L'ART, par Théophile Gautier / Timothy Adès

ART

 

Yes, a work comes out better

that’s hewn and won from matter

             perverse:

 enamel, onyx, marble, verse.   

 

For false rules we’ve no use!

But to go straight as an arrow,

            Muse,

your shoe needs to be narrow.

 

Down with commodious rhythm 

that’s like an outsize boot,

           whose fathom

fits and fails every foot!

 

Modeller, shun, for it slips

at your finger-tips,

            the clay,

should thoughts go astray;

 

grapple, reveal, refine

            in hard carrara,

or trace in rarer

parian, the contour line;

 

borrow from Syracuse

her bronze, standing firm

            to accuse

proper pride and charm;

 

make dextrously, chase

in a perfect nugget

            of agate

Phoebus’s beaked face.

 

Painter, eschew the gouache:

fix the frail timbres

            at fire-flash

in the enameller’s embers.

 

Make mermaids and dolphins,

twist in fivescore fashions

            their tailfins,

blue monsters of blazons;

 

haloed in triple lobe,

limn Mary and her Son;

           the globe,

and His Cross thereon.

 

All passes. – Robust

art lives for ever;

           the bust

is the city’s survivor.

 

The dull medal, found

by humble labourer

           beneath ground,

eveals an emperor.

 

Even gods perish,

yet peerless stanzas

            flourish,

stronger than bronzes.

 

Sculpt, chisel, rasp:

let the precisian

            block grasp

your dancing vision!