Henri Rousseau, The Waterfall (1910), oil on canvas
When the white men came Left their priest here with his tales of Jesus and original sin we of course recognised the Garden of Eden For is not the place we live in the very same
If we want to talk to God we go to the waterfall We know our God is everywhere In plants, and beasts, and soil – the rain that feeds the river But it is here that we do truly hear her call
God waters the grass we bend to make our huts Where even now the priest leads evening prayers But I prefer our God’s song –I do not care For wearing clothes, or to hear his stories -of which he has lots
Just like the snake, the priest would give us knowledge Of our nakedness, our nature as sinners But I know we still live in the garden, where we can pluck dinner From the very trees, or, grateful, take in the life of brother deer
So whilst my kin listen to the priest’s lies I slip away to the never-ceasing waterfall Whose plashy tones are our God’s call Endlessly flowing ‘neath Her created skies…
Over at dVerse Poets Pub, Melissa Lemay in Poetics, invites us to respond to the paintings of Henri Rousseau. Melissa was in part, inspired by a poetic exchange between myself and Merril about Rousseau on her site Collaborature which you can read here.
Merril D. Smith – a dVerse Poets Pub aficionado and I have made a collaborative project over on Collaborature, run by another dVerse luminary and friend, Melissa Lemay!
Rousseau Exchange #1
by Merril D. Smith and Andrew Wilson
Dear Merril,
I confess I am quite envious of your recent visit to the Henri Rousseau Exhibition since I have never seen his work in the flesh and I suspect it is even more vibrant than the many reproductions suggest. I wonder if the painting The Representatives of Foreign Powers Coming to Greet the Republic as a Sign of Peace was one of the paintings you saw?
For a celebration symbolic of Peace why are there so many military uniforms in evidence?
Why is the celebration of the Republic by citizens dancing more convincing than Rousseau’s imaginary “photo-op”?
How did the delegates who only merited small flags wave their Olive branches with greater vigour to compensate?
Did the French people, whose fields hosted the First World War appreciate the true irony of this painting…?
Best – Andrew
Dear Andrew,
Thank you for your letter. I send you good wishes on the autumn winds blowing here, but who knows what destruction they will bring.
I did not see The Representatives of the Foreign Powers Coming to Salute the Republic as a Gesture of Peace at the exhibition. Did you know Picasso once owned it? And that he threw a party for the artist, nicknamed “douanier,” the customs officer—though he called Rousseau a joke.
Perhaps, it’s not irony, but innocence, a painting painted before either world wars,
perhaps it’s optimism or hope. Mostly, I wonder about the lion. Rousseau seemed very fond of lions.
I think about his earlier work, La Guerre painted in 1894, with its avenging-revenging goddess, an otherworldly horse, a nightmare scene of broken bodies and devouring crows, no attempt to make it heroic, this is visceral, brutal–
yet when I look at it again, the white torsos of the fallen men seem almost angelic.
What do you think, Andrew?
Rousseau Exchange #2
by Merril D. Smith and Andrew Wilson
Dear Merril
Thank you for your good wishes, borne on the wind, sooner or later, every breath of America wends Eastward you may have to wait a little longer for mine to reach you West-about…
I agree that the lion is fascinating, not just because, it is suggested, it represents French power, and as such, looks remarkably docile; but also, the lion is very strange looking. Rousseau was considered a Naïve or Primitive artist, but that doesn’t mean he can’t draw well but he had never been outside France, his animals are taken from illustrations in children’s books, and tableaux of taxidermy wild animals.
why did Rousseau choose to make the figure of War female why is the French word for war, La Guerre feminine
dressed in blinding, angelic white as she leaps from her jet black horse brandishing a sword and Death’s scythe to alight on the field of the fallen
is it for modesty that the one fallen person on the battlefield whose front we see is fully-dressed – all others naked…
even before the big guns of the First World War cannons could lay waste to trees as well as people
Here is another Rousseau painting of a lion “The repast of the Lion” – this time its head is quite lion-like…
if artists only painted what they had seen with their own eyes and writers wrote only what they had experienced though passed by the sensitivity readers would we survive the dullness of reading or looking…
if the jungle was so plentifully provident of bananas would we have ever left the trees and evolved
did the lion get indigestion from wolfing down the crocodile headfirst and how well hidden are the elephants in Rousseau’s hothouse jungle
What are your thoughts, Merril?
Dear Andrew,
Thank you once again for your letter and good wishes. With climate change, who knows when and where the winds might blow? Or where they might blow us.
As for war and lions—it’s impossible to know what Rousseau was thinking.
Perhaps the lion was symbolic— lying down with peace?
Perhaps it was merely fantasy or exoticism.
War, “la guerre,” must be female, I suppose. But this one is striking, a savage, feral child.
Not that era’s ideal image of childhood or womanhood, for that matter. No sugar and spice there. Only blood.
Nightmarish.
A curator said Rousseau was a story-giver, not a storyteller—the pieces there, for us to weave together.
Perhaps it’s better then, not to wonder what he intended, but simply to see where the images take us.
Did you know his lawyer got him acquitted— in a trial for passing bad checks—
he told the judge Rousseau was too naïve to commit the crime, just look at this painting, he said, where an American Indian wrestles with a gorilla.
Rousseau probably knew what the lawyer was going to say,
maybe even wrapped that persona around himself, wearing It proudly, the naif, the self-taught genius, he was extremely self-confident, it seems.
I can see how his work with its dream-like quality
appealed to the surrealists,
But in fact, I’m still not certain if I like it.
No, I take that back, I like some of it,
I do have a fondness for dreams.
You mentioned the odd-looking lion, but Andrew have you seen the children Rousseau painted?
Look at the daughter in the carriage here— how tiny she is! How large the father driving! And the dogs. I think Rousseau must have liked dogs.
There is a third and final post to come and I will append it here when it “drops”!
You have done it on your own the craft of poetry garnering your words identifying your voice never mixing metaphors unless you mean to accenting with alliteration tackling subjects from waxing lyrical about nature to sounding the clarion calls to activism in a world gone mad…
Now, why not try the delights of collaboration… a dance á deux a menage á trois an orgy of poesie with multiple poets if you will bat stanzas back and forth ekphrast a painting or photograph by a friend why do it on your own when you can do it together become a collaborator…
Ten months ago, our very own Melissa Lemay, started an online journal of collaborative poetry, Collaborature so why not head over there and have a gander at all the exciting poems that have been submitted and then reach out to another poet to have a go at collaboration…
Since January this year, my friend Melissa Lemay, has been publishing her online journal Collaborature. As the name implies, it is a place for collaborative writing and other forms of creativity to thrive. You can find out more about Collaborature and how to submit work here.
Melissa also interviews some of her contributors and I was recently the subject of just such an interview. Amongst the many things we talked about, was our own collaborative project in which we are writing an epic saga called Shipmates. It was inspired by “The Golden Gate”, a novel by Vikram Seth, written entirely in sonnet form in the 1970s. He, in turn, was inspired by Pushkin’s novel “Eugene Onegin”, though I only found that out well into the project. We don’t know how far this project will carry on – it will publish in chapters, mostly around seven sonnets each, every two weeks. There follows, the first two verses of Chapter 1…
Shipmates
Whale Struck and Love Struck
1:1 Mid-ocean is a lonely place But some seek there to sail The Pacific is the greatest space But not to run into a whale As Kate found snoozing in her bunk She woke to find her whole world sunk With barely time to don Mae West And swim out leaving all the rest Before her precious yacht and home Dove downwards to Pacific deep Kate left ringed with flotsam and foam She searches but finds nought to keep Some way off the whale’s spout she espies And though a tough cookie, Kate just cries…
1:2 Alas, the salt, it dries her skin And oil it overcompensates Causing blotches, discoloration And what of it if true love waits O’er yonder past the waterspout? She thinks perhaps a whale to mount Could be an achievable task Should she calculate around the blast Choose wisely time to take the reins Lest end up shot to Port of Spain Though, admittedly wouldn’t be so bad A holiday in the Caribbean Kate snaps back to reality In just the nick of time to see…
