Liszt: Années de pèlerinage. Deuxième année: Italie

Beyond its religious connotation, there is more general meaning in the word pilgrimage. It is a journey towards your sources, your identity. Your roots, individual and collective - family, ethnicity, country, faith, culture, civilization. An attempt to understand where you come from, who you are, what is your purpose. Looking for your sources, finding them, meditating, experimenting, living them again.

You can make the journey in your young years, or you can make it later in life. At any age, after you made it, you are no more the same. For any age, it's an apprenticeship, a rite of passage. Think at Byron's poem: you start the journey a Childe, you end it a Knight. It remains in you, and later you will come again to it, in your memory this time, meditating, filtering, enriching its treasure. The journey can take place physically, it can be also imaginary. The essential is to make it in total openness, to accept the magic, to live the awe.

For Liszt, the pilgrimage was developed in three stages. It was firstly the journey to Switzerland, where, as he  put it later, a real rapport, an inexplicable but undeniable communication was established with the phenomena of nature and their attendant sights. It was followed by the journey to Italy, in search of his European cultural roots. A search that was developed twofold. An exploration of the universe of Renaissance: visual arts and literature, having Raphael, Michelangelo, Petrarque and Dante as guides; and an exploration of the Italian musical world. I would speak about the third stage of Listzt's pilgrimage later, it deserves a separate discussion.

These stages of pilgrimage were later sublimated by Liszt in music: the three piano suites Années de pèlerinage, a remembrance of his journeys, meditating them again, exploring all their potentialities, living them again. Like in a religious experience, it is not about repetition: the time disappears, you are again there, in that moment, past becomes present, the moment is eternal.

And we, listeners of Liszt's music, are called to make our own journey: into the world of sounds, and through it toward the paradigms of Renaissance, and ultimately toward the simple and great paradigms of Universe. Goethe's Wilhelm Meister comes to mind: meditating the masterworks is also a rite of passage.

Raphael: The Marriage of the Virgin (Spozalizio)
1504
oil on roundheaded panel
Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Raffaello_-_Spozalizio_-_Web_Gallery_of_Art.jpg)
no copyright infringement intended

Liszt: Années de pèlerinage. Deuxième année: Italie
(Years of Pilgrimage. Second Year: Italy)
Part 1: Sposalizio, Lazar Berman, piano
(video by FranzLisztFerentz)

Michelangelo: Il Pensieroso, 1531
(the tomb of Lorenzo de' Medici in the Medici Chapel)
(http://architecturalwatercolors.blogspot.com/2011/08/noli-me-tangere-rebuilding.html)
no copyright infringement intended

Grato m’è il sonno, e più l’esser di sasso.

Mentre che il danno e la vergogna dura.

Non veder, non sentir m’è gran ventura

Però non mi destar, deh’—parla basso!

[Sleep, nay, being made of rock,

makes me happy whilst harm and shame endure.

It is a great adventure neither to see nor to hear.

However, disturb me not, pray—lower your voice!]

(http://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/al.asp?al=CDA67107)

Quand Michel-Ange veut exprimer la méditation, la mélancolie, et nous en offrir les caractères universels et dominants, il est obligé de modérer le geste, d’atténuer le mouvement, de peur de représenter non plus le  Penseroso, mais un certain homme et une certaine femme, de restreindre la portée de son œuvre en la particularisant.
[When Michelangelo wants to express the meditation, melancholy, and offer us the universal characters and dominant, he was forced to moderate the gesture, to mitigate the movement for fear nor represent the Penseroso, but a certain man and a certain woman, to restrict the scope of its work in the particularisant.]

Revue des Deux Mondes, XLVII-e Année, Troisième Période, Tome XXI, 1-er Mai 1877, pages 309, 310
Paris, Impr. J. Claye,  A. Quantin et Cie, rue Saint Benoît
(http://books.google.com/books?id=Fn0IAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA309&lpg=PA309&dq=michel+ange+il+penseroso&source=bl&ots=jpus6u61nA&sig=wddf5Fy5R8LUxHFFEFnH6H5kJtI&hl=en&sa=X&ei=7KksUMbnI4qIygGM6IBA&ved=0CFcQ6AEwCA#v=onepage&q=michel%20ange%20il%20penseroso&f=false)

Liszt: Années de pèlerinage. Deuxième année: Italie
(Years of Pilgrimage. Second Year: Italy)
Part 2: Il pensieroso, Wilhelm Kempff, piano
(video by ClassicalRecords)

image from Opera nova amorosa, vol. 1
Strambotti, sonetti, capitoli, epistole et una disperata
Author: Nocturno Napolitano
no copyright infringement intended

Liszt: Années de pèlerinage. Deuxième année: Italie
(Years of Pilgrimage. Second Year: Italy)
Part 3: Canzonetta del Salvator Rosa, Wilhelm Kempff, piano
(this Canzonetta, Vado ben spesso cangiando loco, was in fact written by Giovanni Battista Bononcini, and not by Rosa)
(video by ClassicalRecords)

Francesco Petrarca, Canzoniere e Trionfi, sec. XV (1480-1500 ca), Ms. 143, cc. 131v-132r
Istituzione Biblioteca Classense
no copyright infringement intended

Liszt: Années de pèlerinage. Deuxième année: Italie
(Years of Pilgrimage. Second Year: Italy)
Part 4: Sonetto 47 del Petrarca, Wilhelm Kempff, piano
(video by ClassicalRecords)

Laura e Petrarca, miniatura dal Canzoniere
(http://areeweb.polito.it/didattica/polymath/htmlS/Interventi/Articoli/Petrarca/Petrarca.html)
no copyright infringement intended

Liszt: Années de pèlerinage. Deuxième année: Italie
(Years of Pilgrimage. Second Year: Italy)
Part 5: Sonetto 104 del Petrarca, Vladimir Horowitz, piano
(video by viennapianoplayer94)

(http://www.misinta.it/biblioteca-digitale-misinta-2/1400-2/1470-petrarca-canzoniere-e-trionfi-miniato/)
no copyright infringement intended

Liszt: Années de pèlerinage. Deuxième année: Italie
(Years of Pilgrimage. Second Year: Italy)
Part 6: Sonetto 123 del Petrarca, Wilhelm Kempff, piano
(video by ClassicalRecords)

Gustave Dorè: illustration for Dante's Inferno, Canto 29
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Inferno_Canto_29,_Gustave_Dor%C3%A8.jpg)
no copyright infringement intended

Liszt: Années de pèlerinage. Deuxième année: Italie
(Years of Pilgrimage. Second Year: Italy)
Part 7: Après une lecture de Dante: Fantasia Quasi Sonata, Libor Nováček, piano
(video by NovacekPianist)

Venetian Fruitseller, Victorian print from 1874
(http://notesfromapianist.wordpress.com/2011/03/22/canzonetta-del-salvator-rosa-or-bononcini/)
no copyright infringement intended

Liszt: Années de pèlerinage. Deuxième année: Italie
(Years of Pilgrimage. Second Year: Italy)
Venezia e Napoli, Part 1: Gondoliera, Wilhelm Kempff, piano
(based on the song La biondina in gondoletta by Giovanni Battista Peruchinni)
(video by ClassicalRecords)

Pulcinella
(http://testispartiti.fotoblog.it/archive/2010/05/22/canzoni-napoletane-s.html)
no copyright infringement intended

Liszt: Années de pèlerinage. Deuxième année: Italie
(Years of Pilgrimage. Second Year: Italy)
Venezia e Napoli, Part 2: Canzone, Jorge Bolet, piano
(based on the gondolier's song Nessun maggior dolore from Rossini's Otello)
(video by xper2xper)

Tarantella
(http://www.napolisotterranea.org/lang/de/corsi_musica_napoletana390c.html)
no copyright infringement intended

Liszt: Années de pèlerinage. Deuxième année: Italie
(Years of Pilgrimage. Second Year: Italy)
Venezia e Napoli, Part 3: Tarantella, Igor Roma, piano
(uses themes by Guillaume-Louis Cottrau)
(video by ZioJafar)

(Liszt)

(Raphael)

(Michelangelo)

(the Bononcini's)

(Salvator Rosa)

(Petrarca)

(Dante)

Liszt: Années de pèlerinage. Première année: Suisse

image of Wilhelm Tell's Chapel
(http://notesfromapianist.wordpress.com/2011/01/20/to-franz-liszt-letter-from-a-traveller/)
no copyright infringement intended

Having recently traveled to many new countries, through different settings and places consecrated by history and poetry; having felt that the phenomena of nature and their attendant sights did not pass before my eyes as pointless images but stirred deep emotions in my soul, and that between us a vague but immediate relationship had established itself, an undefined but real rapport, an inexplicable but undeniable communication, I have tried to portray in music a few of my strongest sensations and most lively impressions.

(musicanth)

These words belong to Liszt: journeys viewed as pilgrimage (which is formative experience, apprenticeship), later meditated in music, in his Years of Pilgrimage, the way Goethe and Byron were meditating their formative experiences in grandiose constructions of words, in Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, and in Childe Harold's Pilgrimage.

François Roffiaen - Le Lac Wallenstadt, 1865
The shores of the lake of Wallenstadt kept us for a long time. Franz wrote there for me a melancholy harmony, imitative of the sigh of the waves and the cadence of oars, which I have never been able to hear without weeping… (Daniel Stern)
(notes of a pianist)
no copyright infringement intended

Here is the first suite of Liszt's Years of Pilgrimage, his Première année: Suisse,  published in 1855. Its parts come with literary captions suggesting equivalences between temples of music and temples of words:

• [min 0:07 on video] The Chapel of William Tell (All for one - one for all)
• [min 6:17 on video] At Lake Wallenstadt (Thy contrasted lake / With the wild world I dwell in is a thing / Which warns me, with its stillness, to forsake / Earth's troubled waters for a purer spring - Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage)
• [min 9:19 on video] Pastorale
• [min 11:07 on video] Beside a Spring (In the whispering coolness begins young nature's play - Schiller)
• [min 15:08 on video] Storm (But where of ye, O tempests! is the goal? / Are ye like those within the human breast? / Or do ye find, at length, like eagles, some high nest? - Childe Harold's Pilgrimage)
• [min 19:34 on video] Obermann's Valley (Could I embody and unbosom now / That which is most within me,--could I wreak / My thoughts upon expression, and thus throw / Soul--heart--mind--passions--feelings--strong or weak-- / All that I would have sought, and all I seek, / Bear, know, feel--and yet breathe--into one word, / And that one word were Lightning, I would speak; / But as it is, I live and die unheard, / With a most voiceless thought, sheathing it as a sword. - from Childe Harold's Pilgrimage; )
• [min 32:51 on video] Eclogue (The morn is up again, the dewy morn, / With breath all incense, and with cheek all bloom, / Laughing the clouds away with playful scorn, / And living as if earth contained no tomb! -  Childe Harold's Pilgrimage)
• [min 36:44 on video] Homesickness
• [min 42:48 on video] The Bells of Geneva: Nocturne (I live not in myself, but I become / Portion of that around me -  also from Childe Harold's Pilgrimage)

Liszt: Années de pèlerinage. Première année: Suisse
(Years of Pilgrimage. First Year: Switzerland)
Pianist André Laplante
(video by musicanth)

Suzanne Howard - Obermann's Valley
(Saatchi Online)
no copyright infringement intended

(Liszt)

Liszt: Hungarian Rhapsody No.2 - Orchestral Version

Composed in 1847 and dedicated to Count László Teleki (a Hungarian writer and statesman), Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 was first published as a piano solo in 1851. Its immediate success and popularity on the concert stage soon led to an orchestrated version. The composer arranged also a piano duet version in 1874.

(wiki)

Liszt: Hungarian Rhapsody No.2
orchestral version, with Herbert von Karajan
(video by USAFAFRet11)

Karajan was born in Saltzburg as Herbert Ritter von Karajan. His great-great-grandfather, Geórgios Joánnes Karajánnis (Γεώργιος Ιωάννης Καραγιάννης), had been born in Kozani, a Macedonian city, leaving for Vienna in 1767. He and his brother participated in the establishment of Saxony's cloth industry, and both were ennobled for their services by Frederick Augustus III on 1 June 1792, thus the prefix von to the family name.

(hvmikelo)

(Liszt)

Liebestod from Wagner to Liszt

(http://scriabin.com/etude/1910/04/some-familiar-teaching-pieces-by-franz-liszt.html)
no copyright infringement intended

The picture above shows Franz Liszt in the home of his son-in-law, Richard Wagner. Cosima Wagner, Liszt’s daughter, sits at the left of the picture with her arm around her son, Siegfried Wagner. On the wall hangs a portrait of King Ludwig, the fanatical Royal Patron of Wagner. It is said that Wagner frequently took his compositions to his greatest friend, Liszt, in order to hear how they sounded, since the great operatic composer played very indifferently.

(http://scriabin.com/etude/1910/04/some-familiar-teaching-pieces-by-franz-liszt.html)

Liszt: Liebestod
Jorge Luis Prats at the Miami International Piano Festival
(video by vaimusic)

(It's Time for Wagner)

(Liszt)

Beyond B A C H - the Answer of Liszt

Josef Danhauser - Eine Matinée bei Liszt, 1840
(Liszt, am Flügel phantasierend)
Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin
source: Bridgeman Art Library
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Liszt_at_the_Piano.JPG)

Liszt is fantasizing at the piano, surrounded by the whole artistic elite of his time (the whole event was imagined, of course, by the author of the painting): Dumas-père, George Sand, and Daniel Stern are seated; Berlioz (or maybe Victor Hugo), Niccolò Paganini, and Gioachino Rossini are standing; Byron observes the gathering from a painting hanged on the wall; the statue of Joan of Arc is on the far left; a bust of Beethoven is on the piano; it's made by Anton Dietrich; and the piano itself is made by Conrad Graf.

A great gathering, no doubt about it. Could you imagine Bach among them? Let's re-phrase this question: was there a Romanticist empathy for the Baroque? Generally not, and it seems to me that the passion for the architecture of Baroque music came back in the twentieth century: Schoenberg, Webern, and all others ejusdem farinae were building a totally new world, hence their keen interest for the basic structures (while Romanticists were rebels living still in a well-established universe).

All this is true, while the case of Bach is different. Maybe because his genius has transcended epochs. And it was the Romanticist period that discovered Bachian transcendence. During the epoch of the great Classics he was considered sometimes a bit too old for their taste. It was Mendelssohn who made obvious his perpetual importance.

What have Liszt seen beyond the B A C H bar, the last bar of Bach's last work, the Unfinished Fugue?

no copyright infringement intended
(http://www.flagmusic.com/work.php?r=Prelude_and_Fugue_on_BACH)

The Fantasy and Fugue on the Theme B A C H is the answer brought by Liszt: a dialog between Baroque and Romanticism; an exploration of Romanticist potentialities within a Baroque work; a Romanticist journey throughout the Baroque realm.

Liszt: Fantasia und Fuge über das Thema B A C H
Rafael Ferreyra plays on a Mutin Cavaillé Coll organ
at Basílica del Santísimo Sacramento, Buenos Aires
(video by stylus fantasticus)

(The B A C H motif)

(Liszt)

Liszt: Liebesträume

The apartment of Liszt in Budapest
source: Tamcgath
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:FranzLisztPiano.jpg)

Liszt composed three piano works, calling each one Liebesträume (Dreams of Love). The most popular remained the third. It was inspired by a poem of Ferdinand Freiligrath. It is about unconditional love and the tragedy of love loss:

O lieb, so lang du lieben kannst!
O lieb, so lang du lieben magst!
Die Stunde kommt, die Stunde kommt,
wo du an Gräbern stehst und klagst !

Und sorge, daß dein Herze glüht
Und Liebe hegt und Liebe trägt,
So lang ihm noch ein ander Herz
In Liebe warm entgegenschlägt!

Und wer dir seine Brust erschließt,
O tu ihm, was du kannst, zulieb!
Und mach ihm jede Stunde froh,
Und mach ihm keine Stunde trüb!

Und hüte deine Zunge wohl,
Bald ist ein böses Wort gesagt!
O Gott, es war nicht bös gemeint -
Der Andre aber geht und klagt.

O lieb, so lang du lieben kannst!
O lieb, so lang du lieben magst!
Die Stunde kommt, die Stunde kommt,
Wo du an Gräbern stehst und klagst!

Dann kniest du nieder an der Gruft,
Und birgst die Augen, trüb und naß
- sie sehn den Andern nimmermehr -
In's lange, feuchte Kirchhofsgras.

Und sprichst: O schau auf mich herab
Der hier an deinem Grabe weint!
Vergib, daß ich gekränkt dich hab!
O Gott, es war nicht bös gemeint!

Er aber sieht und hört dich nicht,
Kommt nicht, daß du ihn froh umfängst;
Der Mund, der oft dich küßte, spricht
Nie wieder: ich vergab dir längst!

Er that's, vergab dir lange schon,
Doch manche heiße Träne fiel
Um dich und um dein herbes Wort -
Doch still - er ruht, er ist am Ziel!

O lieb, so lang du lieben kannst!
O lieb, so lang du lieben magst!
Die Stunde kommt, die Stunde kommt,
wo du an Gräbern stehst und klagst!

(http://www.jhelbach.de/freiligr/zwisch.htm#O%20lieb)

(video by BPanther)

• Petrarca CXXXIV
• Baudelaire, Le Thyrse
• The Books of Borges
• Beyond B A C H - the Answer of Liszt
• Liebestod from Wagner to Liszt
• Hungarian Rhapsody No.2 - Orchestral Version 
• Années de pèlerinage. Première année: Suisse 
• Liszt: Années de pèlerinage. Deuxième année: Italie 

(Old Masters)

Petrarca CXXXIV

illustration published in Amori da Lontano - Posta del Cuore
(http://postadelcuore.myblog.it/archive/2008/02/28/erstr6.html)

Pace non trovo e non ho da far guerra
e temo, e spero; e ardo e sono un ghiaccio;
e volo sopra 'l cielo, e giaccio in terra;
e nulla stringo, e tutto il mondo abbraccio.

Tal m'ha in pregion, che non m'apre nè sera,
nè per suo mi riten nè scioglie il laccio;
e non m'ancide Amore, e non mi sferra,
nè mi vuol vivo, nè mi trae d'impaccio.

Veggio senz'occhi, e non ho lingua, e grido;
e bramo di perire, e chieggio aita;
e ho in odio me stesso, e amo altrui.

Pascomi di dolor, piangendo rido;
egualmente mi spiace morte e vita:
in questo stato son, donna, per voi.

(http://www.cdrc.it/TestiCDRC/PetrarcaCXXXIV.html)

Petrarch's sonnet 134 inspired Liszt (who mentioned the sonnet as 104 - one of the three Petrarchian works on which the Années de pèlerinage - Years of Pilgrimage - were based).

(video by twotea22)

I find no peace, and all my war is done;
I fear and hope; I burn and freeze like ice;
I fly above the wind, yet can I not arise;
And nought I have, and all the world I seize on;

That looseth nor locketh holdeth me in prison
And holdeth me not, yet can I 'scape nowise;
Nor letteth me live nor die at my device,
And yet of death it giveth none occasion.

Withouten eyen, I see; and without tongue I plain;
I desire to perish, and yet I ask health;
I love another, and thus I hate myself;

I feed me in sorrow, and laugh in all my pain;
Likewise displeaseth me both death and life;
And my delight is causer of this strife.

English rendering by Sir Thomas Wyatt
(http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/translation-of-petrarch-s-rima-sonnet-134/)

Laura de Noves
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/48/Francesco_Petrarca01.jpg)

Pierduta mi-este pacea: n-am arme sa ma bat,
Si sper, si ard, si-s gheata, si ma cuprinde frica,
Si-n ceruri zbor si-n tarna zac pururi nemiscat;
La piept strang lumea-ntreaga si n-am la piept nimica.

M-a prins intr-o-nchisoare far' de zavor la poarta;
Nici liber nu ma lasa, nici nu ma-nchide-n ea.
Nu vrea sa ma ucida Amor, nici nu ma iarta,
Nici viu nu ma doreste, nici chinul nu mi-l ia.

N-am ochi si vad, si, fara de limba, strig la cer;
Vreau moartea sa m-ajunga si-ajutoare cer;
Si ma urasc pe mine pe cat mi-i Ea de draga.

Imi place ca ma doare si vesel sunt plangand;
De viata si de moarte sunt dezgustat pe rand...
Din vina ta, Madona, ma chinui viata-ntreaga!

Romanian rendering by Anne-Marie Bejliu

(http://agonia.ro/index.php/poetry/145152/Pierdut%C4%83_mi-este_pacea:_n-am_arme_s%C4%83_m%C4%83_bat)

Sonnet form: (It) abab abab cde cde (En) abba abba dee dee (Ro) abab abab ccd eec

(Petrarca)

(Liszt)

The Books of Borges

(http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/01/02/opinion/20110102_Windows.html?ref=opinion)

The books that Borges has read make a Library of Babel: hundreds and hundreds of books, with their end pages scribbled by him. They are gathered in a room whose window overlooks a garden, narrow and long, bordered by the other houses, a pulmón de manzana.

Fortunate those who can look at the books that Borges has read, to stare at the notes written by his hand! I remember, long time ago, I was visiting Weimar and I entered the house of Liszt. There was a small piano, without chords, only the keyboard: the master had used it for keeping the velocity of his fingers. A mold of his hand was resting on the piano. I looked at it, I looked at the keyboard and I touched it gently. No sound was coming, as there were no chords. I was imagining the fingers of Liszt walking over the keys.

Fortunate those who can look at the window from the room that keeps the books read by Borges: they will see the world outside, as the master has seen it.

You should read the article written by María Kodama, who was the wife of Borges:

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/01/02/opinion/20110102_Windows.html?ref=opinion

(Borges)

(Liszt)

Baudelaire, Le Thyrse

Liszt in 1858

I visited the house of Liszt in Weimar. There is a piano there without strings: only the keyboard, for maintaining the flexibility of fingers. We were four friends in that afternoon: Danut, Adriana, Dorel and me. Danut is no more among us. This post is devoted to him.

A Franz Liszt.

Qu'est-ce qu'un thyrse? Selon le sens moral et poétique, c'est un emblème sacerdotal dans la main des prêtres ou des prêtresses célébrant la divinité dont ils sont les interprètes et les serviteurs. Mais physiquement ce n'est qu'un bâton, un pur bâton, perche à houblon, tuteur de vigne, sec, dur et droit. Autour de ce bâton, dans des méandres capricieux, se jouent et folâtrent des tiges et des fleurs, celles-ci sinueuses et fuyardes, celles-là penchées comme des cloches ou des coupes renversées. Et une gloire étonnante jaillit de cette complexité de lignes et de couleurs, tendres ou éclatantes. Ne dirait-on pas que la ligne courbe et la spirale font leur cour à la ligne droite et dansent autour dans une muette adoration? Ne dirait-on pas que toutes ces corolles délicates, tous ces calices, explosions de senteurs et de couleurs, exécutent un mystique fandango autour du bâton hiératique? Et quel est, cependant, le mortel imprudent qui osera décider si les fleurs et les pampres ont été faits pour le bâton, ou si le bâton n'est que le prétexte pour montrer la beauté des pampres et des fleurs? Le thyrse est la représentation de votre étonnante dualité, maître puissant et vénéré, cher Bacchant de la Beauté mystérieuse et passionnée. Jamais nymphe exaspérée par l'invincible Bacchus ne secoua son thyrse sur les têtes de ses compagnes affolées avec autant d'énergie et de caprice que vous agitez votre génie sur les coeurs de vos frères. - Le bâton, c'est votre volonté, droite, ferme et inébranlable; les fleurs, c'est la promenade de votre fantaisie autour de votre volonté; c'est l'élément féminin exécutant autour du mâle ses prestigieuses pirouettes. Ligne droite et ligne arabesque, intention et expression, roideur de la volonté, sinuosité du verbe, unité du but, variété des moyens, amalgame tout-puissant et indivisible du génie, quel analyste aura le détestable courage de vous diviser et de vous séparer?

Cher Liszt, à travers les brumes, par-delà les fleuves, par-dessus les villes où les pianos chantent votre gloire, où l'imprimerie traduit votre sagesse, en quelque lieu que vous soyez, dans les splendeurs de la ville éternelle ou dans les brumes des pays rêveurs que console Cambrinus, improvisant des chants de délectation ou d'ineffable douleur, ou confiant au papier vos méditations abstruses, chantre de la Volupté et de l'Angoisse éternelles, philosophe, poète et artiste, je vous salue en l'immortalité!

Michèle Battut, Le Thyrse, 1988
(http://www.idburyprints.com)

Beyond the slightly ironic tone (maybe suggestion to the decision of Liszt to enter the sacerdoce), this poem brings witness to the modernity of Baudelaire. The thyrsus, suggesting both male virility and feminine delicacy of shapes: this ambiguity of the poem, this play faking innocence, between male and female, between straight and arabesque, this incertitude is essentially modern.

Here is an English version of the poem:

For Franz Liszt

What is a thyrsus? According to the moral and poetic definition, it is a sacerdotal symbol in the hands of priests or priestesses celebrating the divinity of which they are the interpreters and the servants. But physically it is only a baton, a pure baton, a hop-pole, a vine-stake, dry, hard, and straight. Around this baton, in capricious meanderings, play and frolic vine-stems and flowers, the first sinuous and fugitive, the second bent over like bells or like overturned goblets. And an astonishing glory leaps from that complexity of lines and of colors, whether tender or showy. Might one not say that the curved line and the spiral court the straight line and dance around it in mute adoration? Might one not say that all of these delicate corollas, all of these calyxes, explosions of scent and of color, perform a mystical fandango around the hieratic baton? And yet, who is the foolhardy mortal who would dare to determine whether the flowers and the vine-branches were made for the baton, or if the baton is only the pretext for displaying the beauty of the vine-branches and the flowers? The thyrsus is the representation of your astonishing duality, powerful and venerated master, dear Bacchant of mysterious and passionate Beauty. Never did a nymph inflamed by invincible Bacchus shake her thyrsus over the heads of her maddened companions with as much energy and capriciousness as you agitate your genius over the hearts of your brothers. -- The baton is your will, straight, firm, and unshakeable; the flowers are your fancy promenading around your will; it is the feminine element executing around the male its marvelous pirouettes. Straight line and arabesque line, intention and expression, rigidity of the will, sinuosity of the word, unity of the end, variety of the means, all-powerful and indivisible amalgam of genius, what analyst would have the detestable courage to divide you and to separate you?

Dear Liszt, through the mists, beyond the rivers, over the cities where the pianos sing your glory, where the printer conveys your wisdom, wherever you are, in the splendors of the eternal city or in the mists of the dreamy lands that console Cambrinus, improvising songs of delectation or of ineffable sorrow, or confiding to paper your abstruse meditations, bard of eternal Delight and Anguish, philosopher, poet, and artist, I salute you in immortality!

(Baudelaire)

(Liszt)

Liubov Orlova

Anii copilariei... Holul cinematografului IC Frimu. Era acolo portretul unei actrite sovietice care jucase in comedia lui Grigori Aleksandrov, Toata lumea rade, canta si danseaza. Actrita se numea Liubov Orlova. Am cautat-o pe web si am gasit o biografie fascinanta.

S-a nascut in 1902 in familia printului Orlov, inrudita cu Lev Tolstoi. A avut noroc prima oara ca desi era dintr-o familie princiara nu a fost arestata de bolsevici. A devenit actrita si a jucat in celebrul teatru muzical moscovit Stanislavski si Nemirovici-Dancenko. S-a maritat cu un om politic care a cazut victima uneia din numeroasele epurari staliniste. A avut noroc a doua oara: pe ea nu au arestat-o.

Regizorul de film Grigori Aleksandrov fusese asistentul lui Eisenstein. Se apucase sa faca filme ca regizor principal. Pregatea o comedie (in Romania a rulat sub numele de Toata lumea rade canta si danseaza, titlul original era Baietii veseli). Cauta o partenera pentru Leonid Utiusov (de numele lui uitasem) - a gasit-o pe Liubov Orlova care a avut un succes imens.
Imi amintesc cum incepea genericul filmului. Aparea Charlie Chaplin, apoi Buster Keaton apoi alti cativa actori celebri, urma NU JOACA IN ACEST FILM, apoi IN SCHIMB JOACA LEONID UTIUSOV, LIUBOV ORLOVA ...

Filmul a lansat cateva melodii. De una imi amintesc, cateodata o fredonez, Inima (Serdtze). Leonid Utiusov era in rolul unui cioban confundat cu un celebru dirijor strain. Scena in care el ajungea sa dirijeze Rapsodia Maghiara de Liszt mi-a amintesc - dar e greu de povestit, e un gag de nivel chaplinian. Ciobanul era curtat de o snoaba (ce vreti, era realism socialist), de care el se indragosteste. Evident, cand snoaba afla ca e cioban si nu dirijor, il trimite la plimbare. Noroc ca de el se indragostise si frumoasa Aniuta, slujnicuta snoabei. Asa ca in final, cei doi, ciobanul si slujnicuta, infiinteaza o formatie de muzica usoara si devin celebri. Filmul a fost criticat pentru lipsa de seriozitate revolutionara, dar Gorki l-a sprijinit si a reusit sa il convinga pe Stalin.

Ei bine, slujnicuta era interpretata de catre Liubov Orlova, iar Grigori Aleksandrov s-a indragostit de ea lulea - a divortat si s-a recasatorit cu ea, apoi ea a jucat in toate filmele lui. Uitasem de Volga-Volga. Uitasem de Circul. A jucat si in Intalnire pe Elba.

Stalin a vazut-o si a simpatizat-o (se pare ca numai atat). A facut-o artista emerita, laureata a Premiului Stalin, tot tacamul. Ar fi intrebat-o odata (zice istoria nescrisa), cere-mi o favoare, orice. Ea i-a cerut sa il vada pe primul sot. A fost chemata la NKVD si i s-a comunicat ca primul ei sot este intr-un lagar si ca are voie sa se duca sa il vada. I-a fost totusi frica.

A ramas maritata cu Aleksandrov pana la capat.

A murit de cancer in 1975.

(Russian and Soviet Cinema)

Psalmi - acolo sezum si plansem

By the rivers of Babylon,

there we sat down,

yea, we wept,

(King James Bible)

La apa Vavilonului,

acolo sezum si plansem

(Mitropolitul Dosofteiu, Psaltirea in versuri)

La Belgrad

pe aiasta piatra

sezum si plansem

cum zice cronicarul

Tot neintrebat

la inceput

Tot neintrebat la sfarsit.

(Nichita Stanescu, Belgradul de piatra)

Iarna crengile scriu

Poezii japoneze

Cu penel fumuriu

Pe matasea zapezii

Ca si cum s-ar feri

Sa-nteleg. Ca si cum

In zadar si desi

Plansem toti si sezum

Sub aceiasi copaci

Al aceluiasi lac

Ingeri muti si stangaci

Ma invata sa tac

Ne-ntelese poeme

Picurand din zapada.

Ieri era prea devreme

Azi au fost altadata.

(Ana Blandiana, Penel)

Sezum

cu moartea

si nu

plansem.

(George Bocsa, La apa Vavilonului)

Bach, Arta Fugii, intrerupta brusc: tema B.A.C.H. - si gata. In replica Liszt, Reger, si multi altii, Fantezie si Fuga sau Variatiuni si Fuga, sau Preludiu si Fuga, pe tema B.A.C.H.

Viziune holistica: exista istorie? Sau numai momente unice, care cuprind in ele eternitatea?

Pentru ca Fuga neterminata a lui Bach este in muzica un moment care cuprinde eternitatea.

Sezum si plansem al Mitropolitului Dosofteiu este in limba romana un moment care cuprinde eternitatea.

Arta Fugii - Psaltirea - Arta Rugii.

(Icon and Orthodoxy)