I kissed the summer dawn.
Arthur Rimbaud, Illuminations

 

 

editorial

this morning, at dawn, a concert on Lake Geneva

 

first dawn (from the Latin alba = white), the moment when the sky turns white, when nothing is defined

then aurora (derived from aurum = gold), the brilliant, dewy glow that follows dawn and precedes sunrise

 

Ferdinand Hodler, lake Geneva and the Mont Blanc

 

the indefinite white space is delimited, yellow then pink appear
on the defined horizon line, the sun will appear and rise: point of day

 

no horizon, no dawn

no dawn, no horizon

 

 

The rose-fingered dawn had scarcely appeared from its cradle of mist.
Homer The Odyssey, II, 1 (translation by V. Bérard)

 

Robert Schumann, excerpt from”The Prophet Bird” by Maria João Pires

 

When the poet says: the rose-fingered dawn, there poetry has intervened. That is the key to the whole poetic operation (…) Between the rose, the fingers and the colours of an entire dawn, there is distance, and margin, all the more so because no form intervenes as a support. (…) Nothing prevents us from seeing the sun emerging like a hand or a burst of rose petals.
Pierre Reverdy, Circonstances de la poésie

 

 

Debussy, “de l’aube à midi”, excerpt from La Mer fondu with dawn raga by Hariprasad Chaurasya

 

this morning one of the musicians had his fingers numb from the early morning chill
“at certain moments, I wanted to play faster, and I had to improvise with this limitation”, he told us after the concert.

you always play with your limits: they define, they contain, they frame, they allow you to go beyond and to create.

 

 

 

 

Dawn and the child fell at the bottom of the wood.

When they awoke, it was midday.
Arthur Rimbaud, Illuminations