The Friday Five - Favorite Artworks

[elrhiarhodan]

This week's entry at thefridayfive wants to know all about your highbrow tastes:

1. What is your favorite poem? Can you recite part of it from memory?

I know it by heart, having read it at both my mother's and my father's funerals.



The Resurrection of the Dead, by Yehudi Amichai

We are buried below with everything we did
with our tears and our laughs
We have made storerooms of history out of it all,
galleries of the past, and treasure houses,
buildings and walls and endless stairs of iron and marble
in the cellars of time.
We will not take anything with us.
Even plundering kings, they all left something here.
Lovers and conquerors, happy and sad,
they all left something here, a sign, a house,
like a man who seeks to return to a beloved place
and purposely forgets a book, a basket, a pair of glasses,
so that he will have an excuse to come back to the beloved place.
In the same way we leave things we here.
In the same way the dead leave us.

Translated from the Hebrew by Leon Weiseltier

2. What is your favorite work of visual art? Can you sketch some of it from memory?



The Vegetable Portraits, by Guiseppe Archimbaldo, and in particular, Vertumnus, the portrait of Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor, painted as the Roman god of the seasons. And sadly, I am no Neal Caffrey.



3. What is your favorite piece of music? Can you sing or hum any of it from memory? Bonus points if you can sing a line of harmony from it.

This is a hard one, since my tastes in music span many genres. Let's go with something uplifting for a Friday morning, and say Vivaldi's Gloria, RV 589. And yes, I can sing the harmonic line.

"Vivaldi's Gloria" (Watch on YouTube)

4. What is your favorite dance form? Can you dance it yourself, however badly, or is it something for which you are mostly a spectator?

Classical ballet, and my favorite is Ballanchine's choreography of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake. And no, I don't dance.

"Tchaikovsky: Swan Lake - The Kirov Ballet" (Watch on YouTube)

5. What is your favorite work of literature? Have you committed any of it to memory?

Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte. Reader, I married him." That's it.


If you want to play along, here's the code for this week's entry for thefridayfive. Post your answers on your journal and then link back to this entry.

<B>1. What is your favorite poem? Can you recite part of it from memory? </B> <B>2. What is your favorite work of visual art? Can you sketch some of it from memory? </B> <B>3. What is your favorite piece of music? Can you sing or hum any of it from memory? Bonus points if you can sing a line of harmony from it. </B> <B>4. What is your favorite dance form? Can you dance it yourself, however badly, or is it something for which you are mostly a spectator? </B> <B>5. What is your favorite work of literature? Have you committed any of it to memory? </B>

Comments

[riverotter1951.livejournal.com]

That poem is beautiful especially the section about leaving things behind. We are remembered by the living by what we said and do. My condolences on the lost of your parents. The Vegetable Portraits sound interesting and I am planning to look them up.

[elrhiarhodan]

Thank you so very much. My parents were wonderful people, not flawless, but loving and very dear to me. My home is filled with the many wonderful things they created and collected and each piece is imbued with their love and the love I still bear for them. That is why this poem means so much to me.

And do check out Archimbaldo - his painting are almost surreal, 400 years before that movement was recognized.

[anais-pf.livejournal.com]

I can sing the alto line from that piece pretty accurately without looking at the score. I've sung it a few times in several choirs. :)

[elrhiarhodan]

Me too, sung the alto line in choir in college. I listen to it often enough that I can still sing along in relatively good harmony.

[dizzydrea.livejournal.com]

I do love classical music (thanks to my grandmother and years of concerts and ballets), but if I'm just unwinding, or need some background music for work I turn to Miles Davis or classical guitar. And weirdly, I find myself humming Beethoven's Ode to Joy at odd moments.

And classical literature... you love Bronte, I love Austen. Are you sure we're not related somehow?

That poem is lovely. It's such a hard thing to lose a parent, much less both. I'm fortunate to still have both of mine, but their parents are all long gone, and I can still see and hear the hole in their hearts when they talk about them (Mom's father and Dad's mother in particular). I know no words from us can help ease that grief, but I hope you know that we all love you and share your grief. That their lives still resonate in your heart and home is a testament to how much they meant to you, and that's a legacy to be proud of.

[elrhiarhodan]

{{{{{{{{{HUGS}}}}}}}}

Thank you.

And yes, people are strangely divided between Austen and Bronte. I wonder why?