Monet Refuses the Operation and other texts

[hp 4ever!]

"Monet Refuses the Operation" in relation to other texts and life in general:
**"Doctor, you say that there are no haloes around the streetlights in Paris and what I see is an aberration caused by old age, an affliction" ( Mueller 1-4). "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" (Mueller 41-46).
These two quotes are a personal favorite of mine because they show that the Doctor (who's a pratical person...that is deemed to be book-smart yet, not creative) can be refered to any person "blinded " by pratically anything.
For instance, in relation to Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible, one can compare the young Monet to Nathan Price because firstly, his left eye is partially blinded from his war experience as Monet's eyesight worsened due to his old age. He is also "blinded " by his arrogance and ignorance of the people that he does not notice the hidden messages in texts like his daughter finds, or the cycle of life based on nature as his wife does. The young Monet admits that "it has taken [him] all of his life to arrive at the vision of gas lamps as angels" (Mueller 5-6).
However, Nathan never reaches a period in his somewhat short life where he too can see beyond the fact that a gas lamp is something much more than just a gas lamp becuase he is killed. Thus, he is like the Doctor in the sense that the Doctor also never sees beyond the typical, pragmatic depiction for entities.
In contrast, Orleanna Price is quite similar to the older, and "wiser" Monet for she in the beginning does not see many things such as the conspiracy and the circle of life. However, later she sees that the Price family was present during an important moment of history as well as the circle of life which is depicted in Euller's poem by the assertion that the "Houses of Parliment dissolve night after night to become the fluid dream of the Thames" (22-25).
What others texts does this concept of being in the dark (not able to see) apply to?

[mzmarymack]

To answer your question, Heart of Darkness, of course! I'll elaborate on that later.

As for the poem, I thought it might be nice to access it here.

Monet Refuses the Operation

Doctor, you say that there are no haloes
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 three-dimensional 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?
I will not return to a universe
of objects that don't 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 it 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 changes 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.

~ Lisel Mueller ~



oh my gosh! i love this poem! i wish i could write this well.
my thoughts on it..

"I tell you it has taken me all my life to arrive at the vision of gas lamps as angels,to ... 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 ... are the same state of being.... I will not return to a universe of objects that don't 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"

Wow. That says so many things on so many levels.
We spend our lives learning rules of the world, but self-knowledge calls for realizing that these rules mean nothing. There is no horizon--no fine line separating the sky and the water. It's all connected, and we're all connected.
"as if islands were not the lost children of one great continent"
I think this is referring to Pangaea (sp?). All of the continents were once a "supercontintent" called Pangaea. Accordingly, all of the races of people came from one--Adam and Eve. It's this idea of unity that we see everywhere.

"The world is flux, and light becomes what it touches, becomes water, lilies on water, above and below water"
Light covers everything. If we focus on water--a body of water, we have three parts--what's beneath the surface, the surface itself, and what's above the surface. If you think of one of those underwater plants (kelp??) that attach themselves to the bottom of the ocean and still stick up above the surface, they represent the combination of...well--everything. They contain each region of the water, and they have unity.

[hp 4ever!]

I highly agree!! I love your evaluation of this poem.
Honestly, this is one of my all time favorite poems considering that it truly devles into the meaning of perspective. This relates to Adah Price in the sense that both share an affliction that essentially the gateway to view matters in a more creative & imaginative manner. In fact, I wrote an entire essay relating these two works in great detail.

[prendrelemick]

How can you asses this poem without mentioning Monet's paintings and his developement as an impressionist painter? The words are surely all about his paintings. His Houses of Parliament, his water lilies, his Rouen Cathederal, his wisteria strewn bridge in his garden. After 54 years he stopped painting the object and began to paint the light that fell upon it, or that surrounded it, or that reflected off it.
The poet is trying to put into words the artistic vision that created them.

[mzmarymack]

I don't know much about Monet actually. I take the blame for that myself. We need to put forth more of an effort to be more educated, culture-wise.

It's amazing how much a painting can convey. From the picture, we make so many word associations. We were studying Picasso's The Old Guitarist, and it was a bit shocking that we inferred so much about not only the guitarist, but Picasso himself. The blues in the painting notified us that it was from his Blue Period, etc.
Anyways, for a poem, the opposite is true. From words, we create images. Vivid images that capture if not all five senses, then a majority of them.

so hp 4ever!, you're saying that Monet's weak eyes and Adah's hemiplegia force them to view the world in a manner that they would not have had they been "normal"?
That's really insightful! I never thought of that!
I'm not saying Monet was not creative, because that would be the most ignorant comment I've made in a while. But he had to channel his creativity through a different medium.

And now I'm very confused. Mueller wrote the poem, right? About Monet's weakening eyes? Or was it Monet who wrote the poem and Mueller is.... ____?