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    4 views7 pages

    The Vortex and The Labyrinth Bruno Schulz and The Objective Correlative

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    James Gregory
    Discussion of Bruno Schulz

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    The Vortex and the Labyrinth: Bruno ‘Schulz and the Objective Correlative David A. Goldfarb® Bruno Schulz and" S Elio both aw the pradvction of mening i art ts 1 proces deeply laden with the constuction and conjuring of tnythologies. Despite the eligon ofthe Naw and the Fates, by which ‘many would charicterize Moderaism, the recuring gesture of primi tivism signals «concomitant yearning for origins. In this es, 1 would Tike co explote che theoredcal psiions on mythology and meaning in Schule and lio, and consdet ow they play out i the ewo authors aise wok "TS. Blo, in his tay “Hamlet and His Problems" claims The only way of expreingemcin inthe or ofa iby ing a, bjs edt ior ovis, 22 af bjt 2st, 4 cain of eee ch sl be Ufo ot porar evi uch that ‘Shen ee exer fai, ih mse amitat in seer experience, [iver the emocian ied evoke ‘ete isan emotion inthe mind of dhe artist, then, which the ast seeks 10 eproruce inthe mind ofthe reader by means ofa “objective onelative—an external thing known to addtesser and addressee— thee produces the same emaion in bot ends. Implici inthis defni= tion is the ida that ae is suceefl as «communicative ac only insofar ts it conveys the ats intention «he “preva eration.” But Eliot fecogniacs dat the artist can express that intention only by connecting to the knowlege base of the receptor. The artist's question then be- ‘Gomes, How do T kow that the are I make now will be meaningful ‘rsh e rt Uh dr pgs sec ne to so as sccossculkures and actos ime, inthe way that wodks lke aml em tobe meaning? lio’s much debated phrase capeued the anxivies of artists in his ‘rele and beyond, in an age of burgeoning" ses” and manifesto. The ‘objective corelative provided an operational description of metaphor ith universal meaning, Fara Pound was developing 2 dhoey of uni veeal meeiphor anchored in concrete objects well belore Elie wee "Hamlet and His Peoblems" That theory ie perhaps most clearly atie- ulated in Ernest Feollsas work on Chinese deograme, which Pound ‘eanalated in 191: ‘The whole delicate subscnce of speech is buile upon sbseracs of metaphor. Abutace rms, presed by etymology eva thee ancient ‘oat ail nba ip dee sean. But the primitive weve tec sping fom arbitary dj rocetes. They ar posible nly be ‘ose they flow objective lines of lacs fa rata esl For Fenollos, poetey was the process of recovering lose metaphors through exymology. He describes the process of mecapors at scientific” rather than “logical,” which we can tke to mean positivitclly that, _metaphors should be based on things cae can be observed objectively rather chan deduced in the mind. They ae meaningful toa commority of readers only insofar as che refer co something that many users of sich ‘deograms ot metaphors could verily by observation. Thus we can ecstand Pounds preference always for aconcete image eather than 3 bsaction.Abstaction is the task ofthe reader. rom Eli's poetry we will se that, drawing on che wider notions of “servable phenomena” offered by James G. Fazer and Sigmund Freud, he loates che source of sch objective corelaives in universal mythology. In The Gelder Baugh, Fier tied to demonstrate that die verse culate had common bate of Fondamertal myths that my have differed in dewil bat were essentially the sme in native outline Freud, and eventually Jung, hoped f0 establish a scientific basis for these covelations through the new discipline of puychoanalysis by 2. Oxfam tron is Hm seni ce hn ‘cn em egret 2. Ein fom Th Wi Chaar fiery in Deal ‘hye a am Pa Raa Py a 298 The Vorex and th Labyrinth demonstsiing tac all of ehea enyths emerged from allegedly univer- ‘al features of human development or human nacre. "Universalis in te, then, cou be achieved by tapping iat human nacure by reference {o theve universal mythologies. The mastee naratives of mythology might be scen at the abjective corelatves ro which se myths tha razr identifies, and Eliot appropriates, eet, ‘Once we se the anthropological context of Elio’ da of an obj tive coslative, i begine to lok quite similar to Brano Schult’ sate tenes on mythology. In a frequently quoted passage from his essay “The Mythologining of Realty,” Schl claims very ager of reaiy live by vite af partaking in 2 wives SeoieDonrytappens when thor cree a ene ce betwee Sonya sinlen eget ofthe primera my =» NOC ON Se) (Fan iene urs des noe iit m nth at tore a iStds deracred myehology. ‘The mont fondsmetal fncton of the spi inventing ks, seating eae. (Ihe ulin mae Ith the ear or aman erode] ses wee wel once ele: they ome fn forgotten, agente ales “tres Poetry cgi ‘hese nt meumings rere word ote plaes, annette by he ‘ld sence ‘Words have meaning by viewe oftheir connection an “all embracing, inuegeal mychology” of “aniverse sense” (115). Words, fragments of theisfomer selves, “complete (Uherselves) with sense,” when they ae sucesfllycaneformed by “poetry” (115). The poet marches words tense the way an archaeologist pieces rogetber shard of pottery. Schule’s theory, articulated in 1936, combines Fenollons' idea of poetry as eey- ‘mology with Eliot's notion af an objective cetelativeexpesed sa uni= ‘versal sense with is lous in primed mych “The heotes lok uite similar, ut how do they cand up in prac tice? Schl, like Elio, peivilges dhe sole of myeholngy in art, but ‘Schula’s work ceveals that, while he may draw on Jewish at classical ‘mythology the most distinctive and appealing aspect of his work is his ‘reation offal or proud mycology, ox, moce particularly, the pet> sonaliacion of thore received mythologies. Where Elit and Pound are ‘et Ind nn re el and "ew cam ait Europace Paitics and Swiss 259 looking for origins by juxtaposing the malate f node citwalisticbe- havior to their cere exotica, Schule, che provincial seculaized Galician Jew, i looking inward ‘Since this cluster of essays is concerned with chal, Iwill couch on lio nly beefy. “The Wasteland” might be ead st Elior’s clearest at- temps to actuslze the thery of the objective cotelaive, at Funder stand tha theory, through che jaxeapsition of mori rom a vate of Primitive aye sources with «natative about modern London high fociey, Toward the beginning of his poem, Eliot aks: What at he ous chat larch, whe branches gow cue ofthis sony cabal? Son of ma, You anno sot gues, for you now oly ‘Aap of broken images. “Roots that clutch” and “branches (that gow" refer tothe mixture of “memory and desire” (3) mixed by “Apa,” which ll of ws now eee= ognize as “che crellest month.” The “too clutch memory ofa time before the "Son of man,” Before the destruction of the ancient pre= Christian icons. The “branches evince a deste o grow fom the "stony rubbish of che “heap of broken images." The metaphor is an ocganic one, but unlike the Romantics, who sw work of ata ie sprung, whole fom the mind of the artist, Eliot propotes that the work most form an organic whole fom the rocky, fragmented soil of lot ad dis- tane nyt “The Wasteland,” in che sense of we dere, i jus such ocky amal- ‘gam of ancien feriity myths drawn frm Frazer, eerences to the Bible, Ovid, Homer, Trizam and ld, “The Fisher King,” they ap= pear in Jessie L. Westons Fram Rtaalt Romany on the Grail myth, probably, Jane Harisce’s ancheopological suds (published just ater ‘he cut ofthe century) onthe etal origins of Greek myth and The Timpat, which is itself « kind of peimivivie fantasy based on liabethan travel erature The aris’ problem i how to create a work that does noc become, like che paintings described in che second part of "The Wasteland,” a hr oe 96-71 13S po « Seni nd ru 9, ano 260 The Vertex andthe Labyrints “withered stump of rime” (104). Poetry can recover those las con rections through meter, a8 surely as chose "withered seumps of time imply by theie cadence and their conte Shelley's "eglessteunks of stone fein, in the poem “Ozymandias,” co the Romantic myth of tncient Oriental despots. The way co restore meaning to alienated ‘modern culeure, them, ix co drink from the source, which, in "The ‘Wasteland, wil be the ancient, the Oren, and ce exotic. ‘A primordial objective corelative willbe Elioe's way out of dhe exe sis of subjectivity articulated i the Lines: We thik ofthe ey. each in i pit “Thinking of the key each conn psn (44-15) By epestng che Sanskrit mantra “Da... Da... Da... Gl 401, 411, 418), feagimenss of & moxco from ehe Upenisbad, “Dace, Dayadhvam. Damyata” (433), Elioe restores the meaning of chose wwords-—"give, sympathize, coneol”—proviing an answer to his very modernist problem the poet can “give” (Data he sight key, which twill cause every reader to “sympathize” (Dayadbnon)—c0 "fel to: _gether"—ahen be wil achieve the acist's masery or “conto mya The bat rpondd Galo ee and expe wih il and ear “The sea was lm, our Beare would ave responded Guy wher and, eaing obedient ‘Toeanling hand (419-23) Ie chese few lines, Elioesuptimposes an Oriental cext ont che myth of the Fisher King to uncover the ofgins of and answer toa question raken from FH. Bradleys Apperonc and Rely econtextualzed though the poetic image of» prison rom Dante- As che bot i controled by the masters hands, so the eats heart must respond "when invited” c the ast’ “concoling hands, if indeed, chey are ealy “expert Th inuch the same way chat Picasso superimposs African masks on bis eubise harem scene in Ler Dons d Avgnor, Eliot estores the connection berween socal represenations in modern life and "prim tive" myth by putting them in contact with each other. Fr Eliot he tev perhaps for caso well the "mytholoizing of ality” might be ast Earopea Politics end Suciair 264 sid co take place when the “interference” berween the primitive and the meee ceveal to the reader he objective carelaive becween the three’? "Now: i chis cenjecare about dhe use of che primitive othe exotic in the production of mesning in some wetks of Eliot and Paso and peshape other Wester European pimicivists, is correc, would be in- fevesing to see how an acti like Schulz mighe eres sae eeme Schulz hod bis own fcioation with the odalsgue, and employed its Jimagery to produce system of mesning that was quite differen fom Picasso, Schule produced severl images of collections of female mde thas might be scent following ie the tradition of Cézanne’ various Bashers, which so fscinated Westra European modernists. Unlike the idyllic seenes of Cézanne, however, or she absteactions of Matisse, erin, or Pistio, Schult’ images ually poreay che women in dom nant or alot pes and incorporate images of men—frequenly sell= portnis—ia pertutes of submission oF debasement. Schul’s women fe almost always a ead above che bene or prostrate male figure, and ‘thee tall, chin appearance accetuates che coldnes of thet gaze In the Binal version of Ls Denaile here are no men, and the tice ‘casts the women a prostizstes, putting them in che postion of debase- rent, Pista’ Afian mask, which mitros che cubis compression of ound space nce the inrerection of 50 any planes, serves 1 eae the ‘elthoad ofthe women porerayed. A mask conceals the fae that would ‘xherwise eprsene the individuality of ce subject. Cubism’ compres- sion of space eeduces curved faces to faceted mask, leaving ony de Aividuated women’s bodies, che origin of human creation in ch primitive ard nines sexuality ‘One of Schule poreits of his frend and sponsor Stanisaw Weingarten (ece Figur” i Schulz’ most interesting variation onthe “Bacher” theme, Weingarten is seated in profile at alow desk, viewing picture, perhaps Schiele: own deawings. Behind him alae tapese fy, esc, poring in an orate fame. The background seems frost eo be « projection of wha isin Weingacten'’s nin, as fhe were Tooking a che images on the dese and we were seeing ee combination Peay Serisari manera REET RT race done tats maser ti CES occa cca neta 262 "Thr Vertex euad she Labyrinth ‘of chem projected onto che wall bhind im. Ind, ic seems 10 be composed of many of Schula’s oher images. There are chee nude ‘women seated beneith a canopy to the right of Weingarten's head and fone reclining. The elining women is caressed by a wingless Cupid, tnd another childlike figure perches in the shadows above and behind Inet A ger elisa the women’ fet and aude Likeness of the acs, is piceued licking ane of the women's fc, in 2 submissive posture. “Two ofthe seated women ate loking down 3 the submissive Schulz ‘One of then is boking sta clown reclining in ee lle corer of the frame and gusing athe whole scene Like viewers looking at puting. the woman in the sght corner ofthe fame ses the clown and de clowe, sees the women, though no mutual recogaition i revealed in eye com> tact ic ea the coo unicieeional gazes didnot al up to 2 single bidieeional gaze. The whole background is a wooded setting with clouds, tees, and grass “The tiger, which appears in Schalzs The Book of ldletry (Xigna aduwhusrzs) a a submissive ballcigethall Schule chimera? could be viewed as an importation of exotic, Like Picaso's mask, but ic also fanctions, along wich the reclining clowa, aan invocation of the cite ‘cas, which is one ofthe primary motifs of Tbe Back of Idlatry. This ‘lowa is clearly not in bit usual setude of performance. The artist is foe a master creator, “expert wih sil and oa." but a slve, and the spectator is «clown, earning the ac of viewing itself, in which Weine {rten is engaged in ee foreground into ke uf performance. “The world of Le Dense: d’Avigon is monalogic insole as the fame delineates sharp division of the viewing (and paincing) sub- jece and che represented (end purchased) objec, Picasso's women are fon the aside ofa space defined by his frame, which determines out ‘ze, Schulz, howeves, puss himself and his viewer both inside and ‘outside the fame, sad then presents his viewer viewing inside that Farm to fashion a remarkably complex meditation oa the problem of the percepion of at by bluting the lines between subject and objec. ‘What in this image could be an objective correlative uniting che mind ofthe perceiver with the and of che asi, when he perceiver tnd the acs become both subject and obec inside che nested fares ofthe work? "Yee despite this blaring of ebjecviy and consion of che simple East Earypam Politics and Sucisies 263 Pore fee ate end Staniw Weingaren. Pom THe Drains of Bram Scull. 119. Copyighe* 1990 by Norhwesen Unersey Pes Tnvradedo, election. ands of engravings aod dawns copyeishe° 190 by Jeriy Bows. English reunion copyighe © 1990 by Norwest Unsivessisy Past. Phorograpis copyright © 1990 by Adam Kacekowsh, eprnned by permission, 264 The Vortec andthe Labyrinth selaion ofan objective coeelaie, Sel, ike Blot, seeks co restore ‘withered seumnps of time,” a he writes in "The Nighe of the Grese Senn Exerone knows, ha in the couse otinity, mara ears, whims tie aes bets fom sts womb her en, peat Yess, deg sat yas ich, Hike ah Wile igor a be ba, gow tr ‘semi defi mom sewers ‘Wesay decane, bec he eel each he fll may Lhe tn inant delvezed Goo lt, lags behind i growth,» enc ‘month flied shor more ener han real)" ‘As I ave argued extensively in my article “A Living Scale: Nee slice sm,” this image noe sme individ aici fanny oe otc fable chat Schulz would have had co dig up fram an arcane source but 1 myth fm his everyday life" Without research, Schulz finds myth iomediaely i the Jewish caer, in which a thirteenth "de- fective monch” is periodically interalsted to keep the mone in Line ‘with the seazons. Schulz can feel exotic enough in the myths of his hillhood without ever leving Drohabyce Schul’s mose sustained fitional meditation on form and mye, which sin some ways an analogue eo “The Wasteland” is he “Takest 1 manekinach,albo wir ksiggn Rodzaja” fom Sbley eemoneny (Cinnano Sop). Since this sa hige we should tke ie nota che = ond chapeer of Genesis bu, like a tome of Zohar, aa pare of the “oral ‘Torah, oe the body of myeh outside she Hebrew Bibl, itself speculated on fee centuries by eabbinc scholars, Schulz probably did not have a= ‘imate dizee knowledge of Zohar of Tala ot Maimonides in Hebrew and Aramaic, but he could hove rad chem in German, and it would hve been dificule co avoid absorbing hei syle and fragments oftheir substance feom the conversation of Orthodox and Hasidic Jews in Galicia ac che time of Scho’ youth. Schl sto thor bili wol- srs what Umbecro Eo in The Nan the Ris othe schol Richard Janko, wha has arcerped to reconstruct the second book of Aro Pais fom rated cots In che "Teacate," Jakub, the mara’ father a fibre merchant, o- 59 tannins nt ed ae om 1 BA Es ty St alg me” Pgs HDD aut Earp Pais ad Scns 265 Poses ose-creace lif ina way that gloities mater over ft, Jakub be- sins his rgumene asa rede adaburdam, proclaiming the opposite of hat he wishes co peove as his Ges principle, declaring“, esting ‘ide the respece due co che Creator, I wished o play ata critique of re ation, T would shout less content, mate form"? "Thee is peest ‘emptation co read this slogan as Jakub actual argument, and to Tea ie further a5 Schule’ view, Beste Jakub is prone co makieg such proclamations, fike Joshoa on the ammpars, In this ease, however, sdopring the gence ofthe “Tractae," Jakub astumes the posture of philosophical argument, at if he "wished co playa critique and en ploys a favorite Socratic gescute even if be docs nox cay ic through its conclusion. IF eis weee an actual edu, Jakub would attempt to

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