Monet Refuses the Operation
Lisel Mueller
Lisel Mueller
Monet Refuses the Operation
around the streetlights in Paris
and what I see is an aberration
caused by old age, an affliction.
I tell you it has taken me all my life
to arrive at the vision of gas lamps as angels,
to soften and blur and finally banish
the edges you regret I don't see,
to learn that the line I called the horizon
does not exist and sky and water,
so long apart, are the same state of being.
Fifty-four years before I could see
Rouen cathedral is built
of parallel shafts of sun,
and now you want to restore
my youthful errors: fixed
notions of top and bottom,
the illusion of parallel space,
wisteria separate
from the bridge it covers.
What can I say to convince you
the Houses of Parliament dissolve
night after night to become
the fluid dream of the Thames?
Monet Refuses the Operation (con't)
I will not return to a universe
of objects that do not know each other,
as if islands were not the lost children
of one great continent. The world
is flux, and light becomes what it touches,
becomes water, lilies on water,
above and below water,
becomes lilac and mauve and yellow
and white and cerulean lamps,
small fists passing sunlight
so quickly to one another
that if would take long, streaming hair
inside my brush to catch it.
To paint the speed of light!
Our weighted shapes, these verticals,
burn to mix with air
and chance our bones, skin, clothes
to gases. Doctor,
if only you could see how heaven pulls earth into its arms
and how infinitely the heart expands
to claim this world, blue vapor without end.
Some Helpful Info...
For more information: http://psych.ucalgary.ca/PACE/VA-Lab/AVDE-Website/Monet.html
Rouen Cathedral, The Façade in Sunlight 1894
Le Parlement de Londres, soleil couchant, 1903
Water Lilies and Japanese Bridge 1899
Interpretation
The author, Lisel Mueller, is trying to communicate that what society, represented by the doctor, sees as deterioration and aging is truly the culmination of life experiences that leads to wisdom, allowing a person to see the world in a more beautiful light.
The poem could also be trying to express that the young curiosity of the world nowadays (represented by the doctor) is getting so caught up in trying to figure how and why works as they do through numbers and science that they can no longer see the beauty, mystery, and magic in not knowing. Much like if you take an impressionist painting like Monet's works, the scientific world is getting so caught up in looking at the little brush strokes that they don't take a step back to see the big picture that is created.