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| Anonymous Italian printmaker after Correggio Birth of Venus with Sea Deities ca. 1510-1530 etching Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
from A Swimmer's Dream
Dawn is dim on the dark soft water,
Soft and passionate, dark and sweet,
Love's own self was the deep sea's daughter,
Fair and flawless from face to feet,
Hailed of all when the world was golden,
Loved of lovers whose names beholden
Thrill men's eyes as with light of olden
Days more glad than their flight was fleet.
– Algernon Charles Swinburne (1889)
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| Sebald Beham Proportional diagram for head of horse before 1550 engraving Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
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| Battista Franco Drapery study for Angel of Annunciation ca. 1553 drawing Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |
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| Battista Franco Two Winged Genii carrying torches before 1561 etching, engraving Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Philips Galle after Luca Penni Gladiators fighting 1562 engraving British Museum |
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| Hendrick van Cleve Pons Fabricius and Pons Cestius, Rome 1585 engraving Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
No Delicacies
Nothing pleases me anymore.
Should I
dress up a metaphor
with an almond blossom?
crucify syntax
on a light effect?
Who would rack their brains
over such superfluous things –
I have learned an understanding
with the words
that exist
(for the lowest class)
hunger
disgrace
tears
and
darkness.
With the uncleansed sob,
with despair
(and one day despair will drive me to despair)
in the face of all this misery,
the number of sick, the cost of living.
I will manage.
I don't neglect writing,
I neglect myself.
The others
Lord knows
can use words to get by.
I am not my assistant.
Should I
take a thought captive, march it
to an illuminated sentence cell?
feed eye and ear
with the choicest word morsels?
research the libido of a vowel,
calculate the collector's value of our consonants?
With this head crushed by hail,
with writer's cramp in this hand,
under the pressure of three hundred nights,
must I
tear the paper,
wipe away the instigated word-operas,
thereby destroying: I you and he she it
we you?
(Should really. The others should.)
My part, let it be lost.
– Ingeborg Bachmann (1967), translated by Margitt Lehbert (1998)
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| Agostino Carracci Holy Family with St Elizabeth, St John the Baptist, and Four Angels ca. 1576 engraving British Museum |
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| Agostino Carracci River Landscape with the Rest on the Flight into Egypt before 1602 drawing National Galleries of Scotland |
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| Annibale Carracci Holy Family before 1609 drawing National Galleries of Scotland |
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| attributed to Antonio Carracci Landscape with Latona and the Frogs before 1618 drawing Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge |
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| Giovanni Battista Pasqualini after Guercino St Carlo Borromeo kneeling before a Crucifix, with Angels before 1631 engraving Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge |
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| Claes Jansz Visscher after Pieter Lastman Dress of Farm Woman from Lombardy (from series of Italian regional costumes) before 1633 etching British Museum |
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| Jacob van der Does Five Sheep 1650 etching Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
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| attributed to Willem van Bemmel Small landscape with couple conversing on a road ca. 1650 etching British Museum |
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| Pieter Serwouters after David Vinckboons Man with a crossbow before 1657 engraving National Galleries of Scotland |
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| Dominique Barrière after Claude Lorrain Landscape with St George and the Dragon ca. 1665 etching Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge |