Birthdays Today

These will seem like obscure birthdays, but they are both artists that I have loved in the past.

First, in 1866, Vassily Kandinsky was born today.   Kandinsky's abstract paintings in the early 20th Century are among my favorites; I remember having a Kandinsky poster in one of my first apartments.

Also born today, in 1875, was the great Austrian poet, Rainer Maria Rilke.   I loved the "Duino Elegies" when I was in college.   Here's a snippet about the strangeness of life and death:

It is truly strange to no longer inhabit the earth,

to no longer practice customs barely acquired,

not to give a meaning of human futurity

to roses, and other expressly promising things:

no longer to be what one was in endlessly anxious hands,

and to set aside even one’s own

proper name like a broken plaything.

Strange: not to go on wishing one’s wishes. Strange

to see all that was once in place, floating

so loosely in space.