Aragon, Brassens and Cartier-Bresson: the Global Impact of French Surrealism through Words, Music, Painting and Photography

 

 

The fog can be cut with a knife and winter chills are in the air. I made coffee and sat down to read. For background I chose an old cassette of French songs – Brassens, Ferré and Barbara.

Listening songs on a 50 year old cassette is like playing Maria Callas singing “Carmen” on a vinyl record.  Or using a mechanical film camera on a busy street. And very similar to the await of your muse’s visit while looking for hours at the blank paper in your typewriter.

It is the beatitude of enjoying the Wabi-sabi of the ordinary moments. And celebrating the perfect imperfections in sound, shape or colour.

 

…The first song was by Georges Brassens “Il n’y a pas d’amour heureux” (There is no happy love) using the iconic 1943 poem by Louis Aragon. I put my book down, shut my eyes and recalled the thousands prior moments when I heard that song.

And, for the first time, I realised that I had not seen that poem translated in any of the languages I know. More, that I had not read any serious translations of Aragon’s works, a man nominated 4 times for the Nobel Prize in literature and a titan of modern French literature.

 

The fog outside was denser now, but my mind determined to search more about Aragon’s anonymity in the non-Francophone world.

To stay with the times, I asked for an analysis by AI about the reasons why Aragon’s works have not been translated.  Interestingly, the analysis I got identified cultural barriers to translation as the core reason. Specifically:

The very elements that made Aragon a household name in France also made his poetry exceptionally difficult to export:

 

• The Musical Connection: In France, Aragon's immense popularity is sustained because his poems were turned into iconic pop and folk songs by legendary French artists like Léo Ferré, Jean Ferrat, and Georges Brassens. Because these songs rely heavily on the natural rhythm, cadence, and slang of the French language, they rarely translate effectively into other cultures. 
• Strict Wordplay and Formal Meter: During WWII, Aragon abandoned complex avant-garde styles to write patriotic Resistance poetry using traditional French alexandrine (12-syllable) verse and precise rhyme schemes. This rigid, classical musicality is notoriously difficult to replicate in English while keeping the emotional weight intact.

Since AI synthesized from available writings about my question, I was surprised, since that many authors, in as many languages and styles, do have their works translated and read around the globe. But what was striking, is Aragon’s seemingly purposeful decision to write to keep his cultural identity intact, and not worry about recognition beyond what the French would call his “terroir”⁽¹⁾.

To my subsequent inquiry about the early years of Aragon’s, this is what I got from AI:

Aragon’s early work in the 1920s defined Surrealism through an intense focus on urban mythologies, the subconscious, and the marvelous hidden within everyday modern life.

Partnering closely with André Breton, Aragon helped launch the movement via early reviews like Littérature (1919) and key theoretical and literary texts.

 

Key Characteristics of Surrealism in Aragon's Early Work

 

• Urban Walkabouts and the "Marvelous": In masterworks like Paris Peasant (Le Paysan de Paris, 1926), Aragon turned the streets, passages, and ordinary commercial spaces of Paris into a dreamlike landscape. He captured an aura of haunting telepathy and uncanny encounters in everyday urban routines. 
• Surrealist Détournement (Repurposing): Aragon practiced détournement—displacing everyday objects, historical tropes, or commercial items from their normal functions to metamorphise the present and shatter rigid rationalism. 
• Theoretical Exploration of "Surreality": In texts like A Wave of Dreams (1924) and Treatise on Style (1928), Aragon chronicled the group's "period of trances," collective illusions, automatic speaking, and states of mental exhaustion or hallucination that unlocked the subconscious. 
• Grounded Realism vs. Pure Automatism: Unlike Breton’s more detached or purely automatic approach (such as in Nadja), Aragon’s early prose remained tethered to hyper-detailed, almost journalistic observations of real places and physical settings, creating tension between gritty realism and dream logic.
• Early Poetry Collections: In early poetic works like Feu de joie (1920) and Le Mouvement perpétuel (1925), Aragon rejected traditional logic and grammar to pursue deep, subconscious truths.

 

This is more in line of what we had learned in college literary classes. The French Surrealism movement had a significant impact on the daily observations people ignore as uncreative, allowing the subconscious shape, colour and give a voice to our own identity, especially in urban settings.

But French Surrealism traveled outside of France and the French language thanks to one of Aragon’s co-pioneer, André Breton.

While Aragon’s work remained within the Francophone world, Breton traveled to a number of European countries and the United States and Mexico and introduced French surrealism to emerging authors and artists. Among those who adopted the use of the unconscious or subconscious in transforming their observations of the daily observed reality are:

David Gascoyne  (1916–2001): As a leading British surrealist poet and translator, Gascoyne traveled to Paris in the 1930s, befriended figures like Breton, and experimented directly with automatic writing and dream-narration.

Philip Lamantia (1927–2005): An American surrealist poet from San Francisco, Lamantia was championed early on by André Breton. He embraced the French surrealist torch of psychic automatism, subversive syntax, and visionary ecstasy, bridging the gap between European surrealism, the San Francisco Renaissance, and the Beat Generation.

Leonora Carrington (1917–2011): Though born in England, Carrington became a central figure of international Surrealism through her association with Max Ernst and the Paris-to-Mexico surrealist network. Living in Mexico, she became a pillar of Mexican Surrealism, known for her visionary, mythic, and alchemical paintings.

 

The latter network is especially revealing because French Surrealism and Mexican art became deeply connected in the late 1930s and 1940s, when European Surrealists fled World War II and found a creative haven in Mexico.

The two worlds came together when André Breton traveled to Mexico in 1938. He famously declared that Mexico was a "surrealist country" by its very nature, shaped by its folk art, rituals, and pre- Columbian mythology.

The most celebrated female Mexican painter is Frieda Kahlo. During his visit to Mexico, Breton championed her as a "natural surrealist", although Kahlo disagreed with the label. She stated that she did not paint dreams, but rather her own reality and physical/emotional pain.

 

… After my research on French Surrealism, the description of Aragon’s early works, a starting point of French Surrealism, kept resonating in my mind:

In masterworks like Paris Peasant (Le Paysan de Paris, 1926), Aragon turned the streets, passages, and ordinary commercial spaces of Paris into a dreamlike landscape. He captured an aura of haunting telepathy and uncanny encounters in everyday urban routines. 

 

I found myself thinking about street photography, a 1940s Leica camera, and countless hours walking urban streets around the world in search of that shot that celebrates the ordinary. And, I wondered if the father of street photograph, Henri Cartier-Bresson was influenced by the French Surrealism in the 1930s.

Et voilà, after 60 years of street photography influenced by the philosophy of Cartier-Bresson, I discovered what had escaped me all these decades!

He was not only influenced by the movement, but was part of surrealism starting 1925. It is said that he attended meetings and gatherings lead by Aragon and Breton to discover the movement’s focus on the subconscious and spontaneous expression.

Diving further into Cartier-Bresson’s life, my AI search identified key events that shaped his vision for photography:

 

The Surrealist Roots (Early 1930s)

 

• Subconscious & Spontaneity: Cartier-Bresson attended surrealist gatherings starting around 1925, absorbing the movement's
• The Leica Discovery: After studying painting and training under André Lhote, he picked up a 35mm Leica camera in 1932. He applied surrealist concepts of "objective chance"—wandering the streets without a fixed destination, alert to bizarre coincidences, mannequins, reflections, and dreamlike spatial relationships.
• Visual Disruption: He viewed his photographs not as traditional reporting, but as "little disruptions in reality" that uncovered a hidden, irrational poetry beneath ordinary life. 

Transition to Humanism and Photojournalism

 

The Shift in Label: Though friends with surrealists like Max Ernst and deeply inspired by Eugène Atget, Cartier-Bresson eventually pivoted toward documentary and humanist photography—partly on the advice of Robert Capa, who suggested he frame his work as documentary to get assignments.

The Spirit Remained: Even as he traveled the globe capturing major historical moments as a photojournalist (such as the Liberation of Paris and Gandhi's final days), he retained the surrealist eye for geometry, serendipity, and the fleeting "decisive moment" where the head, eye, and heart align

 

...On a foggy morning I listened to Brassens sing Aragon’s famous poem about love. And my mind took me to researching about French Surrealism linking literature to painting and photography. Unexpectedly, as a street photographer, I ended up learning more about Cartier-Bresson and street photography, closing the circle of my short curiosity journey.

Finally, this time as an academic, I wonder if among my readers there a student who is searching for a dissertation topic in literature or the arts. I believe exploring the tentacles of the 1930s French Surrealism will be a much valued contribution to the field.

 

November 2, 2026

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2026

 

1.      (1) Terroir (from the French word terre, meaning "land") is the complete set of natural and environmental factors that give an agricultural product its unique flavor, aroma, and character.

I often think of terroir when defining identity. While most commonly known as a descriptor of French wine identity, when talking about the arts the “unique flavor, aroma, and character” acquire a distinct meaning. 

Aragon’s works and his decisions to shape them through his French identity are derived, I believe in part, from his conscious cherishing of his terroir. 

For losing one's terroir is always an existential loss.

The Synodic Cycle of Venus

 

 

It was an abstract thought

Then

As a circle

As a snake eating its own

Tail

It became loving

In search of

Its own

Love

 

I did not get lost

In the corridors

Of the heart

Of memories

And of ruins

Where gardens once

Made lilac wine

And jasmine

Ambrosia

 

In the language

Of wondering eyes

Words shaped like

The present

Erased the last stanza

Where Promises were left

On an old pillow

And morning coffee

Tasted

Like yesterday’s brew

 

It was an abstract thought

Before it crumbled

Like an unbaked dough

Left on the counter

Like a sacrifice

Upon the granite

Alter

Of expectations

 

And in that elliptic

Language of

The eyes

I remembered

The entrance way

To the corridors

That once led

To catacombs

Where the Green Fairy

Was drank

Was drunk

And lost

Her way

 

In the steps

Of

A

Dance

 

October 28, 2026

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2026

The Deeper That Sorrow Carves Into Your Being, the More Joy You Can Contain (Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet)

 

 

You can carve with a knife; you can carve with water pressure. Eventually it is the nature and state of what you are carving that matters.

Stone does not turn to wood, and clay hardens when hot. People turn to people, and then turn inside their own space for comfort.

And sorrow becomes the carver while joy watches from afar.

Serpentine or strait, the carving lines map our identity. A platinum-hair woman sitting next to you on a transatlantic flight may notice how deep the lines have become. And in the colicky cry of a baby you find the passage of erased lines only if you allow that cry to become the melody of your discovery. Often, discovery comes before the search, for in the new spaces of your being, the carved paths have already been filled with expectation.

And joy watches from afar, patiently.

Old wooden storm windows let the August rain into your bedroom. But they also let the scent of gardenia flowers to mix with the humidity of that room. Together they carve the invisible space where promises were made the night before.

But now you feel free.

And sorrow stops carving. Not to sharpen its knife, but because the serpentine paths now glitter. Because the wooden storm windows have opened wide and you see the rain.

And joy is not just a distant watcher anymore.

 

October 24, 2026

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2026

200,000 Times Thank You

 

I still recall when my literary, painting/sculpting and photography blogs were read 50,000 times. It felt like what was important for me, to share, was equally attractive to readers from four continents. Over the years, I have received feedback about the ideas I tackled, my style of presenting them, and how much of what was read added dimensions to the curiosity of the readers.

This month, to my delight and continuous surprise, Blogger count showed that we had surpassed 200,000 reads from more than 46 countries. And I wanted to thank all those who stayed with me over the years and those who discovered a series of blogs that fall outside the “ordinary.”

Indeed, my writings, photography and artwork have been qualified on the Net to constitute a continuum within “niche blogs.” That means the older platform I still use, my vintage cameras and strictly only B&W film, and my eclectic paintings inspired from the Southwest, all are for readers and artists who purposefully search for topics or art genres rather than fall upon them through advertisement. And that is because none of my blogs use any commercial means to advertise. And, from the outset, I decided to not use Google Analytics to find more about who was reading.

I keep my blogs within the goal of celebration and sharing. And Unpretentiously, I deliver them to the swirls and winds of the Internet knowing that they will land where they are supposed to find an inviting mind.

And they will continue to remain so, as long as muses allow me to share my musings, and the curiosity of readers provides me the joy of finding common grounds, no matter where on our planet we sit down to write or to read.

About my own “place to write”, after 13 years in Arizona, now my home is Colorado. In the past 3 months I have organized a new studio for my darkroom work and for painting and I will be back to posting new paintings soon. And that will be a new discovery for me since looking at the snow capped Rocky Mountains and green fields is radically different from the Arizona desert where I once found my inspiration. I am eager to see if the transition to a radically new environment will also change my outlook and reflect it in my writing, photography and painting.

I think it will.

Till then, thanks to all of you (mostly anonymous…) readers. Perhaps unknowingly, you continue to provide the most genuine feeling and reward I have ever had as a published author in the sciences and the arts.

 

Vahé                      

October 21, 2026

The Human Chin: From Anatomy to the Arts

 

 

After a session of table tennis playing, I asked my friend, an engineer involved in integrated circuitry and chip design, about iconography as is used by “etching” pathways via laser beams into a minuscule chip.

“The iconography I know goes back to Dutch and German artists carving and ink printing on wood. That was centuries ago. Is there a parallel in microchip production since the same word is used?”

After he explained the basics, he drew a parallel with biology:

“Biology fascinates me. Especially when it comes to structures and organs that are still in us but do not seem to have a critical function. There is no such thing in engineering.”

 

On my way home I thought about the human chin. A structure only Homo sapiens have, nor what biological functions it fulfills. And slowly, memories from an anatomy class came back and I realised that the words of our professor had stayed with me, albeit dormant for more than 40 years.

… “Homo sapiens have features you cannot find in other mammals nor in our Neanderthal ancestors. Your next assignment is to go to the library and learn about five such features and structures all of you have. I will tell you about three of them today.”

And he started with the chin.

“Have you seen a donkey, goat or sheep with a chin? Why do we have a chin? No scientist has an answer if it evolved for a survival purpose. It is a phenotypic trait and also called a spandrel. So we call it an evolutionary accident, although it allows the romantics in you to dream about that accident.

Next is the colour of our sclera. Have you seen a mammal with all that white in their eyes? No, we are the only one. All others have heavily pigmented sclera, especially pack hunting mammals whose eyes should not be seen by the pray. Again, perhaps “survival purpose” is for poets to dream about eyes for beauty and as windows to our soul. 

Third is our first that rib. We are unique among mammals in the articulation of that rib since it is only attached with the body of the first thoracic vertebra. All other primates and modern mammals have the first rib articulate as attached with two vertebrae; hence it is a bivertebral articulation.”

 Teaching with the humour he was known for, he summarised his message:

“So, remember – when times are rough, only humans can take it on the chin. When a smile makes you dream, it is because of the white in the eyes; and, when you fall from your donkey’s back, your first rib, because it is not rigidly articulated, is the least prone to break.”

I was amazed that I can still recall his words – that is the genius of a good teacher.

 

 

… I kept thinking about the chin and the eyes. In fact, my teacher’s message had stayed with me beyond biology, into the arts.

It was sometime in mid 2000s when I went to the TaipeiEYE theater in Taipei with a colleague who wanted to introduce me to Chinese Opera.

“You will see the unique art of Lianpu, the painted facial makeup on actors’ faces. It is all about what colour the chin is painted. Since you will not understand Mandarin, remember that the hero always has a red chin, the villain a white chin, and the thinking one has a blue chin. Now you can guess what is happening!”

Masks, be those carved from wood, papier mâché, silk or leather have been used in theater since Ancient Greece. And, as in Lianpu, the chin played a major role – not by having different colours to identify the actors’ characters, but in Greek theater the masks were designed as helmet-style headpieces including a chin and a jaw line. Historical accounts specify that actors would grab the mask by its chin to pull the helmet shaped mask over their head.

There were Tragic and Comic masks, hence the definition of tragic-comedy still used today when talking about a plot, be that theatrical or regarding movies.

Tragic masks were of more imposing sizes, giving the chin prominence with attached pointed beards for age or satirical characters. Comic masks had wide opened mouths reaching the chin to exaggerate the actors expression.

  

…Theatrical masks, first rib articulation, Chinese opera, unpigmented sclera, and chins. A simple comment by my friend at the end of a table game took me to places I once have been and memories I had forgotten.

But there was one more. Somehow all these seemingly unrelated topics got connected in recalling the opening scene of “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” when Audrey Hepburn steps down from a Yellow Cab onto a deserted Fifth Avenue in New York City. Like a dream just before dawn, she glides to the Tiffany & Co. jewelry store window, eating pastry from a paper bag. The dress she wore, a sleeveless floor-length Italian satin sheath evening gown with a cut-out décolleté at the back became the most famous Little Black Dress of cinematographic history. Add to this moment the long cigarette holder Hepburn was holding, that the pastry was eating out of a paper bag to contrast the iconic dress and Hepburn’s sophisticated elegance, the tortoiseshell sunglasses and pearl necklace, Henry Mancini’s “Moon River” playing, and you have the most creative, well-choreographed and filmed romantic moment in cinema.

Hepburn’s eyes could not be seen because of the glasses. But her chin, her subtle smile and the gracefulness she embodied have have described her as “The ultimate icon of delicate beauty. She possessed a beautifully petite, softly pointed chin that gave her a famously gamine and youthful look.”

 

And I smiled, and wondered what my anatomy professor would have thought if I had come back from the medical library search (there was no internet then…) and written:

 

“Evolutionary accidents are beautiful and, when “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” is the consequence, they do have a survival purpose for many Homo sapiens like me.”

 

I did not write it then, but today I would.

 

October 14, 2026

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2026

About the Photo: I took this shot in Taipei, in 2007 with a Mamiya 645 1000S during an evening walk. I first thought there were three mannequins in the clothing store.

Swan Song, Victim Advocacy and Shakespeare’s Othello

 

 

 

It has been an interesting week regarding emails I got from my readers. Often, the feedback I get about an essay I wrote is to express the pleasure the readers got from the lecture. Sometimes however, they share some of their reactions to what I wrote and ask questions. Needless to say, I am grateful for all reactions readers share especially from those who stay anonymous. It is part of the mystery I have cherished in the past two decades since I started my first blog – somewhere around the globe, somehow, what I had wanted to share became an echo in someone’s mind or heart.

 

My last essay was inspired by an email I received where a reader had found one of my poems published in a medical journal in the late 1990s. It was about addressing domestic/conjugal abuse from social and medical spheres of concern.

 

Soon after I posted that essay, I received another email about another essay I had written a few years back about Shakespeare’s Othello where the reader wonders if sometimes in the arts conjugal abuse is disguised by the artistry of the writer, such as in Shakespeare’s Othello.

 

First, the essay I wrote was about Pietro Calvis’s famous marble bust of Othello, and not thoughts about the social or medical aspects in interpreting Desdemona’s death in Shakespeare’s dramatic theater plot. My essay can be read here.⁽¹⁾

 

Second, and since I had not read Othello for many moons, I went back to re-read the final scene lines.

 

And third, when I started scribbling a few lines on paper, I realized that my mind was going in a very different direction than Othello and the violent last scene.

 

 

Putting Othello within the reader’s framework of conjugal abuse was neither difficult nor new. There is much written, especially in our century that equate Othello’s behaviour and act to domestic abuse and violence, and intimate partner homicide. This is the social or societal angle. In addition, there also is a medical recognition of that very act under the symptomatic definition of “Othello Syndrome” (although not a syndrome defined as such in the American Association of Psychiatry DSM-5 manual ⁽²⁾) and is widely use as a psychiatric diagnosis of morbid or delusional jealousy, when a person has an irrational and fixed belief that their romantic partner is unfaithful, despite having no actual proof.

 

The interesting discovery I made re-reading the Act 5, Scene 2 of Othello is about Desdemona’s maid Emilia who also suffered conjugal homicide from her husband Lado for protecting Desdemona against Lado’s plot, said just before being stabbed to death:

 

                                        "I will play the swan,

                                          And die in music."

 

This is when my mind left Shakespeare and Othello to realise that Shakespeare had perpetuated the myth of the “Swan Song” or the belief that swans are mute and sing only just before their death.

Of course swans are vocal throughout their lives, and the origin of the myth goes back to Ancient Greece. The "swan song" is a myth when believed that they sing just before their death. It is also an idiom for one’s last grand act and best creativity before death or losing touch with who he once was.

It is highly poetic and that belief continues after two millennia.

But the use of the idiom in Othello seems to have a consequence Shakespeare may not have thought about or intended in 1603. Indeed more than four centuries after Shakespeare used that two millennia-old myth, today Othello is considered not only a domestic/conjugal abuse and violence tragedy focused on the seemingly inevitable acts of Othello and Lado but also a focus on the victims Desdemona and Emilia. Both victims, especially Emilia, are seen in today’s focus of abuse prevention as the voice of those who did not accept complicity with their abusers and showed defiance albeit they paid the ultimate price. Emilia, early in the play’s plot steals Desdemona’s handkerchief to please her husband, but when she realizes that Lado’s lies caused Desdemona’s murder, she refused to continue her complicity with her husband. In an attitude of loyalty to a fellow woman she spoke to Venetian authorities, all males, about Lado’s plot. Sadly, she suffered the same fate as Desdemona at Lado’s hands.

 

I read Othello when I was in college. But today, decades later and knowing more about domestic violence statistics, I realised that Shakespeare may have paved the way in how victims can be protected and shielded when the “Othello syndrome” or other behaviours are observed and diagnosed in the abusers, which was unavoidable in 1603.

And, it became clear that Emilia broke yet another myth of unavoidability – she did not stay mute. She did sing knowing about her fate may be the same as Desdemona’s.

She became the swan who advocated for the abuse victim.

 

Othello remains a very relevant and pertinent theatrical masterpiece within our changed and changing social, moral and medical norms 400 years after it was the play’s first performance in 1604 at Whitehall Palace in London for King James I.

 

 

October 8, 2026

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2026

 

(1)   https://vahezen.blogspot.com/2024/08/pietro-calvis-othello-and-memories-of.html

(2)   DSM-5 diagnosis is a standardized mental health evaluation based on criteria from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition, published by the American Psychiatric Association (APA).

Do Horses Gallop in the Inner Emotional Landscapes of Women?

 

I am always delighted to receive feedback from my readers, especially when my writings provide fodder to them for further exploration of the topics I tackle.

A message from a few days ago was from an anonymous reader who searched my published poetry works beyond what I had shared in my blog, and found two poems in the medical journal The Lancet dating back to the late 1990s. These are poems about domestic/conjugal violence as I was involved in research of that socio-medical issue from a public health and epidemiology angle. The references for these publications are at the bottom of the page.

So, I took a time travel to the recent years when the medical profession was actively involved in understanding, healing the wounds and preventing domestic violence as an epidemic both from the public health and clinical medicine points of view.

Going back two decades, I recalled a meeting of the research team (I was the only male scientist on that team) when the psychologist, equally fluent in literary works, read a passage from D.H. Lawrence’s 1920 modernist novel “Women in Love” and lines from the “ She Had Many Horses” famous 1983 poem by Joy Harjo. It was a moment when poetry and medicine came together in describing the attitude of the female character in relationships. And, since the quotes were both about women and horses, I later learned that the psychologist had grown up on a farm in Maryland.

Our research team had been given a historic and existential dive into the human relationships through a few literary lines.

Although I recalled the discussion perfectly, I had to go back and search for these lines as two decades have passed since that rainy morning in Baltimore.

The passage from D.H. Lawrence’s book was:

"And woman is the same as horses: two wills act in opposition inside her. With one will she wants to subject herself utterly. With the other she wants to bolt, and pitch her rider to perdition." 

And the lines from Joy Harjo’s poem were:

“She had some horses.

 

She had some horses she loved.

She had some horses she hated.

 

These were the same horses.”

 

…Sometimes it is good to look back and see how one’s own thinking and interpretation have changed through new life experiences.

 

The themes of autonomy and disobedience, fear and resilience, trauma and healing are often central to the association made between women and horses, and consequently by women regarding horses. The history of this sensical identity goes back to the beginning of times. Symbolic brides were often tied to equine themes in Greek mythology. Called Centaurides (female Centaurs), they were hybrid descendents of Greek gods, represented in paintings and carvings as half human female and half horse. The core paradigm was about duality of human nature, similar to Harjo’s poem that they were “the same horses” – the same duality that has to be accepted and dealt with. The duality of good and evil. The duality of kind and violent. As such the ending lines of her poem make us realize that the poem is not about horses – it is about human nature. Always in Greek mythology, the most famous female centaur, gifted with exceptional gracefulness was Hylonome in Ovid's Metamorphoses. After her lover, the centaur Cyllarus, died in battle, she committed suicide.

 

At this point, I recalled a few photos I had taken perhaps subconsciously having that mythological and psychological treatise of the special association between the human female and equine attitudes the lines from D.H. Laurence’s book masterfully summarise.

Here are a few examples, all from Arizona where cowboys, cowgirls and their horses continue the identity of the state as the last frontier of the Wild West.

 

A.    The photo atop the page. I do not recall the name of the farm. The rider was in the field, riding bareback. We talked about the farm, the horses and the desert. Then I asked if I could take a photo – she just hugged her equine alter ego saying:

                         She never had a saddle -we understand each other

B.     A girl on her horse in the desert. This was a moment from my weekly outings in the High Desert. I heard hoofs, and had just enough time to click once. The clouds indicate it was sometime between July and September, during the monsoon season. I overexposed the print paper to preserve her identity and enhance the mood of the shot. The capture has themes of harmony and co-existence between nature, the young girl and her horse.

 

C.     Comfort in external appearance differences. A horse and a pony showed up as I was hiking in the desert. I assumed they had found a break in the fence of a farm miles away. They passed near me, unbothered by my presence and exhibiting complete happiness in exploring the surroundings. Fences are not for horses, just as ports are not for ships.

 

 

 

 

Concluding thoughts

 

Re-thinking about the research and my poems published in The Lancet, I found myself focusing on two names from Greek mythology – Philhippos and Hippodamia. The first is man’s name which translates as “lover or friend of horses.” The name has gone through a number of iterations, and the modern version is Phillip. As for Hippodamia, a mythological woman, it means “she who masters and tames horses.” Both names reflect the fascination of Ancient Greeks for horses, but for different reasons.

Philhippos was and remains an aristocratic name. In Ancient Greece it was a sign of nobility, military power and wealth to own a horse. But not any horse – it had to reflect that very aristocratic status. In that sense, “love for horses” meant showing your status-pride and make the horse an extension of your glory.

Hippodamia in contrast, is a mythical, dangerous and raw, wild sexuality ridden character. For her, the relationship with the horse is through her subjugating the chaos a horse has within it. In that sense, Hippodamia herself has the untamed wildness of the horses in Greek mythology impersonated in the chaotic nature of Centaurs who were half-horses. Hippodamia is the anti-thesis of the horses (and Centaurs who were half-horse) wilderness and chaotic natures, and her raison d’être is to tame, subdue and dominate the horse. Hippodamia is famous for her wedding day. Her father invited the Centaurs to the wedding for political reasons. The Centaurs got drunk and tried to kidnap Hippodamia and other human women. This violent incident was the reason for a violent battle, called Centauromachy, where the Centaurs were defended by the human Lapiths.

And this is where I see a link and continuation of the social issues regarding domestic/conjugal violence and the psychological explorations of the relationship between horses and women.

 Philhippos is similar to the Centaurs, the half man-half horse mythological creatures. The chaotic nature of the Centaurs is the result of which part of the creature reacts to the moment – is it the horse in them that makes them untamed, violent and pursuing open fields where to run: or is it the man who is able to pass through the civic and social spheres without creating chaos and peacefully?

Hippodamia takes no chances in guessing what the horses and the Centaurs are going to do. She minimizes violence and chaos in them by dominating them. Subjugating them. Hoping that the wild and unpredictable in them will be tamed.

 

And that, perhaps, brings us back to why women and horses still have a unique relationship. But, a fundamental paradox remains: do horses really want to be domesticated and tamed? Can Hippodamia erase the wild mustang in them? Will the call of the wild always resonate in the soul of horses kept within farm fences waiting to be saddled for the next slow ride in the desert or lush meadows?

Or are horses metaphors for inner emotional and life experience landscapes that women understand best?

That will require consequent and future musing.

 

 October 1, 2026

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2026

 

References and Access to my Poems Published in  The Lancet

 

Title: Wide-eyed and Blue

Author: Vahe A. Kazandjian 

Journal: The Lancet (Volume 354, Issue 9172)

Publication date: July 3, 1999

 

 

Title: Black-eyed Suzan

Author: Vahe A. Kazandjian

Journal: The Lancet (Volume 352, Issue 9137, Page 1398)

 

These poems and my scientific papers can be read on Academia.edu as well as on Google Scholar