<<  -- 8 --  Jennifer I Paull    'SKY POETS PAINT THE SHELTERED CURVE TO FIND'

John Calder's autobiography reminds me of some of Toulouse Lautrec's bitter, self-caricature sketchbook lamentations. Even when one openly admires his instigating capacity in so many imaginatively creative fields, Calder's canvass is always too Wagnerian in scale to be real. The gods can smile upon him, flattered, but they can also let him down demanding sacrifices of his own blood: his leitmotiv. The cameo and the miniature sit not upon his easel; they would be swallowed up like Jonah. His curve is its own tangent. Therein lies his skill to discover and his imagination to compose and create for others. Why then decompose himself and his entourage, often with outrageous inaccuracy and utter indifference for the cruelty of his own (ancient Olivetti) pen?

'A poem is never finished, only abandoned.' -- Paul Valéry (1871-1945) French poet, writer and philosopher.

Why do eyes that choose to see with enlightenment, remain blind and oblivious in equal measure? Perhaps that is the lot of the poet Calder used to be. It may also be the epitaph of he who has sacrificed the Merely Mundane upon the High Altar of Operatic Gourmandise, leaving his lackeys to clear way the ashes for him. Life has inevitably pivoted to become his own libretto -- 'an aftertaste of exhaust fumes ... but the sun shone like a spot light someone had just remembered to switch on'.

The poet sits praising himself over and over,
As if it mattered, as if it could be proved.

from Couplets -- Robert Mezey

Donald Justice, a brilliantly talented American, Pulitzer Prize winning poet and writer, was equally at ease with paintbrush or manuscript paper. I met him and Robert Mezey one evening in 2001, attending the first performance of Justice's Sunday Afternoons (2001), a delightful poem for string orchestra: a moodscape with the exact flavour its title suggests. Perhaps his earlier aquarelle was also a Sunday Afternoon, Tea Dance? The palm trees reach out by themselves, exploring the sheltered curve of time.

Tea Dance at the Nautilus Hotel (1925)
(on a painting by Donald Justice)

The gleam of eyes under the striped umbrellas-
We see them still, after so many years,
(Or think we do), -the young men and their dears,
Bandying forward glances as through masks
In the curled bluish haze of panatelas,
And taking nips from little silver flasks.

They sit at tables as the sun is going,
Bent over cigarettes and lukewarm tea,
Talking small talk, gossip and gallantry,
Some of them single, some husbands and wives,
Laughing and telling stories, all unknowing
They sit here in the heyday of their lives.

And some then dance off in the late sunlight,
Lips brushing cheeks, hands growing warm in hands,
Feet gliding at the lightest of commands,
All summer on their caught or sighing breath
As they whirl on toward the oncoming night,
And nothing further from their thoughts than death.

But they danced here sixty-five years ago! -
Almost all of them must be underground.
Who could be left to smile at the sound
Of the oldfangled dance tunes and each pair
Of youthful lovers swaying to and fro?
Only a dreamer, who was never there.

from 'Collected Poems' -- Robert Mezey

Paul Bowles was a linguist who considered translation to be a high Art form in itself. It is to him that we owe the translation and title No Exit of Huit Clos by Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980). Bowles was undoubtedly a master and is owed very much; the list would make too long a menu.

'Is there not an art, a music, and a stream of words that shalt be life, the acknowledged voice of life?' -- William Wordsworth (1770-1850) British poet, 'Home at Grasmere' (written 1800, published as 'The Recluse' 1888).

Just as Burgess lived away from his origins in Provence, so did Bowles in Tangier. Is there something about the Nomad inherent within the artist? I believe there is, and often in no small measure!

'Travel is the greatest education of them all' -- Paul Peter Paull (1906-1978), War-displaced scholar, polyglot, engineer, instigator of the first recording techniques in talking pictures in Paris, Spitfire pilot, jazz musician, writer, watercolour painter and father of this author.

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