Degas: a sequence after an exhibition at the Burrell Collection, Glasgow, 2024, by Chris Athorne

Portrait of Hilaire de Gas, by Edgar Degas (France) 1857

Portrait of Hilaire de Gas, Musée d’Orsay, 1857

Hilaire de Gas, his stick across his thigh,
suffers no fools, only hard cash for cotton.
A fourteen year old trainee ballerina pouts nue,
her bust-less chest; position four. De Gas
fixes the interest with a disapproving eye.

​Study in the Nude for The Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer, by Edgar Degas (France) 1878-1880

​Study in the Nude for The Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1878-80

Perhaps it was, in that world 
prior to the fin de siécle,
where children ran naked 
under the trees in the garden 
at La Maison Rose, Montmartre,
before Freudian suspicion spoiled
the dream of prepubescence; perhaps,
only natural to think of innocence. 
Whose discomfort is it, after all?
Whose transference?

​Study of a Young Girl’s Head, by Edgar Degas (France) 1890s

​Study of a Young Girl’s Head, National Gallery of Scotland, 1890s

Sharp in your central eyesight, in unusual oils,
your retinal cones fix the profile
of a young girl. The hard edge floats
in our peripheral vision, a candle
held before a dark, uncertain future.

Woman Combing Her Hair, by Edgar Degas (France) 1888-1890

​Woman Combing her Hair, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1888-90

Your pastels are hairy, Edgar, chalked down
ward like river weed stroked by the current
or rivulets running down the window pane.
A world seen through glass? Or submarine?
And here’s a waterfall of female hair
over the rock of her shoulder. Never
a Nature painter, never plein air.

Before the Race, by Edgar Degas (France) 1882-84

​Before the Race, The Walters Art Museum, 1882-84

Familiar from childhood Saturdays,
my father rides the sofa:
Newmarket, Cheltenham, Ascot.
He knows the odds, the tote, 
the easy come, the easy go.
His dad: Big Tanner,
between the mine, North Africa
and the glass factory, a bookie’s runner.
Look at it this way. You throw
in a fiver. He throws in a tenner.
Two to one on and winner takes all.
Easy come. Easy go.
A thousand quid in the money
this week and out of it the next.
Easy come. Easy go.

​Miss La La at the Cirque Fernando, by Edgar Degas (France) 1879

​Miss La La at the Cirque Fernando, National Gallery, London, 1879

Might this angel fall,
holding on by the skin of her teeth,
momentum conserved 
in the arms’ spun inertia,
wheeling the canopy about her,
pirouetting on a pin’s head?

What’s in the frame stays in the frame.
An accidental view from the window
is inept photography, as though falling,
spinning, a moment salvaged in
not quite perfect condition.
C’est la. La-La.

The Bellelli Family, by Edgar Degas (France) 1858-1867

​The Bellelli Family, Musée d’Orsay, 1858-1867

My head is still spinning. 
You 
make me 

dizzy like Cezanne’s 
frustratingly
ordinary trees with elbows for branches
getting in the way of my
sightline
and sticking in and out
of the frame, 
being
not at all behaved
like the daughter 
of a well-to-do critic
in a family portrait.

​Portrait of Edmond Durranty, by Edgar Degas (France) 1879

​Portrait of Edmond Durranty, Burrell Collection, Glasgow, 1879

Uncomfortable people, the critics, to spend
time with, and restless with themselves too:
apes picking their brains for the nit of a thought,
something to say at today’s soirée. Something
out of the frame? Left field? Outré?

Dancer Adjusting Her Shoulder Strap, by Edgar Degas (France) 1895-1900

Dancer Adjusting Her Shoulder Strap, Glasgow Museums, 1895-1900

Natural. Unnatural. A Rebours. Studied,
sequinned, the gilded tortoise. A dancer
adjusts her shoulder strap. An image
of a dancer adjusting her shoulder strap.
A model studies a dancer. A model
models a dancer adjusting her shoulder strap.

L'Absinthe, by Edgar Degas (France) 1875-76

​L’Absinthe, Musée d’Orsay, 1875-76

They’re all framed, 
mounted, arranged
in ordinary. 
Don’t you see? 
It takes a while.
Yes, you!
You’re set up too.

Young Woman Looking Through Field Glasses, by Edgar Degas (France) 1866-68

Young Woman Looking Through Field Glasses, British Museum, 1866-68

Mannish glasses for the supervision
of combat in the field. She’s Field
Marshal in drag and we the crowd,
not troops but flaneurs trooping,
window shopping these canvasses.
She reflects us. Voyeur! Ma soeur.

Silence and soft shuffles under dimmed light,
we walk the gallery of the dead
patrons and collectors, a slow descent: 
Durand-Ruel and Henry Hill, Ionides.;
acknowldege Key for Absinthe; for van Gogh,
Alex Reid. Did they make history with Degas?
Or did Degas do for them? More recently,
women step into the frame: Audrey Loats
for Woman Ironing; Rosalind Maitland,
Geraldine and Marge Workman gave us
the wordsman Martelli. Women in the frame,
the falling hair, the irony.

There is always something between us:
the rain on the window,
the disguising eye-glasses,
the invisible protective pane
separating absinthe drinker
from (pretended) pimp.

There is the complex of composition,
the model, the dress, the placing,
the setting, the sitting and waiting.

What do we trust
of the reconstruction of the Real
in the ditching of the Ideal?

These, says Baudelaire, are the heroes
of the quotidian city of light.

What I have lost, I gave away too easily, falling in
with the habits of others’ language; must now regain,
claw back the way I came, 
exit by deceit, dissemblance,
the cave of Truth, the One-Eyed Liar’s lair, 
woke by a phrase outside the tribe’s making 
and stumble out into the no-man’s land 
of liminal commitment.

Chris Athorne

​Chris Athorne is a mathematician living in Glasgow. Recent poetry has been published in MAGMA, Acumen and in Apocalyptic Landscape, an anthology edited by Steve Ely.