March)

Picture: Unknown

"During the time of our experiment, I discovered that I liked to eat the legs and breasts of women, for as in other animals, these parts are delicacies. I also savored young women's breaded ribs. Best of all, however, I relished women's brains in vinaigrette."

- Diego Rivera

Picture: “Nieves”, Model of Diego Rivera (1943).

An Experiment In Cannibalism

I've put on Bach

uprooted I am /

horrifically god-lost, the cloud with

a rose-mouth, ice-clump-shaped my heart what

for heaven's sake has happened to me / lonely

the frond of the palm I'd like on

my grave etc., alas this stigma these

May these June days how heart-rending, dew-fall

and frenzy a thousand times sorrow

dissolve in tears / no one

gives me their hand no eye consolingly

passes into my soul / buried

alive in my warm blood : ditched dissolute distraught damned done-in

deadly the daybreak and late evening / torn out

I've torn myself out of

human society .. see

Glenn Gould squatting crooked humming furious

howling and hotting - (and we have

crying 1 light-ray and 1 poison)

- Friederike Mayröcker

Picture: "Friederike Mayröcker, Wien" by Joseph Gallus Rittenberg

Glenn Gould

"Kako, languid from sleeping pills she takes, is lost in a world of her own in a jazz shop in Tokyo"

Life Magazine - Teenage Wasteland: Japanese Youth in Revolt 1964.

"All lovers live by longing, and endure:
Summon a vision and declare it pure."


- Theodore Roethke (Four for Sir John Davies)


Picture: Isamu Noguchi with Undine (Nadja) 1925.

Desire.