Venice: A “Fluxus Eleatis” Discourse

Michel Foucault:  Discourse operates in four major ways. Discourse creates a world; discourse generates knowledge and “truth”; discourse says something about the people who speak it; discourse always incorporates elements of power.

Socrates und Alcibiades

 A poem by Friedrich Hoelderlin

“Warum huldigest du, heiliger Socrates,

“Diesem Juenglinge stets? kennest du Groessers nicht?

“Warum siehet mit Liebe,

“Wie auf Goetter, dein Aug’ auf ihn?

Wer das Tiefste gedacht, liebt das Lebendigste,

Hohe Jugend versteht, wer in die Welt geblikt

Und es neigen die Weisen

Oft am Ende zu Schoenem sich.

 

Gustav von Aschenbach: ‘What lies in wait for me here, Ambiguous Venice, Where water is married to stone, And passion confuses the senses?’

 

Farfarello: And so, if you’d like to give me your soul before its time, I’m here, ready to take it.

 

Luchino Visconti: The sky has to be orange, even if Fassbinder copies me in Querelle.

 

Mr. FFF:  I started my trip from the Northern Cemetery in Munich. I arrived in Venice by train. The Marathon run finished a few minutes ago. There are many visitors. The water of the lagoon has a dull grey color. It is chilly. It is cloudy but there is no rain. Mrs. T misses you already.

MM:  Do not get lost in the art farm that is Venice! I googled and saw that you have bad weather and it’s raining. Hope you got your wellies.

 

Apollo: Reason, control, and clarity

 

Gustav von Aschenbach: I am furious because I am forced to return, but secretly I rejoice.

 

Dionysus: Wander lust

 

Gustav von Aschenbach:  Vacillating, irresolute, absurd.

 

Thomas Mann: A life spiraling out of control.

 

Friedrich Hoelderlin:

Und immer,

Ins Ungebundene gehet eine Sehnsucht.

(And always,

there is a longing to dissolve)

 

Mr. FFF:   In Palazzo Grassi I met Mr. Dob, the Manga character that has been adopted by Takashi Murakami. He has three eyes and an energizing stare.  Mr. Dob inhabits Murakami’s masterpiece 727-272 (The Emergence of God at the Reversal of Fate). Mrs. T is in love with him but he ignores her.  For her, it was love at first sight. For him, she does not even exist.

 

MM:  Luckily today I will be on scrub watch so that should keep me busy enough not to think about not having the both of you around.

 

Don Giovanni:

 Deh vieni alla finestra, o mio tesoro,

Deh vieni a consolar il pianto mio.

Se neghi a me di dar qualche ristoro,

Davanti agli occhi tuoi morir vogl’ io.

Tu ch’ ai la bocca dolce piu che il miele,

Tu che il zucchero porti in mezzo il core!

Non esser, gioia mia, con me crudele!

Lascati almen veder, mio bell’ amore!

Friedrich Nietzsche: To experience a thing as beautiful means: to experience it necessarily wrongly – (which, incidentally, is why marriage for love is, from the point of view of society, the most unreasonable king of marriage). The demand for art and beauty is an indirect demand for the ecstasies of sexuality communicated to the brain.

 

Farfarello: Well, then, since of necessity you love yourself with the greatest love of which you’re capable, of necessity you desire your happiness as strongly as you can. And since this supreme desire of yours can never be satisfied even in the smallest degree, it follows that in no way can you escape being unhappy.

 

Gustav von Aschenbach: Time presses, time does not press

Constantine Cavafy: Πλαϊ στο παραθυρο ηταν το κρεββατι που αγαπηθηκαμε τοσες φορες. (By the window was the bed where we made love so many times).

 

Mr. FFF:  A Cretan Madonna in Santa Maria della Salute. It was taken from the Church of Saint Titus in the last minute before fleeing Candia and Crete, by the Commander of the Venetians Morozini. The Ottomans captured Candia immediately after. Crete and Venice, share a co-existence that brought El Greco to Venice before he continued his journey to go to Spain.

MM:  I can’t say I am doing such exciting stuff as you. I waited in line for an hour to change the tires on my car and now it’s being done. Nothing fun to report.  Of course I miss the both of you terribly. It seems like I cannot have meaningful conversation with anybody else, but you.  Not to mention the fact that we took our jokes and puns to a whole other level and now whatever jokes anybody tries to do is pointless.

 

Filippo Ottonieri: Except for the times of suffering, as well as of fear, I would think that the worst moments are those of pleasure because the hope for them and the memory of them, which occupy the rest of our lives, are better and much more pleasant than the pleasures themselves.

 

Thomas Schutte: Efficiency Men, Punta della Dogana, Venice

Jean Baudrillard: Everyday experience falls like snow. Immaterial, crystalline and microscopic, it enshrouds all the features of the landscape. It absorbs sounds, the resonance of thoughts and events; the wind sweeps across it sometimes with unexpected violence and it gives off an inner light, a malign fluorescence which bathes all forms in crepuscular indistinctness.  Watching time snow down, ideas snow down, watching the silence of some aurora borealis light up, giving in to the vertigo of enshrouding and whiteness.

 

Friedrich Hoelderlin:

 Wo aber gefahr ist, waechst,

Das Rettende auch.

(Where there is danger,

some Salvation grows there too.)

 

Gustav von Aschenbach : What if all were dead, and only we two left alive

Luigi Pirandello: The torment of imagining you far away – among other people who can have the joy of seeing you, talking to you, being near you while I am here without life because I can neither see you nor talk with you, nor be near you – can be mitigated only by the thought that you feel my presence within you and that even from far away you give me life, and that even in your silence you see me and talk to me; in one word, that I am alive and close to you, more than those who see you, talk to you, and are around you.

 


Mr. FFF:  Thomas Schuette’s “Efficiency Men” were waiting for me at the Punta della Dogana.  Their steel bodies were covered down to their knees by felt blankets. It was like a call to Joseph Beuys. His felt self is all over German Art.

 MM:  You realize I’m not having nearly as much fun as you are, but I expect to be entertained upon your return! So prepare lots of stories from Venice. You know the kind: money, blood and sex.

Giuseppe Ungaretti:

ECO

Scalza varcando da sabbie lunari,

Aurora, amore festoso, d’ un’ eco

Popoli l’ esule universe e lasci

Nella carne dei giorni,

Perenne scia, una piaga velata.

 

Luigi Pirandello: What life is there left for me? I don’t care anymore about anything. Only about you do I care, and all that concerns you, my Marta; if you suffer, suffering with you and for you; if you get angry, getting angry with you; if you hope, hoping with you and for you. And remaining – for as long as I stay alive, for as long as my eyes stay open, for as long as my heart keeps beating, for as long as the soul burns in me – with my eyes, my heart, my soul, enchanted by your beauty, by the charms of your person, by the divine nobility of your feelings and of your spirit.

Adele:

Whenever I’m alone with you

You make me feel like I am home again

Whenever I’m alone with you

You make me feel like I am whole again

Whenever I’m alone with you

You make me feel like I am young again

Whenever I’m alone with you

You make me feel like I am fun again

However far away I will always love you

However long I stay I will always love you

Whatever words I say I will always love you

I will always love you

Mr. FFF:  Fog everywhere. I boarded a U-boat where a rabbi was reading the Kaballah. Later, in Hotel Metropol during lunch I met an Indian Maharadja and his German maiden.

MM:  All these cultural encounters! We redid the kitchen; the hard part is over now. You may be interested to know that nothing works without me!

Gustav Mahler: I should not have cried on the train departing Venice. I should not have dismissed Alma’s music compositions. It is too late now.  I gave my name to von Aschenbach.

Discource Participants

Adele, English singer

Apollo, Greek God of light

Gustav von Aschenbach, German writer (through the pen of Thomas Mann, through the interpretation of Myfawny Piper, through the camera of Luchino Visconti, through the interpretation of Fluxus Eleatis)

Jean Baudrillard, French philosopher

Constantine Cavafy, Greek poet

Dionysus, Greek God of pleasure

Farfarello, character created by Giacomo Leopardi

Michel Foucault, French philosopher

Mr. FFF, wanderer

Don Giovanni, a young, extremely licentious nobleman (created by Lorenzo da Ponte)

Friedrich Hoelderlin, German poet

Gustav Mahler, Austrian composer

Thomas Mann, German writer

MM, partner

Friedrich Nietzsche, German philosopher

Filippo Ottonieri, philosopher created by Giacomo Leopardi

Luigi Pirandello, Italian writer and Nobel Laureate

Giuseppe Ungaretti, Italian poet

Luchino Visconti, Italian director

The late Mattia Pascal – Ο μακαριτης Μαθιος Πασκαλης

Lyobov Popova: Sketch for a portrait

Introduction

For the moment (and God knows how much it pains me), I have died already twice, but the first time was a mistake, and the second—well, you may read for yourself . . .

Luigi Pirandello, Forward to The Late Mattia Pascal

So, then, man is but a disguise, a lie and hypocrisy, both in himself and in regard to others. He will not have the truth told him, he avoids telling it to others, and all this disposition, so far removed from justice and reason, is rooted by nature in his heart.

Blaise Pascal, Pensees

(both quotations are sourced from Ed Mendelowitz’s article)

Giorgio de Chirico: Portrait prémonitoire de Guillaume Apollinaire.

This is a story about the late Mattia Pascal, the hero in Luigi Pirandello’s 1904 novel, Il fu Mattia Pascal (The late Mattia Pascal)..

Through a movie made by Bernard L’ Herbier in 1925, Mattia assumed another identity (and life) as one of the alter egos of the Greek poet and Nobel Laureate, George Seferis.

In this post I will present Pirandello’s novel, hoping to continue in the future with Seferis’ alter ego.

The Author

Luigi Pirandello (1867-1936) was born in Agrigento, Sicily, the son of a rich mining contractor.

Having studied at the universities of Palermo and Rome and taken a degree in philology at Bonn, the young Pirandello turned to writing poetry and stories, achieving his first literary success in 1904 with his novel The Late Mattia Pascal. 

During World War I, Pirandello began to write for the stage, winning an international following with plays such as Six Characters in Search of an Author (1921) and Henry IV (1922).

In 1934, he received the Nobel Prize for Literature. Pirandello was the author of novels, essays, stories, and more than fifty plays, as well as an influence on writers as different as Eugène Ionesco and T.S.Eliot.

Pine tree with Pirandello’s grave

Commenting on his work in 1920 Pirandello wrote:

I think that life is a very sad piece of buffoonery; because we have in ourselves, without being able to know why, wherefore or whence, the need to deceive ourselves constantly by creating a reality (one for each and never the same for all), which from time to time is discovered to be vain and illusory….

My art is full of bitter compassion for all those who deceive themselves; but this compassion cannot fail to be followed by the ferocious derision of destiny which condemns man to deception.

Pirandello Museum

The Novel

The story

Mattia Pascal endures a life of drudgery in a provincial town.

Then, providentially, he discovers that he has been declared dead.

Realizing he has a chance to start over, to do it right this time, he moves to a new city, adopts a new name, and a new course of life—only to find that this new existence is as insufferable as the old one.

But when he returns to the world he left behind, it’s too late: his job is gone, his wife has remarried.

Mattia Pascal’s fate is to live on as the ghost of the man he was.

Francis Bacon: Study after Velazquez

Pirandello on personal identity

…So personal identity is also perception and interpretation, it is a mask, a construction.

And as ernerges from Pirandello’s work, either we play along, or we are out o f the game, i.e. society.

The authentic identity is an illusion; identity is fiction.

Luigi Pirandello

This means that we are always playing roles, with the onIy distinction being between those people who do it unconsciously and those who are aware of their condition.

The resulting character, in Pirandello, is one that is more or less conscious of the fragmentation of the self.

The protagonist usuaily suffers fiom the awareness of this fragmentation whereas the secondary characters generally perceive themselves as unified subjects.

(from Rachel Remington’s thesis)

Masks of No Theater

Pirandello and Heidegger

.…It’s difficult not to be stunned and impressed by the wisdom of Pirandello who had been employing these concepts in his art from his very first novel. But within the genre of novels, it was with Mattia Pascal that Pirandello inaugurated the series of personages to whom he would assign the arduous task of searching for their own authenticity in this Heideggerian sense. But upon the emptiness left by his presumed death, in fact, Mattia quickly reconstructs another persona which, only apparently different from the first, in reality represents its grotesque double. Mattia’s voyages, without any precise destination or practical utility, can seem like the modern transcription of the great romantic theme of vagabondage.

(Source: Wikipedia on Pirandello)

… Pirandello’s play (Cosi e) enacts a post-modern model of truth, which is characterized as an event, an arriving withdrawal, and as a particular affective relationship to that event. The event occurs in ec-static moments that open up the possibility for decisive action, and for the freedom to constitute a new order of life, what Martin Heidegger would call, a new way of being-in-the-world.

Pirandello shares with most existentialists the urgency of criticizing conventional (unauthentic) society…. But where Pirandello’s development of the existentialism problematic stands out is in the affinity between it and Heideggerian phenomenology. His likeness to Heidegger in describing the modalities of the solitary self (the losing of the self in the they) and the process by which the self relinquishes its central position as the subject of representation is … striking.

…Both for Pirandello and Heidegger, the truth of being-there is mysterious because truth is always intertwined with the concealment of truth’s withdrawal.

(Source: Anthony Petruzzi’s article)

Feu Mathias Pascal

Feu Mathias Pascal – The late Mathias Pascal (1925)

Since seeing a Paris production of Pirandello’s play Sei personnaggi in cerca d’autore, L’Herbier had been eager to collaborate with the author on a film of one of his work’s, but hitherto Pirandello had been unwilling to give permission for any adaptations because he would not accept the compromises that were asked of him.

When however a proposal was put to him on L’Herbier’s behalf to film his novel Il fu Mattia Pascal, he was sufficiently impressed by the film-maker’s earlier work to give his enthusiastic agreement.

It was after watching this movie that George Seferis adopted Mattia as one of his alter egos.

But this is the topic od another article, to come in the near (unknown) future.