Family Values V
1947
November 15
Dear Professor Nicolson, Would you be
so good as to stop by my Gallery
at your convenience to help us with
the presentation of a new canvas
by René Magritte?
‘Family Values’,
Magritte has informed us, is his tribute
to Fuseli’s masterpiece (now on view
at the Art Institute of Chicago):
‘Milton Dictating Paradise Lost
to his Three Daughters’.
Not surprisingly
for works by either artist, there have been
iconographic questions and even
charges (in Belgium) of obscenity!
Your Columbia colleague Professor
Mayer Schapiro
suggests that a word
from a noted Miltonist like yourself
would go far – farther than the evasive
assessments of any mere art critic –
towards reconciling Mrs Grundy with
the revelations,
startling as they are,
of Magritte’s vision. Furthermore, I am
myself convinced, Professor Nicolson,
that granted the prestige of your immense
authority, Magritte’s new creation
might work its magic
unobstructed by the philistinism
which has so often blighted the careers
of Ernst and Balthus, Belmer and the rest.
We look forward to meeting you. Warmly,
Julien Levy.
Mr Levy, please.
Marjorie Nicolson. Yes. And you are
Julien Levy himself? I had supposed
there would be a staff:
your letter mentioned “we” several times.
Delighted to meet you too. Now where...Oh,
please don’t call me that:
“professor” just makes static in my ears
and puts off any kind of intercourse
with actual learning.
I much prefer that you would think of me
as Chairman of the English Department.
No, Chairman will do.
The gender affixed to “chair” hardly seems
a matter of controversy; perhaps
you have guessed as much
from the fashion (or non-fashion?) in which
I dress. It has been said, Mr Levy,
though not to my face,
that I look like a tweed fireplug with breasts.
Absurd simile: fireplugs, as you know,
already have breasts!...
In any case, as the Department Chair
– surely I look more like a chair to you,
even a sofa,
than a fireplug, don’t I, Mr Levy? –
and as the author of five studies (six,
counting the Handbook)
in explication of Miltonic facts,
I eschew the padding of Professor –
quite superfluous.
“Miss Nicky” is what my friends and students
– I hope they are the same? – often call me.
Perhaps you will too...
The one problem I met with, arriving
in my character as a full-bodied
piece of furniture,
is the design of the elevators
in these old houses: making others wait,
a solo ascent
was my only means of approach. But here
I am...and there, I guess, is your Magritte!
I’ve done my homework,
and I’m proud to be consulted: rarely
is an academic figure – e.g. mine! –
asked to mediate
among sin, sales, and Surrealism...
I am assuming that Magritte is still,
if not in favour
with Monsieur Breton, a Surrealist?
These Movements are momentary as
the Protestant sects
were for poor Milton...And this canvas here,
this grand machine, this Conversation Piece
has been called obscene?
And immoral too! Well of course it is
a complex issue – Shakespeare was hardly
the first to present
a father whose feelings for three daughters
infringe on our notions of seemliness.
From the very start,
Apollo and the Muses afforded
another instance of such intimate
promiscuities...
I am not familiar with Fuseli’s
picture to which Magritte pays homage,
yet I cannot see
how any knowledge of it could keep me
from asserting the inoffensiveness
of this brilliant work.
Of course it is difficult to explain
why the daughters should all have fish-heads
and yet be wearing
no clothes at all...But obscene? immoral?
The way the poet – don’t you agree
that must be Milton
up there? – is lying almost on top of
the three...girls leads me to suppose
Magritte is punning
on “milt” – fish sperm, you know – milt on:
an incestuous poetry with his
ichthycephalous
daughters...Oh dear, I suppose that does sound
rather obscene, though it’s a classical
trope for Apollo.
The longer I look, the less I know what
to think. Magritte’s title is certainly,
like many of his,
odd and perhaps perverse. I’m thinking of
The Invisible World and Siren Song –
Family Values,
when you add that jointed sarcophagus
to all the fishy goings-on...I fear
such figurations
may indeed offend an orthodox sense
of propriety – Milton often does!
To stand fast against
such defensive folly, best to recall
what Milton himself, hard-pressed by righteous
objectors, remarked:
They thought themselves gallants, and I thought them
fools; they made sport, and I laughed; they misspoke
and I misliked; and,
to make up the atticism, they were out
and I hissed...
I must thank you once again
for my Private View,
which I trust will soon become a public
occasion. Please don’t try to see me out:
the elevator,
as I told you, necessitates my making
an altogether solo departure.
Of course if any
attestation from the resident
Miltonist of Columbia can be
of some assistance,
I shall be delighted to oblige. Thanks,
again, for this experience. Goodbye,
Mr Levy. Down!
THE JULIEN LEVY GALLERY requests the honor
of your presence at the opening
of an exhibition of works by René Magritte
December 12 from 5 to 7
featuring Family Values, a new painting
132 East 57 Street NYC
“No modern canvas has
given me more pleasure.”
– Professor Marjorie Nicolson
Page(s) 33-37
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