The Wicked and
Unfaithful Song Of
Marcel Duchamp
To His Queen
by Paul Carroll (1961)
with music by John Austin (1979)
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Figure
1
Marcel Duchamp, The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors,
Even, 1915-23
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A
weighted soul who believed in the purity and vitality of poetry,
the poet Paul Carroll inherited from Dada and Surrealism
an undisguised passion and iconoclasm.
"The Wicked and Unfaithful Song of Marcel Duchamp to His Queen"
of 1961 seems to resonate with a consequential reading
of postmodern thought--"meaning" is literally a mere perception
residing in the human mind ... perhaps nothing more,
and the presence of Duchamp's posthumously revealed
Given: 1. The Waterfall, 2. The Illuminating Gas (1946-66),
by musing on "Death" as "the only good joke."
In 1979, composer John Austin conducted a vocal piece
based on the very same poem. Tout-Fait is delighted to
present the juxtaposition of text, sound, and visual images
in order to induce an enchanted experience of various dimensions
in simultaneity.
- Compiled by Ya Ling Chen
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Figure
2
Marcel Duchamp , Dust Breeding, 1920, from the Green
Box of 1934
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Figure
3
Marcel Duchamp, Cemetery of Uniforms and Liveries, No. 2,
1914
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Figure
4
Photograph of Duchamp's
studio, 1916-17
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Figure
5
Photograph of Duchamp's
Unhappy Readymade (1919) taken by Jean Grotti or Suzanne
Duchamp Grotti, 1920
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A trifle pompously, your move, my love, among
the mass of nerve-
tissues in my cranium;
and as you move
you have become the last
of my inconsequential ironies. At best,
chess too just
a question of pure chance.
Films of dust
girdle your body: for once
I shift you on the chess board, sweet, you will become
a solution for which
there never was a problem:
that old itch
for order which we like to hint
exists in what we do. And yet, that blueprint
I fashioned once
for the motions of the body
ended nice-
ly in a cemetery
of empty uniforms: priest and bus-
boy, butler, gendarme,
undertaker, horseman—jointless.
Art? A form
of intimate hygiene for
the ghosts we really are. More work, those wolftraps for
the intellect
(one must always work,
sweet, to contradict
one’s taste)—the hanger tack-
ed upright to the floor; that urinal
I signed: R. Mutt;
and that geometry textbook I tied to dangle
in diagonal at
a corner of my porch
until, buffeted by raw winds, bleach—
ed by sun & sleets,
it got the facts of life;
or those glass discs
twirling on the phonograph
to tease the ear and eye. How predictable
poor Picabia
became! And such a fool
to bitch all day
and thrash about and sob
how slovenly God goes about his job.
I’ll let you sit,
sweet, and move the Rook
instead. Why not?
Death is the only good joke.
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