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Isolated Image (the poetic act has no past)

 

Bachelard, The Poetics of Space:

One must be receptive, receptive to the image at the moment it appears: if there be a philosophy of poetry, it must appear and re-appear through a significant verse, in total adherence to an isolated image; to be exact, in the very ecstasy of the newness of the image. The poetic image is a sudden salience on the surface of the psyche, the lesser psychological causes of which have not been sufficiently investigated. Nor can anything general and co-ordinated serve as a basis for a philosophy of poetry. The idea of principle or “basis” in this case would be disastrous, for it would interfere with the essential psychic actuality, the essential novelty of the poem. And whereas philosophical reflection applied to scientific thinking elaborated over a long period of time requires any new idea to become integrated in a body of tested ideas (even though this body of ideas be subjected to profound change by the new idea) as is the case in all the revolutions of contemporary science, the philosophy of poetry must acknowledge that the poetic act has no past, at least no recent past, in which its preparation and appearance could be followed.

Triptych, 2002 [POLKE]

Fairy Feller's Master-Stroke (Richard Dadd, 1855-64)

Another artist with connections to Polke is the little-known Englishman Richard Dadd (1817-1886), who was committed early on to an asylum because in a moment of delirium he had killed his father. His Fairy Feller’s Master-Stroke (1855-64; The Tate Gallery, London) is a miracle of hypnotic naturalism. Surrounded by feverishly depicted nature, with tiny stones, grasses, and leaves in close-up, the picture is populated with a work force watched by fairies, dwarfs, a princess, and a king. In an inexplicable manner, these fairy-tale characters grow smaller and larger. None of the proportions are certain, although nature—in the form of grasses, daisies, and hazelnuts—is larger than any of the figures. A later sketch of the work, entitled Le Songe de la fantaisie (1864), is particularly notable for the way it portrays a web of hairnet-like lines covering the whole picture, on top of which generously curved loops swirl with calligraphic artistry, as though an ice skater had pirouetted and turned across the surface of the paper. It is impossible not to think of Polke’s Dürer Curlicues (1986), those archetypes of successful, mature forms that invoke art and nature alike. 

—Bice Curiger, Accelerated Attention, Sigmar Polke: Works on Paper 1963-1974, The Museum of Modern Art, NY, 1999

Helpers

Mary Simpson, Death of Orpheus, 2005

Roberto Calasso, The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony, p. 302:

In the solitude of the primordial world, the affairs of the gods took place on an empty stage, with no watching eyes to mirror them. There was a rustling, but not clamor of voices. Then from a certain point on (but at what point? and why?), the backdrop began to flicker, the air was invaded by a golden sprinkling of new beings, the shrill, high-pitched cry of scores of raised voices. Dactyls, Curetes, Corybants, Telchines, Silens, Cabiri, Satyrs, Maenads, Bacchants, Lenaeans, Thyiads, Bassarides, Mimallones, Naiads, Nymphs, Titires: who were all these beings? To evoke one of their names is to evoke them all. They are the helpers, ministers, guardians, nurses, tutors, and spectators of the gods. The metamorphic vortex is placated; once surrounded by this noisy and devoted crowd, the gods agree to settle down into their familiar forms. Sometimes that crowd will appear as a pack of murderers, sometimes as an assembly of craftsmen, sometimes as a dance troupe, sometimes as a herd of beasts.

That worshiping crowd was the first community, the first group, the first entity in which one name was used for everybody. We don’t even know whether they are gods, daímones, or human beings. But what is it that unites them, what makes them a single group, even when different and distant from on another? They are the initiated, the ones who have seen. They are those who let themselves be touched by the divine. Which of them came first? We don’t know, since for every god there is always a corresponding god or goddess—in Asia, or Thrace, or Crete—who predates them and who likewise surrounds himself with such beings. But of all of them we could say that they were honey thieves.

Under the Alien Sun (One Has Two Eyes Too Many)

Mary Simpson, Please Look Behind You (2), Oil on paper mounted on panel, 2010

THE LAY OF THE LOVE AND DEATH OF CORNET CHRISTOPH RILKE
Rainier Maria Rilke (translated by Stephen Mitchell)

Riding, riding, riding, through the day, through the night.

Riding, riding, riding.

And the heart has become so tired, and the longing so vast. There are no longer any hills; hardly a tree. Nothing dares to rise up. Alien huts squat, thirsting, beside muddy wells. Nowhere a tower. And always the same scene. One has two eyes too many. Only when it is dark do we sometimes think we know the way. Are we doubling back every night, over the ground we won with so much effort under the alien sun? Perhaps. The sun is heavy, as it is in our country in the depth of summer. But it was summer when we said our farewells. For a long time the women’s dresses sparkled out of the green. And we have been riding for a long time now. So it must be autumn. At least there, where sorrowful women think of us.

Matter 5 (Study of the Object)

Zbigniew Herbert

STUDY OF THE OBJECT

1
The most beautiful is the object
which does not exist

it does not serve to carry water
or to preserve the ashes of a hero

it was not cradled by Antigone
nor was a rat drowned in it

it has no hole
and is entirely open

seen
from every side
which means
hardly anticipated

the hairs
of all its lines
join
in one stream of light

neither
blindness
nor
death
can take away the object
which does not exist

2
mark the place
where stood the object
which does not exist

with a black square
it will be
a simple dirge
for the beautiful absence

manly regret
imprisoned
in a quadrangle

3
now
all space
swells like an ocean

a hurricane beats
on the black sail

the wing of a blizzard circles
over the black square

and the island sinks
beneath the salty increase

4
now you have
empty space
more beautiful than the object
more beautiful than the place it leaves
it is the pre-world
a white paradise
of all possibilities
you may enter there
cry out
vertical-horizontal

perpendicular lightning
strikes the naked horizon

we can stop at that
anyway you have already created a world

5
obey the counsels
of the inner eye

do not yield
to the murmurs mutterings smackings

it is the uncreated world
crowding before the gates of your canvas

angels are offering
the rosy wadding of clouds

trees are inserting everywhere
slovenly green hair

kings are praising purple
and commanding their trumpeters
to gild

even the whale asks for a portrait

obey the counsels of the inner eye
admit no one

6
extract
from the shadow of the object
which does not exist
from polar space
from the stern reveries of the inner eye
a chair

beautiful and useless
like a cathedral in the wilderness

place on the chair
a crumpled tablecloth
add to the idea of order
the idea of adventure

let it be a confession of faith
before the vertical struggling with the horizontal

let it be
quieter than angels
prouder than kings
more substantial than a whale
let it have the face of the last things

we ask reveal o chair
the depths of the inner eye
the iris of necessity
the pupil of death