Soldiers with semi-halos
prostrate on yellow sand,
machine gun on stilts
on beachhead, red
bunker spewing yellow
flame, black triangle of
landing craft beached,
front severed by thick
white tree-like trunk,
serrated edge
– Johannes Beilharz ( © 2009 )
Author’s notes
The outcome of a recent visit to Munich and the marvelous Kandinsky show there at the Lenbachhaus. Impression III (Concert) of 1911 provoked the above ekphrasis the instant I saw the painting.
According to the catalog, Kandinsky attended an Arnold Schönberg concert on January 2, 1911. The painting, done the next day, demonstrates that the “impressions of an external nature” serving as the source of a series of paintings titled “Impressions” could be acoustic as much as visual.
The above poem could be called a third-generation impression in yet another form – writing.
The painting cannot be reproduced here for copyright reasons.
