The Entry of James
Ensor into My Memories of Brussels
by Colette Inez
(My first years, and those of Belgian painter
James Ensor's last, quickly slipped by in Belgium.)
Greeted His Work
"My colors are purified...integral and
personal. Yet I upset convention...I was
called nasty, bad...a simple cabbage became obscene; my placid
interiors...hotbeds of revolution.
Critics...snarled without let up...."1.
I Speak of Birdsong Street, of My Beginnings
On the Rue Chants D'Oiseaux, I warbled Sanctus
from a small rose mouth. Puny recruit in the militant church, my blue uniform
drew motes of silver dust, gray lint, yellow pollen from trees in a spring
Brussels doled out as a gift to each inhabitant.
Love child, bundled off to the Catholic sisters,
over the years I spooned simple cabbage in soups and stews without letup,
sniffed nasty and agreeable smells in placid interiors. Lilacs and farts. Garlic and apples.
My walls were the grey white of fog-edged skies
in autumn, of oyster shells, and rows of iron beds planting shadows like
columns in an underwater light. Fumbling for a chamber pot in the dark, I
smelled the waters of my body. When I
rolled out from a flannel bolt of dreams, what was real? Piss that streamed in a roar. Like a waterfall.
James Ensor Writes of His Painting "The
Consoling Virgin"
"I had a glimpse of the Consoling
Virgin...recorded her peaceful features on a panel of good quality. I kissed her little feet of snow and
mother-of-pearl. On the hard substance
of the old panel, the diaphanous image can still be made out...."
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Adam and Eve Expelled from Paradise, 1887 |
I Describe the Holy Mother and Reflect on My
Parents
Stained-glass windows beckoned me to begin such
reveries as I could draw out of my body at matins, vespers and lauds. Snowy lamb of God lulled by Vierge Marie, who
attended my prayers, a blue cloak falling to her feet. If she is the mother of God, God and Jesus
are brothers. I asked but no one
answered me. The God I believed in saw
me squat on the toilet, a pimple on my rump, snot in my mouth. Didn't Sister say he was everywhere at
once? Integral and personal?
Did my mother wear pearls? Did my father work the clasp to slip them off
her neck? Before I was born my father
kissed her little feet. Perhaps. My
parents were diaphanous images. Yet I
waited for them to shelter me, prayed they would come when I sang French
words. Fleur-de-lis and alouette.
James Ensor Writes About Words
"Ah, but I love to draw beautiful words,
like trumpets of light...words in the steel-blue color of certain insects,
words with the scent of vibrant silks, subtle words of fragrant roses and
seaweed...words whispered by fishes in the pink ears of shells...."
I Leave Belgium for Another Country
When I quit Brussels in the spring just before
the war, sailed past Ensor strolling on the beach at Ostend, my words adored
the ship coaxing me to America on the steel-blue waters of the sea. Fishes sang green and orange notes in my ear
without reasons. Explorations. I will learn of my dead father's holy words,
the rain of gray words in my mother's letters will bathe me in cool weather.
James Ensor in His "Reflection on Art"
"Our vision is modified as we observe. The first vision... is the simple line,
unadorned, unconcerned with color. The second stage is when the better-trained
eye discerns values of the tones, their subtleties and play of light…."
Colette Inez in Her Reflections on Memory
The simple lines of trees on the Rue Chants
D'Oiseaux, the parallel lines of trolley tracks. The Children's Home. The shadow of the iron
gate. Where did they go? To the heaven
of seaweed and roses Ensor gathered in plays of light? And the child I ask what am I to learn in the
subtle world? And I answer her, to draw
consoling words out of the air. To
arrange them like irises in a vase, to weave them into proof our lives like a
sea teem with remembrances. To
endure. Integral and personal.
1. Letters
of the Great Artists, from Blake to Pollock, Random House, l963, pp 174-l77,
Ensor's translator: Paul Haesaerts.
Poem first published in the Northwest Review,
March 1990.
Colette Inez, born 1931 in Brussels, Belgium, is an American poet and a faculty member at Columbia University’s Undergraduate Writing Program. She has published 10 poetry collections and won the Guggenheim Fellowship, Rockefeller Fellowship, two National Endowment for the Arts (NEA Fellowships) and many other awards.
James Sidney Edouard, Baron Ensor (1860-1949) was a Belgian painter and printmaker, an important influence on expressionism and surrealism who lived in Ostend, Belgium. He was associated with the artistic group Les XX.
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