The Magical Dreams of Henri Rousseau – haiku responses.

http://the-athenaeum.org/art/full.php?ID=61117

 DREAM OF WONDERS

by Gabriel Rosenstock

A lot of experts said he couldn’t paint. They made fun of him:

“Poor Henri, he tries so hard, doesn’t he?”

“Yes. He does. But he’ll never be able to paint.”

“Not in a month of Sundays!”

Henri Rousseau dreamed of wonders and painted the teeming jungles of the mind. Today we call him a genius.

When people make fun of you, your heart closes. Henri said:

“It is often said that my heart is too open for my own good!”

How lucky we are that so-called experts and know-alls didn’t force him to throw his brushes away. They called him le douanier (the customs officer); that’s all he was in their eyes. And yet his heart remained open to the wonders of the world and he believed he had real talent. A rare talent.

Henri worked in customs, as a toll officer. You have to make a living somehow. As a customs officer, he must have seen many a strange sight! The things people bring back with them from foreign climes! You wouldn’t believe it . . .

For twenty two years he worked at the toll station. Did he feel imprisoned?

http://www.the-athenaeum.org/art/display_image.php?id=103955

Did he dream of freedom? Of course! And where better than a customs office to hear tales of wonder! Except, of course, he wasn’t a douanier at all, though he’s called that to this day. He was simply a gabelou – someone who worked for the tolls service. A humdrum job.

Paris was surrounded by a wall and the government made money on a toll, or tax, called an octroi. There were 60 octroi gates and Henri was one of about 2,000 toll officers. Imagine that, 2,000 people collecting tolls. Their job was to ensure that no cow, sheep or bottle of wine got into Paris without paying an octroi.  

Henri listened, wide-eyed and open-hearted, to stories from travellers and soldiers who had returned from foreign parts. Mexico! The land of the Aztecs . . . In fact, he spent four years in the army himself – without distinction. He was born a dreamer, not a general. To give him his due, he did play a few tunes in the army band.

He dreamed. He dreamed of wonders. Sometimes an artist sits around and does nothing but dream. But it’s worth it in the end when she or he emerges to share those visions and dreams with the world.

Henri saw the world differently, saw things which others failed to see – it’s said he could see ghosts! “I always see a painting before I make it”, he once said. Lots of rumours spread about him:

“Some of his own paintings frighten the wits out of him!”

“So I’ve heard! He trembles all over! If he paints a tiger, he can hear it roar!”

His father was a plumber and tinsmith who fell into debt. Henri, too, knew what it meant to be short of money. To make ends meet, the self-trained painter often played the violin on the streets. He played to cheer himself up – and others too.

How did he train to be an artist? He copied masterpieces in the Louvre, that’s how; it’s as good a training as you are likely to get. Some people believe that had he gone through years of formal training, it might have knocked all the dreams out of him, one by one! Sure. Quite possible.

He had his own way of painting. He started at the top and worked his way down, using one colour at a time. Henri, as you have guessed, had a mind of his own: some paintings show animals from different continents that would never be seen together in the wild!

It’s not easy to be an artist. It’s doubly difficult if your fellow artists are laughing up their sleeve at you. Picasso – one of the most famous artists of modern times – invited Henri to a party so that he and his sophisticated friends could have a laugh!

“Henri is painting monkeys now.”

“Yes. Self-portraits!”

Henri once asked the poet and critic Guillaume Apollinaire to write something nice about him, “to avenge me for the insults and affronts I have received.”

One critic had written: “Monsieur Rousseau paints with his feet, with a blindfold over his eyes.” This, and other ‘reviews’, Henri kept in a scrapbook.

Not every critic was cruel. One young artist, Louis Roy, wrote in a review that Henri was certainly odd and so was his art but that doesn’t mean we should laugh at him. On the contrary. Henri was being Henri and that’s more than enough:

“Why should oddity give rise to mockery? . . . Monsieur Rousseau has encountered the fate of all innovators. He continues along his own path; he has the merit, a rare one today, of being completely  himself . . .”

His life wasn’t easy. His first wife died. Then his second wife died! His children died, all but one! In those days, fresh food was not as freely available as it is today. Diseases such as tuberculosis were rampant.

He retired as a tolls officer with a very small pension, not enough to buy the supplies necessary for his art, barely enough to put food on the table. Poor though he was, he shared what he had with those who came to his door, misfortunates who were even poorer than himself. A big-hearted, open-hearted man!

In his early years he tried to make ends meet by doing various jobs, even teaching elocution. In his later life, he taught music and painting whenever he could and was rewarded for his work with an honour known as Palmes academiques. He was proud of this honour – he had deserved it, had he not? – and wore the rosette that went with it.     Alas, poor Henri – it could only have happened to him: the honour was an error! It was meant for someone else with the same name . . .

He cut his leg accidentally and by the time he sought treatment for the wound, gangrene had set in, deadly blood poisoning. Only seven people came to the funeral. He was buried in a paupers’ grave. What follows is a brief extract from an unpublished book for children, aged 8-10, free-style haiku responses to works of art by Rousseau.

 

rustling leaves  . . .

where is the home

of the wind?

http://the-athenaeum.org/art/full.php?ID=7997

here they come

moustaches trimmed –

mighty football heroes

http://the-athenaeum.org/art/full.php?ID=7983

full moon  . . .

what beasts prowl

the jungle of the heart?

http://the-athenaeum.org/art/full.php?ID=7959

autumn chill –

calloused fingers

of the farmer

 

http://the-athenaeum.org/art/full.php?ID=7935

shadows

have come out too!

great weather for walking

 

http://the-athenaeum.org/art/full.php?ID=37098
blue skies  . . .

methane gas

escaping from cows

http://the-athenaeum.org/art/full.php?ID=8007

in the woods

the monkeys come and go –

talking of Michelangelo

http://the-athenaeum.org/art/full.php?ID=8008

peach of a day!

the air buzzes

with flying insects

http://www.the-athenaeum.org/art/display_image.php?id=116335

paintings?

I’ve seen enough paintings!

Henri’s second wife

http://www.the-athenaeum.org/art/full.php?ID=7952

 

little to eat in the house

but ah!

as long as the rabbit is happy

http://www.the-athenaeum.org/art/full.php?ID=251838

 

Gabriel Rosenstock’s latest volume of haiku is Stillness of Crows.

https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=stillness+of+crows

 

Browse Front PageShare Your Idea

Comments