The Paintings of Georg Buchner

I had a conversation with Russell the other day about the failure of language. We were discussing Artaud’s theories and proclamations about the inherent evil of language. Art, then, seems to be the answer to the Artaudian and post-structuralist view. After all of this, and the realization that we were getting nowhere and had to return to work to toil away the precious hours of our lives, I finished reading Lenz. When I started this story I was immediately struck by the Romantic era writing. Having just read Artaud and Sarah Kane’s 4.48 Psychosis I was not wholly prepared to encounter a “traditional” approach. Yet, here was Buchner painting beautiful landscapes of the German and Switzerland border. Here was Buchner getting lost in the description of nature. Here was Buchner celebrating the natural world and the author’s ability to capture it. As I was reading I could picture such famous Romanticism works as Caspar David Friedrich’s “Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog.” I was not impressed. The modernist in my head kept screaming, “Make it new!” Then Lenz went crazy and everything changed. Suddenly, Buchner heard Ezra Pound and Artaud from generations yet to come and made it new. As Lenz drifts into insanity, the structure of the story changes; we leave the Romanticism behind and seem to speed toward Expressionism.

Lenz, save for a few areas, cannot easily be expressed as literature. The feel and makeup of this piece lends itself to art. If the first half of this story finds itself in comparison to Friedrich, then the latter half finds itself a precursor to the works of Edvard Munch. Two paintings jumped to my mind as I read the latter part of Lenz. The first was “The Scream.” I pictured that famous painting when I read, “something was stirring and swarming toward an abyss toward which he was being swept by an inexorable force” (47). The anxiety and uncertainty of this line captures what Munch would express in painting nearly 60 years later. This line, along with countless others, expresses so unequivocally what Artaud would write some 80 years later. Artaud’s words fail him; his terms are never defined, for each word is reliant on the previous…until what? Until there is a final word? The finite and finality in this supposed word is what drives people like Artaud and Lenz (both fictional and non) to insanity. The inability of this supposed final word is what drives others to art.

The other painting by Munch that leaped to mind whilst reading of Lenz’s exploits into the abyss was “The Sick Child.” The scene in this painting and the scene in which Munch paints are very similar, so similar in fact that it could probably be argued that Munch had read Lenz.

“The child seemed so forsaken and he himself so alone and isolated; he threw himself on the corpse; death terrified him, raw pain shot through him, these features, this quiet face were soon to rot away, he fell to his knees, he prayed with the full misery of despair that God…” (53)

With this image in my head I find myself wondering if language is all that inadequate. Clearly it is, it’s been proven since Plato’s Phaedrus, yet here we have a writer so clearly and beautifully transcribing a scene that only later manifests itself into art. Perhaps the main theme in Lenz can be understood that we experience the world visually, that the sane mind takes in the world, admires its beauty and its colors. The insane mind takes in the feel, he can see the pain, he can see the failure. Perhaps Lenz is one of the only written works that is both prose and painting. It is only through this amalgamation that meaning can begin to surface.

An Abyss That Laughs at Creation

Reading through Sarah Kane’s 4.48 Psychosis I was slightly worried that I’d have nothing remotely insightful to say. The piece is amazing. I’ve not read anything from Sarah Kane prior to this, and I see why she is so celebrated. This is a terrifying “play” that I’m sure most people can relate to, if only on a visceral level. I was reading and thinking to myself that this is the most tragic, honest, and brilliant thing I’ve read in quite some time. But, really, what am I to say about it? Sure, I could explore the “play’s” lack of character identification, its ambiguity, and its certainty. I could write that never before have I read a more poetic and tragic suicide note. But, I wasn’t sold on all of these. And, clearly, they don’t take up enough page space. Then, something wonderful happened, I turned to page 31: “the chicken’s still dancing / the chicken won’t stop.” I read these lines and instantly stopped. In the midst of a piece that seemed self-contained, self-reliant, self-actualized appeared a reference. Sarah Kane is referencing 1977 German film Stroszek. At the end of Werner Herzog’s masterpiece is a dancing chicken. The eponymous main character has stumbled—after many hardships and tragic defeats—onto a roadside attraction in the backwoods of some desolate American town. Within this roadside attraction are a series of performing animals. There is a duck playing a drum, a rabbit on a fire truck, and the dancing chicken in question. While the camera is focused on the chicken a faint gunshot is heard—this is presumably Stroszek’s suicide. The film ends with the chicken dancing, forever dancing.

It was at that point in the “play” that the character’s suicide was cemented. No longer was it in question, no longer could it be misconstrued. This reference to the dancing chicken carries into my poor attempt to be Alex Ross. Last entry I spoke of Interpol’s clarification of Artaud, and here, with Sarah Kane, again I find reference and clarity within popular music. The chicken as death is now threefold. The first was Stroszek’s death. The second was Ian Curtis, the lead singer of Joy Division. Before Ian Curtis killed himself he reportedly watched the film Stroszek. Now, Herzog has the blood of Sarah Kane on his hands. What is it about the film that so connects it to death? I think I might be piecing that together. Using the motif of this course, the acting out of the everyday, and my experience with Artaud’s "cry of life," I can see these three events as players in the rapidly dissolving line between art and life. All three of these people—including the fictitious Storszek—are bound to their arts. They all hear the cry of life and ask themselves, “why lie?” There is clearly a danger presenting itself in this theory; this attempt to not merely observe art, but to experience it.

If Artaud’s “cry of life” summed up my initial response and excursion into this, perhaps the following quote from Sarah Kane sums up my feelings for this burgeoning theory in my head:

“the only thing that’s permanent is destruction

we’re all going to disappear

trying to leave a mark more permanent than myself

I’ve not killed myself before so don’t look for precedents

What came before was just the beginning”

The feel and look of 4.48 Psychosis has more in common with a poem than that of a play. Again, this ties back to Artaud and the blurring of the artistic fields. The poetic nature and theme of this “play” reminds me of a poem by Mina Loy:

There is no Life or Death,

Only activity

And in the absolute

Is no declivity.

There is no Love or Lust

Only propensity

Who would possess

Is a nonentity.

There is no First or Last

Only equality

And who would rule

Joins the majority.

There is no Space or Time

Only intensity,

And tame things

Have no immensity

Herzog's Dancing Chicken

Artaud's Cry of Life

I’m not one for “profound thoughts of mind,” as Beckett would say; but, I am one to steal lyrics from popular musical acts like Interpol. The theme of this class, as appears to be the theme of Artaud, is to explore and expose theatre. What is theater, and maybe more importantly, why does it matter? As I was driving home from class one undated and mostly forgotten day, Interpol was playing on my iPod. It’s a song that I know very well, so well that it doesn’t affect me; it doesn’t even register in my head as it plays. However, the lyrics “in a passion it broke / I pull the black from the gray / but the soul remains” stood out. I was reflecting on Artaud’s letters and his purpose (too strong a word). It struck me that Artaud was attempting to pull the black from the gray (or maybe the white) to expose us to the soul of theater.

Artaud’s letters center around his desire to get published. He is committing literary faux pas by seemingly harassing an editor who did not publish his work. Artaud, however, asserts that he does not care about his poems being published; instead his aim is to be made to exist. Like every writer, Artaud is writing for posterity. What separates Artaud from the pack is Artaud feels he cannot exist, he may not exist, if he is not captured in some permanent manner.

“I nevertheless offer [these poems] to existence. I have felt and accepted these phrases, these ungainly expressions which you criticize…They come from the deep uncertainty of my thinking. Fortunate indeed when this uncertainty is not replaced by the absolute inexistence from which I sometimes suffer.”

When the publisher finally realizes that Artaud is not just advocating himself (though that is his chief aim), but a new way of seeing (Artaud as Rimbaud’s Seer), he offers to publish the letters they’ve exchanged. The publisher suggests publishing them as works of fiction, or at least changing their names. To this Artaud writes, “why lie, why try to place on a literary level a thing which is the very cry of life?” This brings me back around to the Interpol song. Artaud’s goal—as I’ve already presumptuously titled it—is to expose drama to life. He is attempting to pull the black (sometimes white) from the gray and show that in doing so the soul remains. That art, drama, poetry, all of it is experienced on such a level that we lie to ourselves and classify what we’ve witnessed as literary. Perhaps it’s not literary; perhaps it’s just the cry of life.

To further stretch the already fully stretched, this Artaudian decree of why lie, why mask the cry of life, can be traced beyond just the works of Artaud or the others studied in this class. It seems to me that the Beat generation embodied this notion as well. Writers like Jack Kerouac and his ilk were less concerned with the literary value of their works and more concerned with exposing the very cry of life.