Ange Blanc
EARLY VERSION
Now that the Spring hath
Fill’d our Veins with kind
And active fire, & made
Green liveries for the Plains,
& every Grove a Quire,
Song we with mirth &
Merry glee, o Bacchus bang
The bowle, for here’s to
Thee, & thou to me,
And ev’ry thirsty nodding soule.
Sheer ye sheep that needs
It, or sleep still, or
See none escape to huff
Off with the Jerez that
Maketh love tough, and plump
as the lusty bit Grape.
—
A note held in open abeyance towards an essay to be titled “What We Know about Art”:
The situation is that of him who is helpless, cannot act, in the end cannot paint, since he is obliged to paint. The act is of him who, helpless, unable to act, acts, in the event paints, since he is obliged to paint.
D.—Why is he obliged to paint?
B.—I don’t know.
D.—Why is he helpless to paint?
B.—Because there is nothing to paint and nothing to paint with.
—Samuel Beckett, “about 1949, in a series of prose Dialogues with Georges Duthuit.”
