Surrealist Poetry and Art Sylvia Plath wrote many poems based on modernist and surrealist paintings in her short career as a writer. Some of these she wrote to describe the visual beauty of the painting in words, while others were almost entirely unrelated to the paintings they were supposed to be based on. In these cases, she uses both the titles of the paintings and the titles’ connotations in order to express her own internal desires. Regardless of the way in which she uses these works of art in her poetry, it is clear that she gains inspiration from them. Plath’s “Yadwigha, on a Red Couch, Among Lilies” is an incredibly vivid poem that uses visual imagery to describe the scene of Henri Rousseau’s “The Dream.” The painting itself is bizarre, with the main focus being a nude woman, dubbed Yadwigha by Plath, lying on a red couch in a jungle, and Plath seems to recognize and appreciate this oddity for what it is. She refutes the complaints of critics who say that a red couch has no right to be amidst this jungle scenery and justifies its presence as beautiful when contrasting with the delicate elegance of nature. She mentions how the contrast of the red “against fifty variants of green” (19) draws attention to the couch and Yadwigha lying upon it, making her seem even more stunning simply because she poses on something unexpected. In the second stanza, Plath addresses the complaints of critics that Yadwigha must choose between the natural green of the jungle and “the fashionable monde of the red couch” (10). The tone of the poem is very against choosing one world over the other, suggesting that Plath thinks both can exist together, complementing rather than opposing each other. When Henri Rousseau first unveiled his masterpiece “The Dream” in 1910, it was immediately recognized as beautiful but was also widely misunderstood. The painting is appropriately titled. As Rousseau once explained, “The woman on the sofa dreams that she has been transferred to this forest and she listens to the sound of the snake charmer.” Many critics simply could not understand why, if the woman is transported to the jungle via a dream, would the sofa on which she reclines appear with her. After all, when a person dreams at night, they do not typically include their bed in the dream. It is these very criticisms that Plath responds to nearly 50 years later. From a literal standpoint, a woman on a red sofa in the jungle makes no sense, but from a non-literal view, Yadwigha on her red couch adds her own beauty to the scene, making it much more than a simple jungle setting. The point of the painting is not to make all the elements fit together in a literal sense, but to make them fit together in a way that is visually appealing and that captures the imagination, transcending all logic and common sense in the process. “The Snake Charmer” was first shown in 1907, bringing Rousseau much acclaim in the art world and possibly helping to shape the development of surrealism (Babb). This painting is clearly an influence on “The Dream,” which was first shown three years later. The female snake charmer who is the focus of “The Snake Charmer” appears in the background of “The Dream,” where she is once again playing a pipe of some kind. The environments of both paintings are also very similar: both take place in a jungle setting under the same full moon, though “The Dream” is certainly far more diverse in both plant and animal matter. The snake charmer is found standing under branches of the same kind of tree in both paintings, later described by Plath as “heart-shaped” and “like catalpa leaves” (“Yadighwa, on a Red Couch, Among Lilies,” 6). Amazingly, these jungle environments were created “from visits to the zoo and botanical gardens, from postcards, books, and from Rousseau's vivid imagination,” as the artist never left France. (Tate Gallery) Sylvia Plath's poem, “Snakecharmer” bears little resemblance to Henri Rousseau's painting of the same title; instead, it is as if she wrote the poem not about the painting, but about the idea of a snake charmer. For one thing, Plath describes a male snake charmer, while the one that appears in Rousseau's masterpieces is female. Plath's snake charmer calls upon so many snakes that there is nothing visible but snakes that “he within this snakedom / Rules the writhings which make manifest / His snakehood” (15-17). The few snakes seen in Rousseau's painting don’t seem to be under the snake charmer's control, but are rather intrigued by the melody she produces. The male snake charmer also seems to be a devious character, possessing many qualities of a twisted God and creating “snaky generations: let there be snakes!” (20) out of “Eden's navel” (19). The female snake charmer, on the other hand, also makes an appearance in “The Dream,” suggesting that she is fit to appear in such a heavenly setting. Finally, while Rousseau's snake charmer seems to have summoned several snakes to her side, Plath's snake charmer creates the snakes and, when he grows tired, can banish them. Giorgio de Chirico's oil painting “The Disquieting Muses” is considered by many to be one of the great surrealist paintings and is widely recognized as de Chirico's best work. Unlike most surrealist works, which typically set a very positive and upbeat tone, de Chirico's few surrealist paintings are unique and much less lighthearted. It was because of this unusual spin on the standard surrealist style that de Chirico was spurned by most other surrealists, causing him to abandon the style in favor of classicism. His brief time creating surrealist works produced paintings that, much like other works within the style, have inspired viewers, including Sylvia Plath, to use their imaginations to create a story that goes beyond the still image in front of them. Plath's “The Disquieting Muses” seems to be another example of her inspiration through an idea gleaned from the title of a work of art, rather than something created from the actual content found within the painting. The painting seemed to mean little to Plath, who simply considered the title the perfect way to describe her mother's wishes for her. She uses the idea of “disquieting muses” as a metaphor for her inability to meet the societal demands expected by her mother. The muses in de Chirico's painting are three oddly put-together statues, while the ones Plath refers to are more like the ghosts of her failures that constantly follow and haunt her. Both sets of muses are certainly disquieting, but de Chirico's are more physically disturbing, while Plath's seem to be purposefully trying to make her feel inadequate and insecure in herself. Her inability to dance with the other children of her age or properly play the piano always disappointed these muses, even though her mother seemed to always love her. Only the last stanza of Plath's “The Disquieting Muses” properly describes the painting that inspired her. In this last stanza, she describes the muses as standing “their vigil in gowns of stone / Faces blank as the day I was born” (50-51). In this description, the muses are no longer vengeful ghosts that follow and torment the young Plath, but are instead mere statues, incapable of movement or emotion. She continues, saying “their shadows long in the setting sun / That never brightens or goes down” (52-53). This is a clear reference to the muses in de Chirico's painting, which are casting long shadows bathed in an orange light, giving the impression that the sun is either rising or setting. This last-minute change of tone suggests that Plath eventually overcame her tormenting muses, reverting them back to the statues of the painting. Sylvia Plath's poetry has inspired countless individuals to write over the past several decades, but it is important for those who enjoy her work to understand where she originally got her inspiration. The surrealist paintings on which she based many of her best works are often considered masterpieces, though like most surrealist works, they are not quite fully understood. While Plath sometimes takes these paintings and tries to describe and explain them, she occasionally creates entirely new stories to accompany the surrealist works. Whatever approach taken by Plath when writing these poems, she always created her own interpretation of the paintings based on her emotions and internal desires, perfectly describing how the paintings have personally affected her. ________________ Works Cited “'Le Douanier' Rousseau – Life and Works.” TheArtWolf.com, Online Art Magazine. Available at: http://www.theartwolf.com/rousseau_biography.htm Steinberg, Peter K. “Biography.” January, 1999, revised February/March 2000, and December 2007. Available at: http://www.sylviaplath.info/biography.html Tate Gallery, The. “Henri Rousseau, Jungles In Paris.” Available at: http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/rousseau/