Charles Meryon, The Death of Marion du Fresne at the Bay of Islands, New Zealand, 12 June 1772, Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington (1846-1848) I Sometime between 1846 and 1848 drew the scene en graiselle in pencil and crayon, heightened with chalk. It’s a largish work, one metre by two metres – a heroic scale for a “heroic” subject, executed by the French artist Charles Méryon (1821-1868) and exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1848. Thence it passed on to the artist’s closest friend, Antoine-Édouard Foleÿ (the two were stationed together at the French naval base in Akaroa on Banks’ Peninsula), a member of the Paris Positivist circle of the philosopher Auguste Comte, who left it to his son. The drawing was purchased in Paris by New Zealand-born British art collector Rex Nan Kivell, who smuggled it back to London, rolled up in the leg of his trousers, as the Second World War broke out. Eventually this magnificent curiosity entered the National Library of Australia as part of t...
In the circle of my arm and my softly anxious voice let me keep you safe from harm, night-time of your present choice. Powerlessness was all my power drawn from void where I was lost. Possessed for now, I search no further, consoled by lineaments of trust. I will pretend you haven’t lied. I will pretend to keep my vows. Like broken Eros crucified bound to this for these few hours. And I keep vigil for those sighs in sleep, as if they were enough, the kisses that are also lies, in sweet facsimile of love.
My first garden was the night sky, the obsidian floor of the temple treasury strewn with ruby and topaz, the five sapphire jasmine flowers of the Southern Cross, the great Kohinoor of night-blooming Sirius. Especially when all are in bed, then I am alone with those Chaldean sages, ploughing lines between lights in the soft loam of the darkness with our eyes, seeing glimmering heroes and monsters in the tactile night. World turns and pale stars spin like Van Gogh’s vision. The exotic orchids of rare novae bloom. Poppy-red Betelgeuse and Aldebaran nod. Spur-wing plovers mourn beneath the great cauliflower of a Méliès moon.
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