The Man with the Blue Guitar

The Man with the Blue Guitar

Broadcast Sat 6 Nov 2010, Radio 3, Between the Ears

160/44; 33.8 MB; sound quality excellent

Wallace Stevens and Pablo Picasso were two great modernists who had much in common: rather than representing the world in their art they transfigured it.

They said, "You have a blue guitar,
You do not play things as they are."

The man replied, "Things as they are
Are changed upon the blue guitar."

Meaning is something created - like the playing of a song or the painting of a picture. In Picasso's painting the old guitarist is gaunt and his clothes ragged - yet he plays. The poem is playful, but like the painting melancholic in tone. It quietly rhymes, it is subtly rhythmic, the theme is stated then variations are played on it. The poem is the guitarist's music, a blues. This programme realises all this in music and language, as a collaboration between actor, musician, artist - even critic.

Martin Simpson is an extraordinary guitarist, 'the nearest Britain has to Ry Cooder' (Mojo) and has made a dozen CDs, including 'Righteousness and Humidity', a homage to the great delta blues players. He lived in the US for 15 years and combines British, Afro-American and old-time music. The poem is wonderfully musical in its language, but somewhat elusive. So Dana Gioia, American poet, essayist and until recently Chair of the National Endowment for the Arts, offers ideas about the poem and Wallace's poetics. The poem and the comments are mixed with the new music by Martin Simpson, inspired by the poem itself and the painting.

Producer: Julian May.

FULL TEXT OF THE POEM

The Man With The Blue Guitar
by Wallace Stevens [1937]

One

The man bent over his guitar,
A shearsman of sorts. The day was green.

They said, "You have a blue guitar,
You do not play things as they are."

The man replied, "Things as they are
Are changed upon the blue guitar."

And they said to him, "But play, you must,
A tune beyond us, yet ourselves,

A tune upon the blue guitar,
Of things exactly as they are."

Two

I cannot bring a world quite round,
Although I patch it as I can.

I sing a hero's head, large eye
And bearded bronze, but not a man,

Although I patch him as I can
And reach through him almost to man.

If a serenade almost to man
Is to miss, by that, things as they are,

Say that it is the serenade
Of a man that plays a blue guitar.

Three

A tune beyond us as we are,
Yet nothing changed by the blue guitar;

Ourselves in tune as if in space,
Yet nothing changed, except the place

Of things as they are and only the place
As you play them on the blue guitar,
Placed, so, beyond the compass of change,
Perceived in a final atmosphere;

For a moment final, in the way
The thinking of art seems final when

The thinking of god is smoky dew.
The tune is space. The blue guitar

Becomes the place of things as they are,
A composing of senses of the guitar.

Four

Tom-tom c'est moi. The blue guitar
And I are one. The orchestra

Fills the high hall with shuffling men
High as the hall. The whirling noise

Of a multitude dwindles, all said,
To his breath that lies awake at night.

I know that timid breathing. Where
Do I begin and end? And where,

As I strum the thing, do I pick up
That which momentarily declares

Itself not to be I and yet
Must be. It could be nothing else.

Poetry

The Man with the Blue Guitar

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