DRAMATIC MONOLOGUE Poem: A LONDON ART DEALER HOLDS FORTH, by Lynn Gilbert

about Edgar Degas’ L’Absinthe (1876)

“This picture fetched a hundred-eighty pounds
last year; surprised it sold at all, really.
People hissed it in our sales room when it was
handed up for bidding. There was a to-do
a few months later as well, when it went on view
here at the gallery: A great many patrons
of the arts found it revolting, as you may
imagine from this copy I had made of it.

The setting’s an artists’ dive, clearly;
by the eyes, the woman’s drunk out of
her senses, probably has been for years.
Call that art? a woman drunk in public?
She’s said to be an ‘actress,’ but she’d only
fall off the stage in her condition.

Her male companion draws on his pipe,
ignores her, looks the other direction—
in search of trade, perhaps? His elbow
leaves her only a corner of the bare
marble for her glass; the water jug
she, or the waiter has set on the table next,
as if she’s with the fellow, but not really.

The absinthe is clouded, so she’s already
poured water in it, and drunk off half an inch.
The stuff’s four parts alcohol, you know,
stronger than whisky by half. The herbs in it
said to be poisonous, too. They are what
give it that clear green cast, I believe,
before mixing with water. Flavor of anise,
they say; you may as well take gripe water,
to my mind. Her limbs, you notice, are
splayed out, whether from footsoreness,
intoxication, or lewdness—all three perhaps.

Both figures are sottish, degraded. We know
such people exist—we have our own gin-
sodden tarts this side the Channel,
God knows—but to paint them? And who’d
display them at home for wife and daughter to see?
Count on the filthy French for vulgarity,
that’s my view. I much prefer his dancers,
the ballet pictures, all in all: A bit of décolletage
never goes amiss, so long as it’s respectable.
They fetch more, as well. Bloody Frogs!