Nightworld

“The Night is alone, like a beggar.
The streetlamps offer
Their yellow flame
As alms.

The Night is as quiet as a locked church.
The melancholy streetlamps
Open their rose flame,
Bright bouquets of light,
Bouquets under glass, the holy relics
That fill the Night with plenary Indulgence.

The Night endures pain!
The streetlamps in a a chorus,
Dart their red and sulphurous flame,
Like votive images,
And Sacred Hearts,
With cold knives.
The night grows inflamed!
The streetlamps in a row
Unfurl their blue flame.
Along the outskirts,
Like souls stopping to rest,
Souls of the day’s dead, treading the roadways,
Who dream of return to their locked houses,
As they linger, a long time, at the city gates.”

- exceprt from The Mirror Of The Native Sky, 1898, Georges Rodenbach.

Now that we are used to streetlights, it takes a deliberate act of imagination to see the world as it looked when they were new. The late 19th century streetlamps pictured here were lit by gas, not electricity, but the world they revealed cannot be dismissed simply as trading night for an artifical day.  By the light of the streetlamp a new world of night appeared. 

Judging by its frequent appearance in his works, the Belgian artist William Degouve de Nunques (1867-1935) found in this illuminated nocturnal world a correspondence to emotional states.  His Pink House (1892 - Kroller-Muller Museum, Otterloo) makes such a strong impression on viewers that it is often credited - in retrospect -  as the first surrealist painting.  The Parc Royale is part of that otherworld.  Like artifacts of some ancient culture, the geometric parterres seem alien without daytime pedestrians to make sense of them.  Equally strange is the air itself; something we rarely notice in daylight now floats like nocturnal spirits set free from captivity.  Pink House was an experiment of a different kind, where the atmosphere disappeared and, with it, our sense of space.  Like the night photography of Daniel Boudinet (1945-1990), the usual indicators of depth are mostly absent.  We see what we expect to see, at first.     

There is no obvious source of the light that illuminates the trees of Rippl-Ronai's park, no telltale shadows.  Here we are inside the park, looking out at an urban landscape reconfigured by artificial lights.  Which raises a question about Symbolist works like Parc Royale and Un Parc la nuit.  How much of what we see is real or how much of reality can we see?

Images:

1. William Degouve de Nuncques - Nocturne au Parc royale de Bruxelles, 1897, Mysee d'Orsay, Paris.
2.  Jozsef Rippl-Ronai  (1861-1927) - Un Parc la nuit, c.1892-1895, Musee d'Orsay, Paris.
3. Daniel Boudinet - London -Streetlight-Nocturne, 1977, Mediatheque, Paris.