Élisabeth Chaplin (b. 1890) was a French painter who lived in Tuscany for most of her life. She was connected to many of the painters of the Les Nabis movement, and much of her work relates to the themes of symbolism, post-impressionism, and early modernism.
She spent much of her life at Villa Treppiede in Fiesole, Florence, and continued painting up until her death in 1982.
I had walked since dawn and lay down to rest on a bare hillside
Above the ocean. I saw through half-shut eyelids a vulture wheeling
high up in heaven,
And presently it passed again, but lower and nearer, its orbit
narrowing,
I understood then
That I was under inspection. I lay death-still and heard the flight-
feathers
Whistle above me and make their circle and come nearer.
I could see the naked red head between the great wings
Bear downward staring. I said, 'My dear bird, we are wasting time
here.
These old bones will still work; they are not for you.' But how
beautiful
he looked, gliding down
On those great sails; how beautiful he looked, veering away in the
sea-light
over the precipice. I tell you solemnly
That I was sorry to have disappointed him. To be eaten by that beak
and
become part of him, to share those wings and those eyes--
What a sublime end of one's body, what an enskyment; what a life
after death.
-- Robinson Jeffers, Carmel-by-the-Sea, published posthumously in The Beginning and the End (1963)
Illustrated city maps include some of my favorite 1950s-style cartography.
The Mullingar Lea / The Flogging Reel
Barrett's Privateers by Stan Rogers
Only a culture like ours would discount a third of their lives.
– Jim Harrison, on dreams