In a Hall Half His Age
The Museum
of Fine Arts
Boston,
Massachusetts
I
Apollinaire
“Now and
then it's good to pause in our pursuit of happiness, and just be
happy.” Guillaume Apollinaire
The stillness
in the air is a confusion of prisons and sorrow, he lifts his eyes
from the page and stayers into a heady distance. The watcher who
stands looking at the pen and ink drawing realizes that he is
watching not a figurine dressed in ordinary clothes, but a picture of
the inner garments of the man, conjoining each manifold in a
geometric structure. The old world of romantic poetry is overthrown,
and the inner triumphs over the outer. 30 years before, he would
assume and Impressionist form of life, for example, by Monet, or
perhaps one of the other workers in that same vein. 50 years ago, he
might catch the eye of romantic attachment, only vaguely whispering
the insincerities of just a hint that says that this painting is not
real enough, but has the hint of something beyond real. But not too
much, people would not understand this.
A heady moment
comes over him, because he was just outside a few minutes ago, where
it was not very warm, but he had been exerting himself, because of
all of the throngs of people visiting the Museum of Fine Arts, he was
perhaps, the only person who was specifically going to see a few
drawings on the wall which were marked within 50 years of the
beginning of the last century. It was entitled something grand,
something extraordinary, which no one else but Museum curators would
barely notice, and would be forgotten by the masses of people, most
of them looking for their favorite piece, or pieces, of art.
This being the
MFA, their was a large selection, some people were here for the
Egyptian, some people here for the Greek and Roman, still others
would be staring at the Renaissance, and a few more for the Chinese,
and of course there were the people who flogged their favorite era
which only they knew the meaning of. Then there were the people who
want something new, and would be enthusiastic about whatever they
were told to be enthusiastic about.
But the young
man was virtually the only person to really look at the pieces, and
to begin to form in his mind a fast detail which he only glimpsed the
barest fraction of. The didn't know which pieces he would assemble,
but he would gravitate to some which spoke his internal language. One
which had stopped him was the angular detail of a poet, by the name
of Apollinaire. What he knew about him was only from one book of his
poems, and some detail from an obscure commentator, whose prose
gravitated towards the abstruse, not to say clouded in his language;
because that was just barely not the case. But there was far more in
the single detail of a brushed stroke, then in the myriads of prose
dumped on the page by the would be author between poems of
Apollinaire.
“When men
want to make a machine that would walk he created the wheel, which
does not assemble a leg.” Apollinaire
Between the
seething text of the scholar, in its propped up scale of detail,
there was a glimmer - the original being far superior to the
translated text – that showed a man of the 20th century
gliding his way after what then was called The Great War. In it he
cast away many of the old lessons, though he kept a few, and looked
in to the common eyes of man; there he found meaning, not in the
concepts there described, because he did not think much of the common
man, in sich, but in the mass of their humanity. He was struggling to
put on paper that detail that was inescapable. In other words, he was
trying to tell the intelligentsia, who was poor but noble, what they
were trying to get the common man to believe.
“Without
poets, without artists, men would soon weary of nature's monotony.
The plastic
virtues: purity, unity, and truth, keep major in subjection.”
Apollinaire
He had not been
much of a fan, except for a few poems, which he felt were fresh and
new and different than the other poems that he wrote. But then, he
understood that what had happened was that Apollinaire had not been
given the primary necessitated of genius: that being a follower who
could explain what is he was trying to say, and point out which works
were important, and which works could be dispensed with, or at least,
left for later.
If after this
discussion you do not realize that the author was not the person who
would act as intercessor for his subject, I don't know what will draw
out the line. I am trying to say, delicately, that the scholar was
shit. And even this expression is part of the problem, because in the
interwar years, people want to express most things in deep enamored
tones, and then draw out in scatological device the excrement which
surrounds and encompasses them. This is because the hallways were
clean, but the entry ways, and more so, the outside, was covered in
what the French call “merde”.
Between the
heightened and exquisite prose, and the device that contrasted them
with more baser impulses was the height of expression of this new
style. The older style did not recognize the baser, it divorced all
aspects from its vocabulary. No hint or trace of the vocabulary of
retching, shitting, or any such vestiges would remain in adult
conversation. The entrance of such words, while contrasted with such
fullsome interpretation that remains true to its higher purpose.
Thus, it maintains a link backwards to the purest of the old, while
linking forwards to an unknown world, where the raw stuff of the
world at large rests, and that includes the baser reflexes. And that
means shit, not excrement. Now Apollinaire was only the beginning of
this process, and he did not even mention shit, but it was the
expectation of engaging in a distant present which made it
inevitable. There is simply no way to talk about the present, with
out talking about to talk about the differences between excrement and
fornication, and shiting and fucking which lies at the end point of
this process.
It began with
forming a picture out of words; The young man remembered one such
picture as a face with a broad brimmed hat and some kind of shirt,
but in fact the lines on this face were etched out of words.
“Recamais-toi” piqued out of the hat, and other words draped out
of the shirt. He remembered it very well as he looked at the painting
in the foreground. Know and of what was to happen in 20 years would
ever usher forth, and yet there was indeed something queasy about it.
“Come to
the edge, he said. They said: We are afraid. Come to the edge, he
said. They came, and pushed them, and they flew.”
Words and pictures, the two are as oil and acrylic, never the twain shall meet.
While he might look as if he were
standing there, in reality his minds eye had captured his brain, and
loosed it images which were both word and picture both. The minds eye
kaleidoscope over a tundra of images, each one called for his
attention, each one different from the last. But what made the most
impression was of la tour Eiffel, made up with words he could not
quite grasp.
Remember at the time that the image was
raised on canvas, it was only 25 years since the tower was raised,
and that meant that not only was words and pictures a new thing, but
the tower itself was a modern image, not something old, and
established. The young man could see the Eiffel Tower from across the
river, where he viewed it on the days when he lived there, going down
to Avenue de New York and stared over the wall separating what he
thought as North from South. He remembered all of the details, though
he was sure he had filled them in, rather than remembered them. But
still the same, he could picture himself staring up at the Tower, and
then it faded into a melange that was of words and pictures he had
seen some 10 years ago, on a magazine cover. He thought it was Pari
Match, but he was not sure, except that it was French in content.
Even at the time he read several
languages, that being one of the gifts from an uncle, the gift of
speaking. Which was greater than every gift he could realize.
“I love men, not for what unites them, but for what divides
them, and I want most of all what gnaws at their hearts.”
Apollinaire
But now he
stares at an assemblage that is meant to represent what the drawer
perceives as the core, not internally, nor externally, but hidden
beneath all windows and expression getting to the deep core of the
Inner Man. Thus it in no way resembles a drawing which depicts, nor
does it depend only on expression has defined by the Germanic school,
but instead carries with it A certain Latin clarity, Reverbertion ou
lumiere of the Roman empire that France, rather obviously to them,
should be the inheritor of.
Which is why
there is not one respective, but several, interlining and overlapping
with a collage that resembles a series of stained glass, from the
Romanesque period. This is as it was as it began, the medieval
guidelines with the modern, especially in the eyes, glaring out in
two space, as opposed to a picture one could actually believe took
place. Of course it couldn't, because there was no respect that
actually represents the figure, everything being to sharp and clear.
It was that way in this picture, but it was garish in the details of
it, and took such flare in repeating the tawdry little details that
come with a prospective wholly out of line with anything natural. In
short it was a prism, capturing the inner essence without a single
trace of beauty.
“One can't carry one's father's corpse about everywhere.” Apollinaire
Thus it stared
out at the viewers, as much as they stared back at it. And if really
looked, that distortion of prospective grinds into your eyes, until
you don't know whether you are staring at the canvas, or whether the
candidates is staring back at you. And as people tried to mill away
from it, by either turning away very suddenly, or by backing away
with their face still upon the picture, it created a zone around it
where the magical eyes held sway over all that truly looked at it. Of
course a number of people did not look at all, only glance at it
while talking of other things, either towards the Contemporary Wing,
which this was temporarily a part of, or coming back and discussing
which room they were going to visit, absorbing the French Baroque, or
other manner of old rooms that were ahead.
But the people
who had here eyes establish in the early part of the 20th
century, could not look away with a straight face. Some were enamored
and beguiled by a person who sat on canvas as if still alive; others
were disturbed by numerous perspectives all competing for allegions
with their eyes. But the man stared in two the page, letting all of
the people whisk by him, trying to fathom what was he was thinking
about. The man seemed very calm, indeed calmer then most of the
people looking at him, he also had something on his mind. But what
remained the question. It was absorbing to the man; though no trace
of what it was beguiled the whisper on his face.
“Joy always came after pain.” Apollinaire
Try as he
might, the young man could not imagine what it was; and so slipped in
to dreaming about it, fashioning himself as a spectator on the
canvas, talking about what it was was on Apolloniare's mind. This
though he did not know exactly what it was, but he imagined it was
something intellectual and brilliant, as the poems were underling.
Then he slid back out in to the vantage point of the museum, and
looked down at a poem.
I realize this
is the right moment to talk about the Jean Metzinger, which though in
the same style, is wholly different in its partaking of the same
subject. The drawing in the museum does not depict the human side
that Metzinger wanted to capture under need the cold exterior, but
want to capture the pure cerebral intellect. Normally the painting
would have hung in Harvard, so it was a short hop to displaying it
across the river in the Museum, but it was far in terms of the number
of visitors which it captured. Their were more people in an hour,
then in whole weeks in its permanent home.
“A
structure becomes architectural, and not sculptural, when it's
elements no longer have there justification in nature.” Apollinaire
The
problem, you see, is that when nothing is happening, just the eyes of
a person communing with a painting or a print, that is the time when
there is true affection, or hatred, or anything else that wants to
name. When there is action, it might seem like that is what is truly
important, but that is never the case. It is in that repose of quiet
that the real activity is happening. Because in that arc second there
is a true connection, even though nothing
is happening, because it is interior forces, such as the main
character in Max, a
quite little film with Hitler played by not a Hitler, but someone
else who has different aspects then the real one. Max, of course, is
the main character – and his of sessions become ours if we want
them to be.
That is also what is happening in the Museum of Fine Arts, for every
moment that slips away, every second rejected and gone, is another
second which everything is turning and the entire exhibit is turning
into a minor key. But this is a rich minor key indeed, and no usual
sounds can come out of this. It drips and wafts, and then stands
upright like the Dragon in Wagner. Who is creepily in tune with the
young man who is thinking about the relationship of eras which have
revolution on their mind.
The main difference between German and French forms of revolution,
was that the German form when you looked at it became messy and there
were the kind of lumps, the kind that made everything foreboding and
forbidding. Where as the Frankish form became lighter and could dance
on the head of a pin. It performed as dancing music, where as the
German form portrayed people who were dressed up like Vikings, and
sang a great deal.
But what truly wrenched him in to the present, having wafted in an of
his minds eye, was a group of people who were gaping and gawing over
the whole set of works, not a very much attention to any of them.
Then a little girl pointed at Apollinaire, and said very loudly,
having not yet realized their was the etiquette of speaking softly in
a museum, “Mama, what is that?” The adults rushed to muffle her
speech, but the young man sent down on his haunches, and looked in to
her blue blue eyes. Then he said:
“That is a great man, of which you have not heard. Go home, and
look up Apollinaire, and begin reading about him.”
