Happy Birthday, Gustav Klimt

Klimt, The Sunflower, 1908

Gustav Klimt was born on this day in 1862.

Happy Birthday, Klimt

Klimt, Forester’s House in Weissenbach II (Garden), 1914

Gustav Klimt was born on this day in 1862.

Happy Birthday, Klimt

Klimt, Apple Tree I, 1912

Gustav Klimt was born on this day in 1862.

Away.

Klimt, Birkenwald, 1903

BIRCHES

When I see birches bend to left and right

Across the lines of straighter darker trees,

I like to think some boy’s been swinging them.

But swinging doesn’t bend them down to stay

As ice-storms do. Often you must have seen them

Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning

After a rain. They click upon themselves

As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored

As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.

Soon the sun’s warmth makes them shed crystal shells

Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust—

Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away

You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.

They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,

And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed

So low for long, they never right themselves:

You may see their trunks arching in the woods

Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground

Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair

Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.

But I was going to say when Truth broke in

With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm

I should prefer to have some boy bend them

As he went out and in to fetch the cows—

Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,

Whose only play was what he found himself,

Summer or winter, and could play alone.

One by one he subdued his father's trees

By riding them down over and over again

Until he took the stiffness out of them,

And not one but hung limp, not one was left

For him to conquer. He learned all there was

To learn about not launching out too soon

And so not carrying the tree away

Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise

To the top branches, climbing carefully

With the same pains you use to fill a cup

Up to the brim, and even above the brim.

Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,

Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.

So was I once myself a swinger of birches.

And so I dream of going back to be.

It’s when I’m weary of considerations,

And life is too much like a pathless wood

Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs

Broken across it, and one eye is weeping

From a twig’s having lashed across it open.

I'd like to get away from earth awhile

And then come back to it and begin over.

May no fate willfully misunderstand me

And half grant what I wish and snatch me away

Not to return. Earth’s the right place for love:

I don’t know where it's likely to go better.

I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree,

And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk

Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,

But dipped its top and set me down again.

That would be good both going and coming back.

One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

Robert Frost

Singing.

Klimt, Tranquil Pond (Egelsee near Golling, Salzburg), 1899

These, I, singing in spring, collect for lovers,

(For who but I should understand lovers, and all their sorrow and joy?

And who but I should be the poet of comrades?)

Collecting, I traverse the garden, the world—but soon I pass the gates,

Now along the pond-side—now wading in a little, fearing not the wet,

Now by the post-and-rail fences, where the old stones thrown there, pick’d from the fields, have accumulated,

(Wild-flowers and vines and weeds come up through the stones, and partly cover them—Beyond these I pass,)

Far, far in the forest, before I think where I go,

Solitary, smelling the earthy smell, stopping now and then in the silence,

Alone I had thought—yet soon a troop gathers around me,

Some walk by my side, and some behind, and some embrace my arms or neck,

They, the spirits of dear friends, dead or alive—thicker they come, a great crowd, and I in the middle,

Collecting, dispensing, singing in spring, there I wander with them,

Plucking something for tokens—tossing toward whoever is near me;

Here! lilac, with a branch of pine,

Here, out of my pocket, some moss which I pull’d off a live-oak in Florida, as it hung trailing down,

Here, some pinks and laurel leaves, and a handful of sage,

And here what I now draw from the water, wading in the pondside,

(O here I last saw him that tenderly loves me—and returns again, never to separate from me,

And this, O this shall henceforth be the token of comrades—this Calamus-root shall,

Interchange it, youths, with each other! Let none render it back!)

And twigs of maple, and a bunch of wild orange, and chestnut,

And stems of currants, and plum-blows, and the aromatic cedar:

These, I, compass’d around by a thick cloud of spirits,

Wandering, point to, or touch as I pass, or throw them loosely from me,

Indicating to each one what he shall have—giving something to each;

But what I drew from the water by the pond-side, that I reserve,

I will give of it—but only to them that love, as I myself am capable of loving.

Walt Whitman

Attentively.

Klimt, Landscape with Birch, 1903

Whoever wants to know something about me – as an artist which alone is significant – they should look attentively at my pictures and there seek to recognize what I am and what I want. 

Gustav Klimt

Benediction.

Klimt, Birch Forest 1, 1902

IN OCTOBER

Now comes the sunset of the verdant year,

Chemic fires, still and slow,

Burn in the leaves, till trees and groves appear

Dipped in the sunset's glow.

Through many-stained windows of the wood

The day sends down its beams,

Till all the acorn-punctured solitude

Of sunshine softly dreams.

I take my way where sentry cedars stand

Along the bushy lane,

And whitethroats stir and call on every hand,

Or lift their wavering strain;

The hazel-bush holds up its crinkled gold

And scents the loit'ring breeze —

A nuptial wreath amid its leafage old

That laughs at frost's decrees.

A purple bloom is creeping o'er the ash —

Dull wine against the day,

While dusky cedars wear a crimson sash

Of woodbine's kindled spray.

I see the stolid oak tree's smould'ring fire

Sullen against emerald rye;

And yonder sugar maple's wild desire

To match the sunset sky.

On hedge and tree the bittersweet has hung

Its fruit that looks a flower;

While alder spray with coral berries strung

Is part of autumn's dower.

The plaintive calls of bluebirds fill the air,

Wand'ring voices in the morn;

The ruby kinglet, flitting here and there,

Winds again his elfin horn.

Now Downy shyly drills his winter cell,

His white chips strew the ground;

While squirrels bark from hill or acorned dell—

A true autumnal sound.

I hear the feathered thunder of the grouse

Soft rolling through the wood,

Or pause to note where hurrying mole or mouse

Just stirs the solitude.

Anon the furtive flock-call of the quail

Comes up from weedy fields;

Afar the mellow thud of lonely flail

Its homely music yields.

Behold the orchards piled with painted spheres

New plucked from bending trees;

And bronzèd huskers tossing golden ears

In genial sun and breeze.

Once more the tranquil days brood o'er the hills,

And soothe earth's toiling breast;

A benediction all the landscape fills

That breathes of peace and rest.

John Burroughs

Happy Birthday, Klimt

Gustav Klimt was born on this date in 1862.

Klimt, Reclining Woman, Seen from Behind, 1917

Yeah.

Thank you, Freiherr von Naarenburg.

Spell.

Klimt, Fir Forest, 1901

To walk in the woods, mindful only of the physical extent of it, is to go perhaps as owner, or as knower, confident of one’s own history and one’s own importance. But to go there, mindful as well of its temporal extent, of the age of it, and of all that led up to the present life of it, and of all that may follow it, is to feel oneself a flea in the pelt of a great living thing, the discrepancy between its life and one’s own so great that it cannot be imagined. One has come into the presence of mystery. After all the trouble one has taken to be a modern man, one has come back under the spell of a primitive awe, wordless and humble.

Wendell Berry

Exceptionally.

Klimt, Birchenwald, 1903

I have often wondered whether especially those days when we are forced to remain idle are not precisely the days spend in the most profound activity. Whether our actions themselves, even if they do not take place until later, are nothing more than the last reverberations of a vast movement that occurs within us during idle days.

In any case, it is very important to be idle with confidence, with devotion, possibly even with joy. The days when even our hands do not stir are so exceptionally quiet that it is hardly possible to raise them without hearing a whole lot.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Eternity.

Klimt, Birch in Forest, 1903

LIFE, DEATH, and ETERNITY

A shadow moving by one's side,
That would a substance seem;
That is, yet is not - though descried -
Like skies beneath the stream;
A tree that's ever in the bloom,
Whose fruit is never rife;
A wish for joys that never come,
Such are the hope of Life.

A dark, inevitable night,
A blank that will remain;
A waiting for the morning light,
Where waiting is in vain;
A gulph, where pathway never led
To show the depth beneath;
A thing we know not, yet we dread,
That dreaded thing is Death.

The vaulted void of purple sky
That everywhere extends,
That stretches from the dazzled eye,
In space that never ends;
A morning whose uprisen sun
No setting e'er shall see;
A day that comes without a noon,
Such is Eternity. 

John Clare

Farmhouse.

Klimt, Farmhouse in Upper Austria, 1912