The Place of Touch in the Arts
by Christopher Perricone
Introduction
In Breughel's great picture, The Kermess, the dancers go round, they go
round and around, the squeal and the blare and the tweedle of bagpipes,
a bugle and fiddles tipping their bellies (round as the thicksided glasses
whose wash they impound) their hips and their bellies off balance to turn
them. Kicking and rolling about the Fair Grounds, swinging their butts,
those shanks must be sound to bear up under such rollicking measures,
prance as they dance In Breughel's great picture, The Kermess.
"The Dance" written by William Carlos Williams in 1944 is one of my favorites.
Williams gives us a feel for that life of the kermess (a carnival) in
his poem through Breughel's picture, as it were three times removed from
the event itself. Of course, unlike Plato, I would argue that the vitality of the
kermess is not lost in the poem; it is actually enhanced by a subtle sleight of
hand. The poem is not primarily about Breughel's picture. It is about dance,
about the dancers who go round, their squeal, the crude music, its rollicking
measures, the dancers kicking and rolling and swinging, their hips, bellies,
and butts. Reading this poem, I "see" those ordinary folk of Breughel's great
picture. I "hear" their music. I "move" to their dance. The poem seems a
condensation, a summary of the fine arts. Perhaps the poem is about poetry's
power to reinvigorate imaginatively what we hear and see. Perhaps I
think of festivities at which I have danced, how such festivities are essential
to the human experience. Perhaps William Carlos Williams in 1944, World
War II coming to a close, was anticipating similar good times.
|
|
