MUSEUM WORDS The Poetics of Ekphrasis from Homer to Ashbery JAMES A. W. HEFFERNAN THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS Chicago and London‘The Unive of Chicago Pres, Chicago 60637 ‘The University of Chicago Pres Led, London (© 1993 by The Univesity of Chicago ‘All rights eserved. Published 1993 Paperback edition 2004 Printed inthe United State of America 080706054 2345 ISBN: 0-226-32313-7 (deck) {SBN:0-226-32314-5 (paperback) Excerpt from “The Wiste Land” in COLLECTED POEMS 1909-1962 by. 5. Elie, copyrighe 1936 by Harcourt Brace and Company, copyright © 1964, 1963 by “TS, Hs, reprinted by permission of Harcoure Brace and CChnpaay (US. rights) and Faber and Faber (Eaglish- language rights excluding US.A), Libeary of Congres Cataloging in Publication Data Heflernan, James A.W. Mascum af words: the poetics of eps from Homer oAchbery / James A.W. Heferan, pm. Inches bibliographical references and index 1 Ltereure--History and item. 2. Bephrasi 1. Tit PNS6ESSHA 1993 09420 93-4509 ap ‘© The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirement ofthe American National Sandad for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSTZ39.48-1992. Contents List of Illustrations ix Acknowledgments x Introduction | 1 Chapter One 19 HOMER, VIRGIL, DANTE A Gensatocy os Expatrasts 1. Homer A Shield Seulped in Words 10 1, Vig Re-imagnig the Shidkd 22 IIL, Vile Specs The Evoiing of Sculpture in Danes Pugaono 37 Chapter Tuo 146 WEAVING RAPE Exonaastic METAMORPHOSES OF THE PuatnoMeta Myrit 82M OvtD TO SHAKESPEARE 1, Philomelés Grp Tale ” 1, Verbalized Depicions oF Rape inthe Ancien Novel 3 UM, Eiphrass and Rape om Chaucer Spenser 6 IN, The Pined Rape of Troy vo Shakeseate Lace ” Chapter Three 91 ROMANTIC EKPHRASIS IconorHosta, ICONOPHILIA, AND THE IppoLocy oF TRANSCENDENCE 1. Wordsworth "Pele Caste’ 4 1. “A beating human passion far above Keatand he Ura 107“i Contents I, Disinogeating Sublime Sheley's “Ozymandias” and "Medusa" IV, Hdeiy and Frey: Byron on Sculpture Chapter Four | 135: Penied Bes us 4 MODERN AND POSTMODERN EKPHRASIS EnreginG THe Museu OF ART 1, Gaze and Glance in Browning’ “My Las Duchess" 1, The Maseum in Audens"Maste TIL The Breughel Museur of William Carios Willams 1. The Muscum-Goe Ashbery "Sele Por Nowes ‘Works Cited the Mise: 9 6 132 19 191 25 | i + Mlustrations |. Abraham Flasman. The Shield of Ahi. 15 ‘George Beaumont. Pele Castle. 104 Picter Breughel. Landscape with the Fall of Tearus. V49 Pieter Breughel. The Fell of laras. 151 5. Hoefaagel, Georg River Landscape withthe Fall of lara 152 Pieter Breughel. The Peasent Dance (The Komese. 153 . Dieter Breughel. The Harvester. 156 Pieter Bretghel. Adoration of che Magi. 158 . Pieter Breughel. The Wedding Ranges. 163 Dieter Breughel. The Parable of te Blind. 164 Pieter Breughel. Hunters in the Snow. 166 >. Francesco Parmigianino. Sef Portrait in a Convex ‘Mirar. 170146 Chapter Four: Ensering the Museum of Art 1 THE MUSEUM IN AUDEN’S “MUSEE” ‘To turn from *My Last Duchess” to Auden's*Musée des Beaux Arts” (CP 146— 47), siteen—in late 1938—neatly a hundred years afer Browning's poem is to move from the private museum of a Kenaissance Duke to the kind of public ‘museum in which great works of art are now commonly displayed. Iis also to move from notional ekphrasis to actual ekphrasis, from an imaginary painting ‘wrought wholly of words to the verbal representation of a painting that can be positively identified and independently scen.'' Taking fll critical advantage of. this independent availabilty {will shordy examine Auden’s poem in light of| the painting. For the moment, however, I wish co consider what the public museum of Auden’s poem shares with the private, imaginary museum of Browning's duke. Just as Fra PandolF’s portrait of the duchess in Browning's poem is juxtaposed with the bronze by Claus of tnnsbruck, a work of are dis- played ina public museum is almost always uxeaposed with other works. Con Sequent, Auden acknowledges the insticuional site of his encounter with a painting not only in his tle bt also in his opening reference ro the Old Mas- ters, whose works can be direely known only in muscums, and in his brief allusions co paintings chat swam into his ken as he made his way co or from the fone chat struck him most. In fact iis these other paintings chat first ilusrate his generalization about the wisdom ofthe old masters ‘About suffecing they were never wrong, ‘The Old Masters: how well chey understood Its human position; haw ic takes place While someone else is eating or opening 2 window or just ‘walking dully along: How, when the aged are reverent, passionately waiting For the miraculous birch, there always must be Children who did not specially want ito happen, skating ‘On a pond atthe edge of the wood: They never forgot "That even the dreadful mareyrdom must run its course ‘Anyhow in a comes, some untidy spor ‘Where the dogs go on with cheie doggy life and the torcurers horse Scratches its innocent behind on a tree. Curiously enough this passage on the other paintings slightly longer chan the one devored to the only painting Auden names —Breughe’s fers, ashe ‘alls it (for reasons { will discuss below). The other paintings, to which Auden merely alludes, have been identified by Long and Cage (287) as two other Breughels: The Census at Bethlobens (1566) at the Brussels Musée and The Slaughter ofthe fanocents(e2. 1564) at Vienna’s Kunsthistorische Museum, Nei ther one of them exactly fits Auderis description. In The Census, which repre- AuDEN’s “MUSE DES BEAUX ARTS) wr sents Bethlehem as a snow-covered Flemish village, children are shown skating (among ocher things) on the ice around a cluster of ees at right, bur che crowd cof mostly older people massed around the building ar lft have gathered to be counted and taxed, not ro wait pasionately and reverent for the miraculous birth, and they appear to be suffering—if a all—no more chan axpayers usu: ally dot the approach of April 15. There isreal anguish in 1e Slaughter, where mothers are shown weeping for ther slain or doomed infants while dogs indit: ferently leap about in the snow, but I cannot quite detect any torturer’ hors: scratching its ass on a tee in chs picture, and strictly speaking, the slaughter of those who cannot deliberately choose to accept death cannot be called 4 “martyrdom.” Since Auden does noc mention either The Censusor The Slaughterby name, i may be capeious to complain that he has reconstructed them, or that he has tacitly moved The Slanghterfrom Viena ro Brussels to join the other Breughels there in an imaginary exhibition hung for him alone. Buc what he does with Breughel’s paintings as well as with their location should prompt us co \wonder—more than critics usually do—about what he sas of the Old Mas ters Ifthey were “never wrong” about the juxtaposition of suffering with signs of indifference to it, what would Auden say of Breughel’ Parable ofthe Blind (gure 10), which ke could certainly have seen in Naples and whieh depiess 2 row ofblind men tumbling miserably inco a ditch while nota single animate creature —neither man nor beast—is shown anywhere else in the picture, le alone shown displaying indifference ro ther plight? Viewed in ight of the mu- ‘eum where this poem is nominally st, and more specifically ofthe paintings to which ialludes, Audens grand generalization aboue the Old Masters is at bes: iiosyncratc.!? We should read itnot asa universal tuth—which iteereinly is rnot—but asa clue to the stave of mind that Audentsspeakerrings tothe view ing of Breughel’ Landsape with the Fall of larus (igure 3). “To grasp this state of mind, we must understand what is signified by che museum constructed in the poem—the museum surrounding the speaker. Ac cording to Michael Riffaerre, the “musée” of the tide prefigues the aesthetic detachment epitomized by the “expensive delicate ship that must have seen / Something amazing, a boy falling out ofthe sky.” Riffaerre writs: ‘What “expensive,” “delicae,” “museum,” and "beaux arts” have in com- mon... is that from the viewpoint of representation chey are all askew, irrelevant on the plane of factual, discrete bits oF information, and tha is ‘what now makes them relevant on the higher plane of united, unified textuality For asa paradigm, they all refer to a detached aesthetic dis- tence, to 8 preference for form, to an ides! of beauty, that presupposes clitsm and the trappings of socal privilege, collecting fine arts, caste, and ‘money lavished on artifats. Tey all fiction asvasiants of academic (8) Given the sort of funds chat most academics have to lavish on atifacts, should rather say that all these aesthetic elements in the poem funtion as vatue Chapter Fo: Encering the Museu of Ars ants of eonnisseurshp, or curstorship, Bur the state of aesthetic derachment— ‘even numbness—induced by the sheer multiplicity of pictures in a museum ‘might indeed help to explain the startling juxtaposition of desperation and in- difference that the poem finds inthe painting. Here, we ae told, everything curs away Quite leisurely rom the disaster; the ploughman may Hlave heard the splash, the forsaken cry ‘But for him ie was not an important failure; the sun shone ‘As it had to on the whice legs disappearing inc the green ‘Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen Something amazing, a boy falling ou ofthe sky, Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on. The point of view implicitly imputed to the painting 2s a whole might be that ofthe sun, mirror of the viewer's eye: the sun resting on the horizon atthe vanishing poincand gazing dispassionately—like an appreciative connoisseur — at the vivid flash of white legs against green wate. Moreocver, as Rffaterte ob- serves, the ship is “the most exemplary passerby in the indifference sequence” (6), forin abandoning the drowning man co his fate, ic breaks one ofthe most fundamental laws of the sa. But how far does che indifference co Tearus’s plight extend? Ifthe splash and forsaken cry that the ploughman may have heard did rot signify “an important failure” for bie, is this also che attude implied by the painting as a whole, or by the poem? Mary Ann Caws answers both ques- tions with a yes. The poem, she writes, subordinates che disaster to “the acs thetic stress of the picture: ship and sea in their splendos, dwarfing the human, fare” ("Double Reading” 328), Riffaterre demu, arguing ther the poem as- sumes a moral authority which preempts the aesthetic standards of the paint- ing. “Auden's words,” he says, “focus on the disaster by stressing that [the painting] pretends co ignore i” (12-13). More precisely, we could say thatthe poem leads us co see how the painting pretends to subordinate the disaster to ‘other sights, ot actually docs subordinate it by making it far less conspicuous than the ship and the ploughman, But above all, Auden’s poem makes us see hhow the moral meaning ofthe painting—the meaning itis said to illustrate — is largely constructed by che words of the cele with which the museum has la- beled it Consider for a moment what we could make of this painting without its til, Even fies thee standing figures should remind us of book 8 of The Meta- ‘morphoses, where the fight of Daedalus and his son is said to have been wit nnessed with stupefaction by “some fisherman, ...ora shepherd, leaning upon his crook, or ploughman, on his plow-handles” (217~19), could we recognize the splashing legs 28 those of learus? Could we do so without any sign of Daedalus in the picure to guid us, with a setting sun scarcely high enough to mele the wax of high-flying wings, and with a fagrantly non-Ovidian ship 0 lead us off the scent? Would we even know that che splashing legs belong t0 a AuDEN’s “Muse pes REAUX ARTS” 9 3, Pieter Breughel. Landscape withthe Fl! of aru. Ca, 1558, Musées Royaux det Beaux-Arts, Brae. drowning man and not o a swimmer happily sporting while the ploughman toil? And would we sympathize more readily withthe swimmer than with the laboring man of the soil)? “The honest answer to all ofthese questions is no. Neither we nor Auden himself could see a drowning Icarus inthis painting without the words of its title, Landiegpe with the Fall of earns, which in the poem becomes simply “Breughel’s fru” Auden’s compression ofthe long ttle sharpens the point of ‘what the curator’ label leads us co seein the painting: a meaning borrowed from another Breughel painting which hangs in Brussels’ Van Buuren Mu- scum and which is almose identical ro the Beaux Arts /earusexcept—a crucial ‘except—for the presence ofa winged man fying through the sky athe very top (igure 4) Inthe Beaux Ars picture, chis unmistakable sige of Daedalus—the sign that would lead us ¢ ideneifythe splashing legs as those of his fallen son-~ is missing, Its place is taken by che key word in che tte che only word Auden cites.4 The Van Buuren Museum version makes it clear thatthe shepherd leaning nis crook and looking skywards in both picures is noc just heartless rurn- ing away from the drowning man but looking up at the winged Daedalus: pre cisely what Ovid says all dhree men were doing as he flew ovcthead. Auden alludes to Daedalus, perhaps unwitingly, when he says chat the ship “must have seen J Something amazing.” What ic saw, of course, was not jus the fall150 (Chapter Four: Entering the Museum of Art ing boy but the fying father who wrought the Cretan muazein which both were imprisoned until Daedalus fashioned the wings chat er chem escape.'® But the poem itself ens sway from the suddenly bereaved Daedalus, eho must surely pe suffering just as much as his son is, and ikewise from the mysterious corpse Ipingin the shadowy woods a let 16 The sole beneficiary ofthe poem sympa- chy i Fearus “The exclusiveness of this sympathy is strange enough in light of whac the piware shows us of hin: a comically upended pair of legs. Ie is strange still in fight ofthe paintings ellusively described in che irs half of the poem, especially The Slaughter of ohe Innocents, where the juxtaposition of visibly anguished mothers with fisking dogs and stolid horses leading thei borsy lives illustrates far more vividly chan Tearasthe originating premise ofthe poem. Even with its title: nothing inthe painting itself compels us to think about the suffering of Icarus, and there is good razon to believe thar Breughel painted his vainly kick ing legs simply to signify his folly. Ina 1553 caching made by George Hoefnagel afer Breughal (figure 3)-an upended Icaruskicks his way down from dhe clouds into a winding fiver dotted with sailboats, and the legend reads: “INTER UTRUMQUE VOLA, MEDIO TUTISSIMUS IBIS" [fly beeween the ex- tremes, in the middle isthe safest way)? ‘Spurning or turning away from this simply prescriptive moral, the poem gives Breughel’ caruca quite different meaning, Focusing on the figure desig- fated by the key word in its title, che poem works from suggestions made by brher Beeughel pictures that Auden finked ro this one, even though be sav them in different museurs. Each of those ocher pictures portrays a momentous tvent in the life of a farily, In the fgure ofa heavily cloaked woman riding a tule across the center Foreground, The Censes at Bedhlehem signifies the is hence of Chaist’s nativity and The Slaughter of Innocens, as already noved, ‘openly depicts the killing of infanes before the eyes of theie mothers. In ad lon, both paintings include figures indifferenc to the momentous event, nd both equite knowledge of atext in order tobe fully understood. We must know the New Testament 0 recognize che mule-iding woman as the Virgin Mary land to know why the infants were slaughtered. “As exemplified by these pictures, then, three things characterize the suffering porttayed by the Old Masters: iis juxtaposed with signs of indifference, its Theaning depends on the viewer's knowledge ofa text, and itis emphatically “familial Wecan now sec ov Auden would be led to make the neglected suffer jng of Icarus the moral center of Breughels picture, Like the paintings of srip- tun events, Landscape with a Fall ofearas—the only panting Breughel did of 1 mythological subject (Stechow 50)—depends on a text. Furthermore, the ‘Ovidian text on which it depends makes this subject poignantly familial: the son calling the father’s name up to the very moment when the sea catches his lips Coraque caerulea patrium damantia nomen / excipiuncur aqua") dhe “pater inalix” calling in vain on the son untl he sees the wings floating on the eaves (Met, 8.22933). Isolated from the father’s anguish, the suffering of AUDEN’S “MUSE DES BEAUX ants" 51 4, Pieter Breughel. The Fall of laras, David and Alice Van Buuren Museu, Brussels the on becomes in Auden's poem the sole center of feling ina seascape of cook 2 een ire eer Te father, is own “forsaken cry” here—-the sole note of prosopopeia in the encire poem —calls to mind what another dying son famously cried cis father: "Mr God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34). : Viewing Breughel through the words of Ovid and turning them into an echo of the last words of Christ, Auden's speaker turns the painting itself into a ‘verbal narrative of suffering wilfully ignored. The assertive power ofthe word cover the image in dis narrative becomes ll too clear as inferential subjunctives— ‘mete conjectures about the story cold by the picture—turn inco unequivocal indicatives: the ploughman may have heard the splash and the ery, but for hin: i war unimportant; the ship mut have ren an amazing sight but satled calls ton, Consider the question begged by this final would-be starement of face. Since the ship is something Breughel added to Ovid’ story of Icarus, we have zo textual guidance on its movements; how then do we know ie willignore splash just now occurring, that ie will not even try to come about and rescue the boy? Is Falstaffian sil (oddly incongeuene with is level hull, the calm sea, and the droop of the horse's tail and ploughman’s tunic) el us only that the wind a: sal level is strong. Even ifthe ship did sail on it could nor have sailed calmly. Auden’s “Musée des Beaux Arts” is anything but a “straightforward reading of an axt work,” as one ertic recently called ic (Suzanne Ferguson 31). leis the ‘verbal reconstruction ofa painting whose meaningis initially determined —fo:132 Chapter Four: Entering the Masew of Art arab Sos ree Se 5, Georg Hoefnagel. River Landcape wish he Fal of ear 1593. Erching after, Pieter Breughel. Bibliotheque Royale Alber I, Cabinet des Estampes, Brussel all who se i in the Brussels muscum—by the words of the tite affixed to it there. Viewing Breughel’s pictute in light of these words, in light of Ovid's ‘words, in light reflected feom Breughels paintings of biblical subjects, and in light ofthe texs chat stand behind chose paintings, Auden remakes the picture in words as a museumn-lase specimen of how the Od Masters could represent suffering s a story of private anguish publically ignored, IF Browning’ "My Last Duchess” points the way ro che modern museum of art, Auden's “Musée” takes us into i un THE BREUGHEL MUSEUM OF WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS William Carlos Williams wrote a dozen poems about pictures by Breughel: “Phe Dance" in 1942, the long passage (which may count asa poem) on Adora- sion ofthe Magiin pare 3 of Pater V (1958), and a group of ten poetns that first appeared inthe Hadton Reviw (Spring 1960) and then ina volume ted Picture fom Brenghel (1962). These poems do not conspicuously evoke the ‘world ofthe museum or deploy the language of connoisseurship. There is noth- WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS'S BREUGHEL POEMS 18. 6, Pieter Breughel. The Peasant Dance (The Kermese). Ca. 1558. Kunsthistorsches Museum, Vienna ing in them quite like Auden’s knowing reference o the wisdom of the Old Masters, with its suggestion of fong and meditative hours periodically spent in major galleries. Ye the Breughel poems evoke the world of the museum every time they mention Breughels name. Apart from the artist’ signature, which may be missing or diffcule ro read, icis typically the authority of the museum that establishes and certifies che authorship of e painting. When Williams ‘writes of "Breughel’s grea picture, The Kermess” in the fist and las lines of “The Dance,” his fst Breughel poem, he salutes an authorship that is at once artistic and museologial, an authorship proclaimed by the museum that hhouses the painting and reinforced by all the ar hiscorical commentary on Breughel’s mastery, The very title of Williams’ ckphrastic volume-—Picturs from Breughel—affirms the primacy ofthe artist and his authorship, and ‘testo Breughel’s mastery of pictorial organization permeate che poets themr- selves, where the Adoration of the Magi, for inscance, is said wo reflect “the resourceful mind f chat governed the whole” and the figures in The Wedding Danee come through as"Diseiplined by che artist / wo goround / & round.” ‘The homage to Breughel’s organizational power is in part self-referential The words on Breughel’s Wedding Dancealso describe “The Dance,” whete~ as Sayre nores— Wiliams creates “a circular poetic structute to rival che struc ture of both dance and painting” (138). In this earlier poem on The Peasant Dance { Kermesse (gute 6), Williams shapes and disciplines the words them-134 Chapser Four: Entering the Muscum of Ars selves to go round, using repetition and internal chyme to re-create in language the effec of repeaced circling: “the dancers go round, they go round and / around’ in “rolicking measures” mimicked by Williams's own rollicking dac- ty ther belles are “round as che thick-/ sided glasses whose wash they im- pound”: they “prance ae they dance J in Beeughel’s great picture” and in Williams’s poem, whose las line (as just noted) echoes and thus rounds back to ins isc one. Yee Williams's poem is anyching bur an iconic sig of Breughel’ painting. Te is awork of language remaking visual art. Besides adding "a bugle and fddles” which are nonexistent in the painting, i also speaks of round bellies that have ‘evidently been transplanted from The Wedding Dance, since the only clearly Wisiblewaise in The Peasane Dance / Kermesseis that ofthe rather trim woman at right Willams had his own way of driving words around, When he re- turned to Breughel in Pictures, be did not revive the blank verse dactyls of “The Dance,” not even to represent another painting of circling dancers. Instead he devised what is sometimes called—with unwitting irony—"the Breughel stanza” (which isalitde like calling the style of Tom Stoppard’s Roseneranz and Guildenstern Are Dead Shakespearean). With its three short free vers lines of vatable fee, the “Breughel” tercet bears a wholly arbitrary relation to the struc- ture of Breughel’ paintings. “In face," a Sayre notes, “the blocklike shape of the cots seems dramatically opposed to the ‘roundness’ of the poem's subject sate” (138). What the poems share with the paintings they represent is nota particular shape but simply evidence of shaping, signs of an organizing hand. ‘When the final sanza of Hunters in the Snow says that Beughel has chosen a swinter-struck bush “for his foreground to / complete the picture” of returning, Ihunters, we are not asked to see the bush asin any sense the “end” ofthe pic- ture; we are invited rather to see the principle of organization that links poetic closure with pictorial enclosure. Beyond all is ostensible subjects, in fact, be- yond “the basi rhythms of man’s life” (Conarroe, "Measured Dance” 569) and {he seasonal eyle suggested by poems about pictures of winter hunting, sum- ‘mer haymaking, autumn harvesting, and the springtime fll of Iearus, Pictures from Broughelthematizes the shaping of a work of art.?° "The thematizing of artistic organization goes hand in hand with Williams's muscological—and distinctively modern —focus on the artist. Buin focusing fon the artist the Breughel poems also show us how modern ekphrasis evives its fancient ancestor. In The Hiad, the shield of Achilles is represented asthe handi- ‘work of Hephaestus, whose act of making ("he made the earth upon it") is re- peatedly afirmed; in the Aeneid, Daedalus gets fll credit for the bas-relief in the Cumaean temple of Apollo, and Valean forthe shield of Acneas. After Vit- fils ckphrasis largely exchides the names of makers. The masterpieces so eon- Epleuously wrought by mythical artisans give way co anonymous works of art! We leacn nothing, for instance, of who created the paintings described in Daphnis and Chloe ot Lecippe and Csiphon or Chaucer's Knight Tale or ‘Shakespeare's Rape of Lucree Not until the seventeenth century do the names WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS'S BREUGHEL POEMS 135 of artists begin to reappear in ekphrastic poetry, and not until the ewentieth century does ekphrasic poetry represent a work of atin such a way a to fore- ‘ground an authorship reliably established by curatorial authority? ‘With Auden and sell more wich Williams, who—as Saye says—“cons tently turns his description ofthe work oa consideration ofthe work’ making (135), we return to what might be called the ekphrasis of artistic creation— with a difference. The artists saluted in ewentieth-century ekphrasisare historic rather than legendary or mythical figures, and their work is represented as in part a representation of the artist himself of his insight into suffering, of “the living quality off che man's mind” with “its covert assertions / for att, art arc!” and even of the arises own face? Ic does not matter thatthe painting represented in “Self-Portras,” the frst of the Picture from Breughel, depicts an ‘old shepherd rather than Breaghel himself; Williams firmly believed that all painting is self portraiture From this point of view, Ashbery’s “Self Portrait” {sas wewill shor see—the supreme example of what happens to ekphrasis inthe ewentieth century. Bucjustas Ashbery’ rreatment of Parmigianino’ self-portrait will differ rad ically from Williams account of Breughel’s sclfrevealing landscapes, Wil- fiamss response to Breughel’s are differs sharply from Auden’, While Auden sounds like a man long familiar wich museums and the masterworks chey ex hibic, Williams often sounds like an amateur secing piccure for the frst time. Consider for instance what he does with Breughel’sIeerain the second poem of the series, "Landscape with the Fall of Iearus" According to Breughel when Icarus fell ie-was spring a farmer was ploughing his field the whale pageancry of the year was awake tingling the edge of the sea concerned. swith itself sweating in the sun that melted the wings wax uunsignificandly off the coast there was156 Chapter Four: Entering the Museum of Art 7, Pieter Breughel. The Hareeses. 1565. Metropolitan Museum of Arc, New York, Rogees Fund, 1919 (19.164). All ights reserved, The Metropolitan Museum of Ar. a splash quite unnoticed this was learus drowning? Citing Breughel as iFhe were a storyteller, the poem recapitulates his version of the ancient myth: Icarus fell in the spring when a farmer was ploughing afield ‘ear the seacoast and sweating in the suo that melted the wax ofthe boy's wings, and he drowned in an inconspicuous splash. Wiliams’ version of Breughe!’s version of the myth includes a place and a time but no specifically pictorial detail, nothing like the flash of whie-on-green that Auden's poem delivers in ts final ines. Tn fact Williams has been faulted forslighting most of the detalsin the pic- cures that his poems purport to represent. “The Corn Harvest” for instance, ‘writen about the painting now generally known as The Harvesters (figure 7), concentrates on the ellipse of figures resting around the base ofthe tree atower Fightand therefore gnores—accordingto one meticulously calibraedestimate— about 92 percent of the picture (Lawson-Peebles 18). Besides such large-scale sins oF omission, Williams’ poems about Breughel’s piccuresalso include sins of ‘commission. In*The Dance” (1942), as we have seen, Williams adds “a bugle WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS'S BREUGHEL POEMS wr and fiddles" to The Peasant Dance / Kermese, and in “The Hunters in the Snow" onthe painting ofthe same name (Figure 1, he tuns the haloed Figure on the innsign into crucifix, Finally, Wiliams hasbeen faulted for distorting the Breughel canon in “Self Portrait” the frst ofthe Pictures fom Breughel. The picture represented inthis poem is nota painting of Breughel and, though once Zaributed co him, has been generally considered the work of another since th: middle 1920.26 But ekphrastic poetry is not ar history, even though modern ekphrasis—as wwe have seen—approaches the border between the wo, and postmodern kphrasis—as we will shortly see—croses it. Ekphrasis never aims simply to reproduce a work of visual art in words, so there is no pointin judging ekphras- tic poetry bya criterion of fidelity tothe work it represents. We can much bettr judge i by asking what i enables us ose in the work of art, or even jus tose, peviod.?” By this criterion, Williams often docs surprisingly well The critic who faults“ The Com Harvest” for ignoring 92 percent ofthe picture identifi many of the details chat Williams mises (Lawson-Peebles 18), but the poets Concentration on the ellipse of resting figures allows him to see certain chings the critic overlooks, such asthe fact thac the sleeping reaper “carelessly / doesnot share” the shade of the eee with che gosiping women. Ironically, the sleeping reaper thus becomes in Williams's poem the hub around which ll ch: busy harvesters visually wen, He is the resting center of their workday world Willams chooses what he wants us o see in Breughel’s picture, but he also takes and adapts interpretive points from the commentaries of Gustave Glcc in Peter Breughel the Elder and Thomas Craven in Treasury of rt Masterpiece, both of which books he consulted while writing his poems (CP 2:504). He certainly drew on them for “The Adoration of the Kings,” where he describes Breughel’s Adoration (Figure 8) as ascene copied welll ay from the Italian masters bur with a difference the mastery ofthe painting and the mind the resourceful mind that governed the whale the alere mind dissatisfied wich what itis asked ro and cannot do58 (Chapter Four: Entering the Museum of Art 8, Pieter Breughel. Adoration ofthe Magi. 1564. National Gallery, London, accepted the story and painted icin the brilliane colors ofthe chronicler [At leas chree texts stand behind this poem. Besides Matthew 2:1~12, the sctiptural source ofthe paincing itself, Williams here conflaces what he learned WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS's BREUGHEL POEMS 159 fiom Gluck and Craven abous Breughe!® transformation ofthe Italian manner- ism that bis Flemish contemporates thoughtlesly adopted and that his own ‘an-Halian” painting reflects with a radical difference."* From Craven also ‘Williams picked up hints abou Breughel’s capacity to organize his composi- tions and make their colors plov.2? Yer che only texc that Williams explicitly Cites a a source or precursor for this poem is his own previous teatment of The “Adoration in part 3 of Paterion, book 5, written two years before the Breughet poets first appeared. "The Breughel passage in Pazerom begins by eluting the paling ofa baby *new bora! J among the words” (226). The arresting phrase evokes not only the mystery of Christ as the word incarnate but also all ofthe scriprural words and iconographic traditions—part verbal, part iconic—on which Breughel draws, as wel asthe considerable body of art historical commentary on his painting.® Yee che words the poctsces surrounding the image of the baby are simply those he prosopopeialy elicits from the soldiers in the painting, words spoken by the “whispering men with avered faces /... / as they talked to the potbellied / greybeatd” who turns out to be Joseph (226). Williams’ own swords secularize the painting, He does something like what he earlier did in “The Dance,” which overlooks all iconographic signs ofa collision between the sacred and the profane in Breughel’s Kermese co Focus imply on the rollicking gyration of dancers going “round and / around."* In the Paterson passage ‘Williams can handy ignore che scriprual source For what he explicitly call the painting of “a Nativity”: of a scene “authentic / enough, to be witnessed fre ‘quently / among the poor” and actualy wicnessed here by kings who “had eyes for visions / in those days—and saw, / saw with their proper eyes” (Paterson 226-27), But the secularism of the poet's own vision is evidenc in what he says about the Christ chld’s purely human parentage—"born co an old man / out ‘ofagirl anda pretty gil / at chat’—and about the gifs that Breughel shows in the kingy hands: (works of ae, where could they have picked them up or more properly have stolen them?) “The very aura of Breughel’ painting asa work of art draws special attention to the works of are depicted in it. Bu in our age, the age ofthe maseurm, works cof arthave become commodities bought, traded, stolen, or acquited under con- ditions not always wholly distinguishable ftom robbery or fraud. The question able dealing that brought the Elgin marbles to che British Museum has since been reenacted many times inthe annals of acquisition. And ifthe work of ar hhas become a commodity, it can never be wholly detached from the reproduc tions through which we s0 often experience it. Hence, even while celebrating the authenticity of Breughel’s work, Wiliams parencherically evokes Gluck’ reproduction off:160 Ohapter Four: Encering the Muewom of Art —but the Baby (as fiom an illustrated catalogue in colors) ies naked on his Mother's knees (Peterton 26) Williamss Breughel, then is not the painter of sacred texts or iconograph- ically readable meanings—of verbal messages conveyed in visual form. What does Williams mean when he says that Breughel simply “painted / what he saw" (Paterson 226)? Secucrve in its simplicity this Formulation realls—from cighteenth-century England—the Earl of Shaftesbury’s impatience with the cigmas of visual emblem and iconic allegory, with anything “fencastic, minac- tlous, ot hyperbolical” chat mighe distort "the compleatly imitative and illusive ‘Art of PAINTING."33 For Williams, however, painting was not illusion but representation, Declaring that “even the most abstract, the most subjective, the ‘most distorted are” was representational, he wrote: “The only question that can present itself i: Whar do you choose to represent?” Here all questions about ‘erisimilitude seem usurped by a single question about sigaificaion. Ifthe Paincer can epresene anything all by any means, the Gombrichian notion of art as an illusionistic record of petception—the record of what the painter saw—gives way tothe Brysonian concept of art asa ste of sign-production.*> But Williams never goes this far in the Breughel poems. On the contrary, he ers Brug pings = mpesemationa in she ordinary mime ‘Acthe same time, Williams's poems on these paintings inevitably reflect the ways in which he experiences them: through reproductions chat transmi ther to his eye of revive them in his memory, through commentaries thar purport co caplain them. “The basic note” ofthe Adoration, saysa Max Dvorak quoted by Gluck, “isa clumsy, sup rigid astonishmene” (Gluck 42). Inthe Paterson passage Williams describes the soldiers in the painting as “savagely armed men” who are showing their amazement atthe scene, featuees like the more stupid German soldiers of the late ‘Ar frst glance, Williams seems co have ewisted Dyorak’s comment into a ‘gratuitously jingoistic slur against the losers of World War I, But later in the passage on the Adoration, this growl of insult modulates into a curious note of sympathy. The soldiers in the painting, Williams writes, ce depicted not only as stupid savages but also as long,suffering veterans: —the soldiers’ agged clothes, mouths open, WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS'S BREUGHEL POEMS 161 their knees and feet Ibeoken from 30 years of ‘war, haed campaigns, their mouths watering for the feast which had been provided (Paterson 28) “The soldiers ofthese lines bear curiously litle resemblance to those inthe paint- ing, whose clothes are tidy enough to be news, whose knees an feet are scarcely visible (whatever chit condieion), and whose mouths ae watering —if at all— fora feast that is nowhere in sight. Williams evidently aimed to construct in words a painting that would exemplify the “two sides” of Breughe!’ vision: his uniinching perception of brutishness and his sympathy for what even beures fel Pictures from Breughel repeatedly shows not just how Williams vetbally transforms the works of Breughel but also how he reconstructs the words of art historians. Apropos The Wadding Banquet (figure 9) he evidently learned from Gluck (quoting Dvorak again) tha che bearded man in black at the end of che table is “perhaps” a landowner or judge or “mayor ofthe village” (Gluck 49}. Williams calls him simply “the bearded Mayor” in “Peasant Wedding,” where the pouring figure on the extreme leis likewise unequivocally identified 2s che “bridegroom” even chough that i just one of several possibilities proposed by Gluck (49). Sill more revealing is Williams's reworking of Gluck’ remark chat “The dishes are being brought in by two peasanc youths on an unhinged stable oot” (Gluck 49). In the poem this becomes dishes are being served clabber and what not from a testle made of an ‘unhinged barn door by two helpers one in a ted coat a spoon in his hatband “To compare Williams with Gluck here is first ofall to see that Williams has noticed something the at historian has overlooked: the spoon in the harband of the red-coated server” But Williams amplifies Gluck’ comment even more suggestive at the very point where he seems most indebted it. While Gluck simply identifies whar the servers ate using to carry the dishes—"an unbinged seable door’ — Williams highlights the metamorphosis of one object into an other: che dishes rest on a trestle madé of an unhinged door. Purthermore, be ciple made comes beeween the passive verb are beingservedandits agent, fy / zo helpers the syntax suggests that the door ‘made into trestle —by the same ewo men who are caryin Fines eurn the painted objec ico @ compressed narrative of is genesis, and at the same time situae iin a network of visual metonymy that makes every ob- cause thele Chapter Four: Entering the Museum of Art ject human because it has been couched or earned by human hands, ike she dishes being handed feom the teste tothe table by the man in the redhat. ‘What is not human by metonymy becomes s0 by metaphor, a in the fst Pour the wine bridegroom where before you the brides enthroned her hie loose at her temples a head of ipe wheat is on the wall beside her the _guescs seated at long tables ‘The “head / of ripe wheat’—an unremarkable metaphor by itself— captures what the pictute shows us: the visual shyme berween the loose, uncov- cred cesses ofthe bride and the crossed sheaves of wheat hung on the wall be- side her like along straight headdress. Here as laer in the poem, Williams's nonstop syntax i relentlessly synaptic. Ar the ends of lines (‘on / the wall”) and even of stanzas (“an / / unhinged barn door”) he breaks up phrases pre- cisely to bring out the connective force of enjambmene; within lines he sup- presses breaks to accentuate continuity. Moving uninterruptedly from sempler to a head, for instance, he prompts us to link the two, reading a head / ofripe wheat as an appositional metaphor for her har | lose at her temples. That the ‘ead metaphor ean also be applied to the wheat alone (wheat ai head) exem- plifes the fuidity of Williams’ syntax, which aims to give the reader something like the freedom of movement offered toa viewer. Asa viewers eye darts from the temples of che bride to the sheaves of wheat, o from the red coat of the server co the spoon in his harband, so move the lines of the poem. Yet forall its ludicy—its back-and-forth indeterminacy of reference— Williams’ syntax is ditecrve, It masters the endlesly diverting muleiplicicy oF images in the painting by mapping an itinerary for the eye: a narrative of the viewing process self. This kindof narrative differs as much from the att histo- slan’s analysis of geometrical form—the fixed, abstract object of the synoptic ¢gaze—as it does from stories about the ation represenced by the painting, so ties abour what preceded and followed che moment depicted. We have already scen examples of each in the Breughel poems. “Iarus” tersely recapirulates the Tearus myth, and “The Corn Harvest” synoptcaly defines The Harvesters a8 “organiaed” about a young reaper who constitutes the “resting / center” of the workaday seene. But “Peasant Wedding” plots the journey ofthe eye, acing rough ellipse fiom the pouring figure at bottom lefe tothe bagpipers a upper lef, ro the bearded Mayor ac upper right, nd finaly to the serving men at lower right. There are «wo detours from this elliptical movement: (1) starting from the poures, the eye ofthe poem darts to the bride and he head of wheat before tracking up the table of guests to che bagpipers (2) from the Mayor, the eye WHLLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS's BREUGHEL POEMS ws, 9, Pieter Breughel. The Wedsing Banguct, Ca. 1558, Kunsthstorisches Museu, Vienna returns to the bride and che gebbing women nexc to her before proceeding to ‘the scrvers, Thus the poem represents the painted bride asa figure who repect edly draws and deflets the eye ofthe viewer but neither fixes nor determines ts movements, which follow a peripheral itinerary Two other poems show Willams in the act of reading aloud, 0 0 speak, tie compositional structure of a Breughel painting. Both poems focus on spatial patterns and chus accentuate the organizational mastery ofthe arts. Bur wh le “The Parable of the Blind” eurns Breughel’s linear desiga inco a compressed narcatve that makes the moral meaning of his composition explicit, "The Hiunters in the Snow” tllsa suspended story of figures caught in winery space. Instead of following the course of ceir lives, the poet «racks the movement of his own eye asic seeks to know a pattern that it verbalizes but will noc gloss Like The Adoration ofthe Kings, Breughel’s Perable ofthe Blind igute 10)is bbased on a scriptural text chat largely determines—one might say overdete~ mines—its meaning. When the disciples of Christ told him thatthe Pharisees were shocked by his teachings, he said: “Leave them alone. They are blind guides! But ifone blind man leads another, they wil both fall inco the dick!” (Matthew 15:14). The passage is quoted by Gluck, who also noces that Breughel represents six men “forming « diagonal across the picture surface” with the firs already fallen into the ditch (at lower right), the second about to fall, and the others—Linked co the frst cwo by extended sticks and hands—166 Chapter Four: Ensering the Museum of Art 10, Pieter Breughel, Th Parable of the Blind. 1568, Masco Gallerie Nazionale di ‘Capodimonte, Naples Photo: Alinari/Are Resource, New York, bound co share their fate (Gluck 48). Guided, no doubt, by Christ’ use of blindness to signify Pharsaical teaching, Gluck reads che picture allegorcaly “probably,” he says, Breughel was thinking of wandering preachers who lead vast crowds into “blind delusion” (48). ‘Comparison of Williams's “Parable” with Gluck’s commentary on Breughel’s Parable shows that Williams follows Gluck only tothe edge of alle gory. Ignoring the meaning ofthe parable, refusing to read Breughel’ figures allegorical signs, the poem concentrates on the meaning of his composition, on the horribly ironie story told by line ‘of beggats leading cach other diagonally downward across the canvas fiom one side to stumble finally ico a bog where the picture and the composition ends back of which ao seeing man is represented ‘The explicc reference to compoition—a word used three times inthe eight shore ercets of che poem—once again promprs us ose the link berween pic- torial and poetic structure. As Breughel’ diagonal of igues draws the viewers eye down othe bog inthe lower right corner ofhis painting, Wiliams tercets WHLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS’S BREUGHEL PoEstS 165 significandly end with phrases denoting decline and fal: “diagonally down- wward” and “into abog,”®? But Will's verbal composition moves beyond the point where the pictorial composition “ends.” Besides noting the presence of Blind men, he registers the startling absence of any seeing nian, of viewer in the painting, oreven-—at the risk of being “wrong” by Auden’ standards —of any sighted figure ignoring what che blind men suffer, The blind men are seen ‘only by the viewer ofthe painting, which shows us inanimate structures stand ingup while men and their stcks—thele worse than useless props—riseonly co collapse: a peasant coteageiis seen and a church spire the faces ate raised as coward the light there is no detail extraneous to the composition one follows the other stick in hand teiumphant co disaster The final tercet encapsulates the meaning of Breughel’s composition, Reconstructed in words, the diagonal of figures stumbling downward with faces expectantly raised becomes a narrative of delusion, the shore story of a cag fall. No such cautionary narrative emerges from Williams’ verbal reconstruction ‘of The Hunters in te Snow (Sgure 11}. Wendy Steiner bas explained at length how Williams's “The Hunters in the Snow” exploits che ambiguities of Breughels piccure: its division of stress between the foreground figures, who recall the medieval practice of using human activities to signify the season, and the disproportionately large snow-covered precipices inthe background, which ‘marke shift co landscape painting as an independent gence and co a Renais- sance focus on natural signs of winter.® The ambiguity here is spatial aswell as themati. Though the spear-bearing hunters trudging down the snowy hill cx tiously anticipate the stick-bearing blind men of Parable (painted three years late), the poem makes no explicit reference co the hunters’ descent, and scarcely any to the meaning oftheir movement ‘The over-all picture is winter iey mountains in the background the rerusn from the hunt itis voward evening from the left sturdy hunters lead in their pack166 Chapter Four: Entering the Muscum of Art 11, Pieter Beeughel. Hates n he Snow: 1565. Kunsthistrisches Museum, Viena. Steiner aptly notes the ambiguity of the third line. While “in the back- ‘ground’ belongs synactically 0 “iey mountains” and “che return” o "fom che fhun.” the string of phrases in the third line suggests thatthe huncers' return may be figuratively backgrounded by che prominence and thematic importance of che mountains in “the over-all picture” (Color 80). "The rerum’ also sug- gests the return of the viewers eye from background co foreground, from ‘mountains to figures. What the poem makes truly indeterminate, however, is the destination ofthe returning hunters “The absence of any specified destination is one of several chings that distin- guish Williams's poem from what John Bersyman does with Breughel’s Hunters in "Winter Landscape,” seritten in 1938-39, some twenty years before “Hoonters in che Snow.” Berryman’ poem plainly ells us that che huncers are returning “to their town” with al is light and companionship, and the final seanza accentuates the line of their movement as they “ankle-deep in snow clown the winter hill / Descend.” The prospect of homecoming suggested by these passages is undermined by the dark prospect ofa devastating warin which “all their company / Will be}... ierecoverably lost’; then “their configura tion withthe erees” will show “what place, what time, what morning occasion” sent chem out wich their “tall poles” to hunt and return, and thus heedlesly to signify acalamicous plunge into wat? Nothing of this dark allegory informs Williams's “The Hunters in the Wwittiane CARLOS WILLLAMS'S REUGHEL POEMS sr Snow” His poem represents the painted huncers moving aconce through time and space—"i is owaed evening” when they “ead in / thei pack” —but the Single preposition “in” isthe only word chat signifies where they are headed. "From the lef” they move “in,” presumably toward che center of the picture, but in doing so they pass “the inn-sign’” and che huge bonfire flaring beneath ic, What we begin to see in this curious configuration of words—this verbal ‘composition wroughe to represent and rival a painted one—isa determination to suspend meaning, 1o withhold signification, co suppress both destination and denotation. Paradoxically, the suspension of meaning is most evident at precisely the point where the pocm seems to invoke a higher meaning, when we are cold that the inn-sign hanging from a broleen hinge isa stag a crucifix berween his anders nin the painting shows no crucifix, only astagand ehaloed prsying figure, these lines often puzzle commentators on the poem. But they can be readily glossed by anyone who follows —as Williams obviously did — the hint furnished by Gluck, Gluck says that the in sign, which reads “In den Her la tothe Stag] beats "the painted legend of St. Hubert or St. Eustace” (4). Both these men were hunters converted by seing a crucifix berween the anules of asta while hunting, and the vision oft. Eustace was the subject ofa painting by Pisanella in which the crucifix is clearly shovin.+2 The question, then, is why Williams drags this bit of iconographic lore into a pocrn that is otherwise innocent oft, why be who ignores virtually all signs of Christianity in Breughel’s other paintings should tease an invisible crucifix out of ths one. Apartal answeris tha the ference tothe crucifixillutrates once morehow much these poems depend onthe curatorial and art historical commentary that surrounds Breughels paintings and hus informs Willams’ experience of ther, Typically Waliams secularizes Breughel and celebrates him for represent ing life tou court, for paintings unbuedened by period styles or iconographic messages in “Haymaking” he salutes painting thatthe Renaissance tried to absorb but ic temained a wheat field over which the wind played Yer not even these lines simply express a naive admiration for recognizable form. They could be written only by someone who knew something, as168 Chapter Pour: Ensering the Museum of rt Williams cleaty did, about the place of the Renaissance in the history of art, and who could also generalize bout the kindof landscapes Breughel produced, since the poem is a verbal composite of two paintings.*® Williams brings to these poems a knowledge of art history, however fragmentary, and his debts to specific commentaries—as we have scen—are plain enough to anyone who knows what he rea. Buc why does he advertise his debtin “The Hunress” by referring to acruc- fix that cannot be seen in the painting? The answer, believe, is that he wanes his verbal reconstruction of the painting to include an unregarded sign of Christianity. As Christ hung on the cross, the sign hangs “from a / broken hinge": more precisely it hangs askew from one good hinge because the other concis broken and no one has bothered co fix i. Though the sign signifies both the warm hospitality ofthe inn and the redempcive power of Chris, it draws the attention of no one: neither the women tending the fire right under it in 1r the hunters, even though the kneeling figure painted ‘on the sign is patton saint of hunters. ‘Very wells does che neglected sign of Chrise hereby signify chat al these un- regarding figures have forsaken hs teachings? I think not, Whether or not the paincing suggests his, which seems to me unlikely, the poem represents the sign of the crucifix bearing stag as merely one of many patterns co be seen in the painting. (Fwe wane to look for paeerns, we can thatthe bird in fighe at upper right forms a eros on its side, and we can also see that the spear borne by the hunter nearest che Bie crosses behind a tee at precisely the angle that would be ‘made by the cross beam of the crucifix on che tilted inn-sign-—if we could see that crucifix. Ifthe painting as awhole hovers, as Steiner suggests, berween me- dlieval iconography and Renaissance nacualism, is parternsalo hover berween, higher meaning and plain geometry: che orc of patterns we fal to see not be- ‘cause we are irredeemably bind or ireigious but simply because we pass them cevery day, and the eye readily pases from one to another. Tn “The Huneets in the Show” Williams constructs a verbal picture of Breughel’s patterns that i also a narrative ofthe viewer's eye in motion. From. the icy mountains in che right background the poem shifts diagonally bac co the hunters at lower ef, crossing the diagonal edge ofthe hil. Then (follow ing the poinc ofthe tree-crossng sper) it moves coche inn sign ac upper le, down to the women under the sign, and recroses “tothe right beyond J the Fill” where we find "a patcern of skaters.” Finally che poem returns tothe fore- ground whee nthe cen, Bech “a chen / + wintsrck bth 1.0 f complete the picture. ‘When printed on a single page (ie straddles two pages in the Collected Poem), the poem can be viewed iconically, with the icy mouneains of the top (frst) stanza and the winter-struck bush of the bottom (last) one framing what comes between, just 2s they do in Breughel’s painting, But the poem is less a verbal icon than a narrative of the viewing process the story of how an eye educated by viewing itself 5 well a by art historical reading discovers—finds ASHBERY’s "SELE-PORTRAIT os and reveals—compositional structure by traveling back and forth across « painting, Unlike Berryman, Williams does nor press the patterns of the paint jing into meanings he declines to make them speak. On the whole, in fact ‘though the early “Dance” resounds with prosopopeial music (“the squeal anc the blate and the / eweedle of bagpipes”) and though Pictures from Breughe ‘evokes few sounds (the gabbing of the women in “Peasanc Wedding” and the ‘gaping mouthed “Oya!” in "The Wedding Dance”), che Breughe! poems repre- sent silent compositions nat by eavoicing them but rather by telling how the poet's eye—the eye of the art-book-reading rmuseum-goer—wanders through them. v ‘THE MUSEUM-GOER IN THE MIRROR: ASHBERY'S “SELF-PORTRAIT” soil Without pathos, he fels what he hears ‘And secs, being nothing otherwise, Having nothing otherwise, he has not “Ta go to the Louvee to behold himself Granted each picrare isa glass Thar the walls are mirzors multiplied, “That the marbles are gluey patches, the stairs ‘The sweep ofan impossible elegance, ‘And the notorious views from the windows ‘Wax wasted, monarchies beyond The $8, Normandie granted (One is always seeing and feeling oneself ‘That’ not by chance ‘Wallace Stevens, "Prelude vo Objet “Self Portsic in a Convex Micron” a long poetic meditation on a painting of that name by Francesco Parmigianino (Fgute 12), isthe work ofa poet steeped in visual ar. William Carlos Williams has eft enough commentary on painting and painters 0 fila volume, but John Ashbery’ collected weitings on visual at could fill several of ther. With the exception of Frank O'Hara, who—besides ‘icing poetry—went to work for the Museum of Modern Artin 1951 and ‘became its curator before he died in 1966, Ashbery is surly che premier combi nation of at critic and poet in our time. He has probably writen more about art— especialy cwentieth-cetury at—than any other American poet ever has Daring the yeats from 1955 to 1965, when he lived in Pai, he wrote regular columns on art for the Herald rabune and fiequent essays for Art Internationa: Ihe alo served on the editorial board of Art and Literature: An Interuatonal Re iw forts thrce yer lifetime (1964-67) and was executive editor of Art Neus218 Notes to Pages 131-139 58. Lam drwing het on Seine, who—as lead noted ~cakes che word “leep watching” fom Leo Stcinber, Se lrs3 8. 58. On the fragmentary character of roman psy see Thomas McFarland, Re mantis ashe For of Pun Princo: Prinston Unie re, 1981), expecially the freccharee, “0, Tsoi par ls sav Dy independence in the work of he ocher he. is pucuy, but ceaily amunes ier CHAPTER FOUR 1. See also hie three-volume Der ct: Theorie, Lexikon, Biblographie( 1981, 1987) and Dewsche Bildwerke im Deusche Gedich (1975), bis anthology of German poems about German works of art, 2. Snodgrass Afr Experience (1968) includes “VAN GOGH: “The Stary Night” slong with poems on paintings by Matisse, Manet, Monet, and Vullard 3, Srevend poem, however, is just incidentally ephrastc it aye so lie aboue the specific feacures of Plasto’ painting that a ertic as meticulous a8 Helen Vendler can ‘wttecwenty-fve pages on the poem (On Extended Wings 119-43) without even men- soning the painter’ name. 4. Dereida, Tush 54, commenting on Kant 68, Fucher on he adds: “Where docs a _povegonbegin and end. Would any garment bea parergon. G-stingsand the like, What todo with absolutely ransparenrvells. And how co transpose ce statement co painting. For example, Cranach’ Lucretia holds only alight band of transparent vel infront of hae ex: where isthe avergon? Should one egatd asa parergon che dagges which is nor part of her naked and natural body and whose point she holds turned voward herself, touching her skin. . A pavergon the necklace she wears around her neck? ..-Ifany _parergoni only added on by vite ofan internal ac in che system co which ie isadded (as.as verified by Religion), whacis chat islacking nthe representation of the body so that che garment should come and supplement it” (hush 57-58), 5. Ta illustrate che traditional conception of ekphasis, Sore (“Seduced” 21) aptly ees C, 8. Baldwin’ Medioal Rhezoric and Petic(New York: Macmillan, 1928), which links the mode with “adornment” (174), “diffusness” (174), “indulgence” (19), and “deviation” (188) {6 Fora detailed account ofthis proces, se Stine, Pietues7~42. 7. "Along withthe ‘work of at’ writes Fisher, “the museum displays and stabilizes the ides ofa national culture, an identifiable Goin or spi, cha canbe illustrated by objects and st in contrast other national cultures” (8). Likewise, explaining how the dicipline of art history systematzes the study of individual works, Donald Pretiosi ‘writes: "The pedagogical requirements of the system involve accessing the archival mass in such a way ae to fabricate consistent and internally coherent narratives of develop ‘ent fliation, evolution, descent, progses, regres in shor, a paticlar ‘history’ of tite practice in she light of chat narrative’ relationship to others porentially embed- ddd inthe archival system’ (The Question of Art History” 370). ‘8, In partial explanation for my sighting of Rosset, I could fst ofl say (again) thar this book does not csi to bea systematic or comprehensive survey of ekphrass bur2 selective seady of whara succession of poershave done withthe mode. Also, while Rosetti epizoizes the pictrialism of Vitorin poetry, his ekphrasic sonnets do not move significantly beyond che ideology of transcendence cha he inherits Fim his r0- ‘mantic precursors. In "A Venetian Pastoral,” for instance, he salues Le Concert Char Nores 70 PACES 144-150 20 _pére i the Louvre (once aserbed to Giorgone, nw co Titian) as 3 painting of move ten slowed co eternal cals well water sighing] in” ove the lip ofa pitcher dipped in itv hand tailing upon the viol-seing, “brown faces ceasling] to sing” the slim pipes slipped fiom the mouth of the woman playing them, and finaly “Life rouching lipe ‘vith immortality” Rosset! 153-54). As Hollander suggests (*Poetcs” 214), Par was ‘ouhelss thinking of cis sonnet when he cited the painting to illustrate the eraser ‘dent beauty of musical incervala” in Venetian landscape panting of momentsin which fe is conceived asa sort of ltening srening to music... ro the sound of wate, time sit Ries” (Pater 120) For more on Rosetti and painting ee Ainsworth. 9, Apropos the seulpcute of Nepeune raming the seahorse, Gail S. Weinberg has kindly dravn my attention tothe passage on Neptune’ calming ofthe winds in chefs book of che Aeneid (142-56). Since Virgil compares Neptune’ acto the paifying et fect ofa respected, authoritative voice om an urban rot the seulpcure nay well sig theartof ring wisely. fso, makes alas ionic comment on the syle of raling rac ticed by the man who commissioned 10, Bryson also implies—quite rightly, #think—thac che gaze is Fronal and the slance oblique, Donald Prezios has ecenly suggested thar at history organizes works fofarcin “an enamorphi manner, such chat relationships among units in the archive are ‘Visible (chat is legible) only from cera preabricaed stances, positions, or attitudes toward the system’ ("The Question of Are History” 370). Previos’s meraphor is apr bt mut be qualified by the observation that ar historians piclly presen their pat cf ‘view a frontal, as ominiscendly central, withthe anamorphic angle of thet viewpoice ideologically suppressed. sls Auden cae the move was nocirtevocable."The Shield of Achilles," which he published some years alee "Musée," evokes bth Homer and the long tadition of nc ‘Sonal ckphrass he initiated, Farther on connec this poem with the Figure of the shield in Ashberys Self-Portrait.” 12, Anthony Hecht suggests that it may have come “Flom a book on art history sather than fom a pecional inspection of (Breughe'] paintings” (100). Ifo, the bole remains tbe identified, 13, Given Auden’ political views atthe time he wrote this poem (late 1938), es somewhat ionic tht the ploughman ges none of his sympathy. As Coombes observes, “Auden was in theory in the 1930s, amorous sympathizer with the working maste: in arthowever they are (however promsinenc in the artwork a take) someone ce and (therefore) “dull” (25). Buta further problem here i that Breughels ploughman looks anything bu exhausted by his day of til. With his daine tiptoe step, his bright rt blouse, and his immaculate tunic falling elegane folds aboutiskees, he seers ready to ake his place in che peasant chorus of Don Giovanni. 14 Ieisof course the only word in che title denoting human figure. "Tome, wits [Auden ebewhere, "Arts subject isthe human cay / Andlandscape buca background a coro” ("Lerer to Lord Byron,” pt 4). 15. Lowe thie wery good poine to Kenneth Mason (283) 16. The pale head ofthis supine igure is barely derecrable ust above che head of the ploughmanis horse, At Gluck suggests in che 1936 edition of his Peer Breughel, which ‘Auden could have know, the conpse placed so near the ploughman ilustates—more vividly than the distan lege of earus—~ the German proverb tha "No plough comes 4 sand because « man dis” (Gluck 24) The proverb reappearsin Blake's Mariage