Reviews for A Garden of Impressionist Verse: Nineteenth-Century French Poetry

The average rating for A Garden of Impressionist Verse: Nineteenth-Century French Poetry based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2016-02-29 00:00:00 Steve Vaught There are two strands to this book, the paintings and the verse. Of those the paintings are, at least for me, the jewel in the crown while the verse is quite enjoyable but does not leave such a lasting impression (forgive the pun) as the art. Featured considerably in the verse is that by Charles Baudelaire. In addition to being arguably the greatest 19th century French poet, he championed artists such as Delacroix, Courbet and the realists before turning his critical attention to the impressionists. His major poetic work, 'Les Fleurs du mal' features often and the verses chosen seem to ideally match the artwork alongside them. Indeed the images and verse selected by Michael Brunstrom do complement each other excellently throughout the book. Baudelaire's 'Invocation' for example sits well alongside Renoir's beautiful portrait of 'Mlle Irene Cahen d'Anvers' with the last verse reading, 'To her most beautiful and best,/Who does my bliss and life supply,/Idol and angel, ever blest,/Be health and immortality.' And the first two lines of Gerard de Nerval's 'Dusk' with 'Morn is no more, nor yet the twilight trembles,/Though from our eyes love's paling of splendours flee' matches Seurat's 'Banks of the Seine near Courbevoie' very well. There are poems from such as Stephane Mallarme, Paul Verlaine, Theophile Gautier, Alfred de Musset and Victor Hugo and paintings by such as Sisley, Renoir, Monet, Manet and Frederic Bazille. The latter was, I confess, a relatively new name to me perhaps because he was killed in the Franco-Prussian war aged only 28 - but he did have time to paint a fine portrait of one of his contemporaries, Renoir, and 'A View of the Village' with an attractive young lady very much in the foreground, which is presumably the image that spawns the matching 'Love Song' poem from Theodore de Banville. It is an enjoyable book, certainly visually, and with the original French verse alongside the English translation it is a test to see how good one's schoolboy (and later) French has held up - not very well in this particular case!

Review # 2 was written on 2020-12-05 00:00:00 Georges Icke That was cute. It would make a nice coffee table book for people to flip through, with beautiful full color paintings accompanied by similarly themed poems.