By Yagiz Ay
Lulu. Do we have to go out tonight? My nerves are bad and I am uncertain. I see a hundred flowers but not one that I can touch. I drift into dullness and mourn the horror of growing old. The morning of life was the best in its juvenile purity. The dampness of furs, the scent of rain-soaked leaves. The eerie fragrance of childhood scenes. The sun flooded us with intervals. Seduced by flowers, corals and the shimmer of shells. I talked to cousin Margaret among the colored-fish. The water was cold like a jewel. Papa said, Augusta, come, warm beside the fire. At night I listened the fireplace crack to the beat of a perishing moon. The birds charmed me at daybreak. I guess, we are going to that party after all. Odious and engulfed with absurdity, these nouveau riche. No taste left in gowns or lingerie. But the one marrying, to that dismal Schön, was you. Your white dress and razor black hair condemned the night, inadequate. I stammered and bit my lip. How did I keep my act serene? We tangoed to the incantation of an inner pull. A wave swept over my head. My hair set free, our eyes met. You can’t put a butterfly in a jar. Then there was the trial. On the run for mariticide. I asked about you meanwhile. No one spared, the stubborn opined: you were the ruin of all love. In your permeating fugitive gleam, you are the only one who can save me, you said. I did not have the courage to reply: “let’s forever leave this town.” I handed the passport and said: you play the Countess for a while. After sickness, care, and defeat. I mourn the last thing to come out of the box. As your sight and the century collapse into an echo.
Murder. SIR – We have all witnessed in recent years the resurgence of that stupendous claim on the pages of this very magazine, first voiced in an article by Mr. R. P. Daggers titled “MURDER – is it art?” Mr. Daggers insists, nay, provokes the readers of this fine magazine to contemplate a tempting and ludicrous proposal scorched in the lowliest confines of the human mind. By Jove, inferno has no terror for him. It is my wish here, sir, to intrude, and to reverse the salience of this claim now well-known and well-discussed in every coffeehouse in London. For it only takes a child’s knowledge to prove Mr. Daggers’ lewdsuggestions wrong and to demonstrate with Logic how the opposite is closer to the truth. I am positive that murder is not an art, as these murder-fanciers like Mr. Daggers have it, but art is a kind of murder. When an artist of esteemed character engages in an act dissecting the vicissitudes and the harshness of the times he finds he is handed a demonic power. A power, sir, from the most deep pits of hell that knows no limits other than its own which appears to every artist as instinct and a mystery. The great Shakespeare knew it well – as did his coterie of famed murderers, Macbeth and Caesar, Hamlet and Anthony, Othello and Richard. So did Milton, Pope, Swift, Gray, Warsh, King, Hammond, Gay, Rowe, Young, Mallet, Broome, Garth, Morel, Parnell and Akenside. With this sultry power the artist grants himself a charter to favor the embellishments of art over the pangs of life. The finest portrait painter of our age, Mr. Gainsborough, takes a soul each time he puts his hands on that sublime canvas of his. Who remembers these men and women that feature in his fair paintings? They are to us no more than mere decorations whose origin is long gone and unlikely to come back. They are little but the men and women of Mr. Gainsborough. He imprisoned their spirit in the crux of his artifice. Now, you might say, what of others? Is Mr. Constable a murderer because he painted an empty landscape, Nature’s finest gift? Mais bien sur! Mr. Constable is no frivolous artist, sir, and his beautiful strokes are enough reason to see that this man has the bloody instinct to kill life itself. To create a painting so great, our own pitiful lives are destroyed by its sheer beauty. His gift, what the French name genie, is his fatal blade. He loves Nature sacrilegiously, thus, he kills it. I shall conclude with a brief indulgence, which I could not forebear to disclose. As we are vastly familiar, Mr Wordsworth, whose worthy acquaintance I had the pleasure of making, wrote a fine poem which included the line “we murder to dissect.” We are free to express doubt whether we dispute Mr Wordsworth’s suggestion that Art and Science are but barren leaves, yet the Lake poet’s words are wise as pearls. This, sir, is the age of murder. Its muse is Envy and its weapon is Avarice. State and gravity are trivial affairs in face of its design, and the pre-destination it charted is in a lock. Art is men’s tool of revenge against the life which has rendered him very helpless and very wretched. The false wit of Mr. Daggers thereof is mere noise for us to resist as seamen and sea-farers – who for undisclosed reasons are well-acquainted with the concept of murder – ought resist the temptation to drink.
Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2. No I do not ever descend. Ever descend he ask and I do not I ever descend. I ask ever I do descend and he ask if no ever descend. Do ask not I and I ask no ever descend. Ever I ask how precise he precise ask he do not ever precise ask. Descend not precise, precise not descend. If ever I descend I ask precise not I ask if I do not ever descend and I ask precise. If descend precise and ever precise I ask ever descend I. Descend ever stair I. Not I. Stair he. Stair he me. Stair he. Stair it. Stair do not. Stair descend. Stair ask. Ask stair. I do stair. Ask stair. Stair descend. Descend do. Stair a case. Ever case. Nu-Case. Du-case. Do case. Ever case. Precise case. Case-case. Case I do. Stair I nu. Mar-nu. Two.
No. 2
Do. 2
Nu two
Du to
No to
Des to.
Cen to
a stair.
Clair.
