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Happy 194th Birthday, Emily Dickinson!

American poet Emily Dickinson (December 10, 1830 - May 15, 1886) was born 194 years ago, in 1830.
Little-known during her life, she has since been regarded as one of the most important figures in American poetry.
Despite Dickinson's prolific writing, only ten poems and a letter were published during her lifetime.
After her younger sister Lavinia discovered the collection of nearly 1,800 poems, Dickinson's first volume was published four years after her death.

Bronze sculpture of Emily Dickinson by Jane DeDecker

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Giovanni Segantini | L’angelo della vita (Dea cristiana), 1894

The Angel of Life (Christian Goddess) was commissioned in 1891 or shortly before by the banker Leopoldo Albini, together with the Pagan Goddess, now exhibited alongside it.
The two works were intended to form a diptych on the theme of women, a mystical mother in the case of the painting considered here, a worldly and lustful vision in the other.
The two figures are portraits of the family nanny, Baba, and of her son Gottardo (painted from memory, since he must have been twelve years old at the time).

Giovanni Segantini | L’angelo della vita (Dea cristiana), 1894 (detaglio) | GAM - Galleria d'Arte Moderna, Milano

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Spinario (Boy pulling a thorn from his foot)

Boy with Thorn, also called Fedele (Fedelino) or Spinario, is a Greco-Roman Hellenistic bronze sculpture of a boy withdrawing a thorn from the sole of his foot, now in the Palazzo dei Conservatori, Rome.
There is a Roman marble version of this subject from the Medici collections in a corridor of the Uffizi Gallery, Florence.
The sculpture was one of the very few Roman bronzes that was never lost to sight.
The work was standing outside the Lateran Palace when the Navarrese rabbi Benjamin of Tudela saw it in the 1160s and identified it as Absalom, who "was without blemish from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head".

Lo Spinario | Palazzo dei Conservatori, Musei Capitolini

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Mahmoud Darwish | Un altro giorno verrà / Another day will come

Mahmoud Darwish (1941-2008) è stato un poeta, scrittore e giornalista Palestinese.
È autore di circa venti raccolte di poesie, pubblicate a partire dal 1964, e sette opere in prosa, di argomento narrativo o saggistico.
È considerato tra i maggiori poeti in lingua araba.
Darwish ha vinto numerosi premi per le sue opere.
È stato giornalista e direttore della rivista letteraria "al-Karmel" (Il Carmelo), e dal 1994 era membro del Parlamento dell'Autorità Nazionale Palestinese.
È considerato poeta nazionale della Palestina per cui scrisse nel 1988 la Dichiarazione d'indipendenza, poi proclamata da Yasser Arafat.
I suoi libri sono stati tradotti in più di venti lingue e diffusi in tutto il mondo.

Mahmoud Darwish | Un altro giorno verrà

Shamsia Hassani | Hope is always beautiful even when you know you are the loser

Un altro giorno verrà, un giorno femmineo,
alla metafora trasparente,
compiuto, diamantino, di visita nuziale, soleggiato,
fluido, allegro. Nessuno sentirà
alcun bisogno di suicidio o di migrazione.

Poiché ogni cosa, fuori del passato, è naturale e vera,
sinonimo dei suoi attributi originari.


Come se il tempo oziasse in vacanza… "Prolunga il bel
tempo
della tua grazia. Illùminati nel sole dei tuoi seni di seta,
e aspetta l’arrivo della buona novella. Poi,
potremo crescere. Abbiamo ancora tempo
per crescere dopo questo giorno…"

Un altro giorno verrà,
un giorno femmineo,
dal cenno canterino e dal saluto e verbo azzurri.

Tutto è femmineo fuori del passato,
l’acqua scorre dalle mammelle della pietra.

Nessuna polvere, nessuna siccità, e nessuna sconfitta.
E le colombe dormono in un carro armato abbandonato
quando non trovano un piccolo nido
nel letto degli amanti.


Mahmoud Darwish | Another day will come

Another day will come, a womanly day
diaphanous in metaphor, complete in being,
diamond and processional in visitation, sunny,
flexible, with a light shadow. No one will feel
a desire for suicide or for leaving. All
things, outside the past, natural and real,
will be synonyms of their early traits. As if time
is slumbering on vacation…"


"Extend your lovely
beauty-time. Sunbathe in the sun of your silken breasts,
and wait until good omen arrives. Later
we will grow older. We have enough time
to grow older after this day…"/

Another day will come, a womanly day
songlike in gesture, lapis in greeting
and in phrase. All things will be feminine outside
the past. Water will flow from rock's bosom.

No dust, no drought, no defeat.
And a dove will sleep in the afternoon in an abandoned
combat tank if it doesn't find a small nest
in the lovers' bed…


Mahmoud Darwish (1941-2008) was a Palestinian poet and author who was regarded as Palestine's national poet.
In 1988, Darwish wrote the Palestinian Declaration of Independence, which was the formal declaration for the creation of a State of Palestine.
Darwish won numerous awards for his works.
In his poetic works, Darwish explored Palestine as a metaphor for the loss of Eden, birth and resurrection, and the anguish of dispossession and exile.
He has been described as incarnating and reflecting "the tradition of the political poet in Islam, the man of action whose action is poetry".
He also served as an editor for several literary magazines in Israel and the Palestinian territories.
Darwish wrote in Arabic, and also spoke English, French and Hebrew.

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Book sculptures by Jodi Harvey-Brown

- "I have always loved art, and I have always loved to read.
Books pull you into a new world, while art lets you see it.
It made sense to me that these two mediums should come together.
The books that we love to read should be made to come to life.
Characters, that we care so much for, should come out of the pages to show us their stories.
What we see in our imaginations as we read should be there for the world to see.
My book sculptures are my way of making stories come alive" - Jodi Harvey-Brown.


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7 masterpieces at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum

Frederick Carl Frieseke | The House in Giverny, 1912

When Frieseke first settled at Giverny in 1906, he stayed at Le Hameau (the hamlet) on the rue du Pressoir.
The two-story cottage surrounded by high walls on three sides enclosing a garden was next door to the home of Claude Monet and had previously been occupied by the American artist Lilla Cabot Perry.

The house shown in The House in Giverny, however, is most likely the Whitman house, the second of Frieseke's three Giverny residences.
Its green shutters and the distinctive open lattice-work of green trellises laden with flowers appear in a number of Frieseke's paintings, including Lilies, Tea Time in a Giverny Garden (both Daniel J. Terra Collection) and Hollyhocks, c. 1912-1913 (Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection).

The intimacy of Frieseke's small painting and his interest in decorative pattern links the artist more closely with the Nabi painters Vuillard and Bonnard than to his neighbour Monet or with Renoir, the French Impressionist he most admired.
The artist stated his creed published in a 1914 interview: "My one idea is to reproduce flowers in sunlight.
I do not suggest detail by form, as I have to keep it as pure as possible or the effect of brilliancy will be lost.
Of course, there is a limit to the strength of pigments, and one can but relatively give the impression of nature. I may see a glare of white light at noon, but I cannot render it literally [...]
I usually make my first notes and impressions with dashes of tempera, then I paint over this with small strokes in oil to produce the effect of vibration, completing as I go". | Source: © Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum

Frederick Carl Frieseke (American, 1874-1939) | The House in Giverny, 1912 | Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

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Enoch Wood Perry | A Month’s darning, 1876

In their subject matter and compositional format, Enoch Wood Perry’s watercolor paintings are quite similar to his oils, and his method of applying paint was consistently characterized by fastidious attention to detail.
Like his colleague Eastman Johnson, Enoch Wood Perry (1831-1915) studied in Düsseldorf and Paris, where he acquired a respect for careful draftsmanship.
He exhibited "A Month’s Darning" in 1876 at the American Society of Painters in Water Colors and later the same year at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, where it was acclaimed for its evocation of times past.
The critic for the "New-York Tribune" found the woman’s head to be "the best part" of the composition and only regretted "that the sweet-faced girl . . . should have such large-footed men-folks to darn for". | Source: © The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Enoch Wood Perry | A Month’s Darning, 1876 | Metropolitan Museum of Art