Teo Tarras - Rendezvous a Paris

STOPPING ALONG THE WAY
Sometimes we used to enter secret wayside cafes
There might be a step down, and always there was a table to choose in the silence or murmur of speech.
A shadow was the most ancient of the regulars; a long, long time she had sat at every place.
The sun would be there, on good terms with her, lying upon a forehead, on your hand, on a glass - and soon he left, like a god one forgets.
During these halts that seemed to become eternal experience came to us,
And we always left these secret cafes subtly changed from what we had been before.
Guillevic, translated by Denise Leverow

Eugène GUILLEVIC, poète à découvrir ...

Écoute en toi le merle
Comme il t’habite

or

L’armoire était de chêne
Et n’était pas ouverte.

Peut-être il en serait tombé des morts,
Peut-être il en serait tombé du pain.

Beaucoup de morts.
Beaucoup de pain.


I looked on the web for a photo made by Brassai, without success. It belongs, it seems, to a collection within the New York Museum of Modern Art - I searched their web site, only it was vainly. That's it!

The photo was showing a chair, and that was the title, too, THIS IS A CHAIR - NOTHING MORE. That reminds me of Magritte, Ceci n'est pas une pipe, with its replica, Ceci n'est pas un Magritte, of Jos de Mey, but it reminds me more of Andre Kertesz and his fork - perhaps the photo of Brassai is not as minimalist as the one of Kertesz (I said, The Fork of Kertesz is minimalism at its best) - but it has the same ellegance, and a subtle nostalgia.

It is an iron chair, of old shape. It stays in a garden, because that's its use, to stay in a garden, and its shadow reflects on the ground. It's summer, perhaps August, only summer is passing, nobody's there, and fall will come soon. Fall, with the verses of Arghezi.

Has Arghezi two mysterious verses, I leave them in Romanian here, to keep their musicality:

Niciodata toamna nu fu mai frumoasa
Sufletului nostru doritor de moarte

It's July 16th, middle of summer. Fall will come soon...

The shadow of the chair of Brassai would have been a subtle paraphrase of the verses of Guillevic (A shadow was the most ancient of the regulars...)

I did't find the photo of Brassai on the web, but probably the Rendesvous a Paris, made by Tarras shares the same ellegant nostalgia.

After some days: here is the photo of Brassai