Cocosse | Journal: March 2017

No personal history | Carlos Marighella, 1911 - 1969

Mini-Manual of the Urban Guerrilla, 1969 Carlos Marighella

“Personal history must be constantly renewed by telling parents, relatives, and friends everything one does. On the other hand, for the warrior who has no personal history, no explanations are needed; nobody is angry or disillusioned with his acts. And above all, no one pins him down with their thoughts and their expectations.”

“The Government is making a fool of itself by attributing all terrorism and acts against the government only to one single patriot” *

“The trick is in what one emphasizes. We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves happy. The amount of work is the same.”

Carlos Marighella, 1911 - 1969

writer, politician, and guerilla

C. Marighella was first arrested in 1932, after he wrote a poem criticizing the administration of Bahia intervener Juracy Magalhães.

Unlike Che Guevara, who proposed guerrilla activity in the countryside, Marighela's theories on urban guerrilla warfare envisaged cities as the source of rebellion.

* Mini-Manual of the Urban Guerrilla, 1969

stereosc2pe + | Face protection / Xanti Schawinsky,1936-39

Plastic face protection from snowstorms, Montreal, 1939 Xanti Schawinsky, Black mountain College, 1936-37

Flash of Spirits | sculptures by Constantin Brancusi, 1876-1957

Constantin Brâncuși, The Prayer, 1907 Constantin Brâncuși

“Architecture is inhabited sculpture.”

“Theories are patterns without value. What counts is action.”

“Work like a slave; command like a king; create like a god.”

“To see far is one thing, going there is another.”

Constantin Brâncuși, Atelier, 8 impasse Ronsin, Paris, 1925

"Simplicity is complexity resolved.”

“Simplicity is not an objective in art, but one achieves simplicity despite one’s self by entering into the real sense of things.”

“They are imbeciles who call my work abstract. That which they call abstract is the most realistic,

because what is real is not the exterior but the idea, the essence of things.”

Constantin Brâncuși, Sleeping Muse I, 1909-10

“When you see a fish you don't think of its scales, do you? You think of its speed, its floating, flashing body seen through the water.

Well, I've tried to express just that. If I made fins and eyes and scales, I would arrest its movement, give a pattern or shape of reality.

I want just the flash of its spirits.”

“Things are not difficult to make; what is difficult is putting ourselves in the state of mind to make them.”

“When we are no longer children we are already dead.”

Constantin Brâncuși, Étude de Mlle Pogany Constantin Brâncuși, Étude

“What is real is not the external form, but the essence of things... it is impossible
for anyone to express anything essentially real by imitating its exterior surface.”

“Don't look for obscure formulas or mystery in my work. It is pure joy that I offer you.
Look at my sculptures until you see them. Those closest to God have seen them.”

“There hasn't been any art yet. Art is just beginning.”

Constantin Brancusi, 1876-1957

Constantin Brâncuși

Constantin Brâncuși, 1920

Constantin Brâncuși, Muse, 1912

Constantin Brâncuși, Bird in Space, 1923

Constantin Brâncuși, Princesse X, 1915-16

Constantin Brâncuși, Sculpture for the Blind (Beginning of the World) c 1916

Constantin Brâncuși, Newborn I, 1915

Constantin Brâncuși, Prometheus

Constantin Brâncuși and Eileen Lane Constantin Brâncuși, Self-portrait, c 1933

Constantin Brâncuși, Florence Meyer, 1932-33 Constantin Brâncuși, Nude, n.d.

Constantin Brâncuși, Nude, n.d.

Constantin Brâncuși, Cyclamen, 1933-34 Lizica Codreanu in costumes designed by Brancusi, Paris, 1924

Constantin Brâncuși, Table of Silence, Targu Jiu, Romania

Dedication / Winter Holidays | Petya Dubarova, 1962 -1979

Petya Dubarova

Dedication

On chilly night, when drunk on rum,
sleep wallows in my attic room,
the moon grows darker from its sins,
when, strangled upon night's sharp rim,
right there - above me - fear hangs,
it's then I offer my pale hand
to you - you strange and furtive man
so tame, wild and swarthy, very handsome,
and only nineteen years this fall,
but having seen and knowing all,
with your independent creed,
yet searching for me - mine indeed,
and having fallen, wept and erred,
but your boyish tenderness preserved -
to take my domineering hand:
I make you brave, feel more a man.
We'll wash the moon of sin. Come, dear,
we'll rid ourselves of the corpse of fear,
and with the voice of a ship we'll blast -
the kind, night voice of my Bourgas.
And when the night backs with the moon
and when the sun showers treasure down
then having outgrown your fantasy
you'll set off smiling, next to me.

Petya Dubarova and friends

Winter Holidays

They melted like snow in my hair,
then died like a cropped out plait.
My panting day is dreaming they're here,
my morning pursues them to stay.

Heaping snow in my cave of delight,
I hide some image there, a secret.
Then textbooks overcloud my sight
and swooping tests speed up to hit me.

Sweet holidays, I yearn to have you
in memories that branch like vines,
and in my winter herbarium keep you
like a miniature tear of ice.

tr. D. D. Wilson
collection The Sea and Me

Flick Review < The Color of Paradise | Majid Majidi (1999)

"Our teacher says that God loves the blind more because they can’t see. But I told him if it was so, he would not make us blind so that we can’t see Him.

He answered “God is not visible. He is everywhere. You can feel Him. You see Him through your fingertips.”

Now I reach out everywhere for God till the day my hands touch Him and tell Him everything, even all the secrets in my heart."