HAIKU DIALOGUE – Surrealistic Art – “I and the Village” – commentary

Surrealistic Art with Guest Editor Lafcadio

For the next few weeks I would like to be your docent in The Haiku Foundation museum. We will only have time to visit the surrealism gallery, which I’m sure will have enough inspiration for getting in touch with our subconscious mind and release its creative potential through the power of the irrational juxtaposition in these drawings and paintings.

First, we can discuss surrealism some to make sure we are all on the same page, or in the same room. Surrealism is an artistic movement that began in the early 20th century. Surrealistic painters created dreamlike and often inexplicable images. One of the major characteristics of this kind of painting is the comparison of unrelated entities and components. This creates a surprise for the viewer and hopefully carries them into a world of fantasy and symbolism. This technique of painting not only challenged traditional painting but was also a representation of the social and political upheavals of society after the trauma and disillusionment of World War I. Still, surrealistic painting is used today to transcend the boundaries of the ordinary and deliver us in the realm of extraordinary.

I can’t remember which came first for me…surrealistic poetry or surrealistic paintings. Either way I am firmly entrenched in surrealism and would love to see your responses to some of the surrealistic artwork. There is so much abstraction and symbolism in the drawings and paintings, I think there will be ample material to use in writing haiku and senryu.

Below is Lafcadio’s commentary for “I and the Village”:

hometown visit
every alley stares back
differently

Nitu Yumnam
India

The painting “I and the Village” was painted by Marc Chagall of his hometown, Vitebsk, where he grew up. I like that Nitu points out it is different from when Chagall lived there. It has been renamed to Belarus. It has become more modern as well as parts of it being destroyed during World War I. The painting shows the town as Chagall remembered it both in his memories and in dreams. Chagall was involved with the Surrealist group when he moved to Paris but had a deeper interest in Cubism. He kept surrealistic details by showing houses and people upside down to keep the idea of dreams in his paintings. Things that were upside down were usually people, animals, or places that held more emotional significance to him. But mostly he painted visually not from the subconscious. Therefore he never formally became a surrealistic painter. But by blurring reality with memories he could give his paintings a sense of nostalgia. Also, his paintings were credited by André Breton as bringing metaphor into modern painting. Chagall also moved away from the formal methods of Cubism which allowed the viewers to not have to analyze the established traits of the work but to rejoice and join in the scene.

mower on the road –
the shadow of his beloved
accompanies him

Stoianka Boianova
Bulgaria

Stoianka notices the upside-down figure of a woman as a shadow. Bella, Chagall’s wife, was never far from him or his paintings. They first fell in love in 1909 and found that they saw the world in a similar way, he in his paintings and she in the stories she wrote. When she first met Chagall, she wrote that his eyes were as blue as the sky and were almond-shaped like boats. She gave up writing for quite a while to assist Chagall in his art career. Bella is often seen in his paintings, mostly with the pair floating in the air together. Chagall felt this was the most passionate example of a couple in love to be drifting in the reverie of a dream together. Chagall left Paris to go back to Russia to marry Bella. Because of WWI they were stuck there and were involved in starting a new art school in Vitebsk and designing sets for the Russian Yiddish theater. However, the Russian government decided Chagall’s art was not appropriate for proletarians and he was dismissed. Bella and Chagall never returned to Russia except in their paintings and writings.

It has also been said that the ‘mower’ with the scythe is death and is symbolizing the death and suffering of so many Jews in the Russian Empire.

reflections –
in the river of memories
the church with the cross

Minko Tanev
Bulgaria

One of the first things I noticed in the painting were the crosses, on the church and on the beads of the green man and on the goat he is staring at. I thought it odd that he included those since he was a Hasidic Jew. I see Minko noticed the crosses as well. I found out later that Chagall included them to point out that the Jews were suffering in the Russian Empire and that Jesus was a Jew. He thought bringing attention to Jesus’ suffering during his crucifixion would alert Christians to the cruelty of killing Jews and hopefully bring them to action against it. Christians usually thought of the cross as representing redemption and hope but Chagall, instead, wanted the crosses in his paintings to represent the persecution and oppression of the Jews.

peasant’s dream–
in the sun’s core
tree of life

Anica Marcelic
Zapresic, Croatia

The tree of life is an important symbol in Chagall’s painting and in various religious, philosophical and mythological traditions. It can symbolize a sacred tree of knowledge that connects heaven and the underworld. It often represents the tree of good and evil in Genesis. Left in the garden after Adam and Eve were banned is the tree of life. A cherubim holding a sword of fire was placed there to keep anyone from using it anymore for the wisdom it contained. Anica linked the ‘tree of life’ in Chagall’s painting to the ‘peasant’s dream’ which is what the tree of life there is all about. It symbolizes the close bond between humans and their farm animals and the earth itself. That relationship was especially important to Chagall. Some have interpreted the tree of life in this painting as a plant he is bringing to the goat as a gift to show his affection for the animals that lived in his village.

room to room
drinking their moods…
connecting dots

Madhuri Pillai
Australia

I love the fragment ‘connecting dots.’ Some of us have some thinking to do (or moods to drink) about our childhood and past. Chagall had this opportunity through memory and painting. One interesting dot is the eyes of the goat and the green man connected by a thin white line, symbolizing the close relationship between Chagall and his village as well as his appreciation for the animals who worked with the humans. The goat is prominent in many of Chagall’s paintings. In “I and the Village” Jewish folklore is illustrated by the goat. On the Jewish Day of Atonement a red ribbon is tied around the goat’s neck to represent people’s sin. The goat is sent out into the woods to make amends for them. And to welcome the soul of sinners into heaven after their death.

The goat is never just a passive part of Chagall’s paintings. It has meaning and emotion in the religious connotations that form Chagall’s world view, as well as the farm life that brought him joy and the interdependence between animals and humans.

native village
colored scents
childhood

rodno selo
obojeni mirisi
djetinjstva

Zdenka Mlinar
Hrvatska

This poem uses the literary device of synesthesia that we mentioned in the last commentary. It is important to note that all the senses play a part in our memories. You can be reminded of a memory by a smell, a sound, a taste or a color. We can also see Chagall’s movement into Cubism. When cubist painting first began the art was severe and mostly artists used black, gray and ochre. But during Chagall’s time they had begun to use brighter colors and simple shapes, which we can see in this painting. Even if painting something sad he still used colors to develop shape and volume. One of the things I admire about Chagall is that he was always able to add love and compassion to his paintings. He has expressed that everything is love and if he added love to his paintings then they would be successful. Many of his paintings include a floating couple just married (usually he and his wife Bella) and always flowers and foliage. Chagall did not try to imitate nature with his colors but rather to suggest movement, planes and rhythms.

goat and I
a crescent moon
ties us both

Nalini Shetty
Mumbai, India

We have mentioned the significance of the goat in Chagall’s paintings, but in this poem Nalini also includes the moon. Chagall rarely used the moon in his paintings as a source of light or a celestial body. It was a symbol of love. It usually was a place opposite of earthly existence, a romantic place where the souls of lovers can meet and deepen their relationship. Chagall is known as a poet-painter because his shapes and all his colors usually symbolize something more than what they are. I like to compare this to the writing of haiku. Though we often write about a moment in time and about nature we often mean something deeper that our readers can discern.

dream landscape
my father’s blue face
blends into mine

Lori Kiefer
London UK

Now we finally arrive at one of the most prominent features of the painting. It is the green man. Lori says ‘blue’ but whether blue or green it is a representation of a picture of Chagall combined with the face of his grandfather. It is green because it symbolizes his deep connection to nature and his nostalgic memories of his hometown, where greenery is associated with life and vitality. Chagall used a picture of himself and his grandfather to show their mutual respect for growth, vegetation, the cyclical nature of life, and its connection to the earth. It can also represent his longing for his hometown and his introspective personality. In several European folklores there is a “green man” archetype often shown with a face covered in leaves, further reinforcing the association with nature and the spirit of the forest. True to his style Chagall shows both symbolic meaning and personal ties in his art.

my father’s guitar
songs from places far away
secrets without names

Margaret Lonsdale
Vancouver Island, Canada

I love the idea of a young Chagall listening to his father sing about places he had never heard about before. I can almost see them sitting around the fireplace drinking tea and listening to the songs, memorizing every verse. Chagall loved music and tried to include some in his paintings, usually by painting a fiddle. Often he painted a fiddler on the rooftop. His paintings inspired the title and the scenery of the Fiddler on the Roof play and movie. Loving music also indicated his devotion to Jewish culture. Jews believed that music was communion with God.

rubik’s canvas
almost solved
let x = green

Curt Linderman
Seattle

Well done, Curt! A witty and creative response to Chagall’s painting. I’m assuming x = green because of the green man but I can’t be sure. It would be difficult to completely ‘solve’ Chagall. During his lifetime he created 10,000 pieces of art. These were not all paintings but somehow with all his moving and the disruption of the wars there are only 1,022 known pieces of his art left.

summer dusk
the sink window frames
my mother’s face

John Pappas
United States

One of my favorite memories of my own mother is her standing in the kitchen window washing dishes. It felt comforting to see her there. In Chagall’s painting we see a face in the window of the Orthodox church. We don’t know if it is his mother, but we know it represents Jewish folklore that Chagall used often in his art. By putting a person in the church window its importance is emphasized. Chagall is known for painting with abstract arrangements that are fragmented, superimposed, and randomly assembled, almost like a jigsaw puzzle from a child’s imagination. John has pointed out just one of those puzzle pieces. Chagall’s painting contains multiple slices of symbolism in illogical groupings, and it is difficult to know which will grab someone’s attention.

departure day
the sound of the sea
still with me

Marion Clarke
Warrenpoint, Northern Ireland

Marion’s poem makes me feel comfort and nostalgia. Chagall had left his village and traveled to France just one year before painting this. He was meeting new artists and being introduced to new techniques and styles. But still it is his hometown memories and symbols that stay with him for life. When his wife Bella died in 1944 many of his paintings contained the floating couple to symbolize the grief he felt. Chagall was a sentimental artist. His art would always be a combination of religion and culture but also include something of personal influences. And maybe he was even inspired by the bleat of a goat or ‘the sound of the sea.’

searching through
my make-up bag
for a death mask

Patricia Hawkhead
England

When I read Patricia’s poem, I thought of the Covid mask I had carried with me for so long. But a death mask may refer to the death of so many Jews in Chagall’s lifetime. He was a witness to the Russian pogroms and the other widespread persecution and violence the Jews experienced during WWI. They were accused of being spies for the Germans. Where they lived was heavily restricted. Jewish communities were often taken hostage to control their population. Despite being treated this way they were forced to fight in the Russian army. His artwork also represented the Holocaust during WWII. During this time 2 million Jews of the Soviet Union were murdered, some in his beloved Belarus.

clinging
to the edges of village life
unnamed aurochs

Roberta Beach Jacobsen
Indianola, IA, USA

It is amazing how much I learn from the poems submitted. I had never heard of ‘aurochs.’ They lived in India two million years ago. They are the ancestors of all cattle. Unfortunately, aurochs were hunted to extinction in 1627. Cattle, of course, were important to Chagall’s village. The relationship between the animals and humans was close. It is interesting to read articles about “I and the Village” because sometimes the animals in the painting are called goats, sometimes cows and sometimes sheep. The one the green man is staring at is a goat because of its importance in many of Chagall’s paintings. But there were many other animals in the village as well. They were cared for as if they were family.

biology class
we dissect the cow’s eyeball
weep at its soft gaze

Jenny Shepherd
London, UK

Oh Jenny…here we have the opposite of treating an animal like family. I felt like weeping. This does make a good comparison of how we dissect Chagall’s painting. We take it apart piece by piece and almost weep at the ‘soft gaze’ Chagall shares with the goat. Even though the village Chagall was raised in was a humble and impoverished village, the world of his childhood is transformed through the lens of distance and time, becoming a place of enchantment and wonder. The painter skillfully combines vibrant colors with floating and distorted shapes, disregarding the rules of perspective, to challenge realism. This approach allows him to create a dreamlike and almost magical world, which reflects his states of mind and evokes a blossoming of memories within his consciousness.

According to some art critics the painting can be broken down into 5 distinct sections. Of course, with it being Chagall, logic and order have no importance to him. Others have ‘dissected’ it. First at the top right we see the town with the church and houses and two people. Second, we have the self-portrait of Chagall combined with his grandfather’s image and painted in green to symbolize growth and vitality on the earth. Third, at the bottom, we have a hand holding a flowering branch (tree of life or a gift for the animal). Next to the branch is a round ball that may be a childhood toy of Chagall’s. And finally we see a milkmaid layered on the head of the goat. This is quite a common motif in Chagall’s paintings. As usual he mixes personal connections with Jewish culture.

stained glass
they gave me the pieces
I juxtaposed

Kathabela Wilson
USA

How many times have we heard the word ‘juxtaposition’ when writing haiku/senryu? In this poem it refers to the memories of Chagall and how he put them together. And how Kathabela juxtaposed ‘stained glass’ with the motifs in his many works of art. It is interesting to note that Chagall was also famous for his stained glass creations. He has windows in sacred cathedrals as well as in secular installations. They are in many places in Europe and in America. He started late in life creating stained glass windows and continued it for the rest of his life. In addition to stained glass and paintings Chagall produced drawings, book covers, tapestries, ceramics, and stage sets.

hometown
all of its pieces
in a snowball

Emil Karla
France

The geometric shapes and symbols in “I and the Village” grab the viewer’s attention. Emil has noticed the circular shapes. The small and large circles have been said to represent 3 spatial phenomena: the sun’s revolution in orbit, the earth’s revolution around the sun, and the moon’s revolution around the earth. Some have interpreted the smaller circle in the lower left-hand corner as an eclipse. It has also been interpreted as one of Chagall’s childhood toys. The circular, curving lines seem to suggest the passage of time and the changing of the seasons. Chagall could speak to his viewers with juxtapositions of various people, animals and buildings. He was known to paint with Cubism, symbolism, Fauvism, expressionism and surrealism techniques. He was a master at putting it all together to present emotive and meaningful images.

Join us next week for our next prompt…

Guest Editor Lafcadio, a former teacher, now works from home writing, editing and proofreading study guides for nursing textbooks. She lives in Tennessee. She has written poetry for a long time but a couple of years ago fell in love with Japanese micropoetry and hasn’t looked back. Lafcadio has been published in a number of journals and anthologies. She writes under the nom de plume of Lafcadio because nom de plume is so fun to say. You can read her poems on Twitter (X) @lafcadiopoetry or Threads @lafcadio2.0

Lori Zajkowski is the Post Manager for Haiku Dialogue. A novice haiku poet, she lives in New York City.

Managing Editor Katherine Munro lives in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, and publishes under the name kjmunro. She is Membership Secretary for Haiku Canada, and her debut poetry collection is contractions (Red Moon Press, 2019). Find her at: kjmunro1560.wordpress.com.

The Haiku Foundation reminds you that participation in our offerings assumes respectful and appropriate behavior from all parties. Please see our Code of Conduct policy.

Please note that all poems & images appearing in Haiku Dialogue may not be used elsewhere without express permission – copyright is retained by the creators. Please see our Copyright Policies.

Photo Credits:

Banner photo credit: Lafcadio

Haiku Dialogue offers a triweekly prompt for practicing your haiku. Posts appear each Wednesday with a prompt or a selection of poems from a previous week.