Art and Poetry - Fernand Léger and Victor Hugo

Fernand Léger, “Landscape with two birds”, frontispiece to “A Poem in Every Book” 1955

And

Victor Hugo, “Oh the Charming Joyful Birds”, published in “Songs of the Streets and the Woods, in 1865

Oh ! the charming happy birds!

How they maraud! how they plunder!

Where is this bunch of little rascals going?

Let all the breaths scatter?

They go into the clear firmament;

Their voice mocks, their beak pixie;

They make you laugh forever

The great childish nature.

How close they are to the living God

And fresh and sweet dawn,

These gay gypsies of the wind

Gather nothing but a little moss.

Grace is their whole movement,

Voluptuousness all their lives;

While they fly vaguely

The immense leaf is delighted.

The bird flees into infinity

And is lost there like the sound of a lyre.

With his tail he says no

Like Jeanne with her smile…

Victor Hugo

Fernand Léger

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