The opening of the poem appears to be frank and straightforward, yet
the line break between ëwalkí and ëoughtí, and the disruption of the
dash suggests discontinuity and artificiality as the lines do not flow.
Just as ëyou laugh or talkí the line is ëlearned/ inside a cultureí. Kleeís
artworks might seem spontaneous but as is indicated in his notebooks,
they are painstaking, part of the modernist culture in which he paints,
and related to his theories and lectures that were presented to students
at the Bauhaus. Artistic and poetic lines are learned; they are a craft or
skill. The speaker turns to the example of the artist or draftsman
whose pencil line takes a lead or direction of its own yet is held on a
lead like an animal that must be tamed.
The speaker imagines ësomewhere between a pun/ and a
tautologyí. The pun and tautology are opposed: a pun works by using
a word that has different meanings, whereas a tautology works by
using different words for the same meaning or idea. To be ëbetweení
them is to fall into a slippage of meaning or between the lines,
creating an aporia and alluding to that which cannot be conceived.
Kleeís artistic exploration of the sublime imagined representing the
unrepresentable, that which is on the edge or at the borders of
conception. Like a ëshadow of the mindí from ëLine on the Grassí the
sublime takes place in the unconscious or at the limits of the self. The
poetry like Kleeís artwork seeks to go to the ëdangerous edge of
things.í But what lies at this edge of delirium?
In Paulinís poem, the sun setting over the horizon (as in Kleeís
Tunisian paintings) goes down and interrupts the black line of the
horizon with its dazzling colour. The word ëyolkyí imagines the sun as
an egg with its associations of fertility, life-giving warmth and
creation. In ëA Last Gestureí (p.77), ëyolkyí is associated with vaginal
fluids and intercourse. The words ësplittery splatteryí signal a
disruption in the discourse of the poem since they are not ërealí or
standardized words and they suggest an alternative language or reality
is available to the painter/poet. This is a language associated with
yolky feminine fluids, with the female body, what is more life giving,
sensual and fruitful which is connected with European representations
of the East.^55 The yolky feminine sun disrupts the line that is held on
55 Examples of representations of the East as sensual and surrounded by bodily
metaphors are found in European representation such as E.M. Forsterís A