Scribd
Upload
381 views1 page

To Paint A Water Lily Redo

Ted Hughes' poem "To Paint a Water Lily" challenges artists to portray nature accurately rather than as calm and peaceful. Hughes uses vivid imagery and metaphors to depict the minute details and complex ecosystem of a pond, moving from a broad view of lily leaves to the predatory dragonflies, battling bees, and creatures below the surface. The artist must paint both the beautiful water lily and the "horrors" of nature to achieve balance and harmony in their portrayal. Hughes appreciates nature's beauty but recognizes the active struggles that underlie its calm appearance.

Uploaded by

angela
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
381 views1 page

To Paint A Water Lily Redo

Ted Hughes' poem "To Paint a Water Lily" challenges artists to portray nature accurately rather than as calm and peaceful. Hughes uses vivid imagery and metaphors to depict the minute details and complex ecosystem of a pond, moving from a broad view of lily leaves to the predatory dragonflies, battling bees, and creatures below the surface. The artist must paint both the beautiful water lily and the "horrors" of nature to achieve balance and harmony in their portrayal. Hughes appreciates nature's beauty but recognizes the active struggles that underlie its calm appearance.

Uploaded by

angela
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 1

AP Literature

February 21, 2010

To Paint a Water Lily-- redo

A cursory glance at nature often leaves the onlooker with an equally superficial appreciation for the
beauty of it and retains an inaccurate portrayal of nature as calm and uneventful. Ted Hughes, in To
Paint a Water Lily, presents the artists with a challenge to expose nature not as a calm picture to be
hung on a wall, but rather a living, breathing, dynamic ecosystem with battles of its own. Hughes’s own
cautious, yet appreciative attitude towards nature can be reflected in the vivid imagery he invokes with
various metaphors and parallels he draws from the activities that Mother Nature undergoes to the
struggles of human kind.

Hughes begins with a broad, overarching view of the lily leaves on the pond to signify the usual
perception of nature- cursory and brief, but lacking in understanding and details. As he begins to focus
on the minute details, Hughes exposes the larger intricacies that surround a mere pond. These details
become the crucial elements to add depth and completion to the portrait of nature. He gives life to the
lily leaves by provoking an imagery of a “flies’ furious arena”. The dragonfly surpasses the common
stereotype as pretty and harmless to be personified as a carnivorous predator ready to devour “meat”
or to “take aim”. Calling upon the readers auditory senses, the humming bees become a part of a
“battlefield” where their cut-throat struggle for survival becomes analogous to the “battle-shouts”
within the wars that humans fight today.

The busy scenery along with the colorful tone then shifts to the deep abyss beneath the pond’s lily
leaves where creatures “with Latin names” and “jaws for heads” dwell. Hughes seems to hold little
appreciation for the creatures underneath with “no improvements”, but finds it necessary as his job as
an artist to portray all aspects of it, no matter how unattractive it may seem. But the dark scenery and
tone shift again as Hughes focuses his attention on the last piece of nature: the water lily. The strong,
long necked water lily is personified as “trembling hardly at all” despite “whatever horrors” beneath the
pond and the flurry of activity above. The lily becomes the culmination of the artist’s task. The artist
must paint nature similar to that of a water lily- strong and vibrant and most of all, balanced. The artist
must create harmony between the grim aspects of nature with the beautiful ones in order to present an
accurate portrayal of nature.

Called to add dimensions to a simple picture, the artist is challenged to go beyond the superficial and
simple, but to incorporate the activities that make up nature. Hughes’s own appreciation for beauty
seeps in through his meticulous description of the pond that the water lily resides. He is unafraid to
realize that beyond the calm picture of nature lays a sea of activity that include battlecries and murky
waters which must be approached with caution, but also reflects upon the “colours” of the flies and the
elegant water lily to reveal his appreciation for Mother Nature.

You might also like