January 9, 2011
Winter Harmony, John Henry Twachtman, c. 1890
In a soundless space;
With footsteps quiet and slow,
At a tranquil pace,
Under veils of white lace.
I shall go shod in silk,
And you in wool,
White as white cow’s milk,
More beautiful
Than the breast of a gull.
We shall walk through the still town
In a windless peace;
We shall step upon white down,
Upon silver fleece,
Upon softer than these.
We shall walk in velvet shoes:
Wherever we go
Silence will fall like dews
On white silence below.
We shall walk in the snow.
— Elinor Wylie
— Comments —
Hurricane Betsy writes:
I wish to thank you for posting that lovely painting by Twachtman. And the poem is one of the most evocative things I have ever read.
“Winter Harmony is one of Twachtman’s many studies of the pool on his property. The silver-gray tones and subdued blues and mauves evoke the evanescent transitions of light on an overcast day. The feathery touches of Twachtman’s brush are very evident in the shimmering greens of the hemlock needles and the golden brown leaves that still cling to some branches. Unlike a French impressionist, who built up a scene with separate touches of color side by side, Twachtman adapted an old master technique of scumbling nearly dry paint into overlapping layers. He worked loosely so that the underlying tints and shades show through between the irregular, incomplete textures of covering strokes.”
Laura writes:
You are welcome. I assume that quote is from the National Gallery of Art, which owns the painting.
Wylie’s poem was first published in 1920. She was a minor poet who led an immoral and unhappy life. From her biography at the Poetry Foundation:
Growing up in a socially prominent family in Somerville, New Jersey, as the daughter of a lawyer who later became solicitor general of the United States, she was trained for the life of a debutante and a society wife, but she rebelled against that destiny and became notorious, in her time, for her multiple marriages and affairs. Her childhood was unhappy, according to Edward Kelly in the Dictionary of Literary Biography; her father had a mistress, her mother was a chronic hypochondriac, and at least one of her siblings, a brother, committed suicide. Another brother was rescued after jumping off a ship, and a sister died under equivocal circumstances. Wylie herself, although known for her beauty, suffered from dangerously high blood pressure all her adult life; it caused unbearable migraines, and would kill her by means of a stroke at the age of forty-three.
