rounded-upon-itself

What sort of a poet can this be, who is ‘traditional’ and ‘yet has no poetic forerunners’? We solve this riddle by saying that in his techniques Mandelstam was indeed unprecedented, yet the techniques were made to serve a form—why not say simply, a beauty?—that rejoiced in calling upon every precedent one might think of, from Homer to Ovid, to the builders of Santa Sophia, to Dante and Ariosto and Racine. For it is true, surely: the sort of form to which Mandelstam vows himself alike in nature and in art, the form of the bent-in and the rounded-upon-itself, is the most ancient and constant of all European understandings of the beautiful—it is what long ago recognised in the circle the image of perfection.

—Donald Davie, foreword to Osip Mandelstam: The Eyesight of Wasps (Ohio State U. Press, 1989), translated by James Greene

painting, meaning, music

Every sensible definition of poetry is personal—is attuned to a poet’s own habit and nature—and is incomplete. If you collected all such definitions of poetry by poets, no doubt they would stand in a circle, with poetry, or life, or essence of man, in the middle, as clear at last as a poem. At the moment I am for Pasternak’s conclusion that poetry ought to contain painting and meaning, in addition to music.

—Geoffrey Grigson, The Private Art: A Poetry Note-Book (Allision & Busby, 1982)

song gathers round

A song issues forth as sound waves: circles that widen outward so as to gather round, to draw close the far-flung members of the tribe.

memory of perfection

I would like my work to be recognized in the classic tradition (Coptic, Egyptian, Greek, Chinese), as representing the Ideal in the mind. Classical art cannot possibly be eclectic. One must see the Ideal in one’s own mind. It is like a memory of perfection.

==

I used to paint mountains here in New Mexico and I thought
my mountains looked like ant hills
I saw the plains driving out of New Mexico and I thought
the plain had it
just the plane
If you draw a diagonal, that’s loose at both ends
I don’t like circles—too expanding
When I draw horizontals
you see this big plane and you have a certain feeling like
you’re expanding over the plane
Anything can be painted without representation

—Agnes Martin, “The Untroubled Mind,” Writings/Schriften (Kuntzmuseum Winterthur/ Edition Cantz, 1992), edited by Herausgegeben von Dieter Schwarz

[Today Google's landing page featured a painting by Agnes Martin, to honor the 102nd anniversary of her birth.]

plainsong

If, according to an old saying, it is a fact that the aim and the nature and even the essence of true art is its suitability (caput artis decere) then indeed Gregorian art takes first place—one unique and noble thought is expressed in the form which is most appropriate and most adequate to the thought itself. But there is more to it: over and above this first quality of suitability, we discover others of broader and higher significance. It soon becomes evident that this form of art, far more than any other, is impregnated, saturated, with truth itself, and that falsehood, or even fiction and vain pretense, are foreign to it and have no place in it. And so the circle of perfect requirements is complete, and in a perhaps unique combination the true, the beautiful and the good meet, and this sublime trinity, which is absent from so many works of art—not excluding the greatest—becomes a living reality in a chapel where humble monks sing and pray on their knees.

—Camille Bellaigue ,“Le Chant Grégorian à l’Abbaye de Solesmes”
Les Epoques de la Musique (Delagrave, 1909)

perfect circle, perfect couplet

If in poetry there was an analog to Vasari’s story about Giotto’s perfect circle, would it be the ability to compose a perfect pentameter couplet as epigram on any given subject? ("Perfetto come la 'O' di Giotto", the Italian meaning: "As perfect as Giotto's circle".)

irregularity

       When the Chinese made
a circle of stones on the top of their wells
one would be a little skewed to make the circle
look more round. Irregularity is the secret
of music and to the voice of great poetry.

—Jack Gilbert
from “The Secret,” The Dance Most of All (Alfred A. Knopf, 2009)