Category Archives: The Arts

Poetry 8

Poetry, Practice, The Arts, ,

800px-MoonClouds

Nocturne upon St. Lucy’s Day

‘Tis the year’s midnight, and it is the day’s,
Lucy’s, who scarce seven hours herself unmasks ;
The sun is spent, and now his flasks
Send forth light squibs, no constant rays ;
The world’s whole sap is sunk ;
The general balm th’ hydroptic earth hath drunk,
Whither, as to the bed’s-feet, life is shrunk,
Dead and interr’d ; yet all these seem to laugh,
Compared with me, who am their epitaph.

Study me then, you who shall lovers be
At the next world, that is, at the next spring ;
For I am every dead thing,
In whom Love wrought new alchemy.
For his art did express
A quintessence even from nothingness,
From dull privations, and lean emptiness ;
He ruin’d me, and I am re-begot
Of absence, darkness, death—things which are not.

All others, from all things, draw all that’s good,
Life, soul, form, spirit, whence they being have ;
I, by Love’s limbec, am the grave
Of all, that’s nothing. Oft a flood
Have we two wept, and so
Drown’d the whole world, us two ; oft did we grow,
To be two chaoses, when we did show
Care to aught else ; and often absences
Withdrew our souls, and made us carcasses.

But I am by her death—which word wrongs her—
Of the first nothing the elixir grown ;
Were I a man, that I were one
I needs must know ; I should prefer,
If I were any beast,
Some ends, some means ; yea plants, yea stones detest,
And love ; all, all some properties invest.
If I an ordinary nothing were,
As shadow, a light, and body must be here.

But I am none ; nor will my sun renew.
You lovers, for whose sake the lesser sun
At this time to the Goat is run
To fetch new lust, and give it you,
Enjoy your summer all,
Since she enjoys her long night’s festival.
Let me prepare towards her, and let me call
This hour her vigil, and her eve, since this
Both the year’s and the day’s deep midnight is.

John Donne

If there is a poem that you would like to suggest for this section, send it to me at barry@middlewaysociety.org and say in what way you feel it is meaningful to you.

Image courtesy of Wikipedia commons

Maternity. Marc Chagall. 1887-1985.

Practice, The Arts, ,

Since Christmas is approaching, I have chosen a mother and child portrayal to discuss, Maternity, by Marc Chagall.
Marc Chagall was born as Moishe Segal in a Russian village called Vitebsk in Belarus. His parents were poor Hasidic Jews and Chagall himself remained a devout Jew throughout his long life.
Since Jesus was born of Jewish parents, I think this work may be relevant and an interesting change from the madonna and child works to be found in the Christian tradition. Chagall was encouraged by his mother to follow his dream to become an artist. After becoming engaged to a local girl called Bella, he set off to live in Paris, which was the hub of artistic activity at that time, in 1914 he returned to his native village to marry Bella and found himself stuck there during WW1. I think it was in 1923 he returned with Bella to Paris, there he painted memories of his village, dreams and experiences, in which proportion and gravity played a very minor role. He created colourful patterns, where his interior world is just as real as everyday reality. In this lithograph, we see a picture full of nostalgia and joy, it is a loving scene of mother and child, set outside a pink house with an unknown man in the background, a strange purple and green tree and a donkey on which sits a bird, by coincidence donkeys are often portrayed in nativity scenes. He used bright, warm colours to express emotion and feeling. Chagall was a ‘one off ‘ artist, a painter-poet, a Slav expressionist, whose work was to influence many Surrealist artists, although Chagall would resist analysing his work. He gathered together colour, line, shape and texture and by doing this he brings about balance, ‘he brought back the forgotten dimension of metaphor into French formalism.’Maternity by Marc Chagall.

The MWS Podcast: Episode 7, Stephen Batchelor

Podcast, Practice, The Arts, , , , , ,

In this episode, the secular Buddhist author Stephen Batchelor talks about his interest in photography and collage, how he sees art as an integrative practice and how he feels it relates to the Middle Way.

The Youtube version of the talk is illustrated with pictures from Stephen’s ‘Imperfect Mirrors’ series.


MWS Podcast 7: Stephen Batchelor as audio only:
Download audio: MWS_Podcast_7_Stephen Batchelor

Click here to view other podcasts

Middle Way Philosophy 3: The Integration of Meaning now out

Middle Way Philosophy, News, The Arts,

The third volume of my Middle Way Philosophy series, The Integration of Meaning, is now out in paperback.Middle Way Philosophy 3

The first part of this book offers a detailed explanation of embodied meaning, drawing on the work of George Lakoff and Mark Johnson. It also explains the drawbacks of the traditional way of understanding meaning as a link between language and reality – representationalism – and how this has contributed to unhelpful metaphysical beliefs.

The remainder of the book is concerned with the integration of meaning, explaining how meaning relates to other sorts of integration, how working with archetypes can help integration, and making a survey of different sorts of practices, including the arts, that can support integration of meaning.

You can see more details and buy the book from this Lulu page. It will eventually also be available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble etc., but not for a few weeks yet.

Poetry 6

Poetry, Practice, The Arts, ,

The Wild Swans at Coole

The trees are in their autumn beauty,
The woodland paths are dry,
Under the October twilight the water
Mirrors a still sky;
Upon the brimming water among the stones
Are nine and fifty swans.

The nineteenth Autumn has come upon me
Since I first made my count;
I saw, before I had well finished,
All suddenly mount
And scatter wheeling in great broken rings
Upon their clamorous wings.

I have looked upon those brilliant creatures,
And now my heart is sore.
All’s changed since I, hearing at twilight,
The first time on this shore,
The bell-beat of their wings above my head,
Trod with a lighter tread.

Unwearied still, lover by lover,
They paddle in the cold,
Companionable streams or climb the air;
Their hearts have not grown old;
Passion or conquest, wander where they will,
Attend upon them still.

But now they drift on the still water
Mysterious, beautiful;
Among what rushes will they build,
By what lake’s edge or pool
Delight men’s eyes, when I awake some day
To find they have flown away?

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939)

If there is a poem that you would like to suggest for this section, send it to me at barry@middlewaysociety.org and say in what way you feel it is meaningful to you.

Image courtesy of Wikipedia commons