{"id":249,"date":"2025-09-24T19:48:00","date_gmt":"2025-09-24T19:48:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hartfordlit.org\/?p=249"},"modified":"2026-01-28T21:28:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-28T21:28:10","slug":"nuns-painting-water-lilies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hartfordlit.org\/?p=249","title":{"rendered":"Nuns Painting Water-Lilies\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

This poem was inspired by something Stevens saw in Elizabeth Park.\u00a0 In a letter to a friend, he wrote, \u201cUntil quite lately a group of nuns came [to Elizabeth Park] each morning to paint water colors especially of the water lilies\u201d (L 610).\u00a0 In this poem he imagines the nuns\u2019 thoughts.\u00a0 As they paint, they ponder the miraculous beauty of life which seems to them \u201csupernatural\u201d in origin.\u00a0 This experience awakens in them a refreshing clarity of mind and spirit.\u00a0 They feel that this is a \u201cspecial day\u201d and that they themselves are an integral part of it.\u00a0 There were several French orders of nuns in the Hartford area, which explains all the French terms in the poem.<\/em><\/p>\n

Nuns Painting Water-Lilies<\/strong><\/h2>\n

by Wallace Stevens<\/strong><\/p>\n

These pods are part of the growth of life within life:
\nPart of the unpredictable sproutings, as of<\/p>\n

The youngest, the still fuzz-eyed, odd fleurettes,
\nThat could come in a slight lurching of the scene,<\/p>\n

A swerving, a tilting, a little lengthening,
\nA few hours more of day, the unravelling<\/p>\n

Of a ruddier summer, a birth that fetched along
\nThe supernatural of its origin.<\/p>\n

Inside our queer chapeaux, we seem, on this bank,
\nTo be part of a tissue, a clearness of the air,<\/p>\n

That matches, today, a clearness of the mind.
\nIt is a special day. We mumble the words<\/p>\n

Of saints not heard until now, unnamed,
\nIn aureoles that are over-dazzling crests. . .<\/p>\n

We are part of a fraicheur, inaccessible
\nOr accessible only in the most furtive fiction.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

Glossary<\/strong>
\nfleurettes<\/em>: French for flowers
\nchapeaux<\/em>: French for hats
\naureoles<\/em>: haloes
\nfraicheur<\/em>: French for freshness
\nfurtive<\/em>: secretive, not open or direct<\/p>\n

Nuns Painting Water-Lilies\" from OPUS POSTHUMOUS by Wallace Stevens, copyright \u00a9 1957 by Elsie Stevens and Holly Stevens. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved. First appeared in The Dial, Volume 75, November 1923.<\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This poem was inspired by something Stevens saw in Elizabeth Park.\u00a0 In a letter to a friend, he wrote, \u201cUntil quite lately a group of nuns came [to Elizabeth Park] each morning to paint water colors especially of the water lilies\u201d (L 610).\u00a0 In this poem he imagines the nuns\u2019 thoughts.\u00a0 As they paint, they … Continue reading Nuns Painting Water-Lilies\u00a0<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71],"tags":[74,75,47,72,32,31,48],"class_list":["post-249","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wallace-stevens","tag-art","tag-french","tag-hartford-setting","tag-metaphysics","tag-poem","tag-poetry","tag-religious-belief"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hartfordlit.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hartfordlit.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hartfordlit.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hartfordlit.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hartfordlit.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=249"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hartfordlit.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hartfordlit.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hartfordlit.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hartfordlit.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}