Salvador Dali: "Give me two hours a day of activity, and I'll take the other twenty-two in dreams"!

• "I believe that the moment is near when by a procedure of active paranoiac thought, it will be possible to systematize confusion and contribute to the total discrediting of the world of reality".

• "If you understand a painting beforehand, you might as well not paint it".

• "We are all hungry and thirsty for concrete images. Abstract art will have been good for one thing: to restore its exact virginity to figurative art".

Love Letter from Balzac to Countess Ewelina Hańska

My beloved angel,

I am nearly mad about you, as much as one can be mad: I cannot bring together two ideas that you do not interpose yourself between them.

I can no longer think of nothing but you. In spite of myself, my imagination carries me to you.

I grasp you, I kiss you, I caress you, a thousand of the most amorous caresses take possession of me.

As for my heart, there you will always be - very much so. I have a delicious sense of you there.

But my God, what is to become of me, if you have deprived me of my reason?

Lorenzo Bartolini | Buste d'Ewelina Hańska, 1837 | Musée Bertrand, à Châteauroux, France

Cassie Phillips | Let them

If they want to choose something or someone over you,

Let them.

If they want to go weeks without talking to you,

Let them.

If they are okay with never seeing you,

Let them.

Jack Vettriano

Cassie Phillips | Lasciali fare | La poesia

Se vogliono scegliere qualcosa o qualcuno al posto tuo,

Lasciali fare.

Se vogliono passare settimane senza parlarti,

Lasciali fare.

Se stanno bene a non vederti mai,

Lasciali fare.

Se stanno bene a mettere sempre se stessi al primo posto,

Lasciali fare.

Jack Vettriano

Wisława Szymborska | Ruben's Women

Herculasses, a feminine fauna.

Naked as the crashing of barrels.

Cooped up atop trampled beds.

They sleep with mouths poised to crow.

Their pupils have retreated in the depths,

and penetrate to the heart of their glands,

trickling yeast into their blood.

Peter Paul Rubens | Venus in Front of the Mirror, (1614-1615) | Museo Nacional del Prado

Daughters of the Baroque. Dough bloats in a bowl,

baths are steaming, wines are blushing.

piglets of cloud are dashing across the sky,

trumpets neigh in physical alarm.

O pumpkinned, O excessive ones,

doubled by your unveiling,

trebled by your violent poses,

fat love dishes.

Peter Paul Rubens | Mars and Rhea Silvia, 1617

Their skinny sisters got up earlier,

before dawn broke within the painting,

and no one saw them walking single file

on the unpainted side of the canvas.

Exiles of style. Ribs all counted.

Birdlike feet and hands.

They try to ascend on gaunt shoulderblades.

The thirteenth century would have given them a golden backdrop.

The twentieth, a silver screen.

But the seventeenth has nothing for the flat-chested.

For even the sky curves in relief -

curvaceous angles, a curvaceous god -

a moustached Apollo astride a sweaty steed

enters the steaming bedchamber.

Wisława Szymborska (Polish poet, essayist, translato, and recipient of the 1996 Nobel Prize in Literature, 1923-2012)

Pope Francis: "Dear Poets, help us Dream"

Below is the letter Pope Francis wrote for the book 'Verses to God: An Anthology of Religious Poetry (italian).

Dear poets,

I know that you hunger for meaning, and that is why you reflect on how faith questions life.

This "meaning" cannot be reduced to a concept. No, it is a comprehensive meaning that encompasses poetry, symbols, and feelings.

The true meaning is not found in the dictionary - that's the meaning of words, and words are merely tools to express everything within us.

Le Quattro Stagioni | I Concerti ed i Sonetti di Antonio Vivaldi

Le Quattro Stagioni è un gruppo di quattro concerti per violino del compositore italiano Antonio Vivaldi (Compositore e violinista Barocco, 1678-1741), ognuno dei quali dà espressione musicale ad una stagione dell'anno.

Furono composti intorno al 1718-1720, quando Vivaldi era maestro di cappella alla corte di Mantova.

Furono pubblicati nel 1725 ad Amsterdam, in quella che all'epoca era la Repubblica delle Sette Province Unite, insieme ad altri otto concerti, con il titolo Il cimento dell'armonia e dell'invenzione.

Un ritratto anonimo ad olio conservato al Museo Internazionale e Biblioteca della Musica di Bologna, generalmente ritenuto di Vivaldi, 1723

Antonio Vivaldi's "Four Seasons" | Music and Sonnets

The Four Seasons (Italian: Le quattro stagioni) is a group of four violin concerti by Italian composer Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741), each of which gives musical expression to a season of the year.

These were composed around 1718-1720, when Vivaldi was the court chapel master in Mantua.

They were published in 1725 in Amsterdam in what was at the time the Dutch Republic, together with eight additional concerti, as Il cimento dell'armonia e dell'inventione (The Contest Between Harmony and Invention).

Orazio Gentileschi | Young Woman with a Violin (Saint Cecilia), 1612 | Detroit Institute of Arts