Plaisir d'amour

     For some reason which I can't remember now, I spent an hour on YouTube last night, listening to different renditions of that famous love song, "Plaisir d'amour." (For those who have only heard the Elvis Presley version, the original was written in 1784 by Jean-Paul-Égide Martini.) Ignoring Nana Mouskouri (not a fan at all) and Joan Baez (am a fan, but not when she sings this song), I sought out classical/opera singers' interpretations and narrowed my favorites down to a handful. (For the text in French and English, click here.)

     Of course, I love Janet Baker's sumptuous sound in everything she does, and "Plaisir d'amour is no exception.

    

     Victoria de los Angeles is another famous interpreter of the song. Though her earlier studio recording is beautiful and vocally fresh, I prefer this later, live performance, taped when she was just past her glorious prime. So soulful.  I wept when I first listened to it.

    

     I also succumbed to the charms of Yvonne Printemps' recording, sung with harpsichord. Printemps, who began her career in operetta before moving on to straight theater and film, brings theatricality and a touch of musical eccentricity to the piece. I find it particularly hard to resist the gut-grinding scoop with which she sings the second syllable of "chagrin" everytime she sings it.

     After listening to a number of male opera singers (Schipa, Gigli, Bruson, even Bastianini), I was won over by Fritz Wunderlich's clean, simple, yet heartfelt singing.

Revisiting My Very First Sonnet

     What formalist can forget the first sonnet he or she ever wrote? Mine came as an assignment for senior English. I can't remember the name of my teacher (as I recall, she wasn't that great a teacher), but I clearly recall that she only required we stick to either the Shakespearean or the Petrarchan rhyme scheme, but she didn't expect meter (much more difficult than rhyme). The day we handed our sonnets in, our teacher perched on her desk and read them all out loud, but without revealing their authors. They were, one after another, half-hearted, jokey, disrespectful attempts, and I could see her becoming both discouraged and angry with each poem. Finally, she came to mine. She began reading it in a weary voice, expecting it to be yet another jokey attempt. At the end of the fourth line, she paused in surprise and looked at the class with a relieved smile. When she finished, she asked, "Did you all understand what the poem was saying?" Then she read it again.

     I think that was the moment my childhood desire to write was cemented.

     Incredibly, after all these years, I still remember that sonnet word for word, even though all written copies of it are long lost. A few years ago, I revised it, primarily giving it meter and polishing up the language. I also changed the rhyme scheme from Petrarchan to Shakespearean. Many of my friends have read both versions; some actually prefer the original for its simplicity and youthful voice.

Small Talk (1977)

As we weave our web of words, staring,
Gazing out the window with private dreams
Locked in our minds, how strange it seems
That here we are, speaking, but not really sharing.
Too tired to listen, not in the least caring
What the other says, we think of schemes
To escape this farce of masks and screens,
To rid ourselves of the frozen smiles we're wearing.
Instead, we go on with our pointless chat,
Fidgeting uncomfortably with each prolonged pause,
While searching desperately for some silly sentence.
What would it be like if we simply sat,
Without feeling so obliged to the dubious cause
Of prim convention and social eloquence?


The Art of Conversation (2010)

We weave a silken thread while private dreams
unfurl behind the diptych of our eyes
and cool façades of polished smiles; we scheme
to flee this habitat where broidered lies
and glib embellishments of fact reside.
Instead, we chatter on. Our platitudes
will serve to mask the homeliness inside.
But as the thread winds round the attitudes
we have so deftly wrought, beneath the pause
inevitably born, we ponder what
would come about if—artlessly—we sat,
unburdened from our duty to the cause
of weaving (for convention's dubious sake)
a thread that only truth could ever break.

© Leticia Austria

The Coziness of Delusion

     Recently, I had a reunion with a person who has known me for over half my life. In fact, we were in love, or something like it, for many years. But all that ended a long time ago, and both of us have changed—in my case, pretty radically. During our recent reunion chatting over coffee, I realized that we now have very little in common. The interests we shared years ago are no longer a viable part of my life, and the things that now absorb my time and mind are not a viable part of his. Still, there are friendships that can exist and even flourish despite big differences in interests and philosophies. It was this hope that prompted me to ask him if he ever reads this blog. Though I certainly don't tell the whole truth in these posts, I tell a lot of the truth, and if anyone cared to know who I am now and how I got to be who I am now, this blog is a great place to start. His answer saddened me.

     "No, I haven't read it. And I really don't think I ever will. Because that  'you' has nothing to do with me, and I want to remember you the way I knew you." A second passed before he added, "I know that isn't real."

     And I know now that he and I can never be complete friends. We can only be nostalgic friends. Like the "love" we once had, it's only friendship of a sort; there are too many things missing, essential things.

     A few years ago, I wrote a sonnet about this sort of delusion and how we cling to it. It wasn't written with this particular person in mind; it was written for someone else, of whom I myself had, admittedly, created a certain image, an image that is idealized—though I have, since writing the sonnet, come to know him better and more realistically.

Simulacrum

I couldn't bear it if the photograph
I took of you so long ago should fade.
Inside my journal, like an epitaph,
between the last two pages, it is laid
with care. From time to time I take it out,
to see if all the colors are still true,
make certain that the sentiment I wrote
is still defined, that time has not subdued
the spirit radiating from your eyes.
And if I can preserve it through the years,
perhaps the dream of you will never die
but flourish, ever luminous and clear.
I know you now just as I knew you then.
My captured image brings you back again.

© Leticia Austria 2009
First published in Dreamcatcher  (under the title "The Likeness")

Divided by a Common Literature

     Yesterday I went for my biannual teeth cleaning. Given that, when having your teeth cleaned/examined/otherwise-worked-on, you spend most of your time with your mouth open while gloved fingers grasping various tools muck their way around in it, you can't say an awful lot. You can, however, listen, if your hygienist or dentist is in a chatty mood, as my hygienist was yesterday.

     "Are you a fan of Downton Abbey?" she asked

     "Nng-nng, echh." (That's "Mm-hmm, yes" in teeth-cleaning speak.)

     This prompted a one-sided discussion on social class and snobbery, during which I longed in vain to contribute something other than grunts and whimpers. Even when the tools were withdrawn for a brief moment, it was only so that I could purse my lips around the little suction tube.

     When the cleaning was finally finished and I could speak again, my hygienist had moved on somehow to Persuasion.

     "I tried reading it once," she said, "but I just couldn't finish it. That father! Such a snob!"

     "It's probably my favorite novel of all time," I said, and prattled blithely on to proclaim the book's many merits, Jane Austen's genius, her comical treatment of characters—such as Mr Elliott—who are less than palatable, etc. "It's the kind of novel that's best read when one is older, I think; as opposed to Pride and Prejudice, which easily appeals even at a young age; no, Persuasion is much more autumnal in tone, and her heroine is older and therefore appeals to a more mature reader; I love Anne so much, because she knows very well what her father is, and yet she .... " Blah, blah, blah.

     At one point, I turned into Niles Crane and used the word "milieu"—"Austen portrays her own milieu so well, with such perspicacity, humor, sympathy"—and as soon as the "m" word flew out of my freshly cleaned mouth, even as I continued spouting Persuasion's and Austen's praises, I noticed a certain expression in my hygienist's eyes as they looked down at me over the surgical mask. True, my view of her was upside-down, since I was still prone in the chair, but I clearly saw in her eyes that it was time for me to shut up.

     "Well," she said, rather lamely, "maybe I'll try reading it again."

     I do hope she does. I wonder what we'll discuss at my next teeth cleaning.

    

The Bond of True Friendship

When I left "the world" to enter the cloister, my deepest sorrow was not, as one would think, leaving my family, but leaving my friends. My family, I knew, would always be there for me and I would be always in their hearts, and they would certainly visit as often as was permitted; but how many of my friendships would survive what could have been a lifelong separation? If I had remained in the cloister, taken solemn vows, it was quite possible that I would never again see any of them, unless they made the trip to Lufkin to visit, or to witness my Solemn Profession.

 

I did receive letters from some of my friends, and one of them did come for a brief visit. One, however, wrote to me far more often than the others. Oddly enough, it was a friend I hardly ever saw in person (and still see only rarely). I was so very grateful whenever my novice directress handed me an envelope scrawled with his familiar handwriting! It was during those two and a half years, enclosed in the monastery walls, that I learned how true a friend he was and is.

Forgetting

Forgetting is the thing I fear the most.
I can't forbid the fading of the day,
nor can I draw the curtains of your heart
against the void of predatory night.
The music we have shared, the scattered days,
are feeble beams of light across the sea
of separation, circumstance, and time.
That there may only be what there
has been, I won't regret. The one thing I
could never bear is that you would forget.


Assurance

"How could I forget you? Be sure of my eternal friendship,
     as I am sure of yours." ~ from a letter

There is a passacaglia in my mind
That plays its stately rhythm on those days
When faith becomes a nebulous, gray haze
And all bright hope lies languishing behind.
Its harmonies are simple, yet refined;
Its tune develops at a solemn pace;
There is comfort in its persistent bass,
A steady beat, dependable and kind.
Above all, its composer is most dear,
For it is you, who wrote it for my heart
When cloister walls had once kept me apart
From things familiar, things I held as mine.
It is my talisman against all fear
Of distance, and its thieving ally, time.


Definition of "passacaglia"
© Leticia Austria 2008, 2011

The Promise

This is a very early poem that I wrote in the monastery and have since very slightly revised.


To surrender in faith is to hope in the dark.
Dark faith it is that first bids us
walk beneath Gethsemane's vigilant leaves
to the brow of Calvary, and there
grasp the hand shattered by our sin, trusting
we shall be carried beyond the weeping stars.

For beyond is where dawn ever gleams
with the joy given to those who trust,
to whom the dark is the way,
in whose hearts echoes the Virgin's fiat
in measure clear and strong.

To surrender in faith is to hope in the dark.
To hope in the dark is to tread toward the light,
the light that is life,
the life that is love,
the love that is Lord.

© Leticia Austria 2006

The Dream

With widening dawn
fragments bloom
like passion flowers:

I smile I recall
but never saw,

a voice from your lips,
yet strange and new,

embraces hidden from history
beneath the heavy cloak of sleep.

Dark disperses as light gathers,
morning quickens, fragments fuse and form;

the vista of day's long hours
brightens
as I remember
the you I knew in the night.

© Leticia Austria 2012