The Fog [Poem]Author(s): Mary MeixnerSource: Art Journal, Vol. 25, No. 1 (Autumn, 1965), p. 25Published by: College Art AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/774864 .

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Modigliani who, as we know, worked in his studio, par- ticipating in his craft and abandoning it some time later in favor of painting. Jean Cassou has stated that "in that epic of hardship and genius, Modigliani was for Brancusi a most fitting companion."37

Another good friend was Le Douanier Rousseau who one day, having looked at the work in the studio for a

long time, exclaimed: "Eh bien, tu as transform6 l'antique en modernel" When Rousseau died, Brancusi, like a medieval

master-carver, cut the gravestone and carved the epitaph written on it in crayon by Apollinaire, following the hand of the poet to whom he felt such a strong bond.38

"I was a very close friend," Brancusi recalled with emotion, "of Guillaume Apollinaire, whose death was a disaster for modern art. He was a wonderful comrade. You felt yourself 'elbow to elbow' with him."39

As for the French poet (who owned a Naiade, a

strangely poetic head),40 I have found a single homage by him to the sculptor in an old art review. In discussing the Salon des Ind6pendents of 1912,41 Apollinaire men- tions only three names among the sculptors, the first being Brancusi whom he considers "un sculpteur ddlicat et tr6s personnel, dont les oeuvres sont des plus raffi- nPes."42

Today, in the great encyclopedias and journals of the world, Brancusi-who cannot be fitted into any school, "escaping all classification"43-is considered "a Mallarm6 of sculpture," on whose shoulders "rests all of modern sculpture . .." They are indeed the strong shoulders of the young man from the village of Hobitza, who remained-in spite of the whirl of the great metrop- olises-in the unblemished realm of Rumanian fairy tales.

lonel Jianou, op. cit. p. 8. In Les soir6es de Paris (1914, January no. 20) Apolli-

naire wrote: "Finally, in 1913, the sculptor Brancusy and the painter Ortiz de Sarate carved on the gravestone the

epitaph I had written with a pencil." Petre Pandrea, op. cit. p. 160.

" Now in the collection of Mme. Jacqueline Apollinaire; reproduced by Sidney Geist, "Brancusi Catalogued?", in Arts, New York, January, 1964. " In the Salon des Inddpendents, March, 1912, Brancusi exhibited Sleeping Muse, Prometheus and The Kiss.

,Apollinaire, "Vernissage aux Inddpendents," in L'In-

transigeant, April 3, 1912.

43 Rend Huyghe, L'Art et L'Homme, vol. III, p. 447.

(translated by SIDNEY GEIST) U

THE FOG

Seurat would have gone forth on such a night walking the mist-hung streets dour silence

wrapping his world in thin recessions immediate frames of form. How he would chew this vapor like a food

tasting distinctions when all cats are grey already in his hand, the touch

veiling in layered chalk this passing woman as a monument. Each windowed structure lost in a broad stroke that makes perfection of the mood of home cubic, irradiated, finding more truth the more that it obscures.

TO THE EARTH PAINTER

Long after light has passed my vision holds repose. Dusk, and a rose-red line transform the fading day. Where dawn showed tillage scar now carmine, channels cross and plough6d black meets black: sgraffito of a Dubuffet.

What of these silent fields dark acres "en repos"? So rest must follow work so still, and washed with calm.

MARY MEIXNER

25 Brezianu: The Beginnings of Brancusi

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