Notes on Daniel Chester French

 

I

 

What’s more dramatic: the plaster maquette

Of Andromeda, her back flat against the stone,

Her left knee drawn as if to hold her against

Her own falling?  Or the life-size piece in solid

marble in the workshop at Chesterwood, stationed on

A wooden plinth so she could descend

 

Through the floor on the short railway

And be trained to take in the natural

Day, the entire white of her making her light as

Air outside and yet as ever still

Chained to the rock for her crime of being

Too beautiful. 

 

I’ve just ordered a new translation of Ovid’s

Metamorphosis, (they’re finally allowing

A woman her own publication – like Andromeda

Chained, the tongues of us

Have been shackled, governed, struck

By lightning.  Plucked charred from the soot.

 

I’ve seen Andromeda in French’s workshop.

She’s splayed in front of the Lincoln memorial

Study. Waiting maybe.  French’s fingers

Were like breezes, the arrival of wind, imagine,

Beat by the wings  of what will ultimately, (but not

From this workshop) save her.  Is she

 

In distress or ecstasy?  A sister outside

Of time to Bernini’s Saint

Teresa, similar postures, similar angles

Of the neck and hands, the bare feet

And raised knees (Teresa’s beneath her almost

Moving canopy of clothes)

 

  

 

 

II

 

They said she was his last – nearly

Completed by the time he died

At 81.  One single solid

Piece of Carrara marble. 

 

How she lies arched-back

Rock in rock on rock

Paused for all the rest of her

Existence.  I’ll say existence

 

Because she doesn’t live but she does

Exist.  She does stay

Stiff still in the chill.

(Feel her.  Right?)  (And tell me she isn’t

 

More than marble.) He thought

She was I bet.  His own remote

Pygmalion.  He made her

Beyond the clay maquette, rose her

 

Up out of the stone

And kept her

Chained there waiting.

Death is his

 

Pegasus.  How fitting, this horse being

Medusa’s son. His wings

Slam the air, and it pounds

Out in front of him

 

Like a Fury, suspends the flesh

In the air, rider and all.

I don’t know yet how the true

Story goes.  For the sake of this

 

Now, I’d like to

Imagine French lowering

His intimate chisel

When the wind arrives

 

From the valley, a kind

A kind, a kind of well, a kind of bride-

Groom.  The dust

Of his work is still

 

On his lips.  He licks them.

In the stone a chain

The smallest chain

Of all,

 

At the vein of her

Wrist, begins to lift

And rub against

Its companion.