Poetry: Rubens' Women

• Engels
• Middelbare school
• vwo
• Leerjaar 6

Rubens' Women

by

W. Szymborska

Peter Paul Rubens was a Flemish painter the seventeenth-century Baroque movement who excelled in portraits, particularly nudes. In " The Women of Rubens" Szymborska describes many of the common characteristics that can be found in Ruben's nude portraits. 

Anciet Art

Medieval Art

Renaissance  1400- 1600

Baroque 1600 - 1750

Romanticism

Impressionism

Pop Art

Contemporary Art / Post-modern Art

Titanettes, female fauna,

naked as the rumbling of barrels.

They roost in trampled beds,

asleep, with mouth agape, ready to crow.

Their pupils have fled into flesh

and sound the glandular depths

from which yeast seeps into their blood.

rumble: make a continuous deep, resonant sound

trampled: squashed

glandular: sexual

Daughters of the Baroque. Dough

thickens in troughs, baths steam, wines blush,

cloudy piglets careen across the sky,

triumphant trumpets neigh the carnal alarm. 

O pumpkin plump! O pumped-up corpulence

inflated double by disrobing

and tripled by your tumultuous poses!

O fatty dishes of love!

Rubens himself was a product of the Baroque period; he studied under classical and Rennaissance artists; it was not until he arrived in Rome, about halfway through his career, that he was introduced to the Baroque style. Thus it seems fitting that the women of his paintings should be daughters   to the period as he was a son. 

trough: a long shallow often V-shaped receptacle for the drinking water or feed of domestic animals

careen: to sway

neigh: to make the prolonged cry of a horse

corpulence: the state of being fat

Their skinny sisters woke up earlier,

before dawn broke and shone upon painting.

and no one saw how they went single file

along the canvas's unpainted side.

Exiled by style. Only their ribs stood out.

With birdlike feet and palms, they strove

to take wing on their jutting shoulder blades. 

jut: to extend

The thirteenth century would have given them golden haloes.

The twentieth, silver screens.

The seventeenth, alas, holds nothing for unvoluptuous.

The comparing and contrasting - as well as the use of the words "golden" and "silver" in regards to past and future artictic styles, which imply riches, and then "nothing" of the Classical period - of the styles sheds light on the writer's appreciation for Rubens' portrayall of women and perhaps the baroque movement itself. She [Szymborska] seems nearly to mock the women of previous artists and their thinner, more beautiful bodies. 

voluptuous: sexually attractive; relating to or characterized by luxury or sensual pleasure

For even the sky bulges here

with pudgy angels and chubby god -

thick-whiskered Phoebus, on a sweaty steed,

riding straight into the seething bedchamber. 

bulge: swell

pudgy: slightly fat

thick-whiskered: having hair on the cheeks and chin

steed: (archaic) horse

Phoebus: Apollo

seething: boiling

thick - whiskered Phoebus on a sweaty steed

Themes        Rubens' Women

Waht are the main themes conveyed in the poem? 

• cultural perceptions of beauty evolve
• beauty is in the eye of the beholder
• women have no power in defining beauty
• society can affect the way art is portrayed
• Because of Szymborska's mockery and shaming of the women of past art movements and her appreciation of their more natural, less modified portrayal in Ruben's work, Szymborska not only seems to marvel at the artist himself but also to heavily inflect the poem with feminism and her opinion on how women are perceived as a whole.