Sylvia Plath's transformations of modernist paintings

College Literature, Summer 2002 by Zivley, Sherry Lutz

"Yadwigha"

In "Yadwigha, on a Red Couch,Among Lilies," based on Henri Rousseau's "The Dream" (1910, "Le Revel" 204.5 x 298.5 cm., Museum of Modern Art, NewYork), Plath again does little more than give details of the painting in a static, flat-affect, museum-catalogue-like description of it. Then she lists the "baroque couch / Upholstered in red velvet," the "tigers and tropical noon" and "the intricate wilderness of green / Heart-shaped leaves," the "snakes," the "birds of paradise," a wide-eyed naive, and innocuous-- looking snakecharmer, and Yadwigha's "dark eyes" and white body. She mentions the painting's complementary colors-the red and the "fifty variants of green."

She shifts her attention to summarize what "Rousseau told the critics," which was "why the couch / Accompanied you," and what he told a friend, that he was "possessed by the glowing red of the couch" and then exclaimed, "Such red!" She even includes the reactions of Rousseau's contemporary critics, saying they "nodded at the couch" and "numbered the many shades of green."

"Snakecharmer"

Plath's technically accurate description of the painting "Snakecharmer (1907, "La Charmeuse de serpents," 169 x 189.5 cm, Musee d'Orsay, Paris) catalogues the painting's details-the snakecharmer, the "moon-eye," the water, the necks, and the snakes. But she also gives the snakecharmer a context, saying "As the gods began one world, and man another, / So the shakecharmer begins a snaky sphere." Furthermore, she imagines the results of his piping. Unlike the Genesis God's creations, the snakecharmer creates a "snakedom," by calling forth "As out of Eden's navel ... lines / Of snaky generation." She writes, "let there be snakes?" / And snakes there were, are, will be." In contrast to the God of Genesis, of whom it can be said at the end of each day of his creating, "And God saw that it was good," Plath implies that not only was what the snakecharmer created evil, but that his created evil "will [continue to] be, till yawns / Consume this piper and he tires of music" (Hughes 1981, 79).

In "Snakecharmer, Plath goes beyond the mere descriptions of the paintings she has done in "Battle-Scene" and "Yadgwah" and creates her own work of art-one which refers to and was influenced by Rousseau's painting but which clearly transcends it. Unlike the flat, catalogue-like descriptions of "The Seafarer" and "Battle-Scene," the central figure "The Snakecharmer," named for Rousseau's "The Snake Charmer" ("La Charmeuse de Serpants," 1907) comes alive and is three-dimensional in Plath's poem. In it she is no longer merely describing the attributes of the two-dimensional painting (what in fiction would be called "plot"5), but rather she is depicting the character, events, and world of the painting (what in fiction is called "story"6). As the snakecharmer "pipes a world of snakes," the world he creates is ominous. It is a world in which the snakecharmer at first appears merely to have the power to transform the world about him-the snake-like forms of the trees, the tree limbs, and the neck of the duck-into real snakes.The "reedy lengths and necks and undulatings" become snakes, the ground becomes "a wave of flickering grass tongues." Everything is "snakes," "sways and coilings," and "writhings," all of which are generated from "the snake-rooted bottom / Of his mind."