Boy or girl... ? Desire and imagination

A boy or a girl ? A boy with a whig and with a girlish veil and dress ?
Yes, most likely, a boy...

I love so much this photograph... I love the sweet face, I love the dreaming eyes, we will never know what he was looking at...

I love the intemporal poetry of this photograph, the beauty of this face is shining for ever, these eyes will haunt me for ever...

Wilhelm von Gloeden's camera caught for ever the fugitive time of a dream, of a memory, of a thought...

This boy of Taormina is looking at eternity...

I don't know your name... Perhaps in Taormina someone still remember it...?

Were you a friend of Pasqualino ?

You make me dream and I would love so much, so much to tell you, so many things...

I know you would listen to me, you would understand me and even smile, and again, you would turn your gaze towards this so remote horizon, back to an immemorial past or to a future beyond your imagination...

Yes, in 2011, there is still someone who is moved by your beauty, by your youth, by the mystery, the riddle of your gaze, so focussed, so deep, so silent...

You are now a part of my small collection of von Gloeden's masterworks... I choose only photographs that inspire me, photographs that are a music for my eyes, for my heart, for my thought...

Perhaps I am wrong, but I think I already crossed your path, a while ago, I was already seduced by your beauty, by your mystery, by your ambiguity. Boy or girl ? Pure beauty ignores borders... Any collection is ruled by its inner logic, by the gaze and the sensitivity of the collector...

Are you the same boy as this one, I posted on my blog on January 29, in 2010 ???

Yes, I think so...

I love this photograph, and, may I tell it frankly, I love you too, so much...

The Old Story

Von Gloeden, Portrait of a Young Boy, c. 1899.

"You loved me, sweet, and I loved you,

Each of us deemed the other true —

What was it fell between us two ?

Your mouth a crimson flower to me,

Your eyes an  unsung melody

Woven to which I fain would be.

Each unto each we were complete,

No sound unto my ears was sweet

As the soft echo of your feet.

Was it because we loved too well,

We tired and broke the fervid spell ?

Wearied of heaven, longed for hell?

I know not, and I do not fret,

Because I hear that you forget

Even that we have ever met.

Yes, I remember without pain,

Ou joy in sunshine and in rain,

And only sigh to love again."

Standley Addleshaw (aka. Alan Stanley)

in: Michael Matthew Kailor (ed.)

Lad's Love. An Anthology of Uranian Poetry and Prose

Volume 1, Kansas City, Valancourt Books, 2010, p. 9.

Dreaming about...

"You are so beautiful, the both of you, Taormina's lads,

You are pure youth and beauty, you are a caress for my eyes,

You are a song, a dream, a sorrow and a memory,

You are so close, so far away, 

Here and now, such a  long time ago and so far away...

How could I reach you, through the mirror of photography

You are on one side of the photograph,

I am on the other side,

Never, never we will meet... I will look at you for ever... 

I would love so much, so much to love you,

Actually I do, I would love so much to be loved by you...

Or just to be looked at, where I am, who I am, on the other side of the photograph...

So much sun, so much light, I love the curves, the shapes, the teen grace,

I love what is shown as much as what is hidden, 

I love you, Taormina's shepherds, I love the both of you...

I would love so much to hear your voice and your laughs,

I would love so much to feel you, so close, so close,

I just love you through a photograph, on the other side of the mirror...

It was such a warm day, such a summer day, at the peak of a wave,

At the peak of the hot wave... in the Taormina's wilderness...

I would love so much to caress the curves, the curves of the hot wave,

The curves of your bodies, so hot young sheperds from Taormina...

Perhaps we will meet, somewhere, elsewhere...

Perhaps we will meet if I can go through  this photograph,

If I can reach you, on the other side of this print,

If I can reach you, in Taormina's wilderness...

My Pasqualino, what is the name of your friend, so tender, so graceful ?

I love the curves, the grace of your friend, while he looks at you...

I would love to be a Joshua tree, to be a cicada, or just a rock,

A rock in Taormina's wilderness,

I would love to be a sun's beam, to be the breathe of the wind,

And to caress the both of you, so close, so far away,

From somewhere else, from the other side of the photograph"

Anonymous poem, Von Gloeden Archive, Call number ca 1900/anon/17.

Partenza vers la beauté !

Comme l'a remarqué l'un des lecteurs perspicaces de mon blog, la photographie de von Gloeden que j'ai postée sous le titre "Orfeo" (et qui fait partie de ma collection personnelle) a été choisie par Achille Essebac pour la couverture de son beau livre "Partenza... vers la beauté !", racontant son voyage en Italie. Ce livre mythique est à présent dans ma bibliothèque, grâce à la générosité de mon amie Nicole.

As one of the clever readers of my blog stressed it, the von Gloeden photograph I posted in my previous message, "Orfeo" (part of my private collection), was chosen by Achille Essebac for the cover of his beautiful book "Partenza... towards beauty !", an account of his journey across Italy. This mythical book is now in my library, thanks to the generosity of my friend Nicole.