Fascinating and richly contrapuntal poem, Mark -- thanks for posting it.
But do you have any actual factual (oh dear!) justification for that line
'while Brahms and Clara rolled in the next room'? Everything I've read about
them reckoned that so far as could be known they never actually consummated
any sort of love together. He certainly later proposed to one of her
daughters, Julie I think it was, and she turned him down.
best joanna
----- Original Message -----
From: "Mark Weiss" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, May 20, 2005 4:24 PM
Subject: Brahms poem
>A propos, I poem I wrote it must be 30 years ago, very Late Romantic, never
> published. It takes an effort to remember the person who wrote it. As
> usual, warning re: format distortions.
>
>
>
> BRAHMS AND MARVELL
>
> Brahms, we know, haunted bordellos, loved sopranos
> and lady pianists, bathed
> in post-coital sadness. Ich grolle nicht
> wrote Schumann raving
> while Brahms and Clara rolled in the next room. Marvell,
> the scholars tell us, on the other hand,
> died virginal his women
> figures of speech. His verses
> argue otherwise
> his mourning nymph not marble
> but flesh
> quivering in the shock of loss a sexual loss. Or portraying his king as
> rapist. Always
> the awareness of pressure in his own groin
> the garden itself
> an orgy.
> Two paradises 'twere in one
> To live in paradise alone,
> the passionate man's renunciation of passion for his self's sake. Brahms
> is more explicit about his motives he writes to Clara
> he shall never marry, his art requires it. Love
> so comforting you lose yourself in it the self-absorbtion that the
> act requires constantly
> intruded upon by domestic necessity. Society
> is all but rude
> To this delicious solitude.
> I keep hoping
> for my own solution that
> the love of life and its passing
> can live together in my body with longing,
> and with beauty,
> who enters alone
> like the moist girl from behind the curtains of my mind's castle the
> constant
> adulteress. I have seen her,
> her feet approaching over the bare stones
> hidden within me. How
> to conduct my life
> with such a secret?
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