Jade

References

  • 01Throughout this book L'Album de poèmes tirés du Livre de Jade is referred to as ‘Jade’ for convenience and simplicity.
  • 02TJ Cobden-Sanderson. The Journals of T.J. Cobden-Sanderson 1879-1922. London and New York, Vol. I. 1926: p. 383.
  • 03Sir Emery Walker (1851–1933): an important figure in the printing world and Private Press movement. It is said he became interested in printing when at the age of 12 he bought a seventeenth-century book from a rag and bone man. He was largely self-taught and in 1883 set up the firm of Walker and Boutall; he developed a technique of engraving for illustrating books with artwork. Walker lived close to William Morris in Hammersmith, and they met at socialist events and became close friends. Walker introduced Morris to printing and typefaces and was instrumental in the foundation of Morris’s Kelmscott Press. He also acted as an advisor to Hornby’s Ashendene Press, and in 1900 set up his own press, Doves Press, with bookbinder TJ Cobden-Sanderson (1840–1922). Both men were close to Morris and involved in the Arts and Crafts movement, were acquaintances of Lucien Pissarro and admirers of Eragny Press.
  • 04Anon. Lucien Pissarro in England: The Eragny Press 1895–1914. Oxford: Ashmolean Press, 2011. The work of the press is well recorded in the numerous letters and contemporary documents, many of which are in the Pissarro Archive at the Ashmolean Museum, along with trial proofs, drawings, engravings and other artistic materials. From these it is possible to build up a fairly complete picture of the technical, financial and aesthetic aspects of the press.
  • 05Marcella D Genz. A History of the Eragny Press. New Castle, DE and London: Oak Knoll Press and the British Library, 2004.
  • 06The Dial stretched to five issues printed between 1889 and 1897 only. Wilde had told Ricketts, on being sent the first issue, ‘it is quite delightful, but don’t bring out a second number, all perfect things should be unique’.
  • 07Rickett’s first book was Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891) and his second Wilde’s The House of Pomegranates (1891).
  • 08Anon. Lucien Pissarro in England: The Eragny Press 1895–1914. Oxford: Ashmolean Press, 2011. The work of the press is well recorded in the numerous letters and contemporary documents, many of which are in the Pissarro Archive at the Ashmolean Museum, along with trial proofs, drawings, engravings and other artistic materials. From these it is possible to build up a fairly complete picture of the technical, financial and aesthetic aspects of the press.
  • 09Marcella D Genz. A History of the Eragny Press. New Castle, DE and London: Oak Knoll Press and the British Library, 2004.
  • 10Anne Thorold. The letters of Lucien to Camille Pissarro 1883-1903. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2012.
  • 11Ashmolean Museum, Pissarro Family Archive.
  • 12Ashmolean Museum, Pissarro Family Archive.
  • 13Le Livre de Jade. Paris: Lemerre 1867.
  • 14Fusako Hamao. The sources of the texts in Mahler’s ‘Lied von der Erde’. 19th Century Music 1995; 19(1): 83–95.
  • 15The Second Viennese School consisted of a group of composers in the early twentieth century, led by Arnold Schoenberg. Berg and Webern were among his first pupils.
  • 16Joanne Richardson. Judith Gautier: A biography. New York: Franklin Watts, 1987 is an excellent and definitive account of her life and work.
  • 17Her father, Théophile Gautier, was a man of letters, poet and novelist. Her mother, Ernestine Grisi, was herself a famous Parisian figure whose sister, Carlotta, was a renowned ballerina. Carlotta was the first Giselle in Gautier’s ballet of the same name and also Théophile’s mistress.
  • 18Bettina L Knapp. Judith Gautier: Writer, orientalist, musicologist, feminist. A literary biography. Lanham, MA: Hamilton Books, 2004.
  • 19Cited in Elaine Brody. Letters from Judith Gautier to Chalmers Clifton. The French Review 1985; 58(5): 670.
  • 20‘Dans une fourrure de plumes, la fille de Théophile Gautier est belle, d’une beauté étrange. Son teint d’une blancheur à peine rosée, sa bouche découpée, comme un bouche de primitif, sur l’ivoire de larges dents, ses traits purs et comme sommeillants, ses grands yeux, où des cils d'animal, des cils durs et semblables à des petites épingles noires n’adoucissent pas d’une pénombre le regard, donnent à la léthargique créature l’indéfinissable et le mystérieux d’une femme-sphinx d’une chair, d’une matière, dans laquelle il n’y aurait pas de nerfs modernes.’
  • 21Robert Jacobs. Wagner and Judith Gautier. Music and Letters 1937 18:134.
  • 22Victor Hugo wrote Ave, Dea; Moriturus te Salutat, a poem about Judith in 1872, which includes the following lines: Judith, nos deux destins sont plus près l’un de l’autre/Qu’on ne croirait, à voir mon visage et le vôtre; Tout le divin abîme apparaît dans vos yeux,/Et moi, je sens le gouffre étoilé dans mon âme; Nous sommes tous les deux voisins du ciel, madame/Puisque vous êtes belle et puisque je suis vieux.
  • 23J Bensusan Butt. Recollections of Lucien Pissarro in His Seventies. Salisbury: Compton Press, 1974.
  • 24Gould B. ‘The Brook’, Chiswick: The home of the Eragny Press. Private library, 1971: 140–147.
  • 25Ashmolean Museum, Pissarro Family Archive.
  • 26Ashmolean Museum, Pissarro Family Archive.
  • 27Originally it was to be printed by Eragny Press, but Lucien had his stroke just as the typesetting was beginning and it was then transferred to Ballantyne Press and published under the Vale imprint.
  • 28Lucien Pissarro wrote to Camille Pissarro that their definition of ‘gothic as spiritual materialism’ would ‘make people shout a bit’ (LP to CP 19 February 1897), although the reference to spiritual materialism in the essay is too obscure surely to have this effect!
  • 29Morris died in October 1896, just after they had finished the essay text (which was dated June 1896); they added to their book a section on the influence of William Morris, in which they acknowledged that ‘the harmony of the book is due to Morris and Burne Jones’.
  • 30Clausen was a fellow artist who exhibited at the New English Art Club. Letter 21 March 1941, in Pissarro Archive, Ashmolean Museum, cited in Marcella D Genz. A History of the Eragny Press. New Castle, DE and London: Oak Knoll Press and the British Library, 2004.
  • 31Laura Urbanelli. The Wood Engravings of Lucien Pissarro and a Bibliographical List of Eragny Books. Oxford: Ashmolean Museum, 1994.
  • 32Lucien Pissarro. Notes on the Eragny Press, and a Letter to J.B. Manson. Edited with a supplement by Alan Fern. Cambridge: privately printed, 1957.
  • 33Lucien Pissarro. Notes on the Eragny Press, and a Letter to J.B. Manson. Edited with a supplement by Alan Fern. Cambridge: privately printed, 1957.
  • 34Lucien Pissarro. Notes on the Eragny Press, and a Letter to J.B. Manson. Edited with a supplement by Alan Fern. Cambridge: privately printed, 1957.
  • 35Manson JB. Notes on some wood-engravings of Lucien Pissarro. Imprint 1913; 240–247. Imprint was a beautifully printed magazine devoted to artistic aspects of printing. It was published in only nine issues in 1913 and used a new and wonderfully clear typeface, Imprint Old Face, produced by the Monotype Company. The same typeface was used for the 22,000 pages of the 20 volumes of the second edition of the Oxford English Dictionary.
  • 36Esther was certainly interested in flowers and was a keen gardener throughout her life, exchanging letters with Monet on gardening matters, and she created her own ‘impressionist’ garden at her home in Chiswick.
  • 37SR Yu-Keng, cited in: Bettina L Knapp. Judith Gautier: Writer, orientalist, musicologist, feminist. A literary biography. Lanham, MA: Hamilton Books, 2004.
  • 38Aujourd’hui, comme jadis, en Chine, les vers sont toujours unis à la musique: on ne les récite pas, on les chante. … Le plus souvent, le chant est accompagné par la lyre chinoise … qui doit vibrer, seulement, devant ceux qui sont dignes de l’entendre, car ses cordes delicates se brisent, leurs ondes mélodieuses ondes se heurtent à une oreille impie.

Chapter 04.

The Poems

Jade Poem Illustration

Spring Coldness
Froidure printanière

Ly-y-Hane

In the melancholic enclosure,
The wind tilts, and pulls the thread of the fine rain.

The double door better stay closed

The willows’ grace and the flowers’ delicacy are targets for the changeable weather, which rains, around this time of cold food.

But whatever the weather, it is always difficult to find the right harmony of the rhymes.

However: the poetry comes to an end.

Who supports and comforts the one who wakes up from drunkenness, the drunkenness of poets, which is not caused by wine.

Now the wild swans are gone.

Oh, I have a thousand painful things in my heart; which I wanted to pass on to these fast messengers

In those days, the spring cold can be felt upstairs.

On the four sides, the house’s blinds are pulled in front of the windows.

I am too careless to come and rest on the jade balustrade.

The blanket is cold … the perfume is consumed.

I wake up from my last dream!
Why are those in great pain not forbidden to dream?

The pearls of dew are becoming water.

Trees will grow green again.

And maybe are happy to see the spring return.

The sun rises, the fog flies away ….

I have to look again, at today’s good weather.

Translation by Soazig Daniel

Dans l’enclos mélancolique,
Le vent penche, et entraîne les fils de la pluie mince.

Il est bon que la double porte reste fermée.

La grâce des saules, la délicatesse des fleurs subissent le temps capricieux, qui règne, vers cette époque des aliments froids.

Mais quel que soit le temps, il est toujours difficile de trouver la juste harmonie des rimes.

Cependant: voici que la poésie est terminée.

Qui donc soutient et console celui qui se réveille de l’ivresse? ... de l’ivresse des poètes, qui est autre que celle du vin.

Voici que les cygnes sauvages ont fini de passer.

Ah! J’ai dans le coeur mille choses douloureuses, que je voulais confier à ces messagers rapides!

En ces jours, le froid printanier se fait sentir, à l’étage supérieur.

Des quatre côtés, les stores du pavillon sont baissés devant les fenêtres.

Je suis trop nonchalante pour venir m’appuyer à la balustrade de jade ...

La couverture est froide ... le parfum est consume ...

Je m’éveille de mon dernier rêve!
Pourquoi n’est-il pas interdit de rêver, à ceux qui ont une grande douleur?

Les perles de rosée se fondent en eau.

De nouveau les arbres vont reverdir.

Et beaucoup se réjouissent, de voir ce retour du printemps.

Le soleil monte; le brouillard s’envole ....

Il me faut regarder, encore, le beau temps d’aujourd’hui!

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