This wasn’t the first time when Wyspiański turned to Planty for inspiration. At the beginning of his artistic practice, in 1894, he created two works dedicated to the park, which the art historian Wojciech Bałus has interpreted as a diptych: the pastel Planty nocą (Planty by Night) and an oil painting Planty o świcie (Planty at Dawn) – in the 1990s, the latter was reproduced on the reverse of a ten-thousand złoty bill. The former is a nocturne illuminated by a mysterious, surreal light reminiscent of the Eye of Providence; the latter shows the same fragment of the park at sunrise. The ‘Eye of Providence’ turns out to be a tacky modern gas lamp, which Wyspiański displayed sarcastically against the background of Wawel Hill.
Bałus interprets these paintings as unveiling the ordinary reality hiding behind a poetic vision. Chochoły, painted four years later, doesn’t try to explain reality, but instead focuses on the extraordinary and the inexplicable. The composition of the drawing is also unusual. When trying to answer a seemingly simple question about the position of the observer, Bałus concluded that this spot simply doesn’t exist and also didn’t exist when Wyspiański was alive.
We see the scene from the level of approximately third floor of a nonexistent house. It is therefore a painting viewed literally from a bird’s eye view, a perspective that is inaccessible to human eyes, which, according to Bałus, is supposed to intensify the extraordinary effect of the ‘dream vision.’ In comparison to other works by Wyspiański, where landscapes almost always have a clearly defined existing observation point, this is an exceptional situation, highlighting the strangeness and uniqueness of the artwork.
Is it just that? The figure of a chochoł (a straw wrap) almost immediately refers the viewer to The Wedding, Wyspiański’s play from 1901. Thus, it is also possible that the circle of swaying shrubs in Planty is an anticipation of the Chochoł dance in The Wedding. This interpretation seems to be supported by other elements: the same time of day and the location of the scene – at the foot of the way to Wawel, so a place carrying special connotations with national history. The most thorough and enlightening interpretation placing Chochoły in the context of The Wedding was written by Agnieszka Morawińska.