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Tag: Romanticism

February 15, 2013

“Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini”/”Variations on a theme of Paganini”‏

a friend wrote me, after my most recent instalment
about musical variations, a few very probing
comments

I delight in sharing them

__________________

Richard,

An interesting counterpoint to your comment about variations being an “intellectual” form of composition. This is
only in the best of cases — the cases that have survived to this day.

In the period in which I centred my dissertation studies — the 1820s and 1830s in Paris — the bane of reviewers’
existence was the steady stream of variations for flute, for piano, for oboe, for every conceivable instrument from
every possible performer who wanted to make his mark as a “composer” as well as an instrumentalist. It was,
shall we say, a form of composition “light,” something that minor talents could write if they weren’t capable of
writing a longer form, such as a sonata.

And yet we have impressive sets of variations in the canon today, from composers such as Bach (the Goldbergs),
Haydn (his delicious piano set in F minor), Mozart (Ah vous dirai-je, maman), Beethoven (the epic C minor
variations that you rightly point to), Schumann (Symphonic Etudes), Schubert (last movement of the Trout Quintet),
Brahms (the Haydn & Paganini sets), Liszt (his Totentanz for piano & orchestra), Tschikovsky (Variations on a
Rococco Theme for cello & orchestra), Rachmaninoff (Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini), Dohnanyi (Variations
on a Nursery Rhyme), and Lutoslawski (Paganini Variations for 2 Pianos).

As you can see, the most fertile source of variations has been Paganini’s 24 Caprices, to which Marc Hamelin has
added his own contirbution:

The form has come a long way …

DONALD

___________________

I will gratefully accept implicit acknowledgment,
in his having confirmed me in my assertion, that
variations “in the best of cases” burn bright, are
“rendered transcendental”, timeless, much as my
friend states, “This is only in the best of cases”, he
says, dotting his contention with a peremptory
“only”, and I’m just fine with that, especially in
the light of so many, as he lists, “only{s}”

thanks, Donald

meanwhile the addition of a most recent set
of variations, this one on a theme of Paganini.
played right here at the Chan Centre in
Vancouver by the pianist who composed it,
Marc-André Hamelin, delights and astounds

it is the same theme, incidentally, as in
the wondrous Rachmaninoff composition
for piano and orchestra, essentially a
piano concerto but without the pauses
that would indicate alternate movements,
a unified musical concept therefore is in
order for its name, Rachmaninoff called it
his “Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini“,
though he could’ve easily called it his
“Variations on a Theme of Paganini“,
for being just that, a set of variations

I even called them his “Variations“ for
years before smartening up, though I
don’t remember the exact date

rhapsody is a much more Romantic term,
you’ll consider, and if Rachmaninoff was
anything at all it was ever Romantic, despite
being nearly a century late, the “Rhapsody“
was written in 1934, one of many similar
musical atavisms

his “Variations“ follow the Classical fast,
slow, fast template, in passing, variations 1
to 10 are fast, 11 to 18 slow, positively
melting, in fact, unforgettable, the rest, 19
to 24, again fast, in the very manner of the
concerto, just to confuse you, to push
the limits musically of evidently ultimately
arbitrary notions of form, another
particularly philosophical investigation

Richard

psst: here’s the original theme of Paganini,
his 24th, and last, Caprice

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February 6, 2013

Beethoven: Sonata no. 21 in C major, op. 53 (Waldstein)‏

the “Waldstein” Sonata, no. 21 in C major, opus 53, is
one of the few compositions that Beethoven named
himself, which is to say that he dedicated it to a
friend and patron, Count Ferdinand Ernst Gabriel
von Waldstein, if you can call that naming it

the ones with descriptive titles, the “Moonlight”, the
“Pastorale“, “The Hunt“, for instance, were mostly so
labeled by his publisher for ease of identification in
the growing market place, a more affluent merchant
class eager to take on the refinements of the nobles,
see such an instance of social mobility, however
lampooned, updated and upended, in again the
engaging and not at all unperceptive “The Beverly
Hillbillies“

this means that the suggestive names we’ve come
to associate with his sonatas, “Moonlight”, “Pastorale“,
“The Hunt“, were never conceived as such by
Beethoven, his compositions were ever purely musical
inventions, or more accurately inspirations, prophetic
pronouncements of a much more oracular order,
like Prometheus Beethoven was delivering nothing
short of fire

to match music to specific visual, or even emotive,
cues, incidentally, “Pictures at an Exhibition“,
“The Carnival of the Animals“, for example, came
later, already a nod to Beethoven’s even indirect
propositions

that titles were given to music, rather than the more
clinical and mnemonically difficult numbers, which
is to say, not easy to remember, isn’t very different
from the evolution of popular music in the early
1960′s

the Beatles, you’ll remember, had cuts on albums
that had nothing more than their group name in
the titles, or the title of one of the album’s cuts,
“Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” came
along to change all that, we saw the birth of the
concept album, where the whole extended affair
becomes a musical metaphysics, this is no
different from the move from the music of Mozart
to that of the more expansive Beethoven, music
is no longer a ditty but an extended technical
and philosophical text, listen to Pink Floyd take
on this mantle superbly in the Seventies, the only
other body since ever to effectively challenge
Beethoven in that especially rarefied field, with
the probable exception of the sublimely expressive
Schubert perhaps, who died much too young for us
to tell, for him to have decisively dialectically proven
himself beside these erudite peers, all having,
however, found ways to have us touch beyond the
sky, the very infinite, and into the no less infinite
confines of our more private and secret selves

what they state is that creation itself, absent any
other meaning, remains potent, perhaps even
ultimately redemptive

creation as a bold and noble response to eternity,
art as affirmation

you’ll note here that the structure of this sonata
is entirely Classical, unity of tone, unity of pace,
and the eventual return of the initial melody,
essential Classical components, what has
changed is the personal bravura of the composer,
Beethoven is not playing for the aristocratic court,
but for a wider, an infinite, audience, he is
pronouncing his and, by extension, our own place
and validity in the universe, by our ability as humans
to create, to respond creatively, and even sublimely,
out of only our otherwise flailing and indeterminate
existence

it is the Romantic response to the waning belief
in God, and incidentally a profound spur to,
argument for, our present notion of inalienable
individual rights

the personal soul has taken over from the earlier
unchallenged deity, the wavering concept of God
has had a seismic fall, and all the king’s horses
and all the king’s men will never be able to put it
together undiminished again

Beethoven is showing us that future

Richard

psst: Helena Bonham Carter plays excerpts from the
“Waldstein“, incidentally, in “A Room with A View“,
a movie entirely worth a revisit

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January 7, 2013

Beethoven – “Pastorale” Sonata, no 15, opus 28‏

from the very beginning of this musical series I’ve
been wanting, looking forward to, highlighting
somewhere, somehow, this incandescent piece
by Beethoven, but hadn’t yet found either a
complete nor, more significantly, a worthy
interpretation, though one briefly came and
went in a blazing virtual, as it were, transit, that
would’ve been perfect, and may now be never 
seen again, o, vast, too vast, eternity   
 
here Konstantin Semilakovs, not even a finalist at
Competition last September, 2012, the competition
must’ve been severely tough, plays an enchanted
rendition 
 
Beethoven is at the height of his euphoria here,
after his 7th sonata, his opus 10, no 3, he’d
followed through with his still resounding 8th, 
his“Pathétique“, opus 13, through several
significant others to just before this one his
 
the “Pastorale“, his opus 28 – “pastorale”,
incidentally, usually retains the German spelling,
for the feminine word in German “Sonate”, and
it is generally pronounced, with an enunciated
“e”, that way – is in all of music the piece I find
the most enchanting, I call it my “Johnny
Appleseed” sonata for its youth, freshness,
exhilaration, sense of adventure, infinite and
effervescent possibility, there isn’t a single
adagio here, note, just, at the very slowest,
an andante, a normal walk, there’s too much
wonder and fascination in the music to slow 
anything here down
 
you’ll note that Beethoven doesn’t too much
sway from the rigours of Classical structure,
the beat doesn’t significantly, nor even
infinitesimally much alter, though there are
some idiosyncratic Romantic liberties taken,
not an uncommon occurrence, by the interpreter,
fully redeemed however by his magical, meticulous 
rendition
 
nor does Beethoven touch tonality, we remain
always in the same key, each according to its
own movement
 
repetition is also there in spades, but you get
there only after he’s taken you through a veritable
rabbit hole, like Alice, and you don’t even know
where you are, where you started, but there you
are again suddenly, to your enchanted wonder,
but already he’s starting you up again for another
apparently iteration, o joy, o even ecstasy  
 
 
note intimations of Prokofiev already a century
earlier in the third movement, the sprightly
“scherzo (allegro assai)”, note the eccentricity
of the syncopation, already the future is here,
spreading its nascent but fully burgeoning
wings into even our very own 21st Century,
decisively, we will not hang Beethoven out
to dry, that’d be like losing Shakespeare
     
 
the elements of Classicism, to summarize, 
remain strong with Beethoven, even essential
to his conception of music, the profound
difference is with the impact of the piano,
soft, loud, the hold petal, his use of volume,
his use of, from solemn to effervescent, pace 
 
with these opportune tools he changed the
face of music, channeling through them his
profound, his supremely inspired, genius,
becoming along the way and incontestibly
the Homer, the highest priest and most
revered elder, of Western music, to this very
day unchallenged, still not outshone, nor
even ever yet matched, just listen 
 
 
Richard   
 
psst: you might want to compare this Beethoven  
           with Schubert’s  “Wanderer” Fantasy, for
           their itinerary spirit
 
 
 
 
 
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December 26, 2012

Beethoven piano sonata no 7, revisited‏

let me say a few words more about Beethoven’s
piano sonata no 7, opus 10, no 3, which I left in a
blur of other sonatas in my last set of opinions, it
is a wonder, and entirely worth a second visit, it
can neatly expose the new Romantic expression
midst the still Classical impositions
 
simply stated the elements of beat, tonality, and
repetition lay out the grid of Classical musical
composition, the blue print, like a house would
have a kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, and
variations on a communal social space 
 
Beethoven adheres to all of these elements but
does so eccentrically, beat itself is moderately
altered here and there, relaxed somewhat, mostly
at the end of musical phrases, an outcome
incidentally of the piano’s hold pedal, which
allows the reverberation of any note played
beyond its being played 
 
but you can nearly identify Beethoven by the
fact that he is always off the stated beat, which
is to say that his accent is always on the wrong
syllable, off what the time signature requires, the 
template along with key notations indicated at
the front of each set of bars of a musical text
 
this is already a significant peculiarity, and
consistent, endemic, he is fundamentally out of
synch, innately rebellious, which makes for nervy,
edgy music, bristling and electric, electrifying  
 
none of it you can sing, though the tonalities are
still entirely melodic
 
 
as far as repetition is concerned, Beethoven is still
repeating religiously, albeit with extended, and
ever so complex, elaborations, leaving you awed
ever, might as well say soulfully levitated, and 
mesmerized
  
 
the first movement, the presto, for “very fast”, takes
place on hot coals, brisk and electric
 
the second movement, the enchanted largo e mesto,
“very slowly with sadness”, is not only in marked
contrast with the first, a required condition for any
new movement, though here rendered flagrantly
extreme, it also tests the limits of effective pace,
again an innovation of the new piano, this time
coming out, despite the absolutely funereal
constraints undertaken here, instead of stultifying  
unquestionably and incontrovertibly transcendental
 
in the last movement, the menuetto (allegro), a
(jaunty) minuet, his parentheses, after an equally
exuberant third, the rondo (allegro), a (jaunty), his
parentheses again, rondo, a musical form akin to
what a sonnet would be to a poem, you can already
hear intimations even of jazz in the free and easy
tickle of the ivories, casual, debonair and apparently
improvisational, like Gene Kelly himself in dance,
toes twinkling with fresh and candid effervescence
and exhilaration  
 
now how unClassical is that    
 
 
Richard 
 
 
 
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December 15, 2012

Evgeny Kissin – a bouquet of composers‏

midway in my considerations about music I
came to myself in a dark wood for the straight
way was lost, if I may paraphrase Dante for my
own purposes, I’d digressed to Elizabeth Barrett
Browning, Audrey Hepburn, and others, and
forgot what I had been talking about with
respect to the development of music, but have
been wonderfully, and perhaps even karmically, 
put back on track by this correspondingly 
 
Evgeny Kissin had provided a resplendent
haven’t yet finished enjoying often, but
found among his other Internet offerings
 
 
at first I wondered about the Schubert/Liszt
connection in the written introduction to the
program, they’d been united by a forward
slash, implying that there’d been some kind
of cooperation, but I hadn’t ever heard of
those two ever meeting  
 
upon very little investigation however I found
out that Liszt had merely transcribed of course
some of the Schubert lieder, something which 
Liszt was wont to do, Liszt transcribed
everybody and everything, most famously all
of Beethoven’s symphonies, writing them
up for piano only, so that more remote areas
could also enjoy them, in often even there 
aristocratic salon settings
 
lieder are songs in German, a lied, a song,
works Schubert produced in astonishingly
great number
 
 
Liszt was paraphrasing Schubert for his own 
Lisztian purposes of course, artists do that, 
which is to say he was giving them much
more Lisztian fanfare and, not unwelcome,
I might add, extravagance, Schubert could
be pretty dry, I think, in his lieder,
uncharacteristically, even his fun ones, 
despite their being ever so eminently
 
 
und der Bach“  from “Die schöne Müllerin“, one
of his song cycles,“Ständchen” from
“Schwanengesang“, another cycle, “Gretchen
 am Spinnrade“, and “Erlkönig” are all poems
of celebrated German poets Schubert set for
accompanied voice, and that Lizst, and Kissin,  
transform into something pretty special   
 
 
next on the program Schubert takes independent
flight with his wondrous “Wanderer” Fantasy,
opus 15, D760
 
 
a fantasy is not a sonata for having only one
movement, but note this fantasy goes through
all the motions of a sonata, fast, slow, fast, each
with its own structural contrasts, but without
any of the intervening pauses
 
so is a fantasy just a sonata without breaks, or is
a sonata just a fantasy with hiatuses, had the
sonata become a fantasy, had the fantasy
become a sonata, definitions were being
upended, then again that’s what revolutions
are about
 
before Beethoven this had been unheard of, 
when music hadn’t yet learned to actually talk,
mean something, Schubert, like Beethoven,
not only talks, not only narrates, as in for
 “Pastoral“,  nor either describes, as in
but actually speculates, ponders, moves 
metaphysically forward, in thrall to his
vagabond spirit much more than to his
wayward heart 
 
hence, incidentally, the more abstract, less
geographical, “Wanderer”, to compare with
for instance Liszt’s more panoramic
see also Caspar David Friedrich here for 
a close contemporary counterpart of his
in art
 
 
music has become no longer merely narration 
then but philosophy, it is finding its way like
the rest of us, and for the rest of us, to the
stars 
 
 
Bach then intervenes here with a Siciliana, a
Baroque composer in Kissin’s Romantic
clothing, but the shoe entirely fits, and
hauntingly, you’ll remember Bach was
composing for the harpsichord, which
had none of the piano’s resonance 
 
 
Brahms then returns us to a more abstruse
Romanticism, “7 Fantasies”, his opus 17,
pushes the limits of melodic continuity, you
can’t sing Brahms, you’re not even drawn to     
 
seven fantasies in one opus, incidentally,
suggests a sonata with seven movements,
with all of the permutations that have been  
suggested already for the fantasy I talked
about, it’s open season on sonatas, in
other words, and by extension their less
segmented fantasies  
 
it is the history of art 
 
 
the final piece is totally transcendent, some
incidental music from Glück, from his sublime
“Orfeo ed Euridice“, one of my very favourite
operas, Orpheus approaches the Underworld
in order to retrieve his beloved bride, we are
about to enter the Elysian Fields, the actual,
original Champs Élysées, or Elysium, with
him, the moment is unforgettable
 
others have led us into the Underworld, most
notably Homer in the “Odyssey“, Virgil in the
“Aeneid“, and of couse, somewhat more
recently but just, Dante in his “Divine Comedy“,
even Bosch in his “Garden of Earthly Delights”  
 
Glück is the one whose hereafter you won’t
not  remember  
 
 
Richard
 
 
 
 
 
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September 29, 2012

“Pictures at an Exhibition” – Modest Mussorgsky‏

 
“You are definately (sic) now in Chopin mode!“, a friend
writes, much as the culture itself would’ve found
itself after a surfeit of Chopin, giving way to of
course newer inventions in art  
 
if there is an overview that would present the
fundamental outline of what was occuring at
the time it is that the heart was giving way to
the mind, late Romanticism still throbbed with
stirring passions, but a more exploratory
psychological perspective would begin to  
dominate, spurred on by a more analytical
approach to everything, even the arts
themselves to the arts themselves, science
had been unearthing revelations, painters
analyzed paint, writers parsed writing, 
composers deconstructed musical composition
 
all investigated potentiality and purpose within
the area of their field to discover if it still had
relevance, and if so, how and why
 
the first step in moving away from emotion in
music was through an attempt at notational
description, to have music become evocative 
of a scene rather than of a sentiment through
orchestrations of sound, an intellectual appeal
to the more probing cerebellum rather than to 
the more facile and evident strings of a rhythmic,
ardently and compellingly pulsing, but primal 
and therefore unreasoning, heart
 
which could also easily become self-indulgent,
only the very best, Chopin, Elizabeth Barrett 
Browning, avoid it, let me add here the never
ever maudlin, always enchanting, Walt Disney,
who cuts mighty, mighty close to the saccharine
in his post-Second-World-War epoch, as do as
skilfully also indeed the other two in theirs
 
it’s all in the rubato, I think, where musical magic
is allowed to turn into pandering kitsch
 
 
here’s Modest Mussorgsky describing “Pictures
at an Exhibition“, each movement a particular
pictorial work, separated by the return of the
original theme, the “Promenade”, representative
of the amble forward, curatorial and monocled, 
I think, to the next considered instalment 
 
here’s the same thing again in a neat transcription
for guitar 
 
 
Richard
 
 
 
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August 22, 2012

Chopin Preludes, opus 28‏

you will remember surely preludes from Bach’s
Well-Tempered Clavier, but as indeed an
introduction to, there, fugues  
 
it might be interesting to note that preludes
were originally ditties instrumentalists cooked up,
spontaneously and improvisationally, to warm up
and tune their muse, one would expect the form
then to be short, sweet and pithy
 
and, by definition, unfinished, which is why Bach
added the fugue  
 
Chopin in 1839 gets them to stand alone, they 
have become by then of course entirely stylized,
less improvisational than formal  
 
Chopin gives them their rightful eminence by simply
validating their claim to the role, they have no trouble
at all standing forthrightly in the footlights, and are
even still individually commanding, unblemished yet
by the infelicities of most lacerating time   
 
like Bach they are still an intellectual exercise, there’s
a prelude for every key, all 24 of them, major and minor, 
like the “Études”, they are technical challenges to the
pianist, an Everest to climb, the work of an eminently
able nevertheless practitioner who didn’t shirk at 
challenging himself heroically, though surely goaded
by the most magnanimous, if unrelenting, of gods
 
others of course took up the contest for the sake of
both the prestidigitational Olympics his compositions 
represented as well as for itself the rapturous music, 
works for the deftest of fingers as well as for the
newly stranded, existentially unfettered and
hungering, 19th-Century soul   
 
you’ll note the humanity that didn’t appear in Mozart,
the intensely emotional appeal of both a more ardent
fury, a tip of the hat here to Beethoven, and a more
melting, sentimental tone  
 
 
incidentally I find Chopin infinitely more aristocratic
than Mozart ever, despite being the epitome of the
more democratic Romanticism, whereas it had been 
the more unruly Mozart who’d written for the
“Classical” courts 
 
Haydn is temperamentally the only other so courtly
composer, appropriately and most efficiently fitting
in his case his own Classical mold, even up until now,
no others have had that distinct personal pedigree 
 
 
allow me to submit my prose therefore to your most
good and gentle graces, as well as the illustrious
music contained therein
 
 
yours
 
Richard 
 
psst: here‘s a version played in a castle, noteworthy
         for its aristocratic allusions not to mention its
         accomplished artistry   
 
 
 
 
 
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August 10, 2012

Chopin “Études”, opus 25‏

if the Debussy, was a bit too fast a move from Chopin’s
Romanticism, his enchanting melodies wrought with
pressing and intent emotion to tug at your most
unresisting aural senses, into a 20th Century of
cynicism and machinery, speed, neurosis, world war,
it was probably too fast for those who actually lived
it as well, just as we think of our own world as out of
control, ultimately the swoons of Chopin would no
longer cut it alone as mileposts towards so unmoored
a future, a heretofore beyond mere private emotions,
other voices would come up responding to further
calamities, inconsistencies in the cultural argument,
where the poet no longer could stand prophetically
alone, there were others also to tend to, and nations
and even new ideologies burgeoning, social, sometimes
sinister even, experiments, Romanticism would have no
choice but to cede to the imperatives of a new, often
inclement, order

but that nevertheless choice still imprint is nowhere
near as definitive as Chopin before all that happened,
as people were still all celebrating and expressing
their newfound personal validity, freedom, worth,
fruit of the revolution not only of the political world
but of the cultural one as well

Elizabeth Barrett Browning is to my mind his only
literary equivalent, compare their equal ardour
and the likeness of their compelling muse

Daniil Trifonov, playing Chopin’s other set of
“Études”, opus 25, not only lives them, he’s
utterly possessed, he’s in Tel Aviv, it’s May, 2011

Richard

psst: the first Étude is called the “Aeolian Harp”,
the ninth the “Butterfly”, the second to last,
or eleventh, the “Winter Winds”, all of which
you might try to make out in passing, they are
not that difficult to identify, all the others are
named for their key

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July 29, 2012

Chopin: “Études”, opus 10

if I haven’t brought up Chopin much in this series
it’s that I think of him more as a decorator than
as an innovator, he was developing a sensibility
that had been defined by the earlier Beethoven,
adding texture and style, form instead of function,
the wheel had been invented, now it remained to
be artfully applied
 
some break new ground, others decorate it, make
it enchanting, Chopin makes things enchanting 
 
he is also the first composer we think of when we
think of Romanticism, which says quite a lot about
the quality, the universality, of his gift 
 
 
here are his opus 10, “Études”, or “Studies”, 12 of
them, they are not sonatas, for not having more
than one movement, they are “études” , “studies”,
called by that name for being what they are, then
given numbers to differentiate them, also their
key, the convenience of universally attributing
titles not having quite caught on yet though a
couple of these do have them, the 5th, the
“Black Keys”, for obvious reasons, and the last,
the “Revolutionary”, again for reasons you’ll find
obvious once you’ve heard it 
 
tonality however remains, no apparent discords,
that’ll come later  
 
 
note that in comparison to Mozart the notes are
a shimmer, the same alphabet is used, the one
set up by Bach, but where Mozart made these
into narratives to follow, and even sing along to,
with Chopin the same flurry of notes becomes
a wash of sound you could never vocally keep
up with, a texture rather, an enveloping caress,
prefiguring incidentally the Impressionists, the
lush soundscapes of for instance Debussy 
 
 
though you’ll find the same prerequisite opening
musical statement as in Mozart, followed by the  
contrasting one, often these will be in altogether
constrasting rhythms as well, tempi, compared
to the single strict beat throughout of the 
foundational Classical model    
 
the tempo itself is also much more lax, some
passages surrendering formal rhythmic strictures
to greater emotional content, more self-expression,
less attention to rules, in accord with the newly
installed ideal of individual human rights 
 
hence Romanticism, the fruit of the Revolution 
 
 
note also that the musical argument is no longer
in the Mozartean playground but of a more mature
understanding, Chopin has known love 
 
 
Richard
 
 
 
 
 
 
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July 5, 2012

Xlll. And wilt thou have me fashion into speech – Elizabeth Barrett Browning

from “Sonnets from the Portuguese“

Xlll. And wilt thou have me fashion into speech

And wilt thou have me fashion into speech
The love I bear thee, finding words enough,
And hold the torch out, while the winds are rough,
Between our faces, to cast light on each? –
I dropt it at thy feet. I cannot teach
My hand to hold my spirits so far off
From myself – me – that I should bring thee proof
In words, of love hid in me out of reach.
Nay, let the silence of my womanhood
Commend my woman-love to thy belief, –
Seeing that I stand unwon, however wooed,
And rend the garment of my life, in brief,
By a most dauntless, voiceless fortitude,
Lest one touch of this heart convey its grief.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

_________________________

there are circumlocutions in Romantic poetry
that are often hard to follow, and the work of
sorting these out just as often will lead to
giving the poem a pass, how pertinent can
a poem be, you ask, as you cursorily lay it
to rest

unless a line or two, a phrase, a cadence, an
arresting truth you find, becomes enough to
probe it further, to read again with a magnifying
glass this time, checking the entrails, the parts
of speech, the punctuation, their interactions,
the chemistry

this alone is good for your head

the word “rend” upended me here, who, I
wondered, rent, the text is clear but “however
wooed” interjects to sow confusion, a comma
after “wooed”, rather than a hyphen, confirms
that she herself is breaking up inside for fear
of speaking out her anguish, a hyphen
would’ve led us to him

still a bit convoluted, but the underlying
sentiment remains incontrovertibly raw
and clear

Elizabeth Barrett Browning is a mess, but
has found a solid anchor in the refuge of
her manifestly masterful, mistressful, if you’d
rather, poems, though I suspect she’ll never
attain belief in her own connubial validity

van Gogh was also so existentially rent

and also Goethe’s Werther, the premier Romantic
hero, who famously foregos his even life for lack
of validating love

Elizabeth Barrett Browning remains to bear it,
live it, for us, iconically

go, I would think, though ever so distraught,
dear and magnificent Elizabeth

Richard

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