Monet See's Beauty In His Afliction

Interpretation of “Monet Refuses the Operation” by Lisel Mueller

In “Monet Refuses the Operation” by Lisel Mueller, Monet is having a conversation with his doctor about the reasons he should not have surgery on his left eye. Monet refuses to have the surgery to correct what has “taken [him] all [his] life to arrive at” (5-6). “If only [the doctor] could see how heaven pulls earth into its arms” (44) then he would understand how beautiful Monet sees his world as “blue vapor without end” (46). After already having one surgery on his right eye, Monet argues the reasoning for going through with another surgery on his left eye to correct what he does not want to see as a problem. Monet insists throughout the poem that his vision is more of a nuisance to his doctor than to himself. No matter how conflicted the doctor believes Monet’s world to be due to his cataracts, Monet sees beauty in his “affliction” (4).

This surgery to correct Monet’s cataracts would “restore [his] youthful errors: fixed notions of top and bottom, the illusion of three-dimensional space” (15-18). What Monet sees in everything is beauty even if his world is distorted in the view of analytical doctor – he believes that distortion gives his world depth. Beauty that would take “a long streaming hair inside [Monet’s] brush to catch it” (36-37) is the distortion he wishes not to change. Why are we so eager to correct someone else’s problem when they don’t see it as a problem? That seems to be exactly what the doctor is trying to do by correcting Monet’s vision with cataract surgery. The doctor says “there are no halos around the streetlights in Paris” (1-2), but to Monet he sees a relationship between objects instead of “objects that don’t know each other” (26). In a continually changing world, Monet believes “light becomes what it touches” (29). The doctor regrets that Monet does not see fine lines, but instead of perfectly drawn lines, he sees a relationship between wisteria and “the bridge it covers” (19). It sounds like he has been waiting his whole life to see this relationship, and correcting it would be the distortion.

“Doctor, if only you could see” (42-43) the beauty in Monet’s world where “heaven pulls earth into its arms” (44) then seeing perfectly may be - not seeing at all. When Monet paints his world it involves relationships with objects and not fine lines. The doctor has been trained to see all of the fine lines so to Monet he believes it is the doctor that needs the correction. The very magic of this poem is in the last lines when Monet says, “how, infinitely the heart expands to claim this world, blue vapor without end” (45-46). Monet distinctly proves that the doctor must try and see with his heart the beauty of the world and then he would understand the importance of Monet keeping his ‘affliction’.

Impressionism involves light and its changing qualities and the inclusion of movement which does not allow for fine lines and distinct objects. Claude Monet is known as the “father” of impressionism meaning he brought this type of art into existence. He painted what he saw with all of its natural distortions and with old age he was now able to see the fruition of his life’s work with “vision[s] of gas lamps as angels” (6). He turned an affliction into seeing the beauty of not seeing “the edges” (8) that the doctor regretted he could not see.

Monet Refuses the Operation

by Lisel Mueller

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.