Delft, The Dutch Republic, Oct. 12, 1654.
Imagine a quiet fall morning. It’s sunny; people are going about their usual activities. A painter, caught somewhere between down-at-heels and famous, is talking with his subject as he paints the portrait. A few blocks away, a clerk goes to the basement to check inventory, using a candle for light. The inventory is 90,000 pounds of gunpowder.
The explosion of what comes to be known as the “Thunderclap” levels whole city blocks. The sound is heard 70 miles away. Almost every building in Delft is damaged. Hundreds are dead; some bodies will never be found. Among the fatalities is the painter, Carel Fabritius, the only survivor of the people in his home but who dies a short time later. While he must have painted numerous pictures, what has survived is barely a dozen, including a few self-portraits. Some were likely destroyed in the explosion. One or two were misattributed to Rembrandt, in whose studio Fabritius had studied. But the fate of the rest is unknown.
To co tin reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.
Some Tuesday Readings
The Blue Absorbent Towel – poem by Charles Southerland at Society of Classical Poets.
Things Worth Remembering: The Woman Who Captured Russia’s Pain – Douglas Murray at The Free Press.
The Hidden Depths in Robert Frost – Ernest Suarez at The Imaginative Conservative.
“Learning to Laugh: and “An American Pastoral” – poems by William Harder at Society of Classical Poets.
The Layers – poem by Stanley Kunitz at Everyday Poems.
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