Monday, June 12, 2006

How Spring Comes


Ange Blanc

EARLY VERSION


Now that the Spring hath

Fill’d our Veins with kind

And active fire, & made

Green liveries for the Plains,

& every Grove a Quire,

Song we with mirth &

Merry glee, o Bacchus bang

The bowle, for here’s to

Thee, & thou to me,

And ev’ry thirsty nodding soule.

Sheer ye sheep that needs

It, or sleep still, or

See none escape to huff

Off with the Jerez that

Maketh love tough, and plump

as the lusty bit Grape.



A note held in open abeyance towards an essay to be titled “What We Know about Art”:
The situation is that of him who is helpless, cannot act, in the end cannot paint, since he is obliged to paint. The act is of him who, helpless, unable to act, acts, in the event paints, since he is obliged to paint.

D.—Why is he obliged to paint?

B.—I don’t know.

D.—Why is he helpless to paint?

B.—Because there is nothing to paint and nothing to paint with.

         —Samuel Beckett, “about 1949, in a series of prose Dialogues with Georges Duthuit.”