New beginning

This new painting will be an image of the sunset, as I remember it from the summers in my childhood. I think I will paint some blue-green in the upper corners, like a dark forest on an island. The red sun will be a little to the left of the center, above the horizon. The rest of the middle part of the picture will be in red, orange, pink and dark red-violet.

(The other abstract landscape picture is finished now. I almost hid the bright colours from the first sketch with a new layer in misty nuances. I have also painted another picture with a path and a couple of red buildings, but I think the finishing details have to wait a while.)

Lines by Shelley (translation)

(P.B. Shelley: first lines from “Letter to Maria Gisborne”, July 1, 1820)
1 The spider spreads her webs, whether she be
2 In poet’s tower, cellar, or barn, or tree;
3 The silkworm in the dark-green mulberry leaves
4 His winding-sheet and cradle ever weaves:
5 So I, a thing whom moralists call worm,
6 Sit spinning still round this decaying form,
7 From the fine threads of rare and subtle thought-
8 No net of words in garish colours wrought
9 To catch the idle buzzers of the day-
10 But a soft cell, where when that fades away,
11 Memory may clothe in wings my living name,
12 And feed it with the asphodels of fame
13 Which in those hearts which must remember me
14 Grow, making love an immortality.

1 Som spindeln sprider nät varhelst hon är –
2 poetens tornrum, källarvalv, ett träd;
3 som silkesmasken väver åt sin flykt
4 en svepning, trygg i mullbärsgrönskans skydd:
5 Så spinner jag – moraliskt sett en mask,
6 som vid sitt sönderfall vill hålla fast –
7 mitt fina tankegarn, en sällsynt tråd.
8 Jag spinner inget pråligt nät av råd,
9 som lockar dagens lata själar med något sött –
10 nej, en tyst puppa, som när allting är förött
11 ger vingar åt mitt namn då jag är död,
12 och göder det med ryktbarhetens glöd.
13 I hjärtan som mig obetingat minns
14 odödlig kärleks möjligheter vinns.

(first draft – will maybe change a word here and there later! /MaLj)