This Date in Art History: Died 10 January 1941 – John Lavery, an Irish painter.
Below – “A Summer Afternoon”; “On the Riviera”; “Lady Lavery”; “The Red Rose”; “Woman with Golden Turban”; “Hazel in rose and grey.”
This Date in Literary History: Born 10 January 1860 – Charles G. D. Roberts, a Canadian poet and author who has been called “The Father of Canadian Poetry.”
“All Night the Lone Cicada”
by Charles G. D. Roberts
All night the lone cicada
Kept shrilling through the rain–
A voice of joy undaunted
By unforgotten pain.
Down from the wind-blown branches
Rang out the high refrain,
By tumult undisheartened,
By storm assailed in vain.
To looming vasts of mountain
And shadowy deeps of plain,
The ephemeral, brave defiance
Adventured not in vain.
Till to the faltering spirit
And to the weary brain,
From loss and fear and failure,
My joy returned again.
Below – Trish Taylor Ponappa: “Cicada Portrait”
This Date in Art History: Died 10 January 1967 – Charles E. Burchfield, an American painter.
Below – “February Thaw”; “Sunflowers”; “Locomotive Shed”; “Dusk”; “Late Autumn”; “House in Landscape.”
This Date in Literary History: Died 10 January 1951 – Sinclair Lewis, an American novelist, short story writer, playwright, author of “Babbitt” and “It Can’t Happen Here,” and recipient of the 1930 Nobel Prize in Literature.
Some quotes from the work of Sinclair Lewis:
“When fascism comes to the United States it will be wrapped in the American flag and will claim the name of 100-percent Americanism.”
“I am convinced that everything that is worth while in the world has been accomplished by the free, inquiring, critical spirit, and that the preservation of this spirit is more important than any social system whatsoever. But the men of ritual and the men of barbarism are capable of shutting up the men of science and silencing them forever.”
“I must say I’m not very fond of oratory that’s so full of energy it hasn’t any room for facts.”
“It is, I think, an error to believe that there is any need of religion to make life seem worth living.”
“Advertising is a valuable economic factor because it is the cheapest way of selling goods, particularly if the goods are worthless.”
Contemporary Russian Art – Fefa Koroleva
Below – “The best friends”; “A moment”’; “The dance with spirits”; “Family”; “Black horse”;“Before the gate.”
This Date in Literary History: Born 10 January 1887 – Robinson Jeffers, an American poet and philosopher.
“Hurt Hawks”
by Robinson Jeffers
I
The broken pillar of the wing jags from the clotted shoulder,
The wing trails like a banner in defeat,
No more to use the sky forever but live with famine
And pain a few days: cat nor coyote
Will shorten the week of waiting for death, there is game without talons.
He stands under the oak-bush and waits
The lame feet of salvation; at night he remembers freedom
And flies in a dream, the dawns ruin it.
He is strong and pain is worse to the strong, incapacity is worse.
The curs of the day come and torment him
At distance, no one but death the redeemer will humble that head,
The intrepid readiness, the terrible eyes.
The wild God of the world is sometimes merciful to those
That ask mercy, not often to the arrogant.
You do not know him, you communal people, or you have forgotten him;
Intemperate and savage, the hawk remembers him;
Beautiful and wild, the hawks, and men that are dying, remember him.
II
I’d sooner, except the penalties, kill a man than a hawk;
but the great redtail
Had nothing left but unable misery
From the bone too shattered for mending, the wing that trailed under his talons when he moved.
We had fed him six weeks, I gave him freedom,
He wandered over the foreland hill and returned in the evening, asking for death,
Not like a beggar, still eyed with the old
Implacable arrogance.
I gave him the lead gift in the twilight.
What fell was relaxed, Owl-downy, soft feminine feathers; but what
Soared: the fierce rush: the night-herons by the flooded river cried fear at its rising
Before it was quite unsheathed from reality.
Below – Jordan Blackstone: “Maybe”
Contemporary Canadian Art – Serguei Borodouline
Below – “Deadwood”; “Storm”; “Channel”; “Frisland”;“Melt Water”; “Spindrift Clouds.”
This Date in Literary History: Died 10 January 1957 – Gabriela Mistral, a Chilean poet and recipient of the 1945 Nobel Prize in Literature.
“The Song You Loved”
by Gabriella Mistral
Life of my life, what you loved I sing.
If you’re near, if you’re listening,
think of me now in the evening:
shadow in shadows, hear me sing.
Life of my life, I can’t be still.
What is a story we never tell?
How can you find me unless I call?
Life of my life, I haven’t changed,
not turned aside and not estranged.
Come to me as the shadows grow long,
come, life of my life, if you know the song
you used to know, if you know my name.
I and the song are still the same.
Beyond time or place I keep the faith.
Follow a path or follow no path,
never fearing the night, the wind,
call to me, come to me, now at the end,
walk with me, life of my life, my friend.
Below – June Munro: “Woman Waiting”
