Et hoved af en mand set skråt bagfra
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This drawing in pencil studies a man's head seen at an angle from behind — a type of exercise closely tied to Nicolai Abildgaard's dual role as artist and teacher.
Abildgaard (1743–1809) was a leading figure in Danish neoclassicism, working as a history painter, sculptor, and architect. He held professorships in painting, mythology, and anatomy at the New Royal Danish Academy of Art in Copenhagen, and his anatomical teaching is reflected in close studies of the human head like this one.
Much of his work was produced for the Danish crown, with pieces made for Christiansborg Palace, Fredensborg Palace, and the Levetzau Palace at Amalienborg. The sheet is held by the National Gallery of Denmark (SMK).
Background drawn from SMK — National Gallery of Denmark & Wikipedia
Today's poem
Primeval my Love for the Woman I Love
PRIMEVAL my love for the woman I love, O bride! O wife! more resistless, more enduring than I can tell, the thought of you! Then separate, as disembodied, the purest born, The ethereal, the last athletic reality, my consolation, I ascend—I float in the regions of your love, O man, O sharer of my roving life.
Walt Whitman · Public domain
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Walt Whitman (1819–1892) was an American poet, essayist, journalist, and novelist, widely regarded as one of the most influential poets in American and world literature. Often called the father of free verse, he blended transcendentalism and realism in work that was controversial in his own time—his 1855 collection Leaves of Grass drew charges of obscenity for its overt sensuality.
This short poem is characteristic of that reputation. Written in Whitman's signature free verse, with long, exclamatory lines and sweeping apostrophe, it addresses first a "bride" and "wife" and then a male "sharer of my roving life," moving between forms of love it calls "primeval" and "resistless." The speaker describes separating from the body and ascending to "float in the regions of your love."
The poem's frank treatment of desire and its shift from heterosexual to homoerotic address illustrate the qualities that made Whitman's poetry both groundbreaking and divisive among his contemporaries.
Background drawn from PoetryDB & Wikipedia