Saturday, February 1, 2014

V. Groupe des cinq


As when Talleyrand made love, hostile lameness wrought bloomed iron
Half-made, David purified its filings, the backless méridienne, Mme Récamier
Recoiling his neck (1800)—Mme de Staël thought, so the twig is inclined
Chateaubriand’s arrival, and Juliette’s reply—Among the abbé’s feeble legs spaced fins,
Her hook without bait; a dolphin could also take him for a man—Labyrinthe figures
Agitating a jaunmange of light strained by Cailliaud’s lawn sieve of Méroé and Canova’s pyramids

Maria Christina lodged in the crypt of her mother’s heart since the day of their birth; her pyramid
Of Saxe-Teschen (1805); Canova renovated for Titian, converted to his own (1822), whose iron-tipped
Trapano, a bow drill, divests the Elgin Marbles, although he would not skim the flesh figures
Nor the Egyptian blue rainwater had blackened; embarked at Piraeus for restoration—Récamier’s
Daybed was no less veneered by the Egyptian survey (1800)—Cailliaud’s pyramidia inclined
70° at Méroé were solid up to their capstones, not like those collapsed along the Nile—Fin de siècle

Chateaubriand’s ill-conceived five months in America (1791), with what was to become the finality
Of a Marengo hamlet—David’s five copies of Napoleon at the Saint-Bernard Pass (1800), the pyramid
Slated for Frari; Titian the Venetian Cestius—Pre-Romantics, who; if not exiles as de Staël inclined
To mention her father’s unpaid promissory note, abandon themselves in unkempt parklands iron-tamped
Into the New Worlds—Benjamin Constant’s liberty in everything thinned his passionate figure
Branded to de Staël since 1794; love as any landscape wears by askance, then overt letters—Juliette Récamier’s

Disinterest aside, from Constant’s mention, No volcano in the world blazes as much as she— Récamier
Is restored into wounding confidence; the ape confuses man with place—Or it is a dolphin’s undoing fins,
In prospect of the container-handling terminal of Piraeus, its kept lion of Sennaar—Figures
Elevated above their motives; Canova’s bust of Récamier, whose olive branch breaches her aura, as a glass pyramid’s
673 panes—de Staël’s stimulus made Talleyrand Foreign Minister (1797), whose gratitude inclined
Securing a Concordat (1802); wherever he pitched turbot, then a Bourbon, at the Congress of Vienna (1814-1815)—Iron

Archways of Vienna were already an extraction of the Eisenbuch (1320-1819), with iron-clad
Protections and Jewish interest rates—Maria Christina’s endowment, nevertheless matched Récamier’s—
Equal to a Meroitic offering to Kentake, the first and last vision of de Staël’s at Coppet, Morin’s inclined
Portrait (1790)—By her love match and title Duke Albert of Saxe-Teschen, founding the Albertina, and gold-finished
Stateroom, or Goldkabinett (1820)—The gout-stricken author of Atala (1801) would object to the figure
Of David’s Mme Récamier Magritte measured for a coffin (1949-1951)—Augustinerkirche’s pyramid

Cenotaph ditches the sacred herald near a sleeping lion, which is Apedemak, the Meroitic principal behind its pyramids
What to make of these careerists of sensibility, their seductions their utmost chattels—Iron-willed,
Cailliaud followed Herodotus to the fallen rams at the Fifth Cataract—Writing his volumes as a decorated figure
The year Canova died (1822)—Brillat-Savarin’s sixth sense is shown to his cousin, Juliette Récamier
By Chateaubriand, the frustrated English tutor shaping a pristine love of a Natchez girl; virginity inclining
Her to suicide—Creeping damp on the Canova monuments once waxed to imitate glabrous, finned

Creatures, aquatic apes marching into the black cave of a pyramid—de Staël finished her life
Experiencing Jean Rocca’s mute offering; Récamier, the figure of her fictions—Their torments lulled as some Tivoli waterfall in her canvas (1808) by my fifth-rate endurance coagulating iron in Cailliaud’s Méroé and Chateaubriand’s melancholy enclosed canopy

3 comments:

Σφιγξ said...

https://www.nyrb.com/products/memoirs-from-beyond-the-grave?variant=41973006343

https://www.nyrb.com/products/memoirs-from-beyond-the-grave-1800-1815?variant=40425875734696

Long-listed.

Σφιγξ said...

https://www.gallery.ca/magazine/artists/proud-coffin-rene-magrittes-perspective-madame-recamier-by-david

Σφιγξ said...

I recall correctly, Javier Marìas's Tomás Nevinson (2021) featured a woman in a park reading Les Mémoires d'Outre-Tombe (1849-50).