Visual Inspirations Meets Real Life: Hölderlin and Me - Part II

Storm in the Salzkammergut, Austria

Sturm und Drang: Part 2

Gibbin House: an excerpt

In the few hours he managed to wrangle free, this became his main object, the stealthy strolling through of these shady fir woods.  How much he would have loved Răluca at his side then.   Watching her sigh and awe in that charmingly self-satisfactory way of hers at all the incidental wonders around them, which he in these moments had to notice passively for himself.  He especially thought of her when a storm cloud happened on him in the course of his walk, because it made him think of Hölderlin.  And Martin would break into an irresistible smile, convinced she too would have recalled their earliest discussion and used it as an opportunity to tease him.  Run, Martin, before you’re caught in the rain and descend into madness!  

On one such stormy afternoon, gripped by the oddest impulse, he actually did start off on a sprint, straight into the arms of the tempest, diving into the cascading fury of lightning that erupted suddenly, and then ever further, slipping through the hiking paths that scaled the wooded base of the mountains, shivering cold and slipping clumsily in the soaked top soil and the rock, but running nonetheless, ever higher, leaving almost everything behind him, as if ascending into the realm of gods and myth, answering the challenge laid at poets and writers, so infatigable in their obsessions and yet so frail.  He ran with the thought of reaching an empty crag he’d hitherto only spied from the shores, a high bluff breaking the monotony of trees, where he might stand and sound his Whitmanian yawp in protest and confirmation, defying the thunder and the splintering lightning like a shower of accusation to break him down. 

Not far from where he had started his sprint, however, his chest begun to sting quite fiercely.  He regressed into a speedy strut, which in turn slowed into a lumbering stagger, his side caving to stitches.  Abandoning his initial destination, which still loomed above him, deceptively near at every winding turn in the trail, Martin made instead for the porch of the Weigert villa, and by evening, he was laid up in bed with a cold.   (p. 239-40)

Poor Theodor, it is rather a worse fate than Hölderlin's, is it not?  To find oneself in the grip of nature's fury and rather than rising to meet it, to stare it square in the face, come up short and capitulate.  As I said in "Part One" of this post, an artist hopes for a moment in which he or she may feel absolutely enthralled, alive, not simply in the involuntary visceral sense of a rollercoaster ride, but also in a philosophical sense, convinced that its magnitude is derived from the importance only we as artists can ascribe to it.  We want convincing that we recognize the ultimate highs and lows of life's experience because of an artistic soul.  And what if it isn't true?  In our Romantic poet's case, he was clearly certain that he was profoundly sensitive to the phenomenal powers of nature, and left no doubt in the public's mind - 36 years up in a lone tower like a deranged Rapunzel will give that impression.  But what if we are not overwhelmed?  What if we do not reach the summit and are made mad with the rapture of it? 

I'm reminded of "Of Human Bondange" by the sublime W. Somerset Maugham, in which the protagonist Philip slowly comes to realize that there is a difference between true artistic genius and wannabe bohemians, and that he sadly belongs to the latter.  Although the book was published in 1915 and rather echoes the adolescent worries of every high schooler with half an imagination, the fundamental problem of whether one is destined for the things towards which one strives is eternal and age-less.  We become no more enlightened because we are older.  In fact, I often feel that bare confidence is a thing luxuriously afforded to childhood alone.   An "A" on a 3rd Grade project is a solid thing, real currency.  Whereas adult compliments and achievements are shrouded in duplicitous mystery, dependent on social connections, sexual manipulation, condescension, etc.   An artist is most commonly validated by the size of his entourage, the dispair of his suicide note, or the shrillness of his devil-may-care bowtie.  In an ever diverse and fragmented yet all-documented, digitally overexposed world, the idea of suffering (or celebrating) in quiet anonymity becomes terrifying.  If we hide from the world these days, no one has the time to notice or care.   Do we have the stength, therefore, to climb the mountain, face the tempest, and thrill in its beautiful savagery alone?

Last month, I found myself, very much on top of the mountain.  As previously mentioned, I attended the wedding of two amazing women-heroines-friends at the summit of Mt. Greylock.  Rather unexpectedly, Hurricane Irene decided to sweep through Massachussetts that same weekend, the eye passing right over our lodge.  No sooner than the storm began and we were advised that roads leading off the mountain were being closed, a sumptuous fog enveloped our little party.  The view, which usually stretches for miles and miles into New Hampshire now reached no further than a few feet.  Soon the rain ripped and pounded past us through the opaque air, and I thought about Hölderlin.  We were not allowed to leave the lodge, the heavy wooden doors secured, but I wondered what it would be like to tear out and run through the storm, to be drenched and beaten about...perhaps it's good that I don't know how I might have felt.  I continue to believe in my artistic soul, unchallenged.

PS: The day I received my first printed copy of "Gibbin House", I went for a run along the beach and was met with a torrential downpour, through which I persisted, furiously skimming over the sand as my head rocked to the beats of Swedish House Mafia's "One"...I was a Greek muse on the deserted beach that evening, light as air, inexhaustible, delerious, in tears against the fiery glow of sunset.  I don't know if that proves anything about me or just Theodor's theory that during seminal moments in our life, it must always rain...

Visual Inspirations - Aboard Gericault's Raft of the Medusa

Raft of the Medusa

Gericault's Raft of the Medusa

Excerpt from GIBBIN HOUSE:

...But after hours of vigilance and wide-eyed awake-ness, one adopts patience.  Or as it ought to be known, the self-congratulatory brother of fatigue.  Patience then gives way to indifference, and in time one becomes a heretic to the creed of goals and ends and satin-ribboned resolutions.  One stops caring about the names of foreign cities, stops seeking out their hearts from window seats.  Eventually one realizes they are all disfigured, all the same sketch of blasted glass and ruins and fire-retardant weeds, anonymous to the fickle gazes that graze them.  One drifts among them, a shipwrecked figure on Gericault’s raft, gaunt and delirious, running one’s arm through the air outside without hope or aim. 

In the past week I have not been alone on this Medusa. 

There were soldiers on my train, boys in pieces - paralyzed by the fear of not recognizing the home they were headed back to, and of not being recognized by it.  They knew the damage that awaited them, because they had inflicted the same damage somewhere else.  And there were the older veterans, those who proved the fears of the younger ones founded, having been rejected, because they had the misfortune to return during the phase of recrimination which always follows the initial relief of having survived.  They now wandered in a transfixed state, as if all they saw anymore were memories superimposed on the actual life around them.  Erratic in sleep as in consciousness, they sometimes snarled and gawked and other times pounced on kindness with the eerie licentiousness of a ghost starved for a soul. (Page 37-38)

Gericault Study

The above belongs to Anka's reflections shortly after her arrival in London.  In this instance,  she likens train travel through a war-ravaged Europe to what she imagines it must have been like aboard the raft of the Medusa - the French vessel that so infamously shipwrecked in 1816 and was interpreted by the young Romantic painter Theodore Gericault two years later.  

We assume that she knows the painting from a book or postcard her art-minded parents might have kept at home, and that they would have related the background story of the horrific incident.  Gericault's painting would easily have stood out to Anka for the isolation, despair and inhumanity the image represents - much of what she feels as she comes to term with her unwanted relocation - and so she draws on it now, picturing herself floating aimlessly and uncertain, on trains filled with men as desperate as those French passengers a century before her.

I will never forget the day I first encountered this painting.  It was the autumn of 98' and I was sitting in Professor W.'s 19th Century Art class - we had just finished up Neo-Classicism and endured three days of W. pronouncing Ingre's name 'ang' (took me half of that to recognize who the heck she was talking about...oh, 'ongrrr'...)  In any case, the next movement was Romanticism, that wild and vivid era of Delacroix, chockabock full of Morroccan brothels, moody seascapes and revolutionary battle scenes (Anka references artists like Delacroix, Turner, and Goya in later passages.)  But Gericault, whom I was not familiar with, came as a surprise.

Professor W. went into great detail about the shipwreck that inspired it, the Meduse Frigate that capsized near Mauritania on July 5, 1816.  127 people set adrift a roughly constructed raft.  13 days before their rescue, only 15 remained alive.  What transpired between the wreck and the raft's rescue was a grotesque tale of madness, illness, and cannibalism that shocked the French public.

Gericault's decision to paint a life-size version of this incident, so fresh in the public's memory, was indeed audacious - such giant canvases had until then been reserved for political figures, military triumphs, and religious themes.  But here he was, elevating a contemporary subject and everyday people, and moreover, capturing them at the brink of their health and sanity.  He met with survivors to learn about the men on board and their intimate tragedies.  He conducted extensive research into the stages of starvation and decomposition, visiting hospital wards and morgues.  Professor W. showed us slides of these early sketches.  I knew very well that previous artists had drawn from corpses, but Gericault's obsession with morbid authenticity was luridly fascinating. 

But what really struck me, was the composition of the painting.  Because, as it happens, there was a point before the raft's rescue, when they were passed by the Argus without being seen.  And it is this moment Gericault focuses on, rather than the eventual rescue, when the men attempt to flag down a ship that is blind to them.  One has to imagine the utter utter despondency of knowing their one chance of survival is lost.

Liberation - Photo Frank ScherschelTime & Life PicturesGetty Images

There were few lectures I remember as fondly as this, and when writing this passage I eagerly included the piece, because I like to think of Anka as a little like me - a little melodramatic and fatalistic but always atune to the symphony of beauty. 

In writing Gibbin House, I was ever aware of the historic context, the physical destruction and precariousness of post-war life, particularly between 1945-50', and I hope I never give the impression of glossing over the bare struggles or romanticizing that time.  But recalling art, music, the things one loves, by which we define ourselves, I can't imagine I would be able to stop myself doing it.  I want to think I would be sitting in a train car, staring out over empty cities and blank faces, and comparing myself to a figure of Gericault's, if for no other reason than to retain my own humanity.