Les Vacances de Hegel – René Magritte
This painting by René Magritte shows an umbrella holding up a glass filled with water. Two opposite purposes: something supposed to keep water out, being used in order to carry a glass full of water.
From under the umbrella the glass can’t be seen, but nonetheless it’s still there. It may be kept outside conscious awareness, but the reality of it is unchanged. And with the slightest movement in the angle of the umbrella, the glass will fall and the water will come down. The moment we put down the umbrella, whatever we’ve been keeping out will come pouring in.
“Les Vacances de Hegel,” the title of the painting, is translated “Hegel’s Vacation” or “Hegel’s Holiday.” Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was a deep and painstaking thinker. His complex philosophies included extensive contemplation of the interrelationship of opposites and how those seeming opposites form the basis of progression through higher and more inclusive levels of meaning, until finally all barriers are resolved in a transcendent all-embracing unity. With unflinching consideration of how things actually are and the nature of human thought, Hegel was determined to pierce the nature of reality and understand the human mind.
In my imagination I see Hegel standing under the umbrella, holding it and saying “I’m on vacation—I’m not going to look at the water in the glass, I’m not going to think, I’m not going to look at reality—it’s my day off!” When I first saw this painting I laughed out loud. And Magritte himself wrote that he thought Hegel would have been delighted by it.
Well, we all need a vacation now and then, but the question for each of us is, what is the umbrella keeping out? Don’t we want to know? And if it’s not raining, why are we holding it in the first place? We tend to go through life with an unconscious “umbrella” on every side, as if we need to be protected, as if we need to keep out what is hidden from view. What if we let down our guard? What if we put down the umbrella and let in what is trying to reach us?
From under the umbrella, we can’t see what’s really there. The umbrella is just a construction made of wood and fabric, but the glass holds revitalizing water we can actually drink. Our guardedness is just a construction. We can let it down. We can relax our grip. We don’t have to be able to see through the umbrella before we let it go. We don’t need to know ahead of time what will be revealed to us when we relax and lower the umbrella, when we let down what’s between us and what’s yet to be seen.
When Magritte began work on what became this painting, he actually didn’t know what the painting would look like. He just had a vague idea about finding a way to show a glass of water so that it would not be indifferent, but have genius. He made drawing after drawing of glasses of water. After more than a hundred drawings, a mark that had been on the glass in each drawing widened out. Gradually, without his knowing ahead of time where it was going, the line stretched out and took the form of an umbrella. And with more drawings, the umbrella’s position changed until it was underneath the glass. It was only later, after the final painting was completed, that he titled it “Les Vacances de Hegel.”
When we let down our guard and open to what is, things start to reveal themselves. When we follow the beginnings of something new, we allow unknown paths to open. Relaxing, allowing, what is within us can begin to take form and become clear. The water of transformation can do its work, so that what’s inside us can come forward into conscious awareness. With that water, whatever has been blocking our vision can dissolve.
The more we allow, the more we recognize that it’s okay to get wet. We don’t need the umbrella as much as we thought we did. We are free to explore. We are just exploring, letting things in, letting things come forward into our vision. Letting down our guard, putting down the umbrella, and letting ourselves be open to the deeper reality within us and all around us.
© 2021 Shanti Natania Grace
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“If you’re willing to bear what you feel you really can’t bear, then everything becomes possible that was not possible before. But the truth is, you can bear it; there just has to be the willingness.”
– Bodhisattva Shree Swami Premodaya, from Truth Speaks: Answers from the Master, Volume 1
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Every journey has secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.
– Martin Buber
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Everything that is visible hides something that is invisible.
– René Magritte
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We forget we’re
mostly water
till the rain falls
and every atom
in our body
starts to go home.
– Albert Huffstickler
If you are interested in learning more about René Magritte, you may wish to check out René Magritte: Selected Writings, edited by Kathleen Rooney and Eric Plattner. An excellent essay on Magritte and his art is “René Magritte and Realist Surrealism,” by Mariana Borges Veras. It’s good to keep in mind, however, that Magritte himself said “The idea doesn’t matter to me, only the image counts, the inexplicable and mysterious image, since all is mystery in our life. I paint the beyond….”
