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THE POEM, FILM, SONG, PAINTING SERIES

Monday, November 18, 2024

Issue No. 9

German poet Rainer Maria Rilke pictured sitting at his writing desk.

By Rainer Maria Rilke

POEM

Love Song

Translated by Stephen Mitchell

How can I keep my soul in me, so that
it doesn't touch your soul? How can I raise
it high enough, past you, to other things?
I would like to shelter it, among remote
lost objects, in some dark and silent place
that doesn't resonate when your depths resound.
Yet everything that touches us, me and you,
takes us together like a violin's bow,
which draws one voice out of two separate strings.
Upon what instrument are we two spanned?
And what musician holds us in his hand?
Oh sweetest song.

Love Song (1907) © Rainer Maria Rilke
Copyright Credit: Rainer Maria Rilke, “Love Song” New Poems 

Actress Holly Hunter is pictured in an aerial view playing the piano in Jane Campion's 1993 film The Piano.
A closeup of a piano's keys.

FILM

The Piano (1993)

Ada (Holly Hunter) is an electively mute Scottish woman who expresses her deepest feelings through her beloved piano. When an arranged marriage brings her and her daughter (Anna Paquin) to the wilderness of nineteenth-century New Zealand, she develops an intense, forbidden attraction to a rugged frontiersman (Harvey Keitel). Torn between him and her controlling husband (Sam Neill) Ada begins her journey of awakening.

Jane Campion’s The Piano is a sublime story of desire, passion, and creativity. With a sensuous, moody cinematography by Stuart Dryburgh, riveting score by Michael Nyman, and dramatically beautiful coastal landscapes, the film made her the first woman to win a Palme d’Or at Cannes. 

Writer: Jane Campion

Director: Jane Campion

Language: English, Māori, British Sign Language Cinematography: Stuart Dryburgh

Music by: Michael Nyman

Composer Michael Nyman is pictured wearing glasses with black frames, with his head resting in his left hand.

SONG

The Promise

By Michael Nyman

Album: The Piano (1993)

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Frida Kahlo's Self-portrait with necklace of thorns shows the artist with a black monkey on her right shoulder and a black cat on her left shoulder. She's wearing a necklace of thorns around her neck, with a hummingbird pendant. Dragonflies and butterflies are flying around her head.

PAINTING

Self-portrait with Necklace of Thorns

By Frida Kahlo (Mexican,1907 - 1954)

PERIOD: Naïve Art
DATE: 1940

MEDIUM: Oil on canvas on masonite

DIMENSIONS: 61.2 cm × 47 cm (24.11 in × 18.5 in)

LOCATION: Harry Ransom Center, Austin  

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