night rpm

Fragment as Art

Sappho’s Fragment 137, from If Not, Winter - Fragments of Sappho (tr. Anne Carson) -

I want to say something but shame
prevents me

…

yet if you had a desire for good or beautiful things
and your tongue were not concocting some evil to say,
shame would not hold down your eyes
but rather you would speak about what is just

This was written, what, around 2600 years ago? But the voice is so immediate and the concerns so contemporary, what to do with this brilliant shard. There’s something about the fragment, as a form of writing, which appeals to me. Probably because any truth or insight, or in fact, any recollection, rarely comes to us in whole. But in broken parts, all of a sudden, in a gasp. This detail from Hölderlin’s fragment, “On Pale Leaves” (tr. David Constantine) -

On pale leaves
The grape rests, the hope of wine, so on the cheek
The shadow rests of a golden earring
Worn by a girl.

No matter how quiescent the notice, there’s something brutal and frank about the way in which a fragmentary notice searches, reveals the moment. There’s nothing equivocal about fragments… yet neither is there anything much conclusive to them: just as open-looped or closed-ended as any moment in life has to be. Friedrich Schlegel, who really believed in the capacity of the fragment as an independent art form -

A fragment must, like a little work of art, be entirely isolate from the surrounding world and complete in itself like a hedgehog.

While heating up my brown rice and string beans in the office microwave just now, I kept thinking about fragmentary details from a Memling, a Ghirlandaio, a Giotto… hands, mouths, glances.

(The latter image, a detail from Hans Memling’s Strasbourg Triptych)

9 January 2012 ·