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False Azure, Frost: CHW reply
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Since everything else that was quoted of what James Marcus wrote, even if he
expressed himself in a joky, journalistic style, made excellent sense, I
thought I’d have a stab at trying to figure out what he was getting at in
singling out “false azure”, which hadn’t bothered me at all until reading his
remark. Hence my deliberate use of the word “suggestion”. Since this mild
suggestion has caused a minor flurry, here is a response. Duncan White’s cavil
seems the most reflective, so I’ll start with his. He wrote:
You write that "Azure means blue. Only secondarily does it connote sky." But
one of the meanings of the noun azure is the type of blue that we see in an
unclouded sky - it is not a secondary meaning, the two are bound up together
in Shade's usage. Here's the OED:
Azure: The clear blue colour of the unclouded sky, or of the sea reflecting
it. (Originally, the deep intense blue of more southern latitudes.)
The azure is "false" because it is not the real sky, but a reflection of it
in the window pane. I don't really think it can be cited as Shade being
sloppy in his use of language.
Of course someone could make a case for Frost being superior to Shade, or
vice versa, but the point is that glibly singling out one line, out of context,
is no way to construct any sort of interesting argument. But then Marcus'
piece is more hackwork than "fair criticism" and probably does not deserve even
this slight fuss.
The OED deserves ultimate respect, and I should have consulted it. In fact,
I thought I’d checked my handy Cassell, but perhaps I only took a quick look
at the internet. Several on-line dictionaries give:
az·ure (ăzh'ər)
n.
1. a. A light purplish-blue. b. Heraldry. The colour blue.
2. The blue sky.
Cassell, however, does give n. lapis-lazuli; the deep blue of the sky; the
vault of heaven; a bright blue pigment; (Her.) the blue of coats of arms, etc.
I may have been over-persuaded by my familiarity with the heraldic usage.
The derivation from lapis-lazuli, a blue stone, seems slightly significant.
Victor Fet wrote:
At least in Russian poetry "azure" ("lazur' ") used as a noun often means
sky, being a standard poetic cliché.
The Russian ("lazur' ") apparently retains a firmer memory of the original
sense (Persian lazhward). Victor’s mention of standard poetic cliché may also
be part of Marcus’s point. Using azure to mean “sky” smacks faintly more of
the poetastic than the genuinely poetic, and perhaps therefore falls more
aptly to Shade. I agree with Duncan, however, that this particular example is
probably not sloppy enough to fuss over. Otherwise, Marcus seems to me spot
on: he is only reacting immediately and instinctively to Rosenbaum’s utterly
preposterous assertion that Shade’s poem “surpasses in every respect anything
that Frost has ever done”. Baloney.
George’s and Carolyn’s points were interesting. The various dictionary
definitions for “blue” seem to hover uneasily between noun and adjective. Carolyn
’s question: Is the sky itself, then "truly" blue? raises the question of
whether “blue” has any existence at all apart from what the human eye
perceives as blue. I would say that it doesn’t, which is why the concept of “false
blue” can’t be justified. “False sky”, however, is of course perfectly
conceivable.
Brian Boyd wrote:
Addendum: James Marcus declares that it takes a tin ear to rate the "Pale
Fire" poem highly. Then he speaks with a tin tongue: "VN just isn't in the same
ballpark as top-drawer Frost." How to undermine your critical clout in one
easy lesson!
This comment seems to me completely irrelevant. The posture of the critic
is, as I believe I’ve said earlier, naturally hateful, and invites hostility.
Sycophancy is far more rewarding, and as Pinocchio’s little friend once put
it: if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all. However,
Marcus is making a journalistic point, not writing poetry. Dr Johnson said, in
defence of the critic, that it is perfectly permissible for a man (though
invidious) to criticise a carpenter who makes him a bad chair, even if he can’t
make a chair himself. Presumably Brian is having a dig at Marcus’s rhetoric, but
there is nothing metallic about his demotic metaphors in this context. In
such cases of joyful mixing I’m often reminded of a sterling line from Churchill
’s 1941 broadcast: “The Royal Air Force beat the Hun raiders out of the
daylight air raid” when what he was also implying was that the RAF had beaten
the daylights out of them.
As I’ve recently been dipping into The Collected Poems of Robert Frost
(Halcyon 1939), I’m vividly aware that I’ve been keeping company with a
true-blue master of cerulean azure, whose works are so far superior to Shade’s as to
leave that neighbourly “poet” not a couple of oozy footsteps, but more like
seven leagues, behind him. This list doesn’t want to analyze the
spine-tingling subtleties of Frost, but I’m bound to agree with James Marcus that,
temporarily no doubt, Ron Rosenbaum must have gone completely off his trolley. But
let me not be unfair.
My warm thanks to Jansy for her generous support.
Charles
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