CARAVAGGIO/PARACELSUS: found objects find a home in my

head

1)

Visible in the historical chiaroscuro: contractual squabbles,

Snide gossip. As in a dream…Caravaggio is served a plate of
Artichokes. These fragments speak. And finally tortured,
As they sink towards nightmare. From nowhere he is nowhere.
Genius would rescue him from those streets,
The rough side of the hustle, living in the underworld.
Nec spes, nec metus (no hope, no fear), it was demimonde
Where all money was cadged. Just a bunch of guys hanging
Out in some Roman tavern. These pictures offer a glimpse:
The secret, the coded, the shameful? Beguiling and corrupt
Icons mingle a double language of fact with fantasy.
Wishing with being, desire and contempt, sexual exploitation,
Deep neurosis. Who knows how the two were conjoined?
A man whose life was torn to pieces by violent, unmastered
Feelings of rage working against him: self-lacerating power:
Drew his sword and slashed the picture to shreds.
Hauled in by the police every few months.
Shouting matches, fisticuffs, thrown rocks, swordfights.
They begin with his fame, fury-fed on celebrity.
Caravaggio killed a man.

2)

God made everything out of nothing. But man He made

Out of everything. Paracelsus thought the world was open
To him. 16th century man reached out beyond his allotted place
In the medieval universe. From the individual to the eternal.
Paramirum explaining the wonders, “the ground of medicine,”
The material which pervades the whole creation. Sulphur, mercury,
salt:
Not stars, not humors. The growth and decay of matter.
At 19, young Faustus had had enough of philosophy.
Live toads against bubonic postules. On foul wounds he heaped
“Three handfuls of steamed pigeons’ dung, moss grown on a skull.”
For hemorrhage, frog’s eggs. Paracelsus used for disinfectant…
What arcanum he was employing: names have no virtues, substances
have.
Paracelsus never became MD, it was of no consequence:
“Splendor, title, ring and name will be as much help as a horses tail.”
“They are sworn fools, beware of such fucking swindlers.”
The work makes the master and doctor---neither Emperor nor Pope.
The priests of the Paracelsus cult have their revolution behind them.
No Magus, astrologer or chiromancer should tell his sovereign
The naked truth. Demons teach, instruct and inspire men.
Signs, action at a distance, communication with the dead,
Passage of matter through matter, charms, spells, amulets,
And all the mantic arts, Paracelsus maintained that the phoenix
Is born of a horses carcass. Anything can happen: negromancy.
All are natural. He never undressed. Night after night, he threw
Himself on the bed in his clothes, wearing the sword he obtained
From a hangman. He did not care for women.
“Then Thou hast made grow in me Thine art under the breath
Of the terrible storm in me.” The unhappy professor utterly lacked
Political insight. A rough man born in a rough country.
“All the universities and old writers put together are less
Talented than my arse!” he rather looked like a teamster.

3)

The drama, however, ended in a farce.

The irritable genius took these affronts with ill grace: never accept
A clergyman patient again. He found enemies wherever he looked.
Launched upon a contest with the city of Basle in a rancorous
lampoon. While the police got ready to fetch the culprit, Paracelsus
must flee. In the dark…denounced their opulence, their buxom fat
wives. Syphilis was a new disease…in those days, merciless, the flesh
Literally eaten away from the bones. Astrologers surmised the
Conjunction of three planets…virtuous Germans quick to saddle
The French. Spanish sailors brought the scourge from the West Indies.
Who could cover up such a felony? With Three Chapters on the French
Disease Paracelsus had to run. “I only denounce the abuses of
medicine to protect the common man from robbery.” Justice was being
trampled, faith was lost. He turns to solitude, poverty and meditation.
“I started out in the Light of Nature…and finished in the Light of
Eternity.”

4)

Caravaggio killed a man. The Madonna of the Rosary, a bet and a ball
Game, the sudden rage of knife play, Caravaggio bright with violence.
See the victim’s mouth, round with agony, then flight and darkness
Again: invariably fouling the new nest, moving from flight to flight.
Outside a café in Naples, a gang of thugs
Beat him beyond recognition…Self Portrait of a Sick Bacchus, The Boy
Bitten by a Lizard, The Fruit Vendor, John the Baptist…meditations on
aspects of desire. It is a delirious moment: Caravaggio rushed to the
shore, only to see his ship pulling away with the work of his exile. He
was found collapsed on the beach, under the blazing, leonine sun. Two
days later he was dead. Here is where dream sinks into nightmare.
Celebrime pittore, Knight of Malta, Sycophant. Caravaggio killed a
man.