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Theories of Art! Believe me, they're no theories!
To know yourself, to clutch what now and here is
And set it down for yourself -
That's all there is in all that chatter about mysteries!
Take my Gioconda
(Mind! the paint is wet and stand well back! She isn't finished yet!)
What made me paint her just like that, d'you think?
Shade, line and colour! Fools to waste their ink!
All that is in it _ that's the stuff of the trade,
As a man of bone and flesh is moulded and made.
Yes, but does God stop there?
Does He design this as an exercise in colour and line
And rest content with that?
And dust His thumb
As though He'd finished working out a sum!
In His own image He makes us -
Meaning He creates each soul with seperate agony,
Tearing it out of His own - and using flesh
(As I, as anyone, might use his brush)
To set His mind free of a thought that stung Him into creation.
What d'you say? I wrong Him
To speak of Him in human terms.
How else can we speak of Him?
Of all miracles the greatest is that a man understands
God in the godhead of his shaping hands
When he moves them blindly, when he gropes he grips,
And the thrill of life cracks through his fingertips.
So let's get back to God.
It is not enough for Him to be.
The wild star-radiant stuff of what He is struggles, is wracked, is torn
Like a harp bursting - and a world is born.
Does He in the agony of birth, on the rack
Of that adorable suffering stand back
And murmer, "Value, colour, balance, line,"
Or when the dawn-gold spure of an Apennine
Cleaves chaos, like a sword, red with His blood,
Sob ot the morning-stars as they sing "It is good"?
Then look at my Gioconda! See how she pinches
Her cold clear lips, and count my soul by inches
Creeping from corner to corner of her mouth and so
To the cheek, to the eyes, to the hair, and watch it grow
Not into a face, (for that were only a trick of neat additional arithmetic)
But into Leonardo himself, and the life she pinches
Between her lips is the life that is Da Vinci's.
That's what Art is - and now enough of talk.
Give me my brush, friend, and that powdered chalk.