Reflections on Stephen Alexander's 'When the Moon Hits Your Eye' - A Guest Post by Sally Guaragna

Stephen Alexander: When the Moon Hits Your Eye (2017) 

 Caspar David Friedrich: Der Wanderer über dem Nebelmeer (1818)

 

For me, whilst Stephen Alexander's amusing photograph entitled When the Moon Hits Your Eye has a surreal aspect provided by its incorporation of a big pizza pie [1], it is clearly rooted in German Romanticism, nodding as it does to the mid-period work of Caspar David Friedrich [2] which typically features a contemplative figure seen from behind and silhouetted against an allegorical landscape.

This compositional device - known as a Rückenfigur - is often used to convey man's insignificance before the vast expanse of nature; that is to say, his sense of isolation and existential anxiety when confronted with the sublime (i.e., inhuman beauty on an overwhelming scale). 

 

As one commentator rightly notes, in using this anonymous and indistinct figure seen from behind, artists are able to create "a metaphorical bridge for the viewer" [3] by which they are able to insert themselves into the image. The Rückenfigur functions thus as an avatar, as well as symbolising the heroic archetype of Man Alone. 

 

Alexander makes clear, however, that the figure in his image should primarily be conceived as a wanderer - a key term in his philosophical lexicon, as it is for many artists, poets and thinkers who work in a post-Romantic tradition. One recalls the words of Nietzsche, for example, with which I would like to close this short post: 

 

"He who has attained freedom of spirit to any extent cannot regard himself otherwise than as a wanderer on the face of the earth - and not even as a traveller towards a final destination, for such does not exist." [4]          

 

 

Notes

 

[1] I have since discovered that Alexander's picture does not, in fact, make use of a pizza; the 'moon' is actually a pancake. It remains a witty and surreal use of food in order to create a work of art. 

 

[2] Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840) was a 19th-century German landscape painter, generally considered the most important artist of his generation. His work seeks to convey a subjective, emotional response to the natural world coupled to a Gothic sensibility. 

      It has been suggested by the American art critic Thomas Bonneville, that Alexander's image actually owes more to the work of the English painter (and visionary) Samuel Palmer (1805-1881), who certainly loved a moonlit landscape. However, whilst this might be the case, I can find no evidence to support this claim.

 

[3] Laura Thipphawong, 'The Mysterious Appeal of the Rückenfigur' (2021) on artshelp.com: click here. 

 

[4] Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, I. 638. It's important to note, however, that Nietzsche's wanderer is not some kind of hypercultural tourist. Indeed, paradoxical as it sounds, his form of existence is what Heidegger terms dwelling.  

 

Ghost Variations: Notes on the Madness of Robert Schumann

Robert Schumann (1810-1856) 

German Romantic composer, critic, and madman

In the season two episode of Seinfeld entitled 'The Jacket' [1], George has a catchy tune from Les Misérables stuck in his head which he can't stop singing: Master of the house, doling out the charm / Ready with a handshake and an open palm ...

Jerry warns him that the ninteenth century composer Robert Schumann went mad after just a single note earwormed its way into his mind and he involuntarily heard it playing over and over again. Obviously, George doesn't find this story very reassuring - Oh that I really needed to hear! - but is it true?

The short answer is yes: Schumann did go insane and have to be institutionalised; and he did hear a persistent A-note at the end of his life as well as other increasingly disturbing auditory hallucinations.

Thus it was, for example, that on one cold winter's night in February 1854, the composer leapt from his bed and began feverishly attempting to set down a melody that he believed at first was being dictated by the very angels of heaven. By morning, however, he was convinced that what he actually heard were the hideous cries of demonic beasts.

Whatever the true source of his inspiration [2], the melody became the basis of the six piano variations - known today as the Geistervariationen - that were the last thing he wrote before his final crack-up. They thus occupy a unique (and somewhat disturbing) place in his body of work - as, indeed, in the history of classical music. 

On 27 February, Schumann attempted suicide by throwing himself from a bridge into the Rhine. Rescued by a passing boat and taken home, he requested that he be admitted to an asylum for the insane. Here he remained until his death, aged 46, in the summer of 1856. During his confinement, although his friend Brahms had permission to visit, Schumann wasn't allowed to see his wife, Clara, until two days before his death.

The cause of his death - just like the cause of his madness [3] - is something that has been endlessly discussed ever since; was he schizophrenic or syphilitic? Did he have a bipolar disorder or were his neurological problems the result of a brain tumour of some kind? Was it pneumonia or mercury poisoning - mercury being a common treatment for syphilis at the time - which finally did him in?   

I suppose we'll never really know. But what we might do - and should do - is resist the urge of some commentators to regurgitate the romantic vomit and tired narratives regarding the genius and madness of artists ...

The view that creativity is rooted in or fatefully tied to madness is such bullshit. Artists may well think differently from most other people - that is to say, they may be neurologically divergent and able to experience the world from a wide array of queer perspectives (to delight in paradox, inconsistency, and even chaos), - but it's banal (and mistaken) to reduce this (or their heightened sensitivity) to mental illness.       

Ultimately, I return to Michel Foucault's conclusion in Madness and Civilization: the onset of madness marks the point at which creative work ends; a moment of abolition that dissolves the truth of the work of art [4].  

Notes

[1] Seinfeld, 'The Jacket' [S2/E3], dir. Tom Cherones, written by Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld, (first broadcast 6 February 1991). Click here to watch a clip from the episode on YouTube.

[2] Sadly, Schumann's mind had deteriorated to such a degree by this point, that he was unable to recognise that - far from being the work of angels, ghosts, or demons - the melody was in fact one of his own, written several months earlier.

[3] I'm taking Schumann's mental health issues - evident from a young age - as a given here, but, interestingly, there are critics such as John Worthen who vigorously challenge this idea. For Worthen the composer's tragic deterioration was rooted in a physical condition (syphilis) and was not a form of madness per se. See: Schumann: Life and Death of a Musician (Yale University Press, 2007).

[4] Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization trans. Richard Howard, (Vintage Books, 1988), p. 287.

The Blue Flower Post

I.

Even though some floraphiles like to parade their knowledge of its modern Latin name - derived from the Greek terms mēkōn and opsis - and insist that the Himalyan blue poppy is not a true poppy at all, it's always been one of my favourite flowers and there's surely no denying the beauty (and authenticity) of its colour. 

In fact, I'm very fond of all blue flowers - from the palest of pale forget-me-nots and delicate little alpine plants that glory in the snow, to those large Bavarian gentians that Lawrence described as darkening the day with a smoky-blueness belonging to the underworld.   


II.

Simon says all this reveals the Romantic aspect of my character. And perhaps he's right: for the Romantics were certainly enchanted by die blaue Blumen and gave it crucial symbolic meaning within their aesthetics and wider philosophy.

Novalis, for example, the 18th-century German poet and mystic who preached a Liebesreligion based on his reading of Fichte, used the symbol of the blue flower in his unfinished novel entitled Heinrich von Ofterdingen based on the life of the fabled Middle High German poet of that name.

In the book, the blue flower betokens man's metaphysical striving for the infinite whilst also symbolising the importance of remaining true to the natural world, for, according to Novalis, the development of the human self - and the ideas and emotions experienced by that self - is also a form of miraculous flowering. 

III.

Having conceded my own Romanticism, it's important to note that, ultimately, I'm not a Romantic; that I am, in fact, anti-Romantisch. I wouldn't go so far as to shout: Schlagt die Germanistik tot, färbt die blaue Blume rot!, but I agree with Walter Benjamin that it's become impossible to share the intense longing for transcendence that marked the true Romantic, or remain an uncritical devotee of the blue flower (as a symbol, not as an actual blossom).         

As Benjamin nicely noted: "No one really dreams any longer of the Blue Flower. Whoever awakes as Heinrich von Ofterdingen today must have overslept."

Notes

D. H. Lawrence, 'Bavarian Gentians', The Poems, Vol. I, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 610-11. This verse can be read online by clicking here. 

Friedrich von Hardenberg, (aka Novalis), Heinrich von Ofterdingen, unfinished work written in 1800 and first published a year after his death in 1802. An English translation of this work is available to read as a Project Gutenberg eBook by clicking here.   

Walter Benjamin, 'Dream Kitsch', in The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility, and Other Writings on Media, ed. Michael W. Jennings, Brigid Doherty, and Thomas Y. Levin, trans. Edmund Jephcott, Rodney Livingstone, Howard Eiland, and Others, (Harvard University Press, 2008), p. 236. Click here to read the essay online. 

For a sister post on the silver-studded blue butterfly, click here.

Drinking the Silence: Notes on the Case of Georg Trakl

Georg Trakl: Self-Portrait (1913)

I.

You should probably read more Trakl, says Simon. And, yes, I probably should ...

For even if his work isn't quite my cup of tea, there are elements within his lyrical expressionism to which I'm sympathetic; such as his fascination with the blueness of twilight and his love of silence. No one can deny that there are many arresting - and disturbing - images in his work, as he fully exploits the often uncanny ambiguity of German. 


II. Wer war Georg Trakl? 

Georg Trakl was a typical Romantic figure; a depressed drug fiend, who engaged in an incestuous relationship with his younger sister, Greta, and received generous financial support from wealthy patrons, including the philosopher Wittgenstein, who, like Heidegger, was a huge fan (see section III below).

A pharmacist by profession, Trakl liked to hang around with the avant-garde artists involved with the well-known literary journal Der Brenner, edited by Ludwig von Ficker. The latter was also an avid supporter of the young poet and not only regularly printed his work, but attempted to find a publisher for his first collection.

Unfortunately, Trakl overdosed on cocaine in the autumn of 1914 and became an early member of what is now known as the 27 Club. There's a very strong possibility of suicide. In a letter written in 1913 he confessed:

"I long for the day when my soul shall cease [...] to live in this wretched body polluted with melancholy, when it shall quit this laughable form made of muck and rottenness, which is all too faithful a reflection of a godless, cursed century."


III. Philosophical Readings of Trakl

As mentioned above, both Wittgenstein and Heidegger were keen readers of Trakl. But, perhaps not surprisingly, they responded very differently to his poetry ...

The former, for example, wrote that whilst he didn't understand the verses, their tone - one of true genius - made him very happy. The latter, on the other hand, claimed that Trakl's work made perfect sense, once it had been situated and unified as a single rhythmic wave within his own thinking.

Derrida would later question this rather outrageous attempt by Heidegger to co-opt Trakl's work - what we might describe as an act of philosophical Anschluss - though, to be fair, it's something we've all done is it not; to read an author in light of one's own ideas and obsessions (indeed, it might be argued that every reading is an act of violation, as the reader seeks out their textual pleasure).


Thanks to the poet and literary scholar Simon Solomon for suggesting this post.

Schlegel's Hedgehog

German poet, literary critic and philosopher, Friedrich Schlegel, was, like other romantics, a big fan of the fragment.

In an oft-cited section of his Athenäums-fragmente (1798), he asserts that, if it is to be distinctive in form and purpose like a tiny work of art, then the fragment "has to be entirely isolated from the surrounding world and be complete in itself like a hedgehog" [206].

Further, it must maintain itself in prickly opposition even to those fragments in close vicinity to which it might otherwise seem in some kind of relation, thereby reflecting Schlegel's view that the world is made up of isolated objects within a chaotic universality of infinite possibilities and perspectives.  

As someone who is also passionate about fragmentary writing - more due to my background in modernism and postmodernism, rather than romanticism - I feel obliged to say something about this; particularly as I feel there's something fundamentally false about Schlegel's view.

Firstly, whilst hedgehogs might lead relatively solitary lives and can, of course, roll into a tight spiky ball for defensive purposes, they are no more isolated from the surrounding world than any other creature; if they were, they'd die. So, if nothing else, the above Igel analogy doesn't hold water as far as any self-respecting naturalist would be concerned.

Secondly, whilst I concede that objects are always at some level withdrawn and don't exist purely in terms of their external relations, for me the beauty of the fragment is that it (potentially) contains all things within it on the one hand, whilst being forever open ended on the other. Indeed, I would say the perfect fragment always inconclusively concludes in an elliptic manner with a set of three dots and that they only really sparkle, like stars in a constellation, by becoming part of a new (intertextual) practice of some kind. 

Ultimately, the fragment is that which allows language to discover its own ephemeral destiny. They appear, but before we can hardly even begin to make sense of them they shoot lines of flight towards the horizon of their own disappearance, showing a beautiful indifference towards their own origin, their own end, or their own Schlegelian self-perfection as an enclosed work of art.

Each thing - be it fragment or hedgehog - streams in what D. H. Lawrence terms an intertwining flux of relations and the business of art is reveal and expand these relations, not isolate itself from the circumambient universe. The only way we might discover some kind of salvation (or belonging) is to accomplish a pure (or quick) relationship between ourselves and other objects of all description and for me it's fragmented or aphoristic writing which, as a literary genre, best facilitates this. 

Note: I am grateful to Thomas Bonneville for encouraging me to read Schlegel and write this post.