Monet's Series: Repetition, Obsession

Author(s): Steven Z. Levine

Source: October , Summer, 1986, Vol. 37 (Summer, 1986), pp. 65-75
Published by: The MIT Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/778519

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 Monet's Series:
Repetition, Obsession*

STEVEN Z. LEVINE

In a well-known letter written in the last months of his lif

sought to discourage precisely the sort of discussion that I will
biographer of his old friend and associate John Singer Sargent
his "horror of theories," and yet inevitably Monet engages in
further remarks: "My only merit lies in having painted dir
nature, seeking to render my impressions of the most fleeting
very much regret having caused the naming of a group wh
nothing impressionist about it" (to Evan Charteris, June 21
In this disavowal of the group name, Monet very nearly ident
ism with his practice alone, this being a sort of police action b
class of fugitive is arrested in mid-flight. The juridical form o
this surrender of the fugitive, is the notorious impression its
precinct for this visual remanding is "directement devant la n
Devant not only means "in front of" but also somewhat les
gests "prior to," and it is the unruly indices of temporal anter
alterity that are repressed in this version of Monet's account.
ter, however, this one written to his own biographer, Monet a
ontological priority of another's vision over the phenomenolog
of his own:

As to what concerns my relations with the "king of skies" I think that

* I would like to thank Rosalind Krauss for inviting me to participate in the 1986 College Art
Association symposium on originality as repetition, and to acknowledge the enabling force of her
own remarks on repetition found throughout her essays collected in The Originality of the Avant-
Garde and Other Modernist Myths, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, The MIT Press, 1985.
I would further like to thank the Committee on Interpretation at Bryn Mawr College for its
vigorous reading of an earlier version of this paper.
1. Daniel Wildenstein, Claude Monet: Biographie et catalogue raisonni, 4 vols., Lausanne and
Paris, La Bibliotheque des Arts, 1974-85. Monet's paintings and letters are referred to in the text
according to their Wildenstein numbers, an uppercase W being used for paintings and a lower-
case w for letters. Vol. 1: 1858-81, W. 1-705, w. 1-226; Vol. 2: 1882-86, W. 706-1122,
w. 227-766; Vol. 3: 1887-98, W. 1123-1500, w. 767-1433; Vol. 4: 1899-1926, w. 1434-2685.
All translations from the letters are my own.

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66 OCTOBER

I have alread
I followed h
which I did
must not be
Jongkind, w
along with C
it and I repea
naissant] to
1920, w. 234

My interest
of what Norm
painting the
paints the wo
is at once a pr
ing. On the o
ognition of th
on the other
tion that the
pends upon t
reflections on
an alien and r
on the motif
Auguste Rod
ruary 2, 188
The formula
- is conjoined
ultimate affir
contradictoril
Derridian or
nature, aliena
the-shoulder
repeats. And f

2. Norman Brys
bridge Universit
3. "[Freud's] pe
again, the inabil
always a repetiti
troduction," in
4. Jacques Lacan
trans. Alan She
5. Jacques Derr
University of Ch
Universitaires d

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 Monet's Series: Repetition, Obsession 67

earlier, he will be "grateful" (April 21, 1860, w. 4). W

aging Boudin returns the compliment by requesting
pupil as a souvenir, Monet once again repeats his
have not forgotten that it is you who first taught m
(August 22, 1892, w. 1162). Nevertheless, for all t
role in the formation of his vision, Monet defers im
erstwhile mentor's pressing demand for a tangible r
Back in 1860 Monet signs his youthful letter t
friend," but soon he despairs of the structure of re
seems uncannily trapped. To his closest friend, th
Monet writes of his frustrations from the coastal t
dear fellow, I want to struggle, scrape, begin agai
sees and what one understands, and it seems to me,
am going to do it all, write it all out, and then have
the job" (July 15, 1864, w. 8).
My emphasis in this letter is on the curiously re
tive structure of present seeing and present doing th
ful reseeing of something already known in the past
ticipated redoing in the name of something not
Another letter to Bazille will sharpen this point: "Th
you did not see me commence, it is entirely done upo
you will perhaps find in it a certain rapport with Co
pletely without imitation. The motif and especia
effect is the only cause" (October 14, 1864, w. 11).6
upon the body of nature herself, as it were, the Na
whom Monet later calls pere Corot - interdicts the im
ist's intercourse.' But it is not through a hubristic or
the precursor that the rapport, the intimate relatio
report, is laid bare; it is not his fault, it is hers, th
which caused Monet to make a Corot.
There were critics who thought that Monet made Corots throughout his
career. Monet's parodic paintings were said to have "the charm of a Corot wi
an 'excess' unknown to the painter of the Morning Effect."8 Either these we

6. Compare Monet's The Road of the Saint-Simion Farm, 1864 (W. 29), to which the artist in
letter may refer, and Corot's Entrance to the Wood, Ville d'Avray, 1823-25, Edinburgh, Nati
Gallery of Scotland.
7. For a discussion of the displaced discursive erotics of the nineteenth-century critical
sponse to landscape painting, see my "Ut Pictura Amor: Painting and Love in 1859," in Reflectio
and Repetitions: Meanings in the Water Paintings of Claude Monet (forthcoming). Also see the re
dissertation by Carla M. Puppin, "The Critical Response to Landscape Painting, 1830-51," Br
Mawr College, 1986.
8. Marcel Fouquier, "L'Exposition internationale de peinture et de sculpture," Le XIXe Sik
June 17, 1886. Compare Monet's The Seine Near Giverny, 1885 (W. 1007), to which Fouquier

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 68 OCTOBER

;::i:?::?."o r.: :0?

i -i ~ i i ~ i i i i i i i -. . . ... . .....8i
-NONE :...... .. .

ONiij-iil'::?i-i;:::::
I_:ii-x'ia~i?:.~i-:M M A W " W -,:"::::_~i::~ .~~:

are.l-:~: si,,i~:C::"

Claude Monet. Etretat, Heavy Seas. 1868. Louvre,

Paris.

Corots with an outrageous oedipal supplement, or they were dreamli

cissistic interminglings of Monet and his alter ego: "This ideal a
landscape after a fashion, . . . a rare work, exquisite, due to the mys
certain encounter of Corot and Monet in an identical impression.
Boudin and Corot were not the only predecessors whose pictures
found himself endlessly condemned to repeat. The paintings of Etre
have been especially fraught with the negative consequences of Mone
tition compulsion. Situated not far from the childhood beaches o
and Sainte-Adresse, Etretat had already hosted artists such as Delacro
kind, and Courbet before Monet settled there with his first family
From Etretat, "in the most perfect tranquillity," he insists to Bazille t

have referred, and the mirror-smooth background reflections in Corot's The Com
(Morning Effect), 1855, Bordeaux, Musie des Beaux-Arts. On pictorial parody as
productive repetition, see Linda Hutcheon, A Theory of Parody. The Teachings of Twen
Art Forms, New York and London, Methuen, 1985 (with useful bibliography).
9. J. Buisson, "Un Claude Monet de l'exposition Petit," La Chronique des Arts et de
February 25, 1899, pp. 70-71. Compare Monet's The Seine at Bennecourt, Winter, 18
to which Buisson refers, and the monochromatic, mist-obscured reflections in Corot
Mortefontaine, 1864, Paris, Musie du Louvre. Many other Corots would serve as w

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 Monet's Series: Repetition, Obsession 69

/ 7/?) (
Johann BartholdJongkind. Etretat. 1865. Louvre, Paris.

will do here at least has the merit of resembling no one, at least I believe so,
because it will simply be the expression of what I will have felt, personally"
(December 1868, w. 44).10
Monet returns to Etretat in the 1880s as to a lost part of himself. His wife
Camille is now dead and, in a letter to his mistress, Monet impulsively wishes
that he were dead too. Alice Hoschede had replaced the sickly Camille in
Monet's affections already during the latter's lifetime; at the time of writing,
Mme. Hoschede is back home at Giverny where her estranged husband and
Monet's former patron has come to pay an official birthday visit. So Monet is
left alone at Etretat to work, "but my affairs stayed beside me on the beach,
without my even thinking to open my box; I stayed looking stupidly at the
waves, wishing that the cliff would crush me" (February 19, 1883, w. 334).
Indeed the cliff very nearly does crush Monet. Earlier in the campaign
Monet writes as follows: "I count on doing a large canvas of the cliff at Etretat,

10. Compare Monet's Heavy Seas at Etretat, 1868 (W. 127) and Jongkind's similarly framed
1865 drawing of the cliffs at Etretat, Paris, Musie du Louvre. It might be added that in this
drawing Jongkind repeats the notorious riverside figure grouping of Manet's Luncheon on the Grass
of 1863 on Etretat's rocky beach.

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 70 OCTOBER

......................

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,Or

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It
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No ml
'00 K.MANN,/

Claude Monet. Etretat, Rough

even though it is terrib

did it admirably, but I w
1883, w. 312). Otherwise
redoing, too, not only o
sively, of the authority
Back home at Giverny
at Etretat, Monet write
to Etretat. I could do no
came bad as soon as I
w. 518). Monet is foreve

11. Compare Monet's Heavy

Rough Seas, 1883, 81 x 100 c
here, Courbet's Etretat, the

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Monet's Series: Repetition, Obsession 71

N i.. . ...

:::::::?::F N

iiiii~i iiii'iiiiiiii'iiiiiiii:;iiici

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186

tions
ment
time.
severa
rain,
am go
take i
ageous
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w. 35
retouc
be ver
thing
day to

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 72 OCTOBER

pletion, as I w
that I would h
redo others.
[for Etretat]
(September 16
ever, "I lift u
familiar to y
It is from Etretat that Monet first writes to Alice Hosched6 about his
pictorial repetitions. Initially repetition is simply a convenient way to get on
with the difficult job at hand: "It is really disheartening, I have not been able to
take up again any of my motifs of the Manneporte; when the tide was just what
I needed the weather was not right. I started a good number of things yester-
day, repetitions, in the hope of being able to work every day, but it does not go
quickly. ... I have brought back some canvases and I really do not know how I
will bring all this back home again" (October 26, 1885, w. 598). Structures of
repetition are reiterated here (1) in the already worked-upon but unfinished
canvases which have been brought back to Etretat from Giverny; (2) in the
ever-foreclosed enterprise of taking up again, of resuming, his prior motifs at
Etretat from under the unpredictable gaze of variable waves and weather;
(3) in the anxious anticipation of having to deal with the accreted canvases of
Etretat back home at Giverny; and, most importantly perhaps, (4) in the pic-
torial reduplication of these canvases and motifs on the spot in the vain hope of
undoing the disabling consequences of all these other repetitions.
Monet is lured into his painted repetitions because "it always seems to me
that in beginning again I will do better" (to Alice Hosched6, March 26, 1884,
w. 462). The problem is that Monet cannot "refind" his effects, as he repeatedly
says; indeed he also has difficulty in "refinding myself" (see letters to Durand-
Ruel and Geffroy, January 24, 1893, July 5, 1899, w. 1174, 1468). From Bor-
dighera on the Italian Riviera he writes that "happiness here is to find again
each day one's effect" (January 29, 1884, w. 398). It turns out that even the
constancy of the southern sun proves insufficient for the purposes of Monet's
recurrent need to master variability and change. What is so striking about
Monet's work is the way it repeatedly persists in seeking temporal and composi-
tional invariance in the notoriously variable climates of Normandy, Brittany,
and London: "At the beginning one always expects to find one's effects again
and finish them: hence these unfortunate transformations that serve for noth-

12. In preparing this paper I compiled a very rough index of approximately thirty re- verbs of
repeated action that reappear dozens of times during the long course of Monet's correspondence.
The verbs I encountered most often were retrouver, remettre, reprendre, revoir, revenir, recommencer,
retoucher, retravailler, refaire, rdpiter. Rather less frequently repeated were retomber, replonger, remonter,
redonner, rabdcher, rapporter, repeindre, recouvrir, reessayer, retenter, rattraper, retourner, relire, revivre,
renattre, rajeunir, se ressaisir, se retrouver, se reconnattre. Nouns such as reprise, rechute, and rdpitition also
recur in the letters with what I take to be a revealingly perseverant insistence.

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Monet's Series.- Repetition, Obsession 73

ing"; "you can never get the same effects again

sketches, true impressions. . . . Now, there are man
get again because of the new situation of the sun; b
this, I am so disheartened that I repeat myself"
1900, March 10, 1901, w. 1532, 1616). Rather tha
the painful lessons of the past, Monet regressively
- rather like the France of 1851 in Marx's The E
Bonaparte and rather like the patient in psycho
paper of 1914, "Remembering, Repeating, and W
effort here is to make Monet sound rather like
repetition as irrecuperable difference such as Ni
In his verbal and pictorial practices Monet endle
and lamented images of his past. Still from Etretat
the familiar litany of incompletion: "One needs so
one's effects with the tides low or high, calm or ag
had so many difficulties, such variable weather. . .
sisting a bit more I can bring back good things, at l
ther put off my return" (November 25, 1885, w. 6
"good things" will result, henceforward the deferra
in to the presentness of work: "If some canvases are
back to complete them in March." In spite of thi
mains disconsolate: "I am absolutely disgusted, for
reworked, I make only trash; it is a lost voyage; ev
days much too short, and yet more than ever I nee
good ones . . . (to Alice Hosched6, December 10,
In this compulsive need for lots of good thin
economic motive. As he writes, Monet needs th
these mass productions, for his dealers Durand
Economics, however, offers no reductive solution t
for Monet's discourse persists long after wealth ha
economics must be taken into account as well, for
repetition also functions to bind and forestall an ag
future of insatiable desire for the instantaneous
return. By the same token, that same token put in

13. For Deleuze's distinction between what he calls Platonic

same reinstantiation of an original identity, and Nietzschean re
of similitude in the face of inevitable disparity, see J. Hillis M
English Novels, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard Univer
14. Degas and Pissarro both criticized Monet for what th
motivated repetitions, his "art de vente." See Camille Pissarro, L
pp. 171-172 (July 10, 1888). On April 9, 1891, regarding the
Pissarro exclaimed: "I do not know how it does not bother M
repetition--here are the terrible effects of success!" (p. 231).

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74 OCTOBER

that Freud s
tragic inaugu
deprive his p
Thus, after "
of Belle-Ile m
his absent co
repetitions o
1886, w. 708,
not even coun
ther process
nothing finis
til I look at i
being able to
unhappily I o
culty in gett
home at Giv
proves impo
w. 742, 752),
lusorily, com
spot turns ou
The problem
the annullin
robbed, and w
la nature of
things. In th
1892, w. 1151
the spot Mon
and after th
after the pic
Sometimes t
stantaneous r
by two Engli
sternated dea
lettre for th
today: "Whet
nature or not

15. Lacan discus

Pleasure Principl
dispossession an
Language in Psy
16. On the Belle
Feeling," New L

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Monet's Series. Repetition, Obsession 75

painters who paint after nature and make only ho

is all" (February 12, 1905, w. 1764). Indeed, the re
tition waiting to be recognized as such. Of course,
uct of theory, or perhaps allegory, "real-allego
phrase. Monet's disclaimers of theory notwithstan
that Monet's professed possession of the world in
count the allegorical repetition of a mortal experi
in my words, an allegory of Narcissus. 17 As M
paints and his pond: "These landscapes of water
an obsession. . . . I have destroyed some . . . som
Geffroy, August 11, 1908, w. 1854).

17. "Monet, Narcissus, and Self-Reflection" is the principle

For some preliminary remarks, see my "Monet, Fantasy, and F
Art, no. 1 (1985), pp. 29-55.

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