The picture's done! And the staircase
Falls like the crash of night.
And the Nude is wafted downward
Like a catapult in flight.
There's a feeling of strange emotion
That is not akin to art;
And resembles a picture only
As a Tartar resembles a tart.
Such art has power to rouse
Our laughter at any time,
And comes like electrocution
That follows after crime.
And Mr. Bunner's poetic gem has a charm all its own:
It was an old, old, old, old lady,
On a staircase at half-past three;
And the way she was painted together
Was beautiful for to see.
She wasn't visible any,
And the staircase, no more was he;
For it was a Cubist picture
With a feeling of deep skewgee.
'Twas a symbol of soul expression,
Though you'd never have known it to be!
That emotional old, old lady
On a staircase at half-past three.
Mr. Wordsworth treated the subject boldly, thus:
She was a phantom of a fright
When first she burst upon my sight;
A Cubist apparition meant
To symbolize a Nude's descent.
Her eyes like soft-shell crabs aflare
Like loads of brick her dusky hair;
And all things else about her drawn
As by one coming home at dawn.
A fearsome shape, an image fierce,
To haunt, to startle, and to pierce.
I saw her upon nearer view,
Like a symbolic oyster stew;
A countenance in which did meet
The paving blocks from some old street;
The staircase, floating fancy-free,
With steps of Cubic liberty.
A perfect lady, nobly built,
Constructed like a crazy quilt.
Or a volcano on a spree,
Or herd of elephants at tea.
The staircase, by a bombshell wrecked,
With something of a burst effect.
What do you think of A. Dobson's triolet:
Oh, see the Nude
Descend the Stair!
Fear not, oh, prude,
To see the Nude;
For by the rood,
She isn't there!
Oh, see the Nude
Descend the Stair!
Of course, no one is a sweeter poetess than Miss A.A. Proctor:
Seated one day at my easel,
I was hungry and somewhat faint,
And my fingers wandered idly
Over the tubes of paint.
I know not what I was drawing,
Or what I was painting there,
But I splotched a Cubic Symbol!
Like a Nude Descending a Stair!
It flooded the crimson canvas
With the gush of a broken dam;
And it lay in sticky masses
Like upset gooseberry jam.
It rioted blazing color,
Like love ballyragging strife;
It seemed the loquacious echo
Of our discordant wife.
It linked all Futurist meanings
Into one perfect cube,
And broke itself up into facets
Like a wreck in a Hudson Tube.
I seek, but I seek it vainly,
That vast, symbolic line,
That came from the head of the staircase
And entered into mine.
It may be that Pab Picasso
Has painted the thing before,
And it may be that only in Bedlam
I shall paint that Nude some more.