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Roy Fuller

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Notes on Art

For Huw Weldon

O ‘green-eyed dumplings with an astral stare’ —
Thus Schoenberg’s paintings, rather well described.
Those who’ve contrived to cover up in art

Their turgid rhetoric or romantic souls
Should keep from practising another art,
Where dim technique may give the game away.

Now Wilfrid Mellers admitted when he heard
The Elgar symphony of 1910
After ‘experimental’ works, it made

The events of sixty years astonishing —
The melancholy and heroic changed
To mutterings that dehumanise; and yet

Still didn’t call the latter green-eyed balls.
Critics make each successive Zeitgeist more
Patently turnip-headed than before.

Surely I’ve bored the world with this already,
Just as I must have more than once observed
That every pigeon wears pale riding-breeches.

Even technique can’t hide that art’s about
What moves non-artists. TV (as you said)
Is telling stories, like George Eliot.

Astute of Anthony Powell to extirpate
The story—teller’s soft interior,
Not least to leave more room for irony.

The astral stare: yes, that we must admit
(For who denies the rumminess of life?)
But flashed from Mrs Erdleigh, not the hero.

If the poetic vision is considered —
Sharper perception, most things slotting in,
Amused affection, even for ugliness —

Isn’t the poem’s importance obvious,
Since this is just what all would wish to feel?
Unless reared on a diet of mad dumplings.

 

Page(s) 37-38

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