03 June 2010

Pure Pleasure: Peacocks


Villa of Poppaea, 1st C.

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It is time for pleasure, and few things are more pleasurable than peacocks.

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S.ta Costanza, Rome, 4th C.



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Dioscorides manuscript of Anicia Juliana, 6th C.



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Rotunda, Thessalonike, 4th C.


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I saw a peacock with a fiery tail
I saw a blazing comet drop down hail
I saw a cloud with ivy cirlced round
I saw a sturdy oak creep on the ground
I saw a pismire swallow up a whale
I saw a raging sea brim full of ale
I saw a Venice glass sixteen foot deep
I saw a well full of men's tears that weep
I saw their eyes all in a flame of fire
I saw a house as big as the moon and higher
I saw the sun even in the midst of night
I saw the Man that saw this wondrous sight.

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Rotunda, Thessalonike, 4th C.



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Identification  misplaced.


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Mark you how the peacock's eye
Winks away its ring of green,
Barter'd for an azure dye.
And the piece that's like a bean,
The pupil, plays its liquid jet
To win a look of violet.

Gerard Manley Hopkins


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Al Jazari's model for a drinking fountain, Topkapi Museum, ca. 1000?


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Benozzo Gozzolo, Medici Chapel, Florence, 1460


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Domination of Black

At night, by the fire,
The colors of the bushes
And of the fallen leaves,
Repeating themselves,
Turned in the room,
Like the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind.
Yes: but the color of the heavy hemlocks
Came striding.
And I remembered the cry of the peacocks.


The colors of their tails
Were like the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind,
In the twilight wind.
They swept over the room,
Just as they flew from the boughs of the hemlocks
Down to the ground.
I heard them cry -- the peacocks.
Was it a cry against the twilight
Or against the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind,
Turning as the flames
Turned in the fire
Turning as the tails of the peacocks
Turned in the loud fire
Loud as the hemlocks
Full of the cry of the peacocks?
Or was is a cry against the hemlocks?

Out of the window,
I saw how the planets gathered
Like the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind.
I saw how the night came,
Came striding like the color of the heavy hemlocks
I felt afraid.
And I remembered the cry of the peacocks.

Wallace Stevens


9 comments:

  1. Delightful collection of image and verse!
    Thank you.

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  2. Hallo there. Stumbled on your blog while doing a research. Is there a copyright on the images published?

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  3. I hope not. I have just collected peacocks from wherever I have seen them. The first one is from Rome101, a fabulous website of photographs of Roman painting, & much else. Some are from postcards. The fountain I found on-line, & the last is from one of several books I was looking at on the Gozzoli Medici chapel frescos. I certainly have no copyright on them.

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  4. I stumbled upon your site whilst searching material pertaining to Gerard Manley Hopkins -- wonderful, especially both the citations of Hopkins and Wallace Stevens.

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  5. Thank you -- it's so nice to get a comment so long after this was published.

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  6. Absolutely beautiful images. To think the earliest one here is from the first century. It is lovely to be able to get a glimpse of Anicia Juliana's peacock. A favourite is the Rotunda Thessalonica peacock. What beautiful jewel like colours and imagery for the 4th century. Truly amazing.

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  7. Aren't they lovely! Thank you for writing.

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  8. If you go on YouTube to Byzantine Secular Music - "The Nightingale Kratima," you will hear the most beautiful and unusual "original" Byzantine music from the 11th century. Anicia Juliana's peacock is on there as well as other beautiful Byzantine pictures. You must check this piece of music out. You will love it, and it perfectly compliments your peacock pictures.

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