Painters From Ireland

"But of course these pictures are not shocking; good painting never is."

"His work is full of the signs of those two cardinal sins from which (as Kafka pointed out) all the others spring: impatience and laziness. The work of every artist is conditioned by the way in which he resists or yields to these temptations."

"In the end each man experiences only himself. To refer to your neighbour or twenty million of them for your touchstone of reality is a logical nonsense in the life of the individual person. When one reflects on the personality of Lautrec in these pictures, brave, unconcerned, scornful, and violent, it becomes a monstrosity of sophism to consider his size or shape as relevant factors.The painter celebrates life where he finds it. His morality is the morality of enjoyment, of the continuous development of his own taste without shame or fear. It is a sort of heroism."

"It is noticeable that rejection and selection no longer operate in terms of merely quality but on kind. This is exactly the situation confronting the Impressionists who attempted to show their works in the salon of 1865."

"The Art of painting is itself an intensely personal activity. It may be labouring the obvious to say so but it is too little recognised in art journalism now that a picture is a unique and private event in the life of the painter: an object made alone with a man and a blank canvas... A real painting is something which happens to the painter once in a given minute; it is unique in that it will never happen again and in this sense is an impossible object. It is judged by the painter simply as a success or failure without qualification. And it is something which happens in life not in art: a picture which was merely the product of art would not be very interesting and could tell us nothing we were not already aware of. The old saying, “what you don’t know can’t hurt you”, expresses the opposite idea to that which animates the painter before his canvas. It is precisely what he does not know which may destroy him."

"I do not know if there are in fact such things as definable social standards of aesthetics that would have any historical or artistic value, but whether there are or not it seems clear to me that for the painter nothing less than complete personal involvement of a moral nature will do."

"For the painter, for whom painting is a vital activity and a way of life — not merely a profession — such attitudes as we find in the histories are deadly. For him the only benefit, at least the deepest and most important benefit, which he can get from the study of the Masters comes from his capacity to see the painting in a thoroughly contemporary way. I mean in the present tense — the tense after all in which it was painted. Not for instance as an early this or a late that, nor as a good example of chiaroscuro or some other aesthetic or technical quality but as an immediately important human statement completely relevant to his life at the moment and convincing for that reason. If a work does not strike the painter in this way all further analysis of it will be futile."

"Sure the shovel and tongs To each other belongs."

"As she sat in the low-backed car The man at the turn-pike bar Never asked for the toll But just rubbed his auld poll And looked after the low-backed car."

"And with my advice, faith I wish you'd take me."

"A baby was sleeping, Its mother was weeping, For her husband was far on the wild-raging sea."

"For dhrames always go by conthraries, my dear."

""That 's eight times to-day that you 've kissed me before." "Then here goes another," says he, "to make sure, For there 's luck in odd numbers," says Rory O'More."

"For a ballad's a thing you expect to find lies in."

"Sure my love is all crost Like a bud in the frost And there's no use at all in my going to bed, For 't is dhrames and not slape that comes into my head!"

"Reproof on her lip, but a smile in her eye."

"The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery."

"I feel ever so strongly that an artist must be nourished by his passions and his despairs. These things alter an artist whether for the good or the better or the worse. It must alter him. The feelings of desperation and unhappiness are more useful to an artist than the feeling of contentment, because desperation and unhappiness stretch your whole sensibility."

"Search for the high austere and lonely way The Spirit moves in through eternities. Ah, in the soul what memories arise! And with what yearning inexpressible, Rising from long forgetfulness I turn To Thee, invisible, unrumoured, still: White for Thy whiteness all desires burn. Ah, with what longing once again I turn!"

"It was the wise all-seeing soul Who counselled neither war nor peace: 'Only be thou thyself that goal In which the wars of time shall cease.'"

"I am the sunlight in the heart, the silver moonglow in the mind; My laughter runs and ripples through the wavy tresses of the wind. I am the fire upon the hills, the dancing flame that leads afar Each burning-hearted wanderer, and I the dear and homeward star."

"It was the warrior within Who called 'Awake, prepare for fight: Yet lose not memory in the din: Make of thy gentleness thy might: 'Make of thy silence words to shake The long-enthroned kings of earth: Make of thy will the force to break Their towers of wantonness and mirth.'"

"It was the fairy of the place, Moving within a little light, Who touched with dim and shadowy grace The conflict at its fever height. It seemed to whisper 'Quietness,' Then quietly itself was gone: Yet echoes of its mute caress Were with me as the years went on."

"O'er the fields of space together following her flying traces, In a radiant tumult thronging, suns and stars and myriad races Mount the spirit spires of beauty, reaching onward to the day When the Shepherd of the Ages draws his misty hordes away Through the glimmering deeps to silence, and within the awful fold Life and joy and love forever vanish as a tale is told, Lost within the mother's being. So the vision flamed and fled, And before the glory fallen every other dream lay dead."

"We must pass like smoke or live within the spirit's fire; For we can no more than smoke unto the flame return If our thought has changed to dream, our will unto desire, As smoke we vanish though the fire may burn."

"Aye, and deep and deep and deeper let me drink and draw, From the olden fountain more than light or peace or dream, Such primeval being as o'erfills the heart with awe, Growing one with its silent stream."

"When the breath of twilight blows to flame the misty skies, All its vaporous sapphire, violet glow, and silver gleam, With their magic flood me through the gateway of the eyes; I am one with the twilight's dream."

"Here the wild will woke within her lighting up her flying dreams, Round and round the planets whirling break in woods and flowers and streams, And the winds are shaken from them as the leaves from off the rose, And the feet of earth go dancing in the way that beauty goes, And the souls of earth are kindled by the incense of her breath As her light alternate lures them through the gates of birth and death."

"Age is no more near than youth To the sceptre and the crown. Vain the wisdom, vain the truth; Do not lay thy rapture down."

"Though the dream of love may tire, In the ages long agone There were ruby hearts of fire — Ah, the daughters of the dawn!"

"We and it and all together flashing through the starry spaces In a tempest dream of beauty lighting up the place of places. Half our eyes behold the glory: half within the spirit's glow Echoes of the noiseless revels and the will of beauty go. By a hand of fire uplifted—to her star-strewn palace brought, To the mystic heart of beauty and the secret of her thought:"

"For sure the enchanted waters pour through every wind that blows. I think when night towers up aloft and shakes the trembling dew How every high and lonely thought that thrills my being through Is but a ruddy berry dropped down through the purple air, And from the magic tree of life the fruit falls everywhere."

"We may fight against what is wrong, but if we allow ourselves to hate, that is to insure our spiritual defeat and our likeness to what we hate."

"Oh, I am so old, meseems I am next of kin to Time, The historian of her dreams From the long forgotten prime."

"We are desert leagues apart; Time is misty ages now Since the warmth of heart to heart Chased the shadows from my brow."

"Where we sat at dawn together, while the star-rich heavens shifted, We were weaving dreams in silence, suddenly the veil was lifted. By a hand of fire awakened, in a moment caught and led Upward to the wondrous vision: through the star-mists overhead Flare and flaunt the monstrous highlands; on the sapphire coast of night Fall the ghostly froth and fringes of the ocean of the light."

"The life which passes mourns its wasted hour. And, ah, to think how thin the veil that lies Between the pain of hell and paradise!"

"Image of beauty, when I gaze on thee, Trembling I waken to a mystery, How through one door we go to life or death By spirit kindled or the sensual breath."

"I must endure the torturing ray, And, with all beauty, all desire. Ah, time-long must the effort be, And far the way that I must go To bring my spirit unto thee, Behind the glass, within the glow."

"I thought, beloved, to have brought to you A gift of quietness and ease and peace, Cooling your brow as with the mystic dew Dropping from twilight trees. Homeward I go not yet; the darkness grows; Not mine the voice to still with peace divine: From the first fount the stream of quiet flows Through other hearts than mine. Yet of my night I give to you the stars, And of my sorrow here the sweetest gains, And out of hell, beyond its iron bars, My scorn of all its pains."

"Drink: the immortal waters quench the spirit's longing. Art thou not now, bright one, all sorrow past, in elation, Made young with joy, grown brother-hearted with the vast, Whither thy spirit wending flits the dim stars past Unto the Light of Lights in burning adoration."

"Canst thou not see adown the silver cloudland streaming Rivers of faery light, dewdrop on dewdrop falling, Starfire of silver flames, lighting the dark beneath? And what enraptured hosts burn on the dusky heath! Come thou away with them, for Heaven to Earth is calling."

"A shaft of fire that falls like dew, And melts and maddens all my blood, From out thy spirit flashes through The burning glass of womanhood."

"Here in these shades the Ancient knows itself, the Soul, And out of slumber waking starts unto the goal."

"Ah, sigh for us whose hearts unseeing Point all their passionate love in vain, And blinded in the joy of being, Meet only when pain touches pain."

"Hush, not a whisper! Let your heart alone go dreaming. Dream unto dream may pass: deep in the heart alone Murmurs the Mighty One his solemn undertone."

"I sometimes think a mighty lover Takes every burning kiss we give: His lights are those which round us hover: For him alone our lives we live."

"Something you see in me I wis not: Another heart in you I guess: A stranger's lips — but thine I kiss not, Erring in all my tenderness."

"Dread deities, the giant powers that warred on men Grow tender brothers and gay children once again; Fades every hate away before the Mother's breast Where all the exiles of the heart return to rest."

"Our love was so vast that it filled the heavens up: But the soft white form I held was an empty cup, When the willows called me back to earth with their sigh, And we moved as shades through the deep that was you and I."