Poetry Thursday - The Song of Wandering Aengus by William Butler Yeats

"The crowd hushed and “Yeats” (the actor Colm Farrell) began
to declaim a poem." (by Róisín Curé, via)

The Song of Wandering Aengus

I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire a-flame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And someone called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands,
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done,
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.

William Butler Yeats (via)

Apart from the lovely and famous "The Lake Isle of Innisfree", which we "did" at school, I'm not aware of having all that much contact with Yeats' poetry, yet his work has appeared in Poetry Thursday twice before - The Second Coming and Old Men Admiring Themselves in the Water. Biographical details and links can be found there.

Thanks to Sheila for this link - might anyone else out there wish to divulge any poetry encounters?

Local news

Mary, reading

Raphael, 1508

Pinturicchio (1454-1513)

Raphael, 1502

Giolamo di Cotignola (1500?-1559?)

Rubens, 1625-8

A small collection from the Gemaeldegalerie.

Why is Mary depicted with a book? In annunciation scenes from the middle ages she had often been shown with a spindle and wool, because of the popular belief that she had been spinning purple yarn for the temple curtain when the angel appeared to her.

With the rise of literacy, especially women's literacy, in the 14th century onwards, as a role model Mary is given a book. In annunciations, sometimes it's a psalter or a copy of the scriptures, with the page open to Isaiah 7:14 - the prophecy that a young woman will shortly give birth to a child whose name will be Immanuel, "God is with us", and that the threat from the enemy kings will be ended before the child grows up.

In the mother-and-child paintings, on the one hand she has the written word, and on the other, the word made flesh.

Signs and suchlike

As happy as the day is long ...

Letterbox in Dahlem

Haircut, anyone?

Variations on the letter A, library door

Workmen's tools, Schloss building site open day

"It was here on 11 August 1962 that Gert Hoffman was dancing
to verboten rock'n'roll music when he fell to his death, inventing
stage-diving in the process." Advertising for a music festival

Drawing Tuesday - the South Seas, mostly

The destination

Having read about "the boats" somewhere, I went to the Oceania section - and sure enough, the boat collection was impressive ... but poorly lit, too distant for my dim eyes, and incredibly complicated -

So I settled down with the "Stabkarten" from the Marshall Islands, which have long intrigued me - how can these things be "maps"? -

A sort of plan of attach evolved as I did the first blind drawing, following first the lines of the sticks and then looking at the spaces formed -

In the "careful" drawing, other details surfaced - the interweaving of the sticks, the placement of the shells (islands? stars?), the way they were tied together - which of these were meaningful to the users? Were "we" meant to decode them?

I've been intrigued by these maps for some time. This one was collected by Winckler in 1893 - he is the authority on these charts -

In this one section the museum has much to offer -

Forms of money - shells, feathers, "salt money", worked items

The "hooked figures" from the Sepik valley of Papua New Guinea where fascinating -

Suddenly I realised I was getting too involved in looking at the exhibits, reading the labels - rather than looking at the objects and drawing them. This was quite confusing ... and easy to do when you're on your own. Indeed, it can be part of the "project" - today I was looking at cultures that were new to me, so I got involved in the little film of cooking sago in the traditional pottery bowl, which allows a fire in wooden houses, and the associated traditional pan in which the sago breads are fried - a short excerpt (filmed in 1973) that raised questions about how the sago was prepared before it was cooked, about the time all this would take up, about much more.

The display of different sorts of houses

 was complemented by a case of models

 which I drew from another angle -

Artefacts from a men's house - at the back, painting on bark cloth. The spikes were used to hold trophy heads obtained in warfare -

The colonisers got represented too -

Large masks, collected in 1912 from the Baining people of Papua New Guinea -

and some dancing staffs from Duke of York Island

Another Baining barkcloth mask

Attached to the Ethnographic Museum is the Asian Art museum. On my first visit in 2009 I drew the Thai pots, some of which were made about 1200 BC, and they called to me again this time -

This delightful jar in the shape of a water buffalo was made about 2300 BC (Lopburi culture) -

Several attempts to draw him just didn't turn out; it was the end of the day.

An extra drawing day on the Friday took me back to the ethnographic museum, Africa section this time, and to the adjacent Museum of European Cultures ... more about that another time perhaps.

Today I'm off to the Bode Museum - Byzantine and early Italian sculptures.


(This post is linked to Off the Wall Friday.)

Lazy Monday - Brücke-Museum

Most museums are closed on Mondays, so we had a lazy morning (on our computers) and headed out to the Brücke-Museum in the afternoon. This involved catching the 115 bus from Freibellinerplatz - not difficult - and choosing a bagel at the Imbiss (snack bar) at the station. Bagels here come with all sorts of seedy embellishments, and a freshly made smoked salmon - with rocket and horseradish for kicks - cost all of 2 euro 60. Delicious. (Photo not available.)

It's a 500-metre walk from the Pücklerstrasse stop, excellently signposted, along quiet and very leafy streets -

This small but extremely pleasant museum was built in 1966 and is a low, airy, light-filled building. It has changing exhibitions based around the painters of the short-lived Brücke group (1910-13), and has published many books about them. There's also an excellent range of postcards for sale.

One current exhibition is on Otto Mueller (1874-1930), including lots of lithographs, in which he trained 1890-2, later studying fine art in Dresden and Munich. In 1937, 357 of his works were seized from German museums, considered to be "degenerate art".

Portrait of Madschka, Mueller's first wife (m.1905-21); they
remained friends throughout his subsequent two marriages

 

Self portrait with Irene Altmann; her father would not allow a marriage, and they
split up in 1921. The mask, made by Mueller, was in an adjacent case

Dunes in Sylt, 1921

Waldlandschaft, 1924. Mueller produced many colour lithographs in the 1920s;
the highpoint is his Zigeunermappe of 1927

 Elsewhere, still lifes by Karl Schmidt-Rotluff - and some objects used in them -

Karton mit Wolle, 1927 (an unusual subject for a still life!)

 Next door is Kunsthus Dahlem, opened this year and housed in the atelier built for the sculptor Arno Breker and opened in 1942. Since 1964, it has has had international sculptors in residence, and now is an exhibition venue for postwar modernism (1945-1961).

 We went for a walk in the woods,intending to return to the museum  -

 and got lost on the way back, ending up at a spot where people who walk dogs go -

 It was near the bus stop ... but not the one we'd started from. Taking the X10 back into town we passed commodious houses from another era -

 Heading for home, a couple of stops for essentials -

A nice rioja...

... and the last slice of strawberry cake

It's raining. Tomorrow is drawing day.