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This was a commissioned work for
Anthony's Manufacturing Corp. in Los Angeles that has since disappeared.
Below are three of Robinson Jeffers pieces that I thought about as the
core of a continuum, in three paintings that were completed in the early
1970's. It turns out that Mr. Jeffers work was and is still pivotal today
when what he prophesied so long ago long ago-is now-apparently coming
true!
The JOURNEY
- PART I
"Be Angry at the Sun
That public men publish
falsehoods
Is nothing new. That America must
accept
Like the historical republics
corruption and empire
Has been known for years.
Be angry at the sun for setting
If these things anger you. Watch
the wheel slope
And turn,
They are all bound on the wheel,
these people,
Those warriors,
This republic, Europe, Asia
Observe them gesticulating,
Observe them going down, The gang
serves lies,
The passionate man
Plays his part: the cold passion
for truth
Hunts in no pack
* * *
Let boys want pleasure, and men
Struggle for power, and women
perhaps for fame,
And the servile to serve a
Leader, and the dupes to be duped.
Yours is not theirs."
Robinson Jeffers, 1941
The JOURNEY
- PART II
"Shine Perishing Republic
While this America settles in the
mold of its vulgarity,
Heavily thickening to empire,
And protest, only a bubble in the
molten mass, pops
And sighs out, and the mass
hardens,
I sadly smiling remember that the
flower fades to make
fruit, the fruit rots to make
earth.
Out of the mother; and through
the spring exultances,
ripeness and decadence; and home
to the mother.
You making haste on decay; not
blameworthy;
Life is good, be it stubbornly
long or
Suddenly a mortal splendor:
meteors are not needed less
Than mountains: shine, perishing
republic
But for my children, I would have
them keep their distance
From the thickening center;
corruption
Never has been compulsory, when
the cities lie at the
monster's feet there are left the
mountains.
And boys, be in nothing so
moderate as in love of man,
A cleaver servant, insufferable
master.
There is a trap that catches
noblest spirits, that caught
-they say-God, when he walked on
earth.
Robinson Jeffers, 1925
The JOURNEY
- PART III
"Give Your Heart to the
Hawks"
".....I am holding the made
world by the throat
Until I can make it change and
open the knot that past time
tied. To undo past time, and mend
The finished world."
Excerpt from Give Your Heart
to the hawks by Robinson Jeffers 1933
* * *
To view the three paintings as a
moving loop:
The
Journey Begins - the top halves
The
Journey Ends - the lower halves
Jim Kirwan
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studios
