... the stuff of thought

Abstract Expressionism

Fled the Armenian Genocide in 1915

"The stuff of thought is the seed of the artist. Dreams form the bristles of the artist's brush. As the eye functions as the brain's sentry, I communicate my innermost perceptions through the art, my worldview"

Arshile Gorky (1904-48), Armenian-American painter

... a pioneering example of modern Symbolist writing

Rimbaud, aged 17

A Season in Hell

Once, if my memory serves me well, my life was a banquet where every heart revealed itself, where every wine flowed.

One evening I took Beauty in my arms - and I thought her bitter - and I insulted her.

I steeled myself against justice.

I fled. O witches, O misery, O hate, my treasure was left in your care!

I have withered within me all human hope. With the silent leap of a sullen beast, I have downed and strangled every joy.

I have called for executioners; I want to perish chewing on their gun butts. I have called for plagues, to suffocate in sand and blood. Unhappiness has been my god. I have lain down in the mud, and dried myself off in the crime-infested air. I have played the fool to the point of madness.

And springtime brought me the frightful laugh of an idiot.

Now recently, when I found myself ready to croak! I thought to seek the key to the banquet of old, where I might find an appetite again.

That key is Charity. - This idea proves I was dreaming!

"You will stay a hyena, etc...," shouts the demon who once crowned me with such pretty poppies. "Seek death with all your desires, and all selfishness, and all the Seven Deadly Sins."

Ah! I've taken too much of that: - still, dear Satan, don't look so annoyed, I beg you! And while waiting for a few belated cowardices, since you value in a writer all lack of descriptive or didactic flair, I pass you these few foul pages from the diary of a Damned Soul

 

... Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891), French poet

 

 



Rimbaud (seated second to left) in 1872 painting by Henri Fantin-Latour

Doctor Zhivago from the heart





Zhivago means "the living" in Russian

“It’s the disease of our time. I think its causes are of a moral order. A constant, systematic dissembling is required of the vast majority of us. It’s impossible, without its affecting your health, to show yourself day after day contrary to what you feel, to lay yourself out for what you don’t love, to rejoice over what brings you misfortune.… Our soul takes up room in space and sits inside us like the teeth in our mouth. It cannot be endlessly violated with impunity.”


... Boris Pasternak (1890-1960), Russian poet, novelist, and literary translator ... a remark in his acclaimed novel Doctor Zhivago prompted undoubtedly by his own  serious heart attack suffered at 62, in the midst of writing it.