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calvin smith

The Death of Marat I, 1907


i.
We can imagine approaching this scene
through a doorway,
or maybe a window
that has been left uncovered.

The first thing we see
is Tulla Larsen.
Munch has made her stand naked
in the centre,
looking at us
with her arms down.
To the left of her,
he has made his dead self
into a kind of arrow
so as to point at her. He is Marat,
and she is Charlotte Corday,
who was his murderer.
But he is not
exactly Marat, because Marat died
in the bath
from a chest wound
while Munch has died in bed
having only been shot in his little finger.
All the same,
there is blood everywhere,
collecting on the bed
like red paint.

Everything is always itself.

ii.
It is not rare, at this small hotel,
for multiple men
to prepare for the bath
at the same time; in fact,
it is happening now: see,
there is Munch
banging at the bathroom door.

In the other painting
(by David),
Marat is in the bath, holding a letter
from Charlotte Corday
which says,
more or less,
‘It is enough that I am unhappy
to entitle me to meet you.’

We can imagine
Munch would have used
a similar reasoning.

iii.
Behind the woman
(who is both Tulla Larsen
and Charlotte Corday)
there is a large splotch of shadow
that is almost like another figure.
It has grown separate from her
and seems to operate almost opposite
to the usual logic
of light and absence.

Actually, to me,
it is like the shadow of the painter.
How do you suppose you escape
from something like that?

iv.
I can see Munch’s room
from my room. Sometimes,
at night,
he sits in the corner,
staring at himself
out the window.

In 1930, Munch suffered a haemorrhage
in his right eye
and the blood gathered into cataracts
which grew in his sight
like shadows.
He would paint the progress
of these cataracts,
attempting a measurement
of this new kind of optics.
This is like trying to trace
the outline of your hand
while it is also bleeding.

Munch’s doctor wrote him a letter
to show to others
explaining his disease:
‘Oslo, 10 May 1930.
Herr painter Edvard Munch
suffers from an acute eye disease
caused by longstanding overexertion.
He needs complete bodily
and mental rest
for a long period of time.
Any disturbance,
oral, written, by telephone,
or by telegraph,
is to be entirely avoided.’

Sometimes, Munch and I
happen to go for a walk
at the same time.
In this case, I walk a little bit behind.
Once or twice he has glanced back
in my direction
and I have had to turn
and pretend to see the sky.

Landscape


From up there, you could see all the hills.
I was with Gauguin, and he told me they looked

almost bodily,
‘Like so many thighs and hips.’

He runs his hand along the smooth
length of his walking stick, and spits.


Calvin Smith is a poet based in Wellington.