"Index" (Paul Violi)

"Index"

Paul Violi

Hudney, Sutej IX, X, XI, 7, 9, 25, 58, 60, 61, 64

Plates 5,10, 15

Childhood 70, 71

Education 78, 79, 80

Early relationship with family 84

Enters academy, honors 84

Arrest and bewilderment 85

Formation of spatial theories 90

“Romance of Ardoy, The” 92

Second arrest 93

Early voyages, life in the Pyrenees 95

Marriage 95

Abandons landscape painting 96

Third arrest 97

Weakness of character, inconstancy 101

First signs of illness, advocation

of celibacy 110

Collaborations with Fernando Gee 111

Composes lines beginning: “Death, wouldst that I

had died / While thou wert still a mystery." 117

Consequences of fame, violent rows,

professional disputes 118, 119

Disavows all his work 120

Bigamy, scandals, illness, admittance of

being “easily crazed, like snow.” 128

Theories of perspective published 129

Birth of children 129

Analysis of important works:

Wine glass with fingerprints

Nude on a blue sofa

The drunken fox trappers

Man wiping tongue with large towel

Hay bales stacked in a field

Self portrait

Self portrait with cat

Self portrait with frozen mop

Self portrait with belching duck 135

Correspondence with Cecco Angolieri 136

Dispute over attribution of lines: “I have

as large supply of evils / as January has

not flowerings.” 137

Builds first greenhouse 139

Falling-out with Angolieri 139

Flees famine 144

Paints Starved cat eating snow 145

Arrested for selling sacks of wind

to gullible peasants 146

Imprisonment and bewilderment 147

Disavows all his work 158

Invents the collar stay 159

Convalescence with third wife 162

Complains of “a dense and baleful wind

blowing the words I write off the page.” 165

Meets with Madam T. 170

Departures, mortal premonitions, “I think

I’m about to snow.” 176

Disavows all his work 181

Arrest and pardon 182

Last days 183

Last words 184, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 190

"Index" appeared in the 1982 collection Splurge. Paul Violi died in 2011 at the age of 66.