Happy Saint Patrick's Day
Mar. 17th, 2025 05:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stonepicnicking_okapiHappy Saint Patrick's Day!
I made green eggs and ham for the boys. They weren't impressed. I ended up finishing the ham with one of my FAVORITE seasonal treats: Bailey's Irish Cream cake. YUM!
I also did a collage.
And I am binge listening to audio versions of stories by Irish Le Fanu and did a ficlet for his story "Schalken the Painter."
Title: Beauty
Prompt: beauty
Fandom: "Schalken the Painter" (short story by Sherdian Le Fanu)
Rating: Gen
Length: 500
Summary: Schalken sells his soul for his art.
The beauty of love. The beauty of art.
The beauty of making love. The beauty of making art.
Godfrey Schalken knew he must sacrifice one for the other. His heart was rent asunder when his beloved Rose, niece of his mentor Gerard Douw, had been sold, yes, let us have a bit of truth in pen as in brush, as bride to the aged, ugly, unscrupulous, impatient, and very wealthy Wilken Vanderhausen.
For three days after the marriage contract was fulfilled, Schalken neither ate nor slept, keeping himself suspended in the amber of misery, but then, there was a knock on the door.
The repulsive rival was there, in the flesh, what was left of it. Anger boiled inside the scorned painter, but before it could bubble over, Vanderhausen raised a bony, long-nailed hand.
“You will be compensated for your loss.”
“There is no price!”
“Oh, but there is. Sign your name, here.”
A certificate was produced and a writing instrument.
“I shall do nothing of the sort!” declared the painter, but then he had a vision. Later, he would not be able to say what it was, but he knew it was power, it was immortality, it was a gift above gold, and he was tempted as he had never been by Rose’s fragrance and sweetness.
He signed, and at the instant the ink dried, he forgot Rose.
He hurried to his studio and began to work.
And it seemed to him that his skill had received an curious augmentation, and he was able to make that which appeared in his mind’s eye and that which his hands and brushes wrought on the canvas to come closer and closer and closer to each other, a state which is, for an artist, the definition of paradise.
It seemed to him that he was in possession of a singular aptitude for portraying candlelight and its effects. And so he dedicated himself, in large part, painting such scenes.
While he worked, he was absorbed in his task, and when he was not working, he often thought about candles and flames and light. But never about Rose.
So when she returned, thirsty for wine and hungry for meat, and the candle went out and she demanded another, well, he left her, the thing she begged him not to do.
And Douw left, too. And thus, she was alone. And the door shut and would not be opened. And the screams. And the Rose, vanished.
Schalken was trying to open the door, wasn’t he? He was applying all his strength to freeing the tortured
Rose from her captor and captivity. And yet…
…he was also thinking about candlelight. And beauty. And his name on a certificate. And his name on small placards beside frames on walls around the world and for centuries to come. He saw people reading his name. He saw eyes taking in his brushstrokes, his scenes, his candlelight, his shadow. They would speak of him and call him…
Schalken the Painter.
I made green eggs and ham for the boys. They weren't impressed. I ended up finishing the ham with one of my FAVORITE seasonal treats: Bailey's Irish Cream cake. YUM!
I also did a collage.
And I am binge listening to audio versions of stories by Irish Le Fanu and did a ficlet for his story "Schalken the Painter."
Title: Beauty
Prompt: beauty
Fandom: "Schalken the Painter" (short story by Sherdian Le Fanu)
Rating: Gen
Length: 500
Summary: Schalken sells his soul for his art.
The beauty of love. The beauty of art.
The beauty of making love. The beauty of making art.
Godfrey Schalken knew he must sacrifice one for the other. His heart was rent asunder when his beloved Rose, niece of his mentor Gerard Douw, had been sold, yes, let us have a bit of truth in pen as in brush, as bride to the aged, ugly, unscrupulous, impatient, and very wealthy Wilken Vanderhausen.
For three days after the marriage contract was fulfilled, Schalken neither ate nor slept, keeping himself suspended in the amber of misery, but then, there was a knock on the door.
The repulsive rival was there, in the flesh, what was left of it. Anger boiled inside the scorned painter, but before it could bubble over, Vanderhausen raised a bony, long-nailed hand.
“You will be compensated for your loss.”
“There is no price!”
“Oh, but there is. Sign your name, here.”
A certificate was produced and a writing instrument.
“I shall do nothing of the sort!” declared the painter, but then he had a vision. Later, he would not be able to say what it was, but he knew it was power, it was immortality, it was a gift above gold, and he was tempted as he had never been by Rose’s fragrance and sweetness.
He signed, and at the instant the ink dried, he forgot Rose.
He hurried to his studio and began to work.
And it seemed to him that his skill had received an curious augmentation, and he was able to make that which appeared in his mind’s eye and that which his hands and brushes wrought on the canvas to come closer and closer and closer to each other, a state which is, for an artist, the definition of paradise.
It seemed to him that he was in possession of a singular aptitude for portraying candlelight and its effects. And so he dedicated himself, in large part, painting such scenes.
While he worked, he was absorbed in his task, and when he was not working, he often thought about candles and flames and light. But never about Rose.
So when she returned, thirsty for wine and hungry for meat, and the candle went out and she demanded another, well, he left her, the thing she begged him not to do.
And Douw left, too. And thus, she was alone. And the door shut and would not be opened. And the screams. And the Rose, vanished.
Schalken was trying to open the door, wasn’t he? He was applying all his strength to freeing the tortured
Rose from her captor and captivity. And yet…
…he was also thinking about candlelight. And beauty. And his name on a certificate. And his name on small placards beside frames on walls around the world and for centuries to come. He saw people reading his name. He saw eyes taking in his brushstrokes, his scenes, his candlelight, his shadow. They would speak of him and call him…
Schalken the Painter.
no subject
Date: 2025-03-17 10:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-03-17 11:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-03-18 08:27 pm (UTC)Very well done with the fic.
no subject
Date: 2025-03-18 10:32 pm (UTC)Thank you!
no subject
Date: 2025-03-23 11:04 pm (UTC):D