what have you done

James Joyce is supposed to have said that certain of Verlaine’s poems, among them the short best-loved ones, were the greatest poems ever written. The haunting sensitivity and disarming simplicity of Il pleut dans mon coeur, La lune blanche, Chason d’automne, Colloque sentimental, Le ceil est par-dessus le toit, etc., are to me unequaled.

I have before me two photos of Verlaine at the Café Francois 1er. From one I have done several drawings and paintings. In that photo Verlaine is leaning back with his head against the edge of the top of the bench on which he is sitting. He is staring upward into space, dreaming. No one else is visible in the café. He looks relaxed, not wanting for anything. Whatever was going to happen has happened.

Qu’a-tu fait ô toi que voilà
Pleurant sans cesse
Dis, qu’as-tu fait, toi que voilà,
De ta jeunesse?*

—Robert De Niro, “Corot, Verlaine and Greta Garbo, or The Melancholy Syndrome,” Tracks, a journal of artists’ writings, Vol. 1, No. 3, Fall 1975, edited by Herbert George.

* "What have you done, you, weeping there
            Your endless tears?
Tell me, what have you done, you there,
            With youth’s best years?"

—Paul Verlaine, “Above the roof the sky is fair…” translated by Norman R. Shapiro, One Hundred and One Poems by Paul Verlaine (U. of Chicago Press, 1999).

simple inevitability

[In Yeats’ “Adam’s Curse”] the poet remarks that writing poetry is a thankless task, for, paradoxically, the poet’s efforts are devoted to making the finished poems seem natural and effortless. Since the best poems give no evidence of the sheer hard work that has gone into their making, they win no praise from the mass of humanity, ‘bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen’, who reserve their respect for the kind of hard work that shows.
[…]
The poem as a whole has the beautiful simplicity, the result of unobtrusive hard work, such as is mentioned within it. The colloquial vigour of the first line, for example, ensures that there is no trace of self-dramatisation here, and the language as a whole has the kind of simple inevitability that is the mark of the greatest poetry.

—Raymond Cowell, William Butler Yeats (Arco Publishing Co., 1970), p. 34-35

inconspicuous and overlooked

Originally, the Japanese words “wabi” and “sabi” had quite different meanings. “Sabi” originally meant “chill,” “lean,” or “withered.” “Wabi” originally meant the misery of living alone in nature, away from society, and suggested a discouraged, dispirited, cheerless emotional state. Around the 14th century, the meanings of both words began to evolve in the direction of more positive aesthetic values. The self-imposed isolation and voluntary poverty of the hermit and ascetic came to be considered opportunities for spiritual richness. For the poetically inclined, this kind of life fostered an appreciation of the minor details of everyday life and insights into the beauty of the inconspicuous and overlooked aspects of nature. In turn, unprepossessing simplicity took on new meaning as the basis for a new, pure beauty.

—Leonard Koren, Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers (Impermanence Publishing, 2008)

modest and secret complexity

The fate of a writer is strange. He begins his career by being a baroque writer, pompously baroque, and after many years, he might attain if the stars are favorable, not simplicity, which is nothing, but rather a modest and secret complexity.

—Jorge Luis Borges, “Prologue,” The Self and The Other (1964)

simple theater

I find great enjoyment at a poetry reading because it is the simplest form of theater: A poet, a lectern or sidetable to hold books or papers, enough light to read by, a bottle of water, and perhaps a microphone and amplifier if the acoustics of the space are poor or the voice of the particular poet doesn’t carry. The audience arrayed in several ranks of chairs (but seldom are more than 50 seats required). That’s it. No cast, costumes or props, no musical instruments, no projector or screen, no flashing or colored lights, just the human voice commanding the attention of a room full of people.