A-L-I-Z-A-R-I-N

Last night I had the honor to assist a distinguished poet with a word.  Robert Hass was reading new poems at Williams College, including a great poem about an imaginary conversation with his old colleague and mentor Czeslow Milosz.  While reading a poem about the Japanese painter Ito Jakuchu, if I remember correctly, Hass hesitated, and asked suddenly, "Are there any painters here?"  I raised my hand.  He then asked, "How do you pronounce a-l-i-z-a-r-i-n?"  I loudly said "alizarin," as in "uh-liz-er-in" with the accent on liz.  He said "elizarin," and I said "alizarin."  He then said "alizarin" and finished the poem, which ended "...until you [something], don't talk to me about Cezanne."  When he publishes his next book, I will get it to read the poem.  Afterwards, I purchased one of his books, and he signed it "For Bob Lafond.  Thanks for the alizarin...Bob Hass."

The above is a 9x12 pen, brush, and ink drawing with touches of watercolor and pastel, of the corner of Fourth and Douglass in Brooklyn.

Same Place Different Time

This is the same spot as the previous pastel, except this is early morning. The other view was at mid-day. And the water is much lower.

I am reading another Czeslaw Milosz book, Native Realm, a biography. He writes, "I did not have the makings of an atheist, because I lived in a state of constant wonder, as if before a curtain which I knew had to rise someday."

Barn with Hay, and Deep Thoughts

The following is from the book Road-Side Dog by Czeslaw Milosz.  It's a collection of prose poems.  The above pastel is 8x10 on sabretooth paper, which has an oatmeal surface.

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OEUVRE

 

We strove, but our goals disintegrated one after another and now we have nothing except works of art and our tribute paid to their creators.

 

Also sorrow and compassion.  For an artist, a poet or a painter, toils and pursues every day a perfection that escapes him.  He is satisfied with the result of his labor for a moment only, and is never certain whether he is good at what he does.

 

Many share the fate of that painter.  He was not concerned with earthly possessions, he lived and dressed haphazardly, and his sacred word was: "To work." Every morning he would stand before his easel, working all day, but no sooner had he finished than he would put his canvas in the corner and forget it, to start a new picture in the morning, always with new hope.  His attempt to pass the examination for the School of Beaux Arts was unsuccessful.  He loved masters of painting, old and contemporary, but had no hope of equaling them.  Detesting worldly life, as it would lure him away from work, he stayed apart.  He lived with his model, with whom he had a son, and after seventeen years of cohabitation he married her.  His paintings were systematically rejected by the Salons.  He needed confirmation of his worth, but though his friends praised him, he did not believe them and considered himself a failed painter.  He would kick and trample his canvases or would give them away freely.  In his old age he despaired over his failure but continued to paint every day.  In his native town, where he lived, he was slighted and hated; it's hard to tell why, for he did not harm anybody and helped the poor.  Uncouth, in stained clothes with ripped-off buttons, he looked like a scarecrow and was a laughing-stock of children.  His name was Paul Cezanne.

 

This tale may  comfort many readers, since it confirms the familiar pattern of greatness not recognized and crowned late.  However, there were numberless artists, similarly humble and hardworking, often living not far from us, whose names mean nothing today.

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Cezanne, despite the frustrations and lack of success in his life, was still able to spend most of it painting.  I have stood in front of some of his great landscapes and still-lifes.  He must have had a few moments of profound joy creating some of these works.  I certainly have felt it when in their presence.   Do the numberless artists also experience that occasional joy?  Why else work?

Field Trip

I took a side field trip, way off the canal path.   Not sure this hangs together, but it is what it is.  Milosz once said, "What matters is the inexhaustible riches of the reality before our eyes.  It's a bit the way a painter feels about the world when he is arranging colors in harmony on canvas.  I doubt he does this with a clear conscience, because the world around him is one of such inexhaustible depth and complexity.  He evokes that world.  Arranging colors harmoniously on canvas is a paltry thing compared to what calls out to be explored."

Canal, Puddle, and Path

I promise to get off the canal path soon, but I am having fun with all the possibilities.  I walked 45 minutes towards Lambertville, and then turned around heading back home.  This big puddle covered the entire path near Church Street.  I have been reading Czeslaw Milosz lately.  The following is from the poem Bobo's Metamorphosis, section V:

I liked him as he did not look for an ideal object.

When he heard: "Only the object which does not exist

Is perfect and pure," he blushed and turned away.

In every pocket he carried pencils, pads of paper

Together with crumbs of bread, the accidents of life.

Year after year he circled a thick tree

Shading his eyes with his hand and muttering in amazement.

How much he envied those who draw a tree with one line!

But metaphor seemed to him something indecent.

He would leave symbols to the proud busy with their cause.

By looking he wanted to draw the name from the very thing.

When he was old, he tugged at his tobacco-stained beard:

"I prefer to lose thus than to win as they do."

Like Peter Breughel the father he fell suddenly

While attempting to look back between his spread-apart legs.

And still the tree stood there, unattainable.

Veritable, true to the very core.

Substitute canal for tree.  I like "accidents of life" and love the line "By looking he wanted to draw the name from the very thing."