In the foreword "À Arsène Houssaye" of Baudelaire's Petits Poème en Prose: Le Spleen de Paris, he says that the idea came to him to "apply to the description of modern life, or rather to a life that is modern and more abstract, the procedure that [Bertrand] had applied to the painting of an ancient life, so strangely pictorial". Aloysius Bertrand's posthumously published book of prose poems, Gaspard de la Nuit, Fantaisies dans la manière de Rembrandt et Callot, is considered by many poets to be the father of the genre–disputes about whether it is a genre to be here ignored.
Why is modern life to be described in words, whereas the life that once was permitted painting with words? Baudelaire wanted illustrations to his work, which makes this statement even more intriguing because he is clearly distinguishing himself from Bertrand, his short descriptions to Bertrand's small pictures, his life to a past lifestyle. Something about this ancient life allowed picture making that is no longer there. Perhaps it is the abstractions?
Baudelaire claims this modern life is more abstract but he does not make clear what the comparison is based upon. The abstraction of modern life seems particularly odd given his emphasis on the modern. Modern is the current and only if we are at a remove can we abstract, that is generalize by presenting an overview. On the other hand, to abstract is also to condense to the essence of the thing. But an abstract is a condensation of something that has happened, simply because we can not reduce the immediate. So if we believe that Baudelaire is going to present a life that is more abstract than we have to believe that it is a life that is always a second behind the current. That indeed would be the very issue of the modern, that is always reviewing what is happening from a self-conscious distance that uses the present to think about the moment happening rather than engaging in it, a self-conscious review of the steps and techniques that permitted the moment or work to occur.
So how do descriptions permit this place where abstractions describe without representing in any figurative space? If it is answered in the poems, it is not done clearly–of course how could it be clear composed in a genre, poème en prose, without distinct boundaries or definition. That is another issue of the modern: a multiplicity of viewpoints, explanations, relations that alter the perception of some objective thing.
The objective thing is not there anymore, so there is nothing to paint in words. At best, we can provide a list, a vertical axis of description, and climbing ever higher build a tower of Babel but one that has no hope of reaching an end. Perhaps only because of painting's just beginning to venture into impressionism did Baudelaire not conceive that painting could be equally abstract, as proven sometimes painfully over the course of the 20th century...or how painting would incorporate words and flip the comparison...but that conversation waits for another day.
Showing posts with label poetry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label poetry. Show all posts
When I Buy Pictures by Marianne Moore
In any discussion of the prose poem, visual art becomes a topic. Though art is inevitably addressed in prose poem studies, art inspires other writers as well. This is simply ignored due to its general prevalence. There are many to look at, but one I recently read is Marianne Moore's poem "When I Buy Pictures". I appreciate this poem because she discusses the incredibly prosaic reasons that a normal person does purchase this or that picture.
When I Buy Pictures
or what is closer to the truth,
when I look at that of which I may regard myself as the imaginary possessor,
I fix upon what would give me pleasure in my average moments:
the satire upon curiosity in which no more is discernible than the intensity of the mood;
or quite the opposite—the old thing, the medieval decorated hat-box,
in which there are hounds with waists diminishing like the waist of the hour-glass,
and deer and birds and seated people;
it may be no more than a square of parquetry; the literal biography perhaps,
in letters standing well apart upon a parchment-like expanse;
an artichoke in six varieties of blue; the snipe-legged hieroglyphic in three parts;
the silver fence protecting Adam's grave, or Michael taking Adam by the wrist.
Too stern an intellectual emphasis upon this quality or that detracts from one's enjoyment.
It must not wish to disarm anything; nor may the approved triumph easily be honored—
that which is great because something else is small.
It comes to this: of whatever sort it is,
it must be "lit with piercing glances into the life of things";
it must acknowledge the spiritual forces which have made it.
Leaving Kandinsky and Hegel to the side, because I don't want here to begin thinking about Spirit, I smile at her opening. "When I buy pictures" is the way I would begin a sentence too, though only ever having bought one I would wonder if picking among pieces the artist has offered could count in the approach to this topic, and probably decide that there was something different about it too complicated to incorporate, thus switching indeed to what it feels like to imagine a piece coming home with me, an experience with which I am far more familiar.
I look at a piece, considering what it would be like to live with it day in and day out, through lovers, cats, interests, homes, and whether it is likely to move with me through those other experiences I can not yet conceive. There is no way to tell though I have the piece that I bought, and the pieces I have been given hanging still which suggests that the act of choosing the piece gives it a permanent relationship to my life that I can never understand when I am selecting.
Marianne Moore had in fact only a few years prior to this poem made the decision to buy several Copley reproductions of Blake prints of Milton's Paradise Lost. She had been thinking about this decision for nine years. Buying a picture isn't necessarily an impromptu decision. And some years later, the picture hanging on the wall can find itself not only a part of your life, but a part of your mind, so that scribbling at her words, Marianne Moore brought the pictures into her art.
"Too stern an intellectual emphasis upon this quality or that detracts from one's enjoyment."
Agreed Ms. Moore, but how interesting then to consider the redrafting of this poem: changes to the words, a shift from its original syllabic design, a clearer mention of the pictures. And perhaps that is the danger in thinking about it too long, you never get to enjoy it. Because if you think about it for long enough, you can reason yourself past the piercing glance that the picture gave you, that stopped you long enough to linger, look, and if luck took a liking to you, let you love it enough to lug it home where it looks back at you, lit by the life of your things.
When I Buy Pictures
or what is closer to the truth,
when I look at that of which I may regard myself as the imaginary possessor,
I fix upon what would give me pleasure in my average moments:
the satire upon curiosity in which no more is discernible than the intensity of the mood;
or quite the opposite—the old thing, the medieval decorated hat-box,
in which there are hounds with waists diminishing like the waist of the hour-glass,
and deer and birds and seated people;
it may be no more than a square of parquetry; the literal biography perhaps,
in letters standing well apart upon a parchment-like expanse;
an artichoke in six varieties of blue; the snipe-legged hieroglyphic in three parts;
the silver fence protecting Adam's grave, or Michael taking Adam by the wrist.
Too stern an intellectual emphasis upon this quality or that detracts from one's enjoyment.
It must not wish to disarm anything; nor may the approved triumph easily be honored—
that which is great because something else is small.
It comes to this: of whatever sort it is,
it must be "lit with piercing glances into the life of things";
it must acknowledge the spiritual forces which have made it.
Leaving Kandinsky and Hegel to the side, because I don't want here to begin thinking about Spirit, I smile at her opening. "When I buy pictures" is the way I would begin a sentence too, though only ever having bought one I would wonder if picking among pieces the artist has offered could count in the approach to this topic, and probably decide that there was something different about it too complicated to incorporate, thus switching indeed to what it feels like to imagine a piece coming home with me, an experience with which I am far more familiar.
I look at a piece, considering what it would be like to live with it day in and day out, through lovers, cats, interests, homes, and whether it is likely to move with me through those other experiences I can not yet conceive. There is no way to tell though I have the piece that I bought, and the pieces I have been given hanging still which suggests that the act of choosing the piece gives it a permanent relationship to my life that I can never understand when I am selecting.
Marianne Moore had in fact only a few years prior to this poem made the decision to buy several Copley reproductions of Blake prints of Milton's Paradise Lost. She had been thinking about this decision for nine years. Buying a picture isn't necessarily an impromptu decision. And some years later, the picture hanging on the wall can find itself not only a part of your life, but a part of your mind, so that scribbling at her words, Marianne Moore brought the pictures into her art.
"Too stern an intellectual emphasis upon this quality or that detracts from one's enjoyment."
Agreed Ms. Moore, but how interesting then to consider the redrafting of this poem: changes to the words, a shift from its original syllabic design, a clearer mention of the pictures. And perhaps that is the danger in thinking about it too long, you never get to enjoy it. Because if you think about it for long enough, you can reason yourself past the piercing glance that the picture gave you, that stopped you long enough to linger, look, and if luck took a liking to you, let you love it enough to lug it home where it looks back at you, lit by the life of your things.
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