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Light from the Left; poems on paintings by Rembrandt
© Judith Lauter 2013 21 poems (1 by Ken Lauter), each paired with a color image of the corresponding Rembrandt painting 51 pp, 8.5" x 11" publisher: Xlibris, 2013 ebook & softcover formats order from Xlibris (softcover or ebook) ***** Excerpts below include: Preface; Table of Contents; sample pages |
PREFACE
After retiring recently following a thirty-year career in human neuroscience, I returned to a love that preceded my life in science, but which had long lain dormant – poetry. Back in the 1970s, as my graduate studies were leading me across a bridge linking the humanities with the behavioral sciences (including the neurobiology of sensory perception), I became fascinated by Rembrandt, and wrote a series of poems about some of his paintings.
For background, I extended my earlier readings in medieval and renaissance literature and history to include histories of the Dutch Golden Age, such as John Motley's The Rise of the Dutch Republic, and Jonathan Israel's The Dutch Republic, its Rise, Greatness, and Fall, 1477-1806. In subsequent years I have turned to works interpreting this same period in the context of other empires (cf. Kevin Phillips' Wealth and Democracy), and others that combine social history with art criticism, such as Simon Schama's brilliant and intensely poetic The Embarrassment of Riches, and Rembrandt's Eyes.
To assemble this book, I have chosen 17 poems from the series I wrote during the 1970s, and added 3 others composed more recently. In all the poems, I see Rembrandt as a man in love not only with light, texture, and color, but also with many aspects of the diversity of the Netherlands of his time.
In his drawings and etchings, as well as in the paintings, he displayed a fascination with the varieties of human physicality and behavior, portraying people of all types and social classes, not just the rich burghers who paid him to paint them for posterity. When not working on commission, he posed family members in everyday clothes, or decked out in items from his studio's prop wardrobe. He also painted himself in more than 90 self-portraits, not only to learn how to render facial expressions, turns of the head, and the effect of light on textiles and metal – but beyond this, to explore something much deeper: his own mind and soul.
Rembrandt's attraction to diversity also extended to systems of thought – the continental storms in religion and politics that swept through the Netherlands during this time are often reflected in his work. In many of the paintings Rembrandt regards the contemporary Dutch social system and its values, including traditional religious myths and practices, with a realistic, wry, and at times a very jaundiced, eye. In fact, I find in Rembrandt an often radically modern sensibility, an artist interested in commenting on his time and culture, yet constantly affirming his freedom from them.
Thus my series begins and ends with poems based on self-portraits, from which Rembrandt considers us with sometimes sad, sometimes disturbing, but always penetrating and deeply human eyes. Those eyes of his have seen amazing things, and drawn their own conclusions – whatever the cost.
-- JLL, Nacogdoches TX, 2013
Summer 1974: An Invocation 350 Years Later
Out of the mottled medieval
light and dark, you and the European
Renaissance were born, extravagant
language and colors of the mind.
As my science looks to the left
of the brain for its art, let
these poems look to your painted
graphs of things as you saw them
to let me see too. Your light
from the left showed clearly
all that was not apparent; let
its knowledge of bright and dark,
of illumination directed behind
the face of things, be the patron
of my own small renaissance.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Preface
Self-Portrait (1628)
The Artist in the Studio (1628)
Christ at Emmaus (1628)
The Raising of Lazarus (1631)
Danaë (1636)
Danaë (1636) – by Ken Lauter
The Angel Leaving the Family of Tobias (1637)
Portrait of a Man in Oriental Costume (1639)
Holy Family (1640)
Agatha Bas (1641)
The Night Watch (1642)
The Woman Taken in Adultery (1644)
Girl at a Half-Open Door (1645)
Christ at Emmaus (1648)
Flora (1654)
Portrait of a Rabbi (1654)
Bathsheba Bathing (1654)
A Woman Bathing (1654)
The Polish Rider (1657)
The Syndics (1662)
Self-Portrait with Palette (1665)
SAMPLE PAGES
After retiring recently following a thirty-year career in human neuroscience, I returned to a love that preceded my life in science, but which had long lain dormant – poetry. Back in the 1970s, as my graduate studies were leading me across a bridge linking the humanities with the behavioral sciences (including the neurobiology of sensory perception), I became fascinated by Rembrandt, and wrote a series of poems about some of his paintings.
For background, I extended my earlier readings in medieval and renaissance literature and history to include histories of the Dutch Golden Age, such as John Motley's The Rise of the Dutch Republic, and Jonathan Israel's The Dutch Republic, its Rise, Greatness, and Fall, 1477-1806. In subsequent years I have turned to works interpreting this same period in the context of other empires (cf. Kevin Phillips' Wealth and Democracy), and others that combine social history with art criticism, such as Simon Schama's brilliant and intensely poetic The Embarrassment of Riches, and Rembrandt's Eyes.
To assemble this book, I have chosen 17 poems from the series I wrote during the 1970s, and added 3 others composed more recently. In all the poems, I see Rembrandt as a man in love not only with light, texture, and color, but also with many aspects of the diversity of the Netherlands of his time.
In his drawings and etchings, as well as in the paintings, he displayed a fascination with the varieties of human physicality and behavior, portraying people of all types and social classes, not just the rich burghers who paid him to paint them for posterity. When not working on commission, he posed family members in everyday clothes, or decked out in items from his studio's prop wardrobe. He also painted himself in more than 90 self-portraits, not only to learn how to render facial expressions, turns of the head, and the effect of light on textiles and metal – but beyond this, to explore something much deeper: his own mind and soul.
Rembrandt's attraction to diversity also extended to systems of thought – the continental storms in religion and politics that swept through the Netherlands during this time are often reflected in his work. In many of the paintings Rembrandt regards the contemporary Dutch social system and its values, including traditional religious myths and practices, with a realistic, wry, and at times a very jaundiced, eye. In fact, I find in Rembrandt an often radically modern sensibility, an artist interested in commenting on his time and culture, yet constantly affirming his freedom from them.
Thus my series begins and ends with poems based on self-portraits, from which Rembrandt considers us with sometimes sad, sometimes disturbing, but always penetrating and deeply human eyes. Those eyes of his have seen amazing things, and drawn their own conclusions – whatever the cost.
-- JLL, Nacogdoches TX, 2013
Summer 1974: An Invocation 350 Years Later
Out of the mottled medieval
light and dark, you and the European
Renaissance were born, extravagant
language and colors of the mind.
As my science looks to the left
of the brain for its art, let
these poems look to your painted
graphs of things as you saw them
to let me see too. Your light
from the left showed clearly
all that was not apparent; let
its knowledge of bright and dark,
of illumination directed behind
the face of things, be the patron
of my own small renaissance.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Preface
Self-Portrait (1628)
The Artist in the Studio (1628)
Christ at Emmaus (1628)
The Raising of Lazarus (1631)
Danaë (1636)
Danaë (1636) – by Ken Lauter
The Angel Leaving the Family of Tobias (1637)
Portrait of a Man in Oriental Costume (1639)
Holy Family (1640)
Agatha Bas (1641)
The Night Watch (1642)
The Woman Taken in Adultery (1644)
Girl at a Half-Open Door (1645)
Christ at Emmaus (1648)
Flora (1654)
Portrait of a Rabbi (1654)
Bathsheba Bathing (1654)
A Woman Bathing (1654)
The Polish Rider (1657)
The Syndics (1662)
Self-Portrait with Palette (1665)
SAMPLE PAGES
Copyright © 2023 Judith L. Lauter
