Charles Baudelaire Profile

Charles Baudelaire Profile

Apr 5, 2023 | David Jay Brown, Poets, Profiles

Carolyn and I have both long admired the writings of the French poet, philosopher, essayist, and art critic Charles Baudelaire. Baudelaire is known for his major contributions to 19th-century French literature and is renowned for his revolutionary collection of lyric poems, Les Fleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil).

Charles Pierre Baudelaire was born in Paris in 1821. His father was a senior civil servant and amateur artist, and he was 34 years older than Baudelaire‘s mother. Baudelaire was 6 years old when his father died, so he never had an opportunity to know him well, and his mother remarried a man that Baudelaire never got along with well.

Baudelaire was educated during his stay at a boarding school in Lyon. In 1835, a fellow student at the school had this to say about Baudelaire, “[He was] much more refined and distinguished than any of our fellow pupils… we are bound to one another… by shared tastes and sympathies, the precocious love of fine works of literature.” Baudelaire later attended the Lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris, where he studied law, and gained his degree in 1839. At the time, the law was a popular course of study for those not yet decided on any particular career.

Baudelaire spent his days in art galleries and cafés, and he experimented with opium and hashish. In 1841 he went on a voyage to Calcutta, India, and the trip left vivid impressions on him that later influenced his poetry. Baudelaire found beauty in the darker elements of human experience and was rather eccentric in his style of dress. He often dressed in black, dyed his hair green, and rebelled against the conformist, bourgeois world of 19th-century Paris in both his personal life and his poetry.

Baudelaire’s first art review was published in 1845, and between 1844 and 1847 eleven of Baudelaire’s poems were published in the Parisian weekly review magazine L’Artiste under a pen name. These were Baudelaire’s first published poems and it is unknown why he used a pen name for both the poems and the art review.

In 1847, Baudelaire’s novella, La Fanfarlo was published. The name in the title, Fanfarlo, has been associated with a Polka-dancer of the time. This novella tells the fictionalized story of the writer’s love affair with a dancer. That same year Baudelaire became acquainted with the works of Edgar Allan Poe, which he felt a strong kinship with.

Baudelaire translated a number of important English works into French, such as Thomas De Quincey’s Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, and many of Poe’s works, which helped to popularize his work in France. Although Baudelaire admired Poe, and the two never met, there was a literary connection between the two writers. Baudelaire found tales and poems by Poe that he claimed, “had long existed” in his “own brain but never taken shape.” Baudelaire also wrote critical essays on contemporary art, and essays on a variety of other subjects.

In 1857 Baudelaire’s most famous work, Les Fleurs du mal was first published, although more poems were added in later editions. Upon its original publication, the poetry collection was embroiled in controversy. Within a month of its publication, the French authorities brought legal action against Baudelaire and his publisher, claiming that the work was “an insult to public decency.”

Although the French government condemned the poetry collection when it was first published, with six of its poems censored due to their “immorality,” it is now considered an important work of French poetry. The poems in this radical volume frequently break with tradition, and deal with themes relating to decadence, eroticism, suffering, and an aspiration toward an ideal world. The final volume of Les Fleurs du mal was published posthumously in 1868, and it includes nearly all of Baudelaire’s poetry, written from 1840 until his death. 

Despite his inheritance of a respectable fortune at the age of 21, making his way financially wasn’t easy for Baudelaire, as he had a taste for extravagance. By 1844, just two years later, he had spent nearly half of his inheritance, and he had become known in artistic circles as a “dandy” and “free spender.” Baudelaire “regularly begged his mother for money throughout his career, often promising that a lucrative publishing contract or journalistic commission was just around the corner.” During the course of his life, he borrowed from his mother an estimated total of 20,473 francs, and much of what is known of his later life comes from his correspondence with her. Baudelaire faced increasing financial difficulties toward the end of his life; he was forced to sell off many of his possessions in order to pay his debts and was frequently in and out of debtors’ prison.

In 1859 Baudelaire’s health began to deteriorate due to chronic illness brought on by stress, poverty, syphilis, and his long-term use of laudanum, a tincture of opium. In 1861 his financial difficulties increased when his publisher went bankrupt. Despite these difficulties, Baudelaire continued to write and publish his works, and he gained recognition for his critical essays.

Baudelaire died in 1867 at the age of 47, leaving behind a legacy as one of the greatest poets in French literature. He is buried in the Cimetière du Montparnasse in Paris. Baudelaire’s mother died in 1871, outliving her son by almost four years.

Despite Baudelaire’s relatively slim production of poetry, his work has had a huge influence on Modernism, a movement in the arts that aims to break with classical and traditional forms of expression, and which embraced experimentation and “a focus on the individual experience.” Baudelaire is noted for his innovative use of creative language, as well as for his use of symbolism and imagery in his poetry, and his work has had a significant impact on later poets.

Some of the quotes that Charles Baudelaire is known for include:

The dance can reveal everything mysterious that is hidden in music, and it has the additional merit of being human and palpable. Dancing is poetry with arms and legs.

Any healthy man can go without food for two days — but not without poetry.

A book is a garden, an orchard, a storehouse, a party, a company by the way, a counselor, a multitude of counselors.

An artist is an artist only because of his exquisite sense of beauty, a sense which shows him intoxicating pleasures, but which at the same time implies and contains an equally exquisite sense of all deformities and all disproportion.

Always be a poet, even in prose.

Nothing can be done except little by little.

I can barely conceive of a type of beauty in which there is no Melancholy.

Whether you come from heaven or hell, what does it matter, O Beauty!

The poet enjoys the incomparable privilege of being able to be himself and others, as he wishes.

by David Jay Brown

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Rainer Marie Rilke Profile

Rainer Marie Rilke Profile

Apr 5, 2023 | David Jay Brown, Poets, Profiles

Carolyn and I have both long enjoyed the writings of Austrian poet and novelist Rainer Marie Rilke, particularly his Letters to a Young Poet.

In 1875 Rainer Marie Rilke was born in Prague, which was then part of Austria-Hungary. His father was a railway official and his mother came from a well-to-do family. Rilke had an older sister who died before he was born, and this unfortunate tragedy was said to influence how his mother treated him as a child, “as if he were a girl” by the way that she dressed and treated him.

Despite his somewhat feminine nature, and being poetically sensitive and artistically talented in his youth, from 1886 to 1891 Rilke was pressured by his parents to attend a military academy. He left the academy due to illness and attended a German trade school for a short time, but he was expelled from this school in 1892 at the age of 16. From 1892 to 1895, Rilke was tutored for his university entrance exam, which he passed in 1895, and until 1896, he studied literature, art history, and philosophy in Prague at Charles University and in Munich, Germany.

In 1895 Rilke published his first work, a volume of poetry called Leben und Lieder (“Life and Songs”). In 1897 Rilke met a married woman in Munich who changed his life, Lou Andreas-Salomé, with whom he fell in love and had a relationship with. Salomé had trained with psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, and she shared her knowledge of psychoanalysis with Rilke. Their relationship lasted until 1900, and Rilke took two extensive trips to Russia to spend time with her. Around this time, Rilke changed his first name from “René” to “Rainer,” at Salomé’s urging, because she thought that name to be “more masculine, forceful, and Germanic.”

In 1899 Rilke traveled with Salomé and her husband to Moscow, where he met the novelist Leo Tolstoy. In 1900, Rilke stayed at an artists’ colony in Worpswede, Germany, and it was here that he got to know the sculptor Clara Westhoff, whom he married the following year, and their relationship continued for the rest of his life. Their daughter Ruth was born in 1901.

In 1902 Rilke traveled to Paris to write an essay on the sculptor Auguste Rodin, and this is where he really began his writing career, although he initially had some hardships in the new city that he wrote about later. In Paris, he encountered Modernism, a movement of the time that reflected a desire for the creation of new forms of art, philosophy, and social organization, and which reflected the emerging industrial world. Rilke became deeply involved with the sculpture of Rodin and then the artwork of Paul Cézanne. For a while, Rilke acted as Rodin’s secretary and he also lectured on Rodin’s work. Rilke also wrote a book about Rodin titled Auguste Rodin.

In 1902 Rilke published Das Buch der Bilder (The Book of Images), a collection of poetry that was later expanded in a 1906 edition. In 1905 Rilke published Das Stunden-Buch (The Book of Hours), a collection of dreamy melodic poetry that he had written between 1899 and 1903. In 1907 and 1908 Rilke published additional poetry collections, Neue Gedichte (New Poems), and Der Neuen Gedichte Anderer Teil (Another Part of the New Poems). In 1910 he published his only novel, Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Btigge (The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge), which is semi-autobiographical and describes the difficult time that he had when he first arrived in Paris.

For around eight years Rilke experienced depression and a lack of creativity and didn’t write much between 1911 and 1919. During this time he traveled across North Africa and Europe in search of inspiration. In 1919 he began working again on his book Duino Elegies, a collection of poems that he had started in 1912, while he was a guest at the castle of Princess Marie von Thurn und Taxis, who was part of a German noble family, on the Adriatic Sea, near Trieste, Italy. Duino Elegies had languished for years, and the collection was finally published in 1923.

In 1922 Rilke wrote a cycle of 55 sonnets that were published the following year under the title Die Sonette an Orpheus (Sonnets to Orpheus). These sonnets, inspired by the death of his daughter’s friend, were written during a period of 3 weeks that Rilke described as a “savage creative storm.” That same year Rilke also completed work on a ten-poem collection entitled Duino Elegies, which had taken ten years to complete, and has been described as “deeply philosophical and mystical.” The Sonnets to Orpheus and the Duino Elegies are largely considered Rilke’s masterpieces and the “highest expressions of his talent.”

There is a mystical quality in much of Rilke’s work, and he extensively engaged with metaphors and contradictions in his poetry and prose to convey a sense of disbelief and a crisis in his faith. He also incorporated figures from Greek mythology and angels into his poems. Between 1902 and 1908, Rilke corresponded with a young writer named Franz Xaver Kappus, who was studying at the military academy that Rilke had also attended. Kappus had written to Rilke when he was feeling uncertain about his future as a military officer or a poet. Rilke advised Kappus on “how a poet should feel, love and seek truth in trying to understand and experience the world around him and engage the world of art.” These letters offered profound insight into the ideas and themes that appear in Rilke’s poetry, as well as his creative process, and were written during a key period of Rilke’s early artistic development. In 1929 these letters were first published in the now classic volume, Letters to a Young Poet.

Shortly before his death, Rilke was diagnosed with leukemia. Rilke died in 1926, in the arms of his doctor, in Switzerland. In 1927 he was buried in the Raron cemetery in Visp, Switzerland. Rilke chose these words for his own epitaph:

“Rose, o pure contradiction, desire
to be no one’s sleep beneath so many lids.”

In addition to his essays, famous letters, and one novel, during his lifetime Rilke produced over 400 poems, as well as short stories and plays. Rilke is currently one of the best-selling poets in the United States and his spirit lives on. Many self-help authors reference his work, and he is frequently quoted in television shows, films, and music, especially when the subjects of love or angels are discussed. I also see Rilke quoted regularly in social media memes.

Some of the quotes that Rainer Marie Rilke is known for include:

Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.

Let everything happen to you
Beauty and terror
Just keep going
No feeling is final

For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror
which we are barely able to endure, and it amazes us so,
because it serenely disdains to destroy us.
Every angel is terrible.

We need, in love, to practice only this: letting each other go. For holding on comes easily; we do not need to learn it.

I want to be with those who know secret things or else alone.

Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write.

The purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things.

The only journey is the one within.

I hold this to be the highest task of a bond between two people: that each should stand guard over the solitude of the other.

It is spring again. The earth is like a child that knows poems by heart.

by David Jay Brown

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Gustav Klimt Profile

Gustav Klimt Profile

Apr 3, 2023 | Artists, David Jay Brown, Profiles

Carolyn and I have long admired the exquisite work of the late Austrian painter Gustav Klimt, who is Carolyn’s all-time favorite artist, along with Picasso.

Gustav Klimt was an influential Austrian symbolist artist who is known for his uniquely stylized paintings. His work had a lasting impact on the development of modern art, and his paintings are among the most recognizable and beloved pieces of art today.

Klimt’s most well known works date from the early 1900s. His paintings during this period focused on symbolism, eroticism, and the female form. Klimt used a variety of techniques and materials, including gold and silver leaf, to create his iconic works of art. His use of color, pattern, and symbolism helped to create an unmistakable style that influenced many of the artistic movements that followed.

Klimt was born in 1862 in the outskirts of Vienna, Austria. His father was an engraver and goldsmith, and his mother was an amateur musician, which likely had an important influence on Klimt’s art. Klimt attended the Vienna School of Arts and Crafts, where he learned the basics of painting and drawing, and was accepted into the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts, where he studied for six years. During his early years as a painter, he created mostly landscape paintings and portraits in the academic style of the late 19th century, and was a successful painter of conventional architectural decorations. Klimt was also a talented architect and designer, who designed furniture and interior decorations, as well as a group of buildings in Vienna.

In 1897 Klimt co-founded the Vienna Secession group with other artists, architects, and designers. This was an art and design movement, which sought to promote modern artwork, architecture, and design in Vienna and elsewhere. Here Klimt was exposed to more modern, progressive styles of painting. He also studied the work of other great painters such as Rubens, Botticelli, and Klimt’s mentor, Hans Makart. Through this combination of formal training and studying the greats, Klimt was able to develop his own most original style of painting.

Klimt was also influenced by the mysticism of the Symbolist movement, and the medieval mosaics that he saw on his travels to Venice and Ravenna in 1903 were most inspiring. Some of his best-known works followed after this journey, including Kiss in 1908, and his portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer, which was completed between 1903 and 1907.

Although Klimt’s artwork is associated with sensuous and erotic depictions of women, he never married. However, he found inspiration in Emilie Flöge, a well-known fashion designer who became his muse, life companion, business partner, and lover. They met in 1890 when she was 18 years old, and their unconventional relationship influenced each other’s work. Although the exact nature of their relationship isn’t clear, it is said to have proved stronger than marriage and lasted for twenty-seven years. Some art historians believe that the female model pictured in Klimt’s painting Kiss was Emilie Flöge, although the hair color suggests it might be the red-haired Hilde Roth, one of Klimt’s other lovers.

Klimt’s final years were marked by a number of health issues. He suffered from a stroke in 1911, which left him partially paralyzed and unable to work with the same ability. He continued to paint, although a more somber and muted palette characterized his later works. Despite his health issues, Klimt’s work remained influential during this time, and his paintings were exhibited in several major cities throughout Europe, including Vienna, Berlin, and Paris. Klimt’s work was also featured in a major retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1935.

Klimt died in 1918. He was buried in Hietzing, Vienna, and numerous paintings by him were left unfinished after his death. Klimt’s influence continues to this day, with his works held in high regard by art historians and collectors alike. His works are among the most expensive paintings ever sold, with one of his paintings— the 1912 portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer II, which was previously owned by talk show host Oprah Winfrey — selling for over $150 million.

In 1941 the Nazis stole Klimt’s famous painting, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I, and acting on behalf of the German state, the portrait was given to the Galerie Belvedere in Austria. However, in 2006, after a seven-year legal claim, an arbitration committee in Vienna agreed that the painting, and others, had been stolen from the family and that it should be returned to Adele’s husband’s niece Maria Altmann, who sold the painting for $135 million, which at the time was a record price for a painting.

In 2012 the city of Vienna had many special exhibitions commemorating the 150th anniversary of Klimt’s birth. Klimt’s paintings have inspired numerous artists, as well as many creative people working in different artistic mediums. For example, his paintings have been used as the basis for films and video games. In 2014 the science fiction role-playing game Transistor used Klimt’s work as a part of the game’s aesthetic, and the 2010 film Shutter Island recreates Klimt’s famous painting Kiss.

Klimt’s works are now located in various museums, galleries, and collections around the world. In the United States, there are collections at the Museum of Modern Art and Neue Gallery in New York City, and the J. Paul Getty Museum in Malibu.

In 2021 an artificial intelligence program was used to digitally reconstruct three lost paintings by Klimt. These three paintings were stolen by the Nazis and were likely destroyed in a 1945 fire. However, thanks to an advanced AI program, these remarkable paintings have been reconstructed in full color from old black-and-white photographs.

Some of the quotes that Klimt is known for include:

No part of life is so small and insignificant that it does not offer space for artistic aspirations.

Even the most humble object, provided it is perfectly executed, increases the beauty of our earth.

There is no self-portrait of me. I am not interested in my person as an object of painting.

Whoever wants to know something about me, they should look attentively at my pictures and there seek to recognize what I am and what I want.

Truth is like fire; to tell the truth means to glow and burn.

All art is erotic.

There is always hope, as long as the canvases are empty.

by David Jay Brown

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Thích Nhất Hạnh Profile

Thích Nhất Hạnh Profile

Apr 3, 2023 | David Jay Brown, Profiles, Spiritual Teachers

Thích Nhất Hạnh’s wisdom and teachings have been a great inspiration to Carolyn and I. He was a Vietnamese Buddhist monk, as well as an author, peace activist, poet, and teacher, who had a major influence on Western practices of Buddhism. According to The New York Times, “Among Buddhist leaders influential in the West, Thích Nhất Hạnh ranks second only to the Dalai Lama.”

Nhất Hạnh combined a variety of teachings from Early Buddhist schools, with different Buddhist traditions, and ideas from Western psychology, in order to teach the foundations of mindfulness, offering a modern perspective on meditation practice. Mindfulness means maintaining a moment-by-moment awareness of our thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations, and surrounding environment.

Nhất Hạnh was born in 1926, in the ancient capital of Huế, which is located in central Vietnam and was under French colonial rule at the time. His father was an official with the French Administration and his mother was a homemaker. Nhất Hạnh was the fifth of six children, and until the age of five, he lived at his grandmother’s home with his large extended family.

At the age of seven or eight, Nhất Hạnh saw a drawing on the cover of one of his older brother’s magazines of a peaceful, smiling Buddha sitting on the grass, and he recalls that this picture gave him joy, and left him with a feeling of peace and tranquility.

One day on a school trip when Nhất Hạnh was eleven, he visited a nearby sacred mountain where a hermit was said to live, and he had what he would later describe as his first spiritual experience. The hermit was said to sit quietly every day to become peaceful like the Buddha. Nhất Hạnh explored the area, looking for the hermit, who he never found. However, he found a natural well there, which he drank from, before falling into a deep sleep on the nearby rocks. When Nhất Hạnh awoke he felt so completely satisfied from drinking this magical well water that he was inspired to become a Buddhist monk.

Nhất Hạnh first expressed interest in training to become a monk at the age of 12. Although his parents were cautious about this at first, they eventually let him pursue his calling at the age of 16. In 1942 Nhất Hạnh entered the monastery at Từ Hiếu Temple, where he received three years of instruction, and his primary teacher there was a Zen Master.

From 1955 to 1957 Nhất Hạnh lived in Huế and served as the editor of the official publication of the General Association of Vietnamese Buddhists. However, after two years the publication was suspended, as higher-ranking monks disapproved of Nhất Hạnh’s writings. In 1964 Nhất Hạnh became involved in co-founding the Institute of Higher Buddhist Studies, a private institution in Saigon that taught Buddhist studies, Vietnamese culture, and languages.

In the early 1960s in Vietnam, Nhat Hanh also co-founded Van Hanh Buddhist University and the School of Youth for Social Service, a grassroots relief organization of 10,000 volunteers based on the Buddhist principles of “non-violence and compassionate action.” This was a neutral corps of Buddhist peace workers who went into rural areas to establish schools, build healthcare clinics, and help rebuild villages.

In 1966 Nhất Hạnh received the “lamp transmission” at the Từ Hiếu Temple in Vietnam from a Zen master, making him a Buddhist teacher and spiritual head of temple and associated monasteries. That same year he was exiled from South Vietnam, after expressing opposition to the war and refusing to take sides. Nhat Hanh continued his humanitarian efforts, rescuing boat people and helping to resettle refugees. ​Nhất Hạnh then spent decades living in exile, mostly residing in France during this time.

In 1967 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. nominated Nhất Hạnh for the Nobel Peace Prize for his work for peace and reconciliation during the war in Vietnam. Nhất Hạnh played an important role in educating Dr. King about the reality of the war from a Vietnamese perspective and inspiring King’s transformation into a national leader in the anti-war movement.

In 1982 Nhất Hạnh established Plum Village France, the largest Buddhist monastery in Europe​ and the hub of the international Plum Village Community of Engaged Buddhism, a social movement composed of Buddhists who are “seeking ways to apply the Buddhist ethics, insights acquired from meditation practice, and the teachings of the Buddhist dharma to contemporary situations of social, political, environmental and economic suffering, and injustices.”

Nhất Hạnh published over a hundred books during his lifetime, which have been translated into more than forty languages, and have sold millions of copies worldwide. Some of his popular books include Being Peace, Peace is Every Step, and The Miracle of Mindfulness.

After a 39-year exile, Nhất Hạnh was permitted to visit Vietnam in 2005. Nhat Hanh was fluent in seven languages until 2014 when he experienced a brain hemorrhage that left him unable to verbally communicate for the remainder of his life. In 2018, he returned to Vietnam, to his “root temple,” Từ Hiếu Temple, near Huế, where he lived until his death in 2022, at the age of 95.

Thích Nhất Hạnh’s spirit is still very much alive. His students continue his work of healing, transformation, and reconciliation, establishing “communities of resistance” around the world. His teachings continue to be read widely, and I see his wisdom shared regularly on social media memes.

Some of the quotes that Thích Nhất Hạnh is known for include:

Walk as if you are kissing the Earth with your feet.

Letting go gives us freedom, and freedom is the only condition for happiness. If, in our heart, we still cling to anything— anger, anxiety, or possessions— we cannot be free.

People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don’t even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child — our own two eyes. All is a miracle.

Feelings come and go like clouds in a windy sky. Conscious breathing is my anchor.

Waking up this morning, I smile. Twenty-four brand new hours are before me. I vow to live fully in each moment and to look at all beings with eyes of compassion.

Through my love for you, I want to express my love for the whole cosmos, the whole of humanity, and all beings. By living with you, I want to learn to love everyone and all species. If I succeed in loving you, I will be able to love everyone and all species on Earth… This is the real message of love.

The mind can go in a thousand directions, but on this beautiful path, I walk in peace. With each step, the wind blows. With each step, a flower blooms.

We are here to awaken from our illusion of separateness.

Life is available only in the present moment.

by David Jay Brown

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D.H. Lawrence Profile

D.H. Lawrence Profile

Apr 3, 2023 | David Jay Brown, Profiles, Writers

When I first met Carolyn in the early 1980s, one of the writers that we passionately discussed was British novelist and poet D.H. Lawrence. We had both enjoyed his novels and been inspired by his sensual writings.

David Herbert Lawrence was born in 1885 in Eastwood, Nottinghamshire, England. His father was a barely literate coal miner and his mother was a schoolteacher. Nottinghamshire was a coal-mining town, and Lawrence’s working-class background influenced his writings.

From 1891 to 1898 Lawrence attended a boarding school in Eastwood that is today named in his honor: D.H. Lawrence Primary School. Lawrence was the first local student to win a scholarship to Nottingham High School. Lawrence had a great love of books while he was young and throughout his life.

From 1902 to 1906 Lawrence worked as a schoolteacher in Eastwood. It was around this time that he began writing his first poems and short stories. In 1907 Lawrence won a short story competition, and he began working on a draft for his first novel. Lawrence enrolled as a full-time student at the University of London in 1908 and he earned a teaching certificate there.

For a while, Lawrence both taught and submitted his writings for publication to some of the literary journals of the time. His first novel, The White Peacock, was published in 1911. The novel explored the theme of love triangles and the damage associated with mismatched marriages. The book received generally positive reviews, and that same year Lawrence quit his teaching position in order to be able to write full-time.

In 1912 Lawrence met the woman who he was to share his life with, Frieda Weekley, and although she was already married when they first met, they eloped and left England for Germany. Once in Germany Lawrence was arrested and accused of being a British spy, although, thanks to an intervention by Frieda’s father, he was released.

That same year, the Lawrences walked from Germany, across the Alps, to Italy. This magnificent journey, with sights of incredible beauty, and Lawrence’s impressions of the Italian countryside, were recorded in the first of Lawrence’s travel books, Twilight in Italy. During his time in Italy, Lawrence completed his novel Sons and Lovers, and he also spent time with his good friend Aldous Huxley. Lawrence’s novel, about the emotional conflicts associated with suffocating relationships and the realities of working-class life, was published in 1913 and received positive reviews.

While in Italy, Lawrence also wrote the draft of a manuscript that was eventually divided into two of his best-known novels, The Rainbow, published in 1915, and Women in Love, published in 1920 as a sequel. In both of these novels, lesbian characters play prominent roles, and the novels were considered highly controversial when they were published. They were initially banned in the United Kingdom for obscenity. In 1922 the Lawrences moved to the United States and settled in Taos, New Mexico.

Lawrence’s final novel, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, was first published privately in 1928, in Italy, and in 1929 in France. The story is about a young, married, upper-class woman who has an affair with her working-class gamekeeper, and the novel revolves around the theme that love can happen purely from physical expression.

Lady Chatterley’s Lover wasn’t openly published until 1960 when it became the subject of an obscenity trial in the United Kingdom for its depiction of sexual intimacy and its use of forbidden language. It was initially banned in the United States, Canada, Australia, India, and Japan. Lawrence’s publisher won the obscenity trial in the United Kingdom, three million copies of the book were quickly sold, and the bans was subsequently lifted around the world.

Lawrence’s work, opinions, and artistic preferences, were highly controversial during his lifetime, and there were many people who didn’t like what he was writing; as a result, he endured quite a bit of persecution and much misrepresentation of his work. Many critics viewed his erotic writings as pornography. However, although Lawrence’s depictions of sexuality were seen as shocking at the time that they were published, they seem rather tame by today’s standards.

There is also a deeper, almost mystical philosophy underlying Lawrence’s novels that many of his early critics missed. The leading characters in his most controversial novels go through rebirth experiences, and they grow into more fulfilling versions of themselves. Also, according to Lawrence, “the journey into the unconscious is accomplished through sensual experience.” This is an important theme for Lawrence. He urges us to explore the impulses and desires of the unconscious in order to find our deeper selves. Lawrence didn’t trust the intellect because he believed that the mind distorts reality, and that bodily sensations are more concrete and thus more real.

Lawrence also wrote five screenplays and nearly 800 poems in his lifetime. He had a lifelong interest in painting as well, and this became his main form of creative expression during his final years. In 1929 Lawrence’s paintings were exhibited at the Warren Gallery in London and the show was extremely controversial. Over 12,000 people attended, and after some people complained about the artwork, the police seized thirteen of the twenty-five paintings. Lawrence was able to get the paintings back— but only under the condition that he never exhibit them in England ever again. Lawrence’s paintings are now housed in a hotel in Taos, and in Austin at the University of Texas.

Lawrence died young, in 1930, at the age of 44, and he was buried in Taos. Since 2008, an annual D. H. Lawrence Festival has been organized in his hometown of Eastwood, to celebrate his life and works.

Some of the quotes that D.H. Lawrence is known for include:

Be still when you have nothing to say; when genuine passion moves you, say what you’ve got to say, and say it hot.

But better die than live mechanically a life that is a repetition of repetitions.

This is what I believe: That I am I. That my soul is a dark forest. That my known self will never be more than a little clearing in the forest. That gods, strange gods, come forth from the forest into the clearing of my known self and then go back. That I must have the courage to let them come and go. That I will never let mankind put anything over me, but that I will try always to recognize and submit to the gods in me and the gods in other men and women. There is my creed.

Life is ours to be spent, not to be saved.

I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself. A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself.

One must learn to love, and go through a good deal of suffering to get to it, and the journey is always towards the other soul.

by David Jay Brown

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Hafez Profile

Hafez Profile

Mar 29, 2023 | David Jay Brown, Poets, Profiles

A few weeks ago I wrote a profile about the 14th Century Persian poet Rumi. A passion for Rumi’s poetry led me to the work of another 14th Century Persian poet, Hafez, whose beautiful spiritual poetry is equally insightful and inspirational. Carolyn and I have both enjoyed Hafez’s wonderful lyrical poems over the years, and his collected works are often regarded as some of the most treasured literature to emerge out of Persia.

Commonly known by his pen name “Hafez” (or “Hafiz”), the late Sufi poet was born as Khwāje Shams-od-Dīn Moḥammad Ḥāfeẓ-e Shīrāzī sometime between 1310 and 1325 in Shiraz, which is located in present-day Iran. Although accounts vary, most scholars think Hafez was born in 1315 or 1320. Not much is known for certain about Hafez’s early life, so historians rely on anecdotes to try and understand what happened, and separating fact from legend about Hafez is tricky, as many mythical stories were written about him after his death.

Hafez is said to have memorized the entire Quran when he was young, by listening to his father read it. He was given the name “Hafez” at an early age, which was a title given to those who had memorized the Quran by heart, and means “memorizer and safe keeper.” Hafez must have had an incredible memory, for he is said to have memorized numerous other writings as well, including the works of Rumi.

Hafez had two brothers; his father was a coal merchant who died young and left the family in debt. Hafez’s uncle helped to raise him, and he had to leave school to work for his family, first in a drapery shop and then in a bakery. While working at the bakery, Hafez had to deliver bread to a beautiful young woman named Shakh-e Nabat, who he fell in love with, and to whom many of his poems were addressed.

Enraptured by this young woman’s beauty, but knowing that his love for her would not be returned, he supposedly held a 40-day-and-night “mystic vigil” at the tomb of Baba Kuhi (a 10th Century Persian Sufi), where he encountered an angel. This was a life-changing event for Hafez, as the angel led him into his pursuit of a spiritual union with the divine.

Hafez became a Sufi, a practitioner of the mystic branch of Islam. He received a classical religious education, lectured on the Quran and other theological subjects, and he wrote commentaries on religious classics. Hafez married when he was in his twenties and had one child.

Hafez mostly wrote lyrical poetry, or what is known as “ghazals,” which are lyric poems with a fixed number of verses and a repeated rhyme, and usually set to music. Some of the themes of Hafez’s ghazals include love, faith, and exposing hypocrisy. He was also known to ignore the religious taboos of his time, and he found humor in some of his society’s religious doctrines. Hafez was a court poet, and as such, was supported by patronage from several successive Persian regimes, although he briefly fell out of favor with one of the rulers due to his mocking of inferior poets.

Hafez wrote approximately 994 poems, which were collected into (at least) 5 volumes, and his poems have been translated into all major languages. The Complete Divan of Hafez, which contains 793 of his ghazals and other spiritual love poems, is available in English translation. Translations of his collections Faces of Love, Beloved: 81 Poems from Hafez, and The Collected Lyrics of Hafiz of Shiraz are also available.

At the age of 60, Hafez is said to have begun another 40-day-and-night vigil, by sitting inside a circle that he had drawn. On the 40th day, it was said that he had achieved “cosmic consciousness” and attained spiritual union with the divine.

Hafez died in 1390. His tomb is located in Shiraz, the city of his birth. The Tomb of Hafez, known as Hāfezieh, is a popular destination for tourists. It is composed of two memorial structures erected on the northern edge of Shiraz, which house the marble tomb of Hafez.

Today Hafez is the most popular poet in his native country, and October 12th is celebrated every year as Hafez Day in Iran. His spirit is alive and well here too. His poetry is read widely, and I see Hafez’s wisdom shared on social media memes almost daily.

Some of the quotes that Hafez is remembered for include:

I wish I could show you… the astonishing light of your own being.

You, yourself, are your own obstacle; rise above yourself.

Your heart and my heart are very, very old friends.

What we speak becomes the house we live in.

This place where you are right now, God circled on a map for you.

The heart is a thousand-stringed instrument that can only be tuned with love.

For I have learned that every heart will get what it prays for most.

An awake heart is like a sky that pours light.

by David Jay Brown

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