This month we are happy to bring you “the decorations,” a meditation on Monet at Giverny, by long-time TC-contributor PETER FILKINS.
Peter Filkins
Contextual Note
Claude Monet donated to the French state the twenty-two panels that make up the installation of eight large water lily paintings at the Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris upon his death at age 86 in 1926. The following spring the permanent exhibition was opened to the public. Monet started the series in his studio in Giverny after his son Jean’s death in 1914, just as World War I was getting underway, and while still grieving the loss of his second wife Alice in 1911, having lost his first wife Camille many years earlier. From Giverny he could hear the bombardment of the trenches throughout the war, where his son Michel and son-in-law Jean-Pierre both served. Despite his age, struggles with cataracts, and the threat of German invasion, he stubbornly refused to leave. At the end of war, Georges Clemenceau, the Prime Minister of France and Monet’s best friend, convinced him to donate all of the panels to France after spending three days with him at Giverny following the Armistice. Though the contract for the gift was signed in 1922, Monet refused to let go of the paintings. He continued to work on them, destroyed nearly five hundred canvases he was dissatisfied with, and relinquished them only at his death.
–Peter Filkins
the decorations
Monet at Giverny
what we see is what was seen
water suffused the depth of sky
traversed by clouds beneath a sun
absorbed within a pond constructed
for the pleasure of the eye and motifs
to paint closing out a century
open to another now gone
the way of sunlight captured still
in carmine aqua the blue abandon
of effaced perspective closed horizons
willow wisteria iris bent
head-heavy flowers afloat amid
an aimless course of days
the scope of years and time to come
ablaze experienced impressions
caught within the shape of light
.
canvas and brushes easel set
due east north light sifting down
plein air the surface studied
himself intent configuring what
strokes and scrapings render release
the weathered shoreline of belle-ile
haystacks dozing poplars erect
rouen’s cathedral ravished by sun
or further inland closer yet
willful lushness on a winding path
capricious with peonies nasturtiums
azaleas warm imbricate gradations
of indigo ochre emerald green
those violet amaranth ruby
swirls streaked emanations seen
by a gaze ashine with welling hue
.
is a cloud a cloud or is it
that smoky billow here now gone
the next minute whirling
in space at last set free
of shoreline willow reeds
or water lilies floating where
there is no there but here
amid the pulse of light unseen
dispensed and flooding through
a skylit studio his cigarette’s ash
protruding from a puff of beard
white as white lightning sharp
the flash the moment gleaned
from a morning’s work before
blanche the blue angel rings a bell
for lunch served hot in bony cold
.
daubings of an old man lost
to cataracts rage the luminous
abyss and bleary fathoms
he mined alone in giverny
camille delicate camille taken
by cancer all those years ago
followed of late by stalwart alice
leveled like the glassy surface
of a twilit pond reflecting
despair he knew then painted
burying next his eldest son
as war unwound those trenches
of pigment plied in ripples
water vibrant on the weft
of canvas covered even if
those barbarians wished to kill him
.
to see the real in the flux
of change the world unresting
restless abrim about to explode
in cadmium coral white fleshy
flowers to the thrum of guns
along the marne the fog at ypres
unleashing ghostly gassy death
to hundreds then thousands
innumerably spent forever lost
another failed painting slashed
and tossed to the crackling fire
whose char-black smoke spews
fury again the quick impossible
shift of color in a second’s lapse
such torturous weather this
crippling war satanic travail
.
pissarro is dead cézanne too
swept away like willowed flotsam
that brute degas gone as well
chafing tides the sea of years
long ago battles fought discarded
ballast tossed from fame’s balloon
rising like heat and the unheard prices
feeding straw to the fires of need
for more garden cuttings variants
ordered planted engendering
each new season’s sway of color
a passing petal’s promised decay
the charge to paint and counter
come what may with what life
is left its pinched horizons
renoir arthritic rodin a wreck
.
askew yet undulant lush
those contiguous impressions
objects space mordant time
charting dead-end paths
the sad inevitable disbanding
of a fête galante in a froth
of roses detached festoons
mystery evanescence
disposed in passing mobile
contentment amid the reverie
of this aquatic garden
as proust would have it never
having met his doppelgänger
possessed of liquid silence
beyond that cork-lined room
.
mirror without a frame
tipped consequentially upright
to an eye turned inward
ranging the plane he’d flattened
water earth and air
fluid impalpable approaching
form dissolved in space
the pond itself elliptical
its motion ponderable
within the birth of blue
water flowering a thing
of mind that won’t let go
the reeds the rushes hard
foliate light assemblages
of green and amethyst pink
swirls eddies sight sans thought
.
not all saw it so of course
sniping purblind critics
corrosive as a killing frost
the old man long washed up
pictorial suicide his withered
ecstasies those nymphéas
a sad last beachhead
on the shore of utter folly
as the war staggered on erasing
verdun pummelling the somme
michel and jean-pierre
somewhere on the front beyond
his mad enchantments glints
of nothingness minutiae
and magnitude brushstrokes
of breath transient mortal
.
la guerre rien que la guerre
snarled le tigre clemenceau
la peinture rien que la peinture
his own call to war and work
on a scale not seen before
six feet by fourteen obdurate
as conviction stretched end to end
curved creating the natural bent
of his back dug in
immense impacted muscular
will and seeded wonder
pressed to see it through
against long odds
berthas howitzers closing in
on this his final pursuit
unless the eyes played tricks on him
.
no no no no no
it cannot be will not do
another canvas ruined decreed
unsalvageable cut to rags
gone wrong unhinged
bitter waves of anguish
all five hundred executed
in misery’s unmaking
while the willows wept
contorted dark with anger
blanche the buffer to his moods
thick as pigment acrid oil
mixed and stirred before
that infernal empty canvas
tempting reprieve condemned
and chasing a sliver of color
.
the pond is but a blur
the blur refracted held
in a swim of light collecting
all he sees all that he knows
paint the memory of paint
the azure air azure water
transparent iridescent set mirror
of all within soon cancelled
by organic infiltrations
petal and leaf corollas burst
soft scythings of the wind
dissembling a wayward cloud
that is there and still
not there impenetrable
as day advancing slow
the speed the quickly gone
.
so too the many passions
of a generation swept
away the western front
a maw of muddy death
encroaching ever near
while ultimate the question
posed is to leave or stay
somehow stay the years
with all that’s done and yet
to be no matter the huns
advancing on paris reims
in ruins the blunt burst of shells
like no tomorrow raining
days on end a palette poised
resilient as his constant longing
for a pouch of sweet tobacco
.
at last the celebration
relief an armistice signed
le tigre tout de suite to giverny
to inspect the water lilies
the repugnant cost the waste
left behind but for
a moment fathomed sought
finding his dearest friend
braced as sunlight keen
to honor france’s victory
two panels chosen willow lily
larger yet their conversation
soon of a series circular grand
decorations housed in quiet rooms
to ease fatigue a pond afloat
dissolving all boundaries space and
.
time and salving nature
rethought reconfigured
form content tangibility
elusive now the ineffable
submission of the realist
to every stimulus falling
upon his roving retina
a universe and its workings
laid bare made visible
lucid the was that now is
a weather of light on water
trapped fire in a flame of sun
mounted there for all
to see the seen while seeing
incarnate before them
no other light than color
.
yet how difficult it was
to restore a war-worn country
scarred villages destroyed
little vermeers of ruin
impressionism itself
called to task dim politicians
dubbing it violent anarchist
at war with time and nature
which he was at eighty
sudden advanced occlusions
flooding the field with haze
his grand decorations
shrunken distorted bereft
done in that famous eye
hungry for sunlit work
and toil will be the end of him
.
a penny for your thoughts
old man near blind surrounded
by water obstinate mercurial
the will to see it through
albeit defeated hopeless
gardening painting food
your great loves vanquished
bleak black baleful moods
invasive as lilies rooted
deep in intractable mud
shooting green stems and stalks
to unfold as pale mitered flowers
thirsting animate throngs
of light grown slanted
clogging the flown expanse
old man a penny for your thoughts
.
there is no end no
beginning there is only
articulated corpuscles
fulminating the reach of day
light dawned on semblance
in the studio prepped
to prevail subsume subtend
that fluid domain
desire driving memory
of those fugitive effects
subsurface undulating
currents of the corpus
sensed as much as seen
despite the cataract
removed and yet remaining
deep troubled impossible things
.
nothing but to complete
the incomplete shades and
shadows mixed within
the well-versed look
transformed inured to
loss after loss amassing
mass in painted panels
ready to be hung attached
glued to l’orangerie ovals
emptied patient as a pond
buoying space beneath
a glass-roofed well
bridging the above with
what lies below beyond
the look the brush the paint
.
paint paint till the canvas
bursts barks clemenceau
days months years a curse
of if not now then when
it must be done must be
the measureless dream of life
he sought to somehow find
ephemeral as any lasting
surge of joy or grief
unless sure dissolution
itself is transformed abundant
nameless nothingness exuding
green a swath of blue
roseate nymphéas seized
in a floating world affixed
its deadline the ever unknown
.
there is an art to leaving
another to entering in
life’s foreshortened river
slow drifting onward on
time’s turbid reach and grasp
lapped by waves of loss
camille alice and jean
young suzanne now marthe
brief manifestations seen
the rising of the mist
releasing light and shadow
to articulate the lilies
painted scribbled
notations of the cost
yellow amaranthine
vestiges of what was
.
anguish amid the ordinary
imbalance balanced
inside the lamplit studio
of each studied day
now the curated hush
of willows shoreline clouds
afloat the depths of water
within the healing calm
we experience beyond
our paltry ills and manias
for a moment left us
created handed down
as imperfection bearable
colossal the inner vision
he saw in savage savored
shadings of a raptured mind
Claude Monet at Giverny
Peter Filkins has previously published five poetry collections, including The View We’re Grantedand Water/Music. His poetry has received the Sheila Motton Best Book Award from the New England Poetry Club, the Stover Award in Poetry from Southwest Review, the New American Press Chapbook Award, and a Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist Fellowship. He has also been the recipient of an Outstanding Translation Award from the American Literary Translators Association, a Berlin Prize from the American Academy in Berlin, and residencies at MacDowell, Yaddo, Millay, Jentel Arts, Hawthornden Castle, the Tyrone Guthrie Centre, and the James Merrill House. His poems, essays, reviews, and translations have appeared in numerous publications, including Poetry, The Paris Review, Harper’s, The New Republic, The Yale Review, The Sewanee Review, andThe New York Times Book Review. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, three fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, a Leon Levy Fellowship in Biography, and two Fulbright Fellowships, until recently he taught writing and literature at Bard College at Simon’s Rock and courses in translation at the main campus of Bard College.
