“Les Nymphéas,” 1916/1919
Blue deeper than blue.
The water lilies’ roots trail down into the muck of earth, the muck of sleep, the ooze of infinity. Here and there the blue is dabbed with lilies. Above all, one white flower floats upon the surface, its petals open, its heart like a yolk: moist, polleny. No wonder they say the Buddha holds a lotus. The lilies come not from vision—for it’s deeper than a vision—but from a dwelling in serenity. Cobalt blue, pine green, the brush strokes give you shadows and weeping willow branches on the water—but make you think of lily stems as well, sinking, wavering, releasing. This is not a pond in time’s boundaries, though it is Giverny. It is not a pond with edges, though the lower lefthand corner, with its small brown swath for earth and its upstanding greens and chartreuse for grasses, make us know there are edges to this rapture.
There are crowds in the museum. But this painting grew in silence. You cannot tell where the branches end, the reflections of branches begin. And in that space the nymphéas blossom. Nymphs, spirits, they bloom on the skin of water, as willow leaves like emerald snakes wriggle down around them.
Oh you know Monet like anyone had his affaires du jour, his rivalries and headaches. But the wavery brush strokes—such freedom of painting translated from trance into the hand—bypass the careful, careworn brain entirely. So his suffering doesn’t matter. It’s what is made that matters. Like these nymphéas, these translucent yokings of spirit and water. And the one most radiant flower—the star, third eye, fire’s illumination.
Sauver ou périr. Save or perish. Nothing else is any good. The soul is starving.
– ann fisher-wirth