William Carlos Williams' "Danse Russe" and Venus Kallipygos / Callipygian · dance ruse

William Carlos Williams "Danse Russe" has a ruse and the trope moves about the sculpture Venus Callipygian or Venus Kallipygos of Naples.

Sadly, "Danse Russe" is absent from the most common paperback collection of his work.

The poem can be heard at Project Gutenberg and it can be read here.

The moment would make a great scene in a film (so much more so than Mark Ruffalo in his white pants in Spotless Mind.)

"Danse Russe" -  unlike Rimbaud's "Vénus Anadyomène" with its medical cue.  And was William's torso that of an Apollo? An Ares?  Note: the sun.

I would argue that the white disc of the sun is the full moon, with the shining trees and the mist.  The drawn blinds are yellow due to the incandescent lamp.  He is in his north room, not in the light of a lunatic.  Key word: grotesque as in grotto.  He is not draped in his white shirt like a serf or a belted Cossack - he is undraped as is the admiring Venus.

The fascination with the Venus looking upon herself and a Venus reconstructed, reinvented.  We are very far from Narcissus here and from perception and mere reflection as knowledge.

Did he imagine those other writers in Paris?  Is his "north" room New England?  Well, Paris is very much to the north in France, and even more so viewed from Greece, or even Naples.  But in may merely be that a north room in New England has no moonlight.  But he is casting shadows while before a mirror.  His song is deceptively simple.

Could the Venus, partially undraped, contemplating herself, be satisfied in a poem?

Suppose you only had a fragment of the statue - or the poem?  And im nu, there it is: ν the Greek 'n' - for this song, this lyric, is not "lonely" but "lovely".

Russe - another alphabet - in which the 'N' is our 'H', Helen is Хелен.  And in Gaelic, his Kathleen?

You might say that his ditty points to Αφροδίτη.

But if my interpretation can be defended, consider how it had been inaccessible if my text of "Danse russe" were in translation?  And that could be the final clue in the title chosen by Wm. Carlos Williams.