Why This Is Rembrandt’s Masterpiece
WHEN in the course of human Events, it becomes necessary….
Welcome to the New American Digest: 2003-2020
Gerard Van der Leun
Lay down these words
Before your mind like rocks.
placed solid, by hands
In choice of place, set
Before the body of the mind
in space and time:
Solidity of bark, leaf, or wall
riprap of things:
Cobble of milky way.
straying planets,
These poems, people,
lost ponies with
Dragging saddles –
and rocky sure-foot trails.
The worlds like an endless
four-dimensional
Game of Go.
ants and pebbles
In the thin loam, each rock a word
a creek-washed stone
Granite: ingrained
with torment of fire and weight
Crystal and sediment linked hot
all change, in thoughts,
As well as things.
Gary Snyder
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.
We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.
Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me; so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.
This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.
— BY THEODORE ROETHKE
The scientists are in terror
and the European mind stops
Wyndham Lewis chose blindness
rather than have his mind stop.
Night under wind mid garofani,
the petals are almost still
Mozart, Linnaeus, Sulmona,
When one’s friends hate each other
how can there be peace in the world?
Their asperities diverted me in my green time.
A blown husk that is finished
but the light sings eternal
a pale flare over marshes
where the salt hay whispers to tide’s change
Time, space,
neither life nor death is the answer.
And of man seeking good,
doing evil.
In meiner Heimat
where the dead walked
and the living were made of cardboard.
His soul stretched tight across the skies
That fade behind a city block,
Or trampled by insistent feet
At four and five and six o’clock;
And short square fingers stuffing pipes,
And evening newspapers, and eyes
Assured of certain certainties,
The conscience of a blackened street
Impatient to assume the world.
I am moved by fancies that are curled
Around these images, and cling:
The notion of some infinitely gentle
Infinitely suffering thing.
Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh;
The worlds revolve like ancient women
Gathering fuel in vacant lots.
— Eliot
I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.
My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this
air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their
parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.
— Walt Whitman
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Nerdwriter may be a layman at art criticism, but he does get off some very good art videos. Rembrandt’s massive painting has lines, darks and lights, and movement. It exceeds the physical content of the painting, and unvarnishes the character of the Amsterdammer irregulars. Old Remmy wasn’t great because he could render and paint – he was great because he continued to innovate and loosen up. So much so, his career goes south on greased arquebus shot! He dies a debtor and is vilified by the city he revealed, and who at first loved him to fame.
That’s why I love Rembrandt. I love that he stuck a finger in their eye.
Thanks for posting this vid. A little story: years ago, when I worked in midtown Manhattan, on the occasional Friday evening immediately after escaping the office, I’d take the train uptown and walk over to the Metropolitan. My too-big-to-fail bank employer was a corporate sponsor for the museum, so employees could get in for free (or make a donation if they felt like it). Anyway, most of the time my whole point in going to the museum was to visit the rooms where a few Rembrandt’s were/are displayed. I do not claim to be anything but ignorant about the vast world of Western art, but I know what I like, and few things I know brought me the kind of joy and solace I took in sitting quietly for a while, staring at those too real portraits, almost believing that, at any moment, they would talk to me in Dutch. He and his contemporaries were brilliant. His paintings make me glad to be alive. Thanks, again.
Hi, Kerry!
I’ll be at The Met on Friday. I’ll say hello to a Rembrandt for ya!
Rembrandt’s “Night Watch” . . . ? What? Has this guy never seen Game of Thrones? Please. Give me a break! Also, I hate listening to nonbinary proletariats parroting Mrs. Hooper, my sophomore art appreciation teacher, when describing any, yes Any!, piece of art. Still, it is a pretty picture.
Thanks, Casey! If ANY of those portraits do, in fact, start a conversation with you, don’t tell me when you return. I’ll be so jealous! Har!
Have a wonderful time.