A chapter from 'Rosens triangel' (2018) and Tiepolo's artworks in 'Scuola Grande dei Carmini', Venezia

A chapter from 'Rosens triangel' (2018) and Tiepolo's artworks in 'Scuola Grande dei Carmini', Venezia

John Bjarne Grover

After the success with recognizing almost all parts of Tintoretto's 'Scuola Grande di San Rocco' in Venice in my "Stillhetens åndedrag" (2016), and almost all parts of my "Stillhetens åndedrag" in Tintoretto's 'Scuola Grande di San Rocco' in Venice - and that was without having seen this Scuola when I wrote my book - I now thought (having been for some days in Venice) that a similar phenomenon will perhaps obtain for Tiepolo's artworks in 'Scuola Grande dei Carmini', his works in the ceiling in the main hall upstairs, relative to my other norwegian poetry book "Rosens triangel" (2018), the chapter 3 called 'Carmelite'. Had I understood the catholic monasteries right - so that my chapter on the carmelites really are about the carmelites? I went to the Scuola Grande dei Carmini for checking this. And indeed my predictions seemed to be to the point. There are 16 poems in my 'Carmelite' part of the book, poems #33-48, and there are 9 artworks by Giambattista Tiepolo in the ceiling upstairs (8 of them are given here) - four in each corner (my #33-36), four that are more centrally (my #37-47) and the main work in the center of the ceiling (my #48). I here bring the correlations between these and my 16 poems. They are by and large easy to recognize but the mapping is not completely one-to-one: For example, the book in the last line of my poem #34 is not in the relevant artwork but in the canvas closer to the center which I recognize as relevant to #44. I refer also to the phenomenon of 'the rose's triangle' (the title to my book) which really is about 'the rose's trinity' - exemplified in the relation between Tiepolo's artwork (where the woman's vision seems to go the waterway through three flowers) to my #37-38-39 - as this finds its ultimate articulation in the 'eye' of the central artwork (as the eye of the horsehead facing rightwards, under the madonna) - an eye which is symbolically present in the two hands in the lower right but really hidden inside an equilateral triangle when seen from the viewpoint of the lower characters. This meets my poem #48. It is in this last artwork that the triangle turns into a trinity. Notice also how #47 describes the white face seen as the female's own mirror image (what is also a ship on a stormy sea) - which could look like a white horsehead, and it may be this white head which is the madonna in #48. Therefore my poem #47 could also be [indirectly?] ascribed to Tiepolo's last and most central painting - as a metaphysical transform. There are some such overlaps - such as e.g. also my #37 which could be recognized in the preceding artwork (along with #36), cp. the dog.

Click on the images and there opens a high-resolution reproduction which then can be clicked again for showing the details.

Click on the big #number above the images for the original norwegian poem - the english translations I have added to the images are maximally literal word-by-word for making it easy to follow the norwegian text.

I had not seen this Scuola Grande dei Carmini before I wrote my book.

A = #33

Source of the reproduction

#33.
I wake up from hypnotic dream
and I have been far away
as in a deep fantastic sleep
in the eternity's shirt.
It is probably my consciousness who
sits and watches me
when sleep's fog which is around
my soul condenses itself.
Arms and hands are like cheeks
and the mouth [like] her hand
when her eyes stare into
me and says: "John!"

B = #34

Source of the reproduction

#34.
Venice is built on pavement/cobblestone
with brick stone walls that got
the red forth under rooftiles
and some quite simply music.
Canals and narrow street shadows
along the heart's mystic path
are the faith that the heart is building.
It is what you fall in love with.
You come to the doors of silence
that slowly open [themselves] up
to what the silence is hearing:
A table, a book and a cup.

C = #35

Source of the reproduction

#35.
You should write down the findings
and hang them up with pegs
otherwise you will never be able
to find that type/chap again.
You see it only in a short second
before time goes out and much change:
A slanting hillside over a darker background,
a tree and a small cottage.
They hang over a newer time
as in a prayer-answerable shout.
The time interval goes in staccato glide
as in a caleidoscope.

D = #36

Source of the reproduction

#36.
The wings of the doves have their nature
in the geometry's test
where origo is in the threshold's contour.
They fly east and west.
They fly like the Lord conducts/steers a nun
the way which the faith takes
and it can well be that kind
of signals it has.
Therefore the woman's hair are her feathers.
She puts/arranges it where she wants
when the air that carries it up is
- the zenoan arrow.

E = #37, #38, #39

Source of the reproduction

#37.
One puts one's foot where one goes
in firm steps and in tugs -
from the right towards the left - they get
it suddenly in shape with a handshake.
It is the soul that finds a ground
when it is steered/led by the childhood faith.
There usually stands a dog
on the top of this bridge.
An angel is a sort of combination
of the one and the other part
as when a man sees it in a vision:
A woman's presence in the/his soul.
#38.
It is when it turns in the high medals
that language's fine nuances turn along/with
in the body's fine procreated/multiplied details
in what the poet considers it with.
There it turns like the fibres of those textiles
that lie like shadows on the body's attic
and run along the body's pale profiles
like the bathing costume/pants on the hips' matter/substance.
There they turn - the first, the second, the third,
like the light that plays in the water canals
breaks each link in the consciousness' chain
and in the ordinal numbers.
#39.
You see it far away
on the other side,
a woman in shirt
with the skirt in it.
She is like a child
who eats an icecream
she got from the father
in paradise.
The biscuit is conic
in its palm
and purely allophonic:
It is the people's Augustine.

F = #40, #41, #42

Source of the reproduction

#40.
The mass voice God's son knows
when there are words in it
is the beauty of the stone arcade.
And there are boards in it.
But the modern serving
believes often that the beverage's name
can cover the skewed marking
which is the religions' want/lack
when the table is properly covered.
It was precisely this
which should not have taken place
in Italy - when the people is satisfied.
#41.
It is in the vision's meter
that which gives form to our life -
the truth's beautiful seats
as in the cyclic time.
The heaven's outermost star
calls it its home.
Yes, I would like to
have what you bring forth.
Moses and the people with the ark
got their thoughts from their God.
Now - that is comedy in the fields,
it is hard commandments.
#42.
Here I go out the door
to our corridor
and close it before it
lets in word.
She sits and turns
her look/eyes towards me
with lifted hands
that bend [themselves]
and wave/fan from the thorax table
(that is the organization)
and says that word:
"...reakzionen".

G = #43, #44

Source of the reproduction

#43.
The mystery path is a corridor
with doors on both sides
that open in to monitors
that show us the heart's times.
I open a door to a bathroom.
The door glides slowly up
as silently as when one thinks it over.
But the room/space has no body.
The human life is a series
that opens one more time
when one is out on holiday
and moves back to fire.
#44.
The bread can be made from stones
that lie rotated towards
each other like the heart's branches
and resemble the world's root.
Thus do I enter a baker's
with the bread that I am pointing at
and wonder if it is tasty.
I hope it is west as well?
And the bread is like a heartvalve
that can be called a cornerstone
when the baker says: "There is enough
space for a resurrection".

H = #45, #46, #47

Source of the reproduction

#45.
She is a wonderful landscape,
a ship on a stormy/rough sea
on-signed by a faithful crew
with wages that the earth gave.
She lifts an index finger
towards me - with a look and a word:
"Are you naturally dead - like rings
in water where you fell last year?"
Eh, that is a difficult question.
What is it she really wants?
I have a slightly difficult hearing.
Maybe she asks one more time?
#46.
A cat is a white symbiosis
that stretches out on a blanket
like the petals of a rose
that fold out in its bed.
When cars are transported with the train
in large amounts and numbers
like the planks in that hull
that sails through the cosmic 'all' [the universe]
then you see in their metope
a car that resembles a cat
that stretches its white syncopation
in/on the clouds floor possessed/engaged/occupied.
#47.
The woman ensouls a beautiful body
she got from the Lord as gift.
She lifts one of her arms up
and scratches herself at the shirtcollar
in the neck that is in my view.
She stands with her back [turned] aside
but turned towards me who is just as tactile
as her body is it in time.
She touches her neck under her hair.
She touches with her finger.
I think she knows it is me she brings
almost to the verge of tears/weeping.

I = #47, #48

Source of the reproduction

#47.

The woman ensouls a beautiful body
she got from the Lord as gift.
She lifts one of her arms up
and scratches herself at the shirtcollar

in the neck that is in my view.
She stands with her back [turned] aside
but turned towards me who is just as tactile
as her body is it in time.

She touches her neck under her hair.
She touches with her finger.
I think she knows it is me she brings
almost to the verge of tears/weeping.
#48.
There dances a shadow
in the brain of the landscape.
My thought wants to build
its time in the distance.
There dances a crab
at the buoy of the sea's side/bending.
It senses a crab
like painted an eye.
In the Hellespont
there live muses
in the horizon:
Signal Horse/Head Producer.