moony

(Her white throat whiter than a moony pearl / Just threaded with a blue vein’s tapestry / Had not yet ceased to throb, and still her breast / Swayed like a wind-stirred lily in ambiguous unrest)

And oft at midnight’s moony scene

A faded form of ghastly mien

Across the waves doth glide;

And oft upon the passing gales

A plaintive voice the ear assails,

When wand’ring by the tide.

Well, ain’t it strange? Why, Aunt Polly, he was always so good and kind and moony and absent-minded and chuckle-headed and lovable—why, he was just an angel! What CAN be the matter of him, do you reckon?

In one of his earliest known paintings, A Carnival Evening, which was shown at the Salon des Independants in 1886, the clown may reflect the influence of Watteau, the clown's girlfriend perhaps was taken from an advertisement for chocolates, the lacy tangle of branches in the trees possibly echoes a postcard photograph of the Bois de Boulogne. They all fit together in a moony atmosphere which is the Duanier's own.