Friday, December 16, 2011

Poets, Prophets, Architects, Sculptors, Composers, Seers, Photographers, Painters, Authors....

From Parabola Magazine:

Saturday, December 17








Ludwig van Beethoven

Ludwig van Beethoven (December 17, 1770 – March 26, 1827) was a German composer and pianist. He is considered to have been the most crucial figure in the transitional period between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western classical music, and remains one of the most famous and influential composers of all time.



Born in Bonn, then the capital of the Electorate of Cologne and a part of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation in present-day Germany, he moved to Vienna in his early twenties and settled there, studying with Joseph Haydn and quickly gaining a reputation as a virtuoso pianist. His hearing began to deteriorate in the late 1790s, yet he continued to compose, conduct, and perform, even after becoming completely deaf.







--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Sunday, December 18









Paul Klee

Paul Klee (December 18, 1879 – June 29, 1940) was born in Münchenbuchsee, Switzerland, and is considered both a Swiss and a German painter. His highly individual style was influenced by movements in art that included expressionism, cubism, and surrealism. He was, as well, a student of orientalism.





Klee was a natural draftsman who experimented with and eventually mastered color theory, and wrote extensively about it; his lectures Writings on Form and Design Theory (Schriften zur Form und Gestaltungslehre), published in English as the Paul Klee Notebooks, are considered so important for modern art that they are compared to the importance that Leonardo da Vinci's A Treatise on Painting had for Renaissance.





He and his colleague, the Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky, both taught at the German Bauhaus school of art, design and architecture. His works reflect his dry humour and his sometimes childlike perspective, his personal moods and beliefs, and his musicality.













--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Wednesday, December 21







Winter solstice

The winter solstice occurs exactly when the Earth's axial tilt is farthest away from the sun at its maximum of 23° 26'. Though the winter solstice lasts only a moment in time, the term is also a turning point to midwinter or the first day of winter to refer to the day on which it occurs. More evident to those in high latitudes, this occurs on the shortest day, and longest night, and the sun's daily maximum position in the sky is the lowest.





The seasonal significance of the winter solstice is in the reversal of the gradual lengthening of nights and shortening of days. Depending on the shift of the calendar, the winter solstice occurs on December 21 or 22 each year in the Northern Hemisphere, and June 20 or 21 in the Southern Hemisphere.



Worldwide, interpretation of the event has varied from culture to culture, but most cultures have held a recognition of rebirth, involving holidays, festivals, gatherings, rituals or other celebrations around that time.







--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Friday, December 23









Robert Bly

Robert Bly (born December 23, 1926) is an American poet, author, activist and leader of the Mythopoetic Men's Movement





"A man and a woman sit near each other, and they do not long

at this moment to be older, or younger, nor born

in any other nation, or time, or place.

They are content to be where they are, talking or not talking.

Their breaths together feed someone whom we do not know.

The man sees the way his fingers move;

he sees her hands close around a book she hands to him.

They obey a third body they have in common.

They have made a promise to love that body.

Age may come, parting may come, death will come.

A man and woman sit near each other;

as they breathe they feed someone we do not know,

someone we know of, whom we have never seen."



— Robert Bly, The Third Body

No comments:

Post a Comment